Monthly Archives: August 2013

contest

Wedding Victory Contest Winner & Answers

We’re sure that you have not googled the answers and are dying to hear the winner of our WVT trivia contest! Here goes…

We managed to see license plates from all 50 states over the course of the tour, but finding them was more difficult than we anticipated. What was the last license plate that we found? 

-The last license plate we saw was surprisingly not Alaska (saw it in Seattle) or Hawaii (saw it in Phoenix). It was Alabama! We didn’t catch it until July 26th.

As you saw, we are trying to photograph ourselves in front of every state capitol building (though not all on this trip, obviously). On WVT, we took pictures in front of the capitols in the largest AND smallest state capitals by population. Name them.

-By population, the largest capital is Phoenix, AZ:

AZ state capitol

 

-And the smallest is Montpelier, VT:

VT State capitol

We saw some interesting state mottos over the course of the trip. Which states have the following mottos?
“Live free or die” –> New Hampshire!
“Eureka” –> California!
“Fatti maschi, parole femine” (“Manly deeds, womanly words”) –> Maryland!

We crossed the continental divide in two states. What were they?

-We crossed the continental divide in Montana (Logan’s Pass in Glacier National Park) and New Mexico.

We saw rain when we ate lunch in Yuma, AZ. On average, how many inches of rainfall does Yuma get in the month of July? (We’ll give it to you if you’re reasonably close.)

-This was surprising! Yuma gets on average a quarter inch of rain each July…and we happened to arrive right after its one annual shower, haha. In case you don’t believe us:

Rain in SW Arizona
Tie-breaker: We estimated that we would drive 10,000 miles over the course of WVT, but the final mileage ended up being more than we anticipated. Estimate what our total mileage was for the entire trip from June 12th to August 3rd.

-It didn’t really come to a tie-breaker, but we drove 12,216 miles on WVT!

For the bonus puzzle, click here for the answer. We had one entry. Nice job, Matt! (Keep a look-out for a stylized representation of tongue-out Bodger in the solution!!)

How did your answers compare? Did you learn something about our vast and varied country? We hope so!

And the winner is….

RYAN!

Congratulations, Ryan! We will be mailing your prize soon eventually.

Thanks to all of the other entrants!!!

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contest

Wedding Victory Contest!

We rolled into Richmond, VA, on Saturday, August 3rd, just in time to change and head to Rohan and Khushbu’s engagement party at the Science Museum. It was wonderful to celebrate their upcoming (will-be-totally-awesome) wedding AND see so many friends, some of whom have already made an appearance on this blog.

MLWGSGIS group

And, of course, we were delighted to catch up with this little friend goober as well! Pretty sure he didn’t miss us at all….(That is, if he noticed we were gone in the first place.)IMG_1031

And on Monday, we gave Harrison’s mom’s car, our WVT workhorse, a much-needed vacuum and bath.

IMG_1041It has been fun to recount stories and share photos from the road with our families. We’re still processing the fact that we were on the road for 53 days, and I’m sure over the next few days, weeks, and months, we’ll remember funny things that happened on the trip.

With no more “from the road” stories to share, we want to have another contest Instead of animal identification, this contest consists of trivia questions and a doozy of a puzzle.

Contest Rules: You must submit your answers by email (info [at] weddingvictorytour.com) on or before Sunday, 8/11, by midnight EST. A winner will be selected from the submissions with the highest number of correct answers by use of the tie-breaker estimation question (see below). Only those in the continental US are eligible as we will most likely have to mail your prize. Once again, the prize is something yet to be determined, but it will be something cool from Richmond, VA.

Some of the questions are “Google-able,” but wouldn’t you sleep better at night if you answered them with your best guesses?

So, without further ado, WVT trivia questions:

  • We managed to see license plates from all 50 states over the course of the tour, but finding them was more difficult than we anticipated. What was the last license plate that we found? 
  • As you saw, we are trying to photograph ourselves in front of every state capitol building (though not all on this trip, obviously). On WVT, we took pictures in front of the capitols in the largest AND smallest state capitals by population. Name them.
  • We saw some interesting state mottos over the course of the trip. Which states have the following mottos?

