DESTINATION: Around Nittany Mall
TRAVELING COMPANION: Alaina. Again. (Why does she end up in so many of these?)
PHOTOS BY: Alaina

"There's not enough time," he interjected, "We can't possibly--"

"Oh, but I guess there was enough time for you to sleep with Chloe," sneered Rachel. "You make me sick, you low-life, pathetic, th --"

"Chloe! CHLOE! You think I care about her, you think she means anything to me?"

"Well, yes I do, Mr. I-only-married-her-to--"

And then, they both stopped yelling, because the sound of the bees suddenly returned.

The previous passage was written by guest blogger William Anthony Wellock III.

For readers not familiar with Rihanna, she is famous for:

-umbrellas
-having legs

And also this: CLICK HERE

"Shut Up and Drive" is the anthem for our generation, a generation of people who just need to stop talking while driving.

So drove I did -- away from this town of drunkenness and debauchery, to the world-famous Nittany Mall.

Driving down College, we witnessed the following:

1. Rockview Prison:

Here's a fun fact about Rockview: The state ships prisoners here to kill them!

2. Stoners Shop:

This hilariously named tool sharpening store is next to the DMV where I took my high school friend and former roommate Pat to get his license renewed on his 21st birthday. (He wanted to get the horizontal license, but in a cruel twist of fate discovered that they work off of the date that your camera card was issued -- and because he got his card before his 21st, he was stuck with the vertical one. When I learned this, I pointed and laughed cruelly in his face, which prompted the DMV staffer to point and laugh along with me. Some love their MTV; I love my DMV.)

Also, my mom once told me that her high school had a special entrance for seniors only. Stoners has something along the same lines:

3. Roberts Oxygen

Proper protocol for refilling your oxygen tank at Roberts Oxygen:

1. Pull up car.
2. Roll down window. Attendant will come over.
3. Order oxygen by saying: "Muuuuuuust.... breeeeeeathe...... ggaaghajsghajshjghajhgjhagjahh..."

But I wanted a yellow hard hat!

4. Timberland

The Way I Are, baby.

5. Rony's Place

That is quite convenient that his name is "Rony" and the sign has a picture of a piece of peppe-roni pizza on it. The only way he could have had a better name is if his parents called him "Cheesypizzasauceington."

6. Waffles & Cakes

Do you want a waffle? This is your place.
Do you want a cake? This is your place.
Do you not want a waffle or do you not want a cake? Do not go here.

7. Red Horse Tavern

First of all: No, I do not think they serve horse here.

Second: I think there should be more places where you can take your family out to dinner and then order some beer to take home to get the kids hammered.

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $0
Miles traveled: about 9

Lessons learned:

[There will be no lessons learned this week as Travis has decided to end the blog early to go back to the Stoners Store.]

Hi everyone.

Maybe you're here because you saw the shameless promo for my blog on the special section Travel page in Tuesday's Collegian. Or maybe you're here because you're already a loyal reader of Travis' Travels. Or maybe you're here because you Googled "lesbians," "barely legal teens" or "adorable kittens." Or maybe you're here because you Googled "barely legal adorable lesbian teen kittens."

In any case, welcome one and all. This is Travis' Travels, where every week I visit a new place somewhere in the world America Pennsylvania. (Although look out... next month Travis' Travels is shipping up to BOSTON! For realsies! You heard it here first, people!)

So now it's time for an extra-special special bonus episode of Travis' Travels Week 9.5: Photos I Neglected to Upload a Few Days Ago. These out-of-context photos relate to week 9's blog. Look for an all-new travel, as usual, on Thursday.

Like Mary and Joseph, we found that there was no room at this Inn. Though unlike Mary and Joseph, people liked us enough to book us another room at a different hotel.

From left to right: Terry Casey, campus editor; Leslie Small, copy desk chief; Devon Lash, editor-in-chief; Kevin Doran, Venues editor. The four of us look so excited because it's really late, we're tired and we have to put all of our stuff back in the car and find the other Days Inn.

