Okay - this is it. The last post of the trip blog. Mostly it is just a giant thank you to everyone. I know we have already said this, but this has been a really great experience - both being able to see the country and being able to share it with everyone. Practicing being a writer and a photographer can be a little stressful, even more so when it is being shared with people you respect and admire. Overall we have received lots of positive feedback from people about the words and the pictures we have shared. Which is always better than being told that you suck. And for those of you that think we suck, a big thanks for keeping that opinion to yourself.
Hopefully we have not embarrassed our families too much on this trip. Well, we actually probably did, we just didn’t talk about it on the internets. We also really tried our best to rep sheer awesomeness of Kentucky and Kentucky people. I personally think it is the best state in the country, although I still have eighteen more states to see before I can officially make that declaration. But we saw some pretty amazing stuff, so if the big clouds in Montana, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, the Badlands of South Dakota, the Ozarks in Arkansas, and the Pacific Coast Highway in California didn’t change my mind, I doubt that anything can. I don’t even think I would pick the beautiful weather of southern California over the oppressive humidity of a Kentucky summer. I mean, how you develop any strength of character when you live in great weather all the time?
We most definitely have to thank all the people that let us crash on their floors and use their showers and eat their food. And all the people that took the time to come hang out with us or show us around their city. Definitely one of the best parts was being able to see Louisville people all over the country. It made being away from home for a month a lot easier. Oh - and we have to thank Ben and Shannon for coming out to travel with us. And for putting up with us. And for defraying some of the expense. And thanks to all the people that participated through the blog with suggestions and words of encouragement. Or just by letting us know that you noticed we hadn’t been around for awhile. It is always a pleasant surprise to know that someone would notice if you disappeared. That’s actually my definition of love - noticing when someone disappear. So thanks for loving us.
So we ended our trip by spending the last weekend in Wisconsin. We got to Madison on Friday night after a full day drive through the bottom of Minnesota. We got to Madison on Friday night - just in time to go out partying with the college kids. But then we realized we were old and no college kids wanted to party with us. So we walked around the cool part of town for a minute, ate some food and had a couple of beers. Then we accepted that we were losers and were back at the Motel 6 by 11pm.
On Saturday we got up and went to the Farmer’s Market. It is right in front of the capital. If you are ever in Madison on a Saturday morning, I highly recommend it. There were tons of people and booth after booth of fresh locally grown food. We bought some Wisconsin cheese, some artisan bread, strawberries, homemade cookies and snap peas.
After the Farmers’ Market we drove an hour to Milwaukee - our last stop! We stayed right downtown on Lake Michigan - our most extravagant hotel by far, but well worth the added expense. We walked down to the Milwaukee Art Museum - which has one of the most impressive collections I have ever seen. It is very diverse. Then we had a picnic on the lake with the food we bought at the Farmers’ Market. Then we went out and got really, really drunk and danced the night away with a bunch of Milwaukeeans. Milwaukeeans are pretty awesome. Almost as cool as Louisvillians. Almost.
The only bad part about the Milwaukee trip was getting up on Sunday and having to drive seven hours home while totally hungover. Jef had it worse than me, since he actually drove the whole time. And Shannon probably had it worse than both of us since she had to leave for the airport at 5 in the morning. She is such a trooper. Other than that - Milwaukee is rad! I want to go back already. Since it is only about seven hours away, it will make a great weekend trip. I definitely want to check out the museum again - it has so much stuff I feel like I didn’t even get to see half of it.
So now we are home - this post is actually coming from my work. The trip was amazing and we had such a great time. Make sure to check back - even though we are home there is still one more post to come! And hopefully we will keep finding things to blog about. Because we have had a great time doing this and hope you had a great time too!
I can’t even remember where I left of (set I). Let’s see - I think we were in Wyoming - just having left Lander. We ended up getting to Devil’s Tower in the late afternoon on Wednesday. Devil’s Tower is pretty neat. We walked the loop around it and actually saw two people climbing, despite a voluntary ban in June out of respect to Native Americans. The lady climber was really struggling. My theory is that it was because the Gods were mad at her.
After Devil’s Tower we went to Deadwood, SD. A word of advice - don’t ever go to Deadwood, SD. It is dumb. Nothing nearly as awesome as the television show implies. It is actually a bunch of casinos. The restaurants are even casinos. We walked around trying to find a place to eat, but all we saw were slot machines. So we asked and someone told us that the restaurants were on the second floor. This guy recommended an “Italian” restaurant down the street. It was more like airplane food. And twice as expensive. Deadwood sucks.
We were going to camp in Deadwood and had already paid for a spot and set up our tents, but then we realized thunderstorms were on the way. We realized this when we were listening to the radio and a teenager was reading the severe thunderstorm warning. We didn’t get the whole story because halfway through she stuttered up and then just said nevermind and stopped talking. It was really strange.
We ended up leaving sucky Deadwood and heading to a town a few miles away to try and find a cheap motel. We found the Raptor’s Nest, which is a dinosaur themed motel run by a paleontologist. All of the rooms have a different dinosaur theme and are decorated with dinosaur pictures. And our room had bunk beds. Way better than Deadwood.
On Thursday we got up and drove all around the Black Hills of South Dakot (set II). We went to Mount Rushmore. We were going to check out the Crazyhorse Memorial until we found out it was $27. So instead we just looked at it from far away and read the brochure. We then did a wildlife loop at Custer State Park. Around this time we realized we were low on gas. We went into Rapid City and ate some Mexican food. But we didn’t get gas. When we were leaving town we passed a bunch of gas stations, but thought we would see more so we didn’t stop. We didn’t see another gas station for about 45 miles. We started getting really nervous. Then we saw a sign for gas. So we stopped. And the old man that owned the store yelled at me and told me they don’t have gas anymore. The closest place was 31 miles away. At this point the gas light came on. So for the next 31 miles we rode in silence with no air conditioning and all the windows up, wondering if we were going to make it. We also noted the fact that there were no cars or houses in any direction. But there were some cows. We coasted into the gas station with a deep sigh and .2 gallons of gas in the tank.