“Live free or die”

“Eureka”

“Fatti maschi, parole femine” (“Manly deeds, womanly words”)

  • We crossed the continental divide in two states. What were they?
  • We saw rain when we ate lunch in Yuma, AZ. On average, how many inches of rainfall does Yuma get in the month of July? (We’ll give it to you if you’re reasonably close.)
  • Tie-breaker: We estimated that we would drive 10,000 miles over the course of WVT, but the final mileage ended up being more than we anticipated. Estimate what our total mileage was for the entire trip from June 12th to August 3rd.

Bonus!!! Harrison’s brother Palmer is an international puzzle champion and has authored several puzzles of his own. At our request, he has made this brain-twister of a puzzle. To solve the puzzle, you must partition the grid into shapes that can be shaded to reveal a hidden message.

The WVT puzzle is available here for you to download (PDF). It is printed over four sheets of paper with one sheet of instructions and practice. All assembled, it should look like this:

harrisonmica-galaxies

If you are able to solve the WVT puzzle, e-mail us with the secret message! MAJOR BONUS POINTS (but not necessary to enter the contest).

(Neither of us has solved it yet.)

Answers will be revealed on Monday, August 12th. Stay tuned.

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from the road

Days 51-52: Sandy Springs & Atlanta, GA

Guys, this is IT! Our last stop on WVT until we return to Richmond, VA. We’re staying in Sandy Springs, GA, outside of Atlanta, with my uncle Terry and aunt Valerie.Terry and Valerie

And we cannot forget their hilarious Malti-poo Jingles!

Jingles

 

Today, we started with a big Southern breakfast, including grits! And then Terry and Valerie took us on a driving tour of Sandy Springs (which, until yesterday, I had no idea existed). We saw some very large and impressive houses before we arrived on Atlanta’s famous Peach Tree Road. We also saw the white oak that Valerie had planted in honor of Sandy Springs’ mayor!

Valerie and Terry were great tour guides, and they were eager to show us the distinct Atlanta sights. Valerie got us tickets to the VIP tour at the CNN World Headquarters! It is in a former indoor amusement park facility with the longest free-standing elevator in the world.

CNN World HeadquartersWe even found Anderson and Wolf!

Anderson Cooper cut-out

(I got this one for Maria!)

Wolf Blitzer cut-outThe CNN tour is really interesting! It sounds silly, but we didn’t realize how much man-power went into making the news. The building was full of screens and monitors and people with headsets, giving and taking instructions.

How do you think we look as anchors? I think we’d be a good co-anchor pair. We put on our serious faces. I guess we’re reading hard-hitting and breaking news. (One entry-level position is manually scrolling through the teleprompt script for each anchor. Yes?? No….)

anchors setAfter lunch, we took a picture of our last state capitol on this trip. (Thanks to Terry for taking this one. It’s rare that we get one together.)

GA State CapitolThen we learned thangs at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. I didn’t get any pictures inside, but it’s a really well-done look at his life and presidency. This brings our total number of visits to presidential libraries to a whopping two! We should go to more. I apparently didn’t pay attention in US History class, so I have to relearn all these things now.

Jimmy Carter Presidential libraryNear the museum is the Virginia Highland neighborhood, which Valerie describes as the closest thing Atlanta has to a bohemian district. We walked around and visited a few cute little shops. This is particularly impressive because it’s early August in Atlanta and walking outside was totally do-able. The humidity was way down today, and there was a clear blue sky and manageable temperatures. Terry and Valerie assure us that this is not normal.

Virginia Highland signIf you’re in the Sandy Springs or Atlanta area, you should visit Heirloom Market barbecue restaurant. Terry and Valerie’s foodie neighbors say that this is the best barbecue in the city, and it was started by a Korean so it has little touches like spicy pepper sauce or kimchi coleslaw. The “Hotlanta” sauce is seriously HOT.

This was a great last visit! It was so nice to see both friends and family on this trip. I haven’t seen Terry and Valerie in almost ten years, and they showed us so many neat only-in-Atlanta things. And I’m glad Harrison could meet so many of my family members, who are now his family members, too!

WVT in Sandy SpringsI think Jingles has found her new soul-mate. Look, she is just beside herself with grief that he is leaving tomorrow!

Jingles & HarrisonAnd so tomorrow, we hit the road and drive from Sandy Springs back to Richmond! Stay tuned, we have a puzzle competition and some “awards” to name!

 

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