This is how we treat our editor-in-chief.

This is Halle Stockton, the real managing editor. She looks confused because the gas pump just asked her to type in her zip code.

At the second Days Inn, we saw a sign indicating that the Pennsylvania Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association was up the stairway to the right.

Here's something I learned from them: You know that awesome combination of gasoline and corn chips that all gas station convenience stores smell like? Gas station convenience store employees actually spray that in the air every hour, just like Abercrombie and Fitch employees with that cologne that you can smell all the way down Allen Street. But don't ask if you can buy the forumla - it's top secret!!!

This was our room. It was 10 times awesomer than my apartment.

Even Harrisburg has shady basements and back alleys.

This is from the lesbian episode of Parental Control that we watched. Try to spot the lesbians in the photo!

Bruce the bat. He was adorable, just sleeping there on the side of Days Inn.

Doran pets Bruce. Doran now has rabies!

Some guy in the lobby of Days' Inn was preventing "aliens and alien-created zombies from taking over the Area 51 military facility." God's work, to be sure.

This is a sampling of the pathetic North American continental breakfast waiting for us at Days Inn.

Here we are at the conference. In the middle is our former editor-in-chief, Erin James. She is clearly excited to be on this blog.

Casey is seen here attempting to show us all up with his tie and class ring.

Casey's class ring can again be seen in the lower right corner of this photo, attempting to steal the thunder of these two very nice young women from another student newspaper in Pennsylvania.

Mmmm yes. The bathrooms at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association were hilarious. There were about four of them in a row, unisex, and each had an airport-style indicator so you could tell whether it was occupied.

This helpful reminder was on the inside of the door, apparently because journalists aren't good in awkward social situations involving bodily functions.

This was posted over the toilets. Wouldn't you love to be the staff member who is notified if the toilet happens to overflow?

This gentleman was the adviser of one of the other student newspapers at the conference. He is seen here reading.

Check out all of these student journalists. We are clearly fans of bottled water.

Aaaand we decided to make an Irish exit before the conference was over because we kinda had a newspaper to make.

I leave you with a nose, a river and a cookie.

Note: I couldn't find my digital camera today, so there are no photos with this post. The photos will be uploaded on a future date. Thank you for your understanding.

DESTINATION: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Where state government is fun!
TRAVELING COMPANIONS: Devon, Halle, Leslie, Terry and Kevin
NON EXISTENT PHOTOS BY: Travis

Over the summer, we at the Collegian learned of a conference happening in Harrisburg. Here were the details we received:

-student journalists
-free hotel room

Not ones to pass up a chance to mingle with student journalists and, more importantly, trash a free hotel room, we jumped at the chance to go.

After the Collegian was looking like it was in good shape, the six of us piled into Halle's Jeep Grand Cherokee. This is a car that was only meant to carry five people, so I folded myself up circus contortionist style to fit in the cargo bay.

Attention: In a Travis' Travels first, the next part of this blog was written by a guest blogger: Mr. Kevin A. Doran, the Venues editor of The Daily Collegian! What a rare and unexpected treat!

After making the 90-or-so-minute trek to Harrisburg, we finally arrived at the Days Inn just after midnight...only to find upon attempting to check in that we'd been booked for the wrong night.

But we lucked out.

Before we started panicing about where we'd be sleeping that night, the desk clerk informed us we'd been transferred to another Days Inn.

So we piled back into the car.

And this time, we started on another trek, this time to our final resting place, at least for the night.

Wasn't that great? P.S. You misspelled "panicking," Kevin!

When we finally found the second Days Inn, which looked like it took its architectural inspiration from Chi-Chi's, the woman at the check-in desk managed to mispronounce 5 / 6 of our names as she rattled off who was booked for what room.

As luck would have it, Devon (who is a girl) and I (who is a man) were randomly booked for the same room. When the check-in woman saw this man/woman roommate combo, she was a bit taken aback and asked, "You goin' together?"

Devon, innocently thinking that she was asking if we were booked as roommates, said yes. Collegian romance! Woooooooo!