With a full tank of gas we drove into the Badlands. At first we were like, “Oh wow - sand mountain thingys,” which were pretty cool But then we stopped at this overlook. I almost didn’t get out of the car because I didn’t think it overlooked anything. But I did get out. And when I walked up to the edge I couldn’t believe what I saw - there was a valley with all of these little tiny mountain like thingys in it. I don’t know how to describe the Badlands - just really cool looking thingys everywhere. And every time we stopped at an overlook there was an even more amazing view. At the last one we stopped at there were little baby goat deer thingys climbing up a really steep cliff. So if you want to see really neat thingys. check out the Badlands. It is pretty spectacular.
After the Badlands, we stopped at the Wall Drugstore in Wall, SD, which is about as stupid as Deadwood (without the slots). We ended up at a Motel 6 in Mitchell, SD. We got up this morning and saw the only Corn Palace in the World, which is way cooler than Deadwood and Wall. Now we are on our way to Madison, WI - about to cross the border into Wisconsin. Wisconsin is our last stop and at this point we are only about 8 hours from Louisville. We are going to spend the weekend here before heading home on Sunday. So enjoy this really long post - the blog is about to end. Unless we come up with something new to blog about. Like thingys.
So we hit Yellowstone National Park on Sunday night about 7:00 pm, after a full day’s drive through Idaho and Montana. We found a place to camp at Mammoth Hot Springs, right near the north entrance. This is where we first saw all the signs about bears. They basically say to lock everything up in your car or a bear will eat you. And a bear eating you bothers Yellowstone because then they have to kill the bear.
This is what I have learned about camping - I like the awake part but not the sleep part. I mean, you have to build your house every night and demolish it every morning. And you sleep on the hard ground in the freezing cold. And you have to make sure you don’t get eaten by a bear. It makes sleeping sort of hard and I wake up grumpy. But then it wears off once I realize I am in the middle of someplace beautiful and amazing.
So we got up on Monday and drove through Yellowstone. We went to down to Old Faithful and watched it blow. It really isn’t that exciting, to be honest. We saw some bison on the drive. The first one we saw we got really excited, like we had seen a unicorn or something. We thought it was rare to see bison. And then we saw four thousand more. They just cross the road right in front of you. And that is how we learned bison are not unicorns. We wanted to camp in the southern part of Yellowstone, but when we got down there we found out that most of the campgrounds were closed because of snow and bears. So we headed down to Grand Tetons National Park. This was the best thing that has happened to us on the trip because we got to the Grand Tetons and it blew our minds.
The Grand Tetons are these mountains right on a lake - Lake Jackson. The first time we saw them we were awestruck. And I don’t use the term awestruck lightly. I only use it when I am actually awestruck. We walked a trail that goes all along the lake and we were to sit on the beach of the lake and look directly at the mountains. And we got to take showers for the first time since Saturday morning, which was also a beautiful thing.
On Tuesday we decided to hike up to Signal Mountain. The map said it was a four mile roundtrip hike, but it actually ended up being six miles. And when we got to the top there were a bunch of people there that we hadn’t seen hiking up. So we asked and it turns out there is a parking lot 200 yards from the top. We felt like bad Americans hiking up when we could have driven. Sorry Mr. President.
After the hike we drove into Jackson and ate lunch. Jackson is sort of wack. From Jackson we headed to Lander, WY, where we stayed with some friends. They were nice enough to cook us dinner and take us out to the local bar. And give us a mattress to sleep on. Oh, and it wasn’t just any dinner. They made us halibut that one of them had just caught on her trip to Alaska. It was delicious. We spent the night and now are headed for Devil’s Tower and then into South Dakota. Hopefully we will be able to find some internets so this can be posted.
Yippee - now we are three. We added a Shannon on Saturday - picking her up at the airport in Seattle. We immediately left Seattle and headed down I-90, back east. The West Coast was interesting and fun, with lots of great people, but Jef and I have decided we are more East Coast people. On our way out of Washington we stopped at the XXX Drive-In Diner in Issaquah, WA - a recommendation from Jesse and Carmen. They had great hamburgers and milkshakes. And then hi-dee-ho, on to Idaho.
We actually only went through the panhandle of Idaho. I think it is maybe 90 miles across, if that. We camped in a place called Beauty Creek, on Lake Coeur D’Alene. It was officially my first real night of camping because we drank beer and lit a fire. And everyone knows that is what makes camping real. We also had some totally creepy guy as a camp host. He was a lot like Clark Griswold’s brother. He reeked of alcohol and we took turns naming him things like Whiskey Adams and Drunk Bob the Serial Killer. We grilled out and sat around the camp fire. To entertain ourselves Shannon started a story and then we would each take turns adding to it. I won’t even try to describe it, but it did involve a mineral jewelry maker living in Amish Country. She moved there after she murdered her husband by cutting his brakes, causing him to drive off the Brooklyn Bridge. Obviously I was the one that came up with that since Shannon and Jef both know that you don’t brake on the Brooklyn Bridge. And that is how we passed the night.
So we spent that night at Beauty Creek, actually sleeping next to a creek, and got up on Sunday morning and hiked up a ridge to an overlook. The Idahoans sort of let us down on this one because it only overlooked I-90, which we had already seen. We did eventually find