ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
During summertime, many people take vacations, but many of those trips are centered around relaxing and taking a break from everyday life, all the while seeing some of the sights in the areas they visit.
New York City is a popular choice for vacations, and as many people do, a mother and daughter from Southwest Kansas traveled to the Big Apple to see some of the city’s sights, but they also were educated about some of those tourist stops.
Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland Troop Engagement Specialist Michele Daniels of Sublette and her daughter, Ashlyn, a Girl Scout, got to visit NYC earlier this summer with a trip planned through a travel education company called Explorica.
Daniels said GSKH sets up trips such as she and Ashlyn got to take. Originally, there was a trip scheduled to take place in Savannah, Ga., but since only the Daniels were the only Girl Scouts going, the destination was moved to New York.
Although they were the only Girl Scouts on the trip, the Daniels were joined by school groups from Salt Lake City and Seattle.
Daniels said as an education-based travel company, Explorica sets up the itinerary for the entire trip.
“You have a tour guide,” she said. “They set up your flights, your hotel. Dinner is set up through them.”
Landing in New York, the Daniels were greeted by a tour guide, and a bus driver took them down Fifth Avenue and pointed out some of the sights around the city.
“We went into the Rockefeller Center,” she said. “We had some free time in the Rockefeller Center while he went up and got the other people from our group. It was pretty amazing.”
Daniels described Rockefeller Center much like an indoor food court.
“It has a few different things,” she said. “It’s mostly food. It has a Ben & Jerry’s. It has a Boba shop. We ate lunch there at a restaurant. Those were the best tacos Ashlyn and I have ever had in our life.”
Walking up and down Fifth Avenue, Michele and Ashlyn met the groups from Seattle and Salt Lake City and had dinner the first night at the Brooklyn Deli. Michele said dinners were reserved in advance with large group.
After dinner the first night, the groups and Girl Scouts spent some time in Times Square, and Michele said she had one of her most memorable experiences on the second day..
“They had set up a Broadway workshop at the Ripley Greer Studios, and a couple of guys who are performers on Broadway led that group,” she said. “One of them was on the piano, and the other one, Tanner Ray Wilson, has been on Broadway for a few years.”
Michele said Wilson taught she and Ashlyn and the other groups a song and an accompanying dance.
“They did some warmups,” she said. “The song they learned, he set the scene, but he was like, ‘I don’t want to give you any spoilers.’ It turns out the scene they learned was actually the Broadway play we were going to see that night called ‘Hadestown.’ They got to learn a two-minute scene from that. Tanner actually acted in that.”
The play the travelers saw was “Hadestown” based on Greek mythology, and having balcony seats to the show, Michele said the experience was an awesome one.
“It was about Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone and Hades,” she said. “That one was at the Walter Kerr Theater.”
Also on the second day, the group visited the top of Rockefeller Plaza, another experience Michele said she enjoyed a lot.
“It was a lot of stairs and escalators,” she said. “We were able to see the history of how it was put together.”
Michele said each day on the trip involved about 14 hours of traveling and walking, and on the third day, the group went on a guided tour of Radio City Music Hall where they learned the history of the famed landmark.
“We were able to see the artwork, the different places,” she said. “We were able to go on stage. The stage is absolutely humongous, but it’s also very sturdy. They’ve had elephants on that stage. When the Rockettes come in, they’ve had a full bus on the stage. They have the hydraulics for things to lift up. They do concerts there, the legendary BMAs, where Kanye West took the microphone from Taylor Swift. We stood on that stage. We were able to meet a Rockette and learn a little about that process. That night, we had dinner Times Square Diner and Grill.”
The group likewise got to see the Campbell’s Soup can painted by Andy Warhol and “Water Lilies” by Claude Monet, which Michele said was enjoyed by everyone, but especially the young people on the trip.
“The kids in school see it in books when they learn about art, but it was neat seeing it in real life,” she said.
The third night saw the group seeing a second Broadway show, this time “Six” at the Lena Horne Theater.
Southwest Kansas, Michele said, has many cultures, but she said the area feels more Americanized than NYC.
“It feels like while we have a lot of people from different places, it’s still very Americanized, and I feel in New York City, they are able to make it their own,” she said.
Overall, just as she found the sights, Michele also found the trip absolutely amazing.
“Even the things that were out of our control with our flights and the delays, the fact that it was set up through this amazing tour company, they handled everything for me down to the hotel reservation when we had to stay overnight in St. Louis,” she said. “I can’t say enough good things about that. Schools are looking into this.”
The trip was likewise quite life changing for both Michele and Ashlyn.
“She wouldn’t have been able to do this trip without Girl Scouts,” Michele said. “Not only was it set up through Girl Scouts, but a lot of the trip was funded through the money she earned with cookies.”
Michele too enjoyed not having to worry about parking.
“The bus picked us up, and the bus driver who has lived there knows everything, and that’s how all those different destinations are,” she said.
GSKH will be starting its fall recruitment soon, and Michele will be in Liberal Friday, Aug. 15, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. to sign up young ladies at the Randall Girl Scout Cabin in Light Park.
“I’m looking forward to sharing all of the information we have about Girl Scouts, all of the new things they’re putting out and hopefully getting girls on board to start doing trips like this,” she said.