I backed her up, saying, "We're practically married."

If this were not real life, the above exchange would have been a great setup for a hilarious romantic comedy. But because this is real life, nothing really became of it and now I'm wondering why I bothered mentioning it in the first place.

Anyway, after we moved our stuff in we all gathered in one of our rooms to stay up late irresponsibly and watch Parental Control, which, next to Next, Room Raiders and Exposed, is one of the most glorious programs to ever grace basic cable.

For those not familiar with the show, here's a summary:

A couple is dating. The parents of one of the people in the couple hate their child's boyfriend/girlfriend. They audition a group of prospective new partners for their child. The mom picks out one, the dad picks out another. The child goes on a date with each of the picks while the parents watch the date on TV with the hated boyfriend/girlfriend. At the end of the show, the child decides whether to stay with his or her current partner or switch for one of the people he or she just met ten minutes ago.

As if that doesn't sound awesome enough, we were fortunate enough to have stumbled onto a rare lesbian edition of Parental Control. So the parents were trying to set up their lesbian daughter with a new lesbian partner. It was quite entertaining and chock full o' lesbians and I really wish former Lady Lions basketball coach Rene Portland was there to share the moment with us.

After this episode, Venues editor and chronic misspeller Kevin A. Doran decided to take a breather. While outside, he discovered A LIVE BAT SLEEPING ON THE SIDE OF THE DAYS INN!

Kevin declared it the coolest animal he'd ever seen and named it Bruce.

We went back inside, and the next time we came out Bruce was gone. Perhaps he was a vampire? Or perhaps he melted?

The next day we hit up the Days Inn's free continental breakfast, which turned out to be from the North American continent, if you can believe it. The breakfast selection consisted of:

-Dixie cups of waffle batter placed next to a waffle iron
-Waxy apples
-Two varieties of cereal
-Unimpressive bagels and pastries
-Creepy old man watching me as I took one of the waxy apples

Then we set off to try to find the conference, which was at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) building next to the old Days Inn.

We arrived a half-hour late, and kept in mind the parking instructions sent to us by the PNA:

Parking
When arriving at the PNA office, please park in one of two areas:
-- in front of the PNA office
-- in back of the PNA office in the first two rows

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SIDE!?!?!? Halle asked.

When we finally got parked and got out of the car, I was surprised by how cool the building was. I didn't think that journalists could really afford buildings, much less cool ones. I mean, the First Amendment was engraved on the side -- does it get awesomer than that?

The conference itself was interesting. We got to meet a lot of dedicated and passionate student journalists from smaller colleges across the state, and shared the advice and wisdom that comes from having your soul sucked out on a constant basis by working without pay for a Princeton Review Top 10 daily student newspaper. PLEASE SOMEONE RESCUE ME, THEY'RE FORCING ME TO DO THIS BLOG AGAINST MY WILL CATTLE PRODS ARE INVOLVED

Attention: In a Travis' Travels second, the next part of the blog was written by a guest blogger: F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby!" What a rare and unexpected treat!

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning----

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Wasn't that great? P.S. Also kinda pretentious!

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $0
Miles traveled: about 166

Lessons learned:

-The business term "best practices" really just means "things that are good to do." Also, if you try to call the Smeal College of Business on your way to a journalism conference to find out what "best practices" means so that you won't seem stupid during a group discussion, the person at Smeal will say that they are transferring you to someone who can answer your question and then hang up on you.

Photos by: Alaina

WARNING: This is the second part of a two-part blog about my travel to Penn's Cave. To read the first part, click here: ANYONE WHO CLICKS HERE IS TOTALLY LAME.

Previously. On Travis' Travels.

"WE CAN'T SAVE THEM BOTH! YOUR SON OR YOUR DAUGHTER, YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE!"

"I CAN'T! I CAAAAAAAAAAAN'T!"

"THEN THEY'LL BOTH DIE!"

"NOOOOOOOOO GOD NO WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY..."

And now the exciting conclusion:

THE LEGEND OF PENN'S CAVE

There is a legend. A legend of a princess. An legend of an American Indian princess. A legend of an American Indian princess named Seeit-byboat.

Princess Seeit-byboat was very beautiful, and so the chief of whatever tribe she was in was all, "Hands off the merch." But Seeit-byboat, being affected by our culture's obsession with casual sex and rock and roll, was all, "You can't tell me what to do, man."

So one day, Princess Seeit-byboat decided to bounce from her teepee. She happened to run into some white boy from France who had an adorable accent and a below-average amount of body odor. She came on a bit strong, but they started hooking up and it was pretty sweet.

But then, as Seeit-byboat and the French dude were in the teepee getting to know one another's genitals, the chief totally walked in and busted them.

He was all, "WTF!?" and the French dude was all, "This is NOT what it looks like," but that didn't really work, so the chief decided to kill the French dude.

His method of torture was to throw him into a cave, which is now known as Penn's Cave but back then was called "lame cave with some water in it," and order his seven sons to guard the exits. The French dude swam back and forth through the cave, trying to find an exit not blocked by one of the seven sons. Finally, he gave up and drowned himself.

As the legend goes, to this day you can sometimes hear through the mountains of Happy Valley a faint echo calling: "Seeit-byboat.... Seeit-byboat..."

This, of course, became the inspiration for the marketing campaign later used by Penn's Cave, Inc. to get chumps to pay $12.95 to sit on a glorified raft and look at rocks.

I am one of those chumps. This is my story.

"Anyone with tickets for the 4:20 tour can board now."

So we were at the dock at Penn's Cave and the woman standing there had just called our ticket number.

I was wearing my Collegian T-Shirt and holding my reporter notepad. I thought that what I was doing -- documenting my journey -- should have been plainly obvious to anyone who could put two and two together.

But then, as we were boarding the boat and I passed by our guide, I made the mistake of commenting on our tour time.

"I'm all about the 4:20," I said.

The eyes of our tour guide, whom I soon after learned was named Johnny, immediately lit up.

"Do you like music? Are you a rapper?" he asked.

At first I thought he was joking, but then I looked and saw that he was weirdly earnest. So I did the only think you can do in this kind of situation:

"Yeah, I am," I said.

"Could you write a rap about me?" he said.

"Sure!" I said.

I must admit something: My original vision for this part of the blog was that I would take a bunch of notes about everyone in the boat and then make fun of them later. For example, there was the obese woman in the back of the boat who made reference to her motorcycle -- she would have been quite a colorful character to describe.

Instead, I somehow locked myself in to writing a rap about Johnny Boy.

About 22 of us boarded this "boat," which consisted of two wooden benches on a raft with a Yamaha engine. Us passengers sat across from each other in two rows facing each other, so I could clearly see the woman in front of me who looked like she was trying way too hard to have fun.

Johnny Boy, our tour guide -- who looked about my age, by the way -- took us out of the dock and into the cave. He began by asking us when Penn's Cave, Inc. was planning to close that day: Apparently he had not gotten the memo that they were closing at 5 p.m. He then informed us that although there were life vests under our seats, we wouldn't need to use them because the water in the cave was only 4 feet deep. That may not seem impressive, but it's still deep enough to hide LOST PIRATE TREASURE!*

*Lost pirate treasure is not hidden in Penn's Cave.

Next, he pointed his flashlight at a stalactite and said, "That is a stalactite. Does anyone know what the opposite is?" The woman in front of me who looked like she was trying way too hard to have fun enthusiastically responded, "Stalagmite!" "That is correct," Johnny Boy said, "and when a stalactite meets a stalagmite it makes a column."

I wrote this down, and Johnny Boy directed his flashlight toward me. "You really writing a song about me?" he asked. I rolled my eyes and nodded.

Something I wasn't really anticipating before I came to Penn's Cave, Inc. was that this would be an, as the Web site describes, "interpretive tour."

If you are wondering what an interpretive tour is, imagine the following: You are a Penn State student taking a class about the atmosphere -- but instead of telling you about condensation and the water cycle, all your professor does is point to a picture of a cloud and say, "OOOH, THAT LOOKS LIKE A BUNNY!"

So we go by a rock and Johnny Boy says, "Statue of Liberty!" then we go by three holes and he says "Cookie Monster!" and then we go by a bunch of bumps on a wall and he says "College Avenue!" I am not making this up.

On multiple occasions Johnny Boy reminded us to keep our hands in the boat and not to touch the rocks, because the oil from our fingers would destroy them, which would then change their shape and require Penn's Cave, Inc. to come up with different stupid names for the formations.

At many points, Johnny Boy deliberately turned off all of the lights in the cave, as if to say, "You just paid $12.95 to see NOTHING!"

Johnny Boy finally took us through the cave to Lake Nitanee on the other side. Once there, we ran over a dead fish (eew), did a lap, then came back out Penn's Cave, Inc. the other way.

Through this whole thing he would continue to shine his flashlight on me and ask me how my rap was going. I'm not saying anything, but I think he was into me. (In that way. The Penn's Cave, Inc. way.)

When we got back to the dock, I ripped the page with the rap in it out of my notebook and passed it to Johnny Boy.

Here is my Penn's Cave rap, in its entirety:

Johnny Boy

By Travis Larchuk
Dedicated to our tour guide, Johnny

Johnny Boy, rollin wit his Yamaha engine tour boat /
saw a hottie on the tour and wrote her this note /

Yo girl /
You and me ain't nothin' but stalactites and stalagmites /
So let's get together /
and make a column /
Ahhhh yeah /

Hands in the boat, you better keep 'em /
or I'll throw you in the water, it's four feet deep, mmm /

When's this tour over? Five o' clock? /
I'll take you behind the Visitors' Center and you can lick my lollipop /

That's my Johnny Boy /
Just don't touch his rocks /
Yeah

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $25.90
Miles traveled: about 40

Lessons learned:

-Just because you can see it by boat doesn't mean you should see it by boat.

DESTINATION: Penn's Cave, Inc. See it by boat.
TRAVELING COMPANION: Alaina
PHOTOS BY: Alaina & Travis

A Note For The Children:

But it is true that sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. For that reason, this week's travel has been split into two parts. You can read the first part now. HOWEVER, to read the second part, you will have to invent a time machine and travel one week into the future. By the end of this week, humanity will either have finally broken through the space-time continuum, or you will at least have learned a valuable lesson about patience.

There have been a lot of aggressive marketing campaigns throughout history:

• Nike: Just do it.
• Wal-Mart: Always low prices. Always.
• Lucky Charms: They're magically delicious!
• Wetzel Clothing: The confidence Wetzel clothes impart gives conviction to your words and character to your proposal.

But none of these quite reaches the heights of:

PENN'S CAVE: SEE IT BY BOAT.

If you have ever driven to State College from anywhere, surely you have seen the billboards. They draw you in with their spell: It's a cave, but I can see it by boat! A BOAT! I mean, How many things in this world can you see by boat? Let's list them:

The ocean: It is fairly common to see this by boat.

The desert: If you were to go through the trouble of moving a boat out into the desert, you could see this by boat.

A boat: If you are on a boat, look down.

Okay, so it turns out that you can see pretty much anything by boat. But still... it's a boat. In a cave. Come on!

As we drove to Penn's Cave on a brisk Sunday morning, we couldn't keep track of how many "see it by boat" signs we passed by. For those of you from Pittsburgh, the "see it by boat" sign is basically the Kennywood arrow of Penn's Cave.

When we finally got to Penn's Cave, I was a bit surprised to see a huge freaking farm greeting us at the end of the road:

Also, I can only assume that "spotlight" on this sign means "having sex with:"

There were also many animals about. This is because Penn's Cave has a wildlife tour that you can go on if you're willing to pony up $17.95. The cave tour alone costs $12.95. Save big by getting a combo tour ticket for $26.95. Or, if you are one year old, CONGRATULATIONS, YOUR TICKET IS FREE!

On the way to the Visitors' Center we noticed that the license plates in the parking lot were from all over the United States -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Ontario (which is sort of in the United States) -- clearly Penn's Cave has a national reputation, or at least an Eastern Seaboard reputation.

Look, Penn's Cave is even popular among Mexicans, as evidenced by this covertly-taken photograph:

**Note: It is possible that the person in this photograph is not Mexican and is really just wearing a Mexican-looking hat. I apologize for this moment of cultural insensitivity.

The place was packed. People are crazy about caves apparently. The line for $12.95 tickets was really long and windy. The girls in front of us were loud and whiny. The guy selling tickets was old and Chinese-y.

**Note: It is possible that the person selling tickets was not Chinese. He could have been from some other area in Asia, or maybe he wasn't even born in Asia and doesn't identify as Asian from a cultural standpoint. I apologize for this second moment of cultural insensitivity.

The next available tickets were for the 4:20 tour (ohhhh yeah), which was about an hour away, so we took the time to explore the Visitors' Center gift shop.

This was probably the white trashiest gift shop ever.

**Note: I am starting to become concerned about the excessive number of unnecessary culturally-insensitive references in this post. From this point on, I will no longer make any references to the race, ethnicity or culture of anything or anyone from this travel. For consistency's sake, please assume that any people or things mentioned in the remainder of this post are white Protestant males. Thank you.

Here are some of the fun items available in the gift shop:

• Hats. Not regular hats, mind you -- red cowboy hats, hats that looked like bats, hats that looked like pizza and hats that looked like bears.
  
• T-shirts. I saw a cool T-shirt design with the cave and a bat flying through it. Unfortunately it was only available in small and XXL.
• THE PENN'S CAVE THRASHER!!! You can't buy this but you can take photos with it. TERRIFYING PHOTOS!!!
  
  But gaze close into its eyes and you'll see that it isn't too terrifying.
  
• Knives. Lots of knives.
  
• Handcuffs. Hrrmmmmmm. Apparently they want to supply you with everything you need to hold your tour boat hostage.
  

We also had the opportunity to take some currency out of circulation:

That's what you get for freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln!

Also, there was a bunch of brochures for a bunch of other caves across the country, including Tennessee's LOST SEA ADVENTURE, which is actually a rather unadventurous tour of an underground lake that people have known about for a very long time.

After the Visitors' Center became boring, we decided to trek up the hill to go see some bison up-close and personal.

Here's what the arrangement of the bison was like:

Bison ..... really thin electrical fence ..... us.

These animals were huge. It looked like they could charge the fence and kill us at any moment. Thankfully, there weren't any small children around to provoke them. Oh wait, there were!

That's right, a white Protestant male mother and her many children were there at the extremely thin bison fence with us. And one of her sons, who I am sure is going to grow up to be our next great Middle East ambassador, decided that it would be a good idea to taunt the animals.

CHILD: Hey buffalo, you want a piece of me?

CHILD: Hey, you want a SAAAAAND-WICH? [While waving bag with sandwich in it]

etc.

And now it's time to play...BUFFALO [BISON] VS. RHINO!!!

CHILD'S BROTHER: Do you think a buffalo could beat a rhino?

CHILD: Nah, the rhino would just ram its horn through the buffalo's stomach.

Congratulations rhino, you win!

And now it's time to play... MOTHER VS. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE WEB SITE!!!

CHILD: How much does it weigh?

MOTHER: Oh, 2,000 or 3,000 pounds.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE WEB SITE: An adult male (bull) bison may weigh nearly 2,000 pounds...

Congratulations mom, you win!

So after that, it was time for us to go on our tour of Penn's Cave.

THAT CONCLUDES PART ONE OF MY PENN'S CAVE TRAVEL. TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR PART TWO... OR MAYBE, IF THIS WEEK'S POST DOESN'T GET A LOT OF HITS, PHOTOS OF ADORABLE KITTENS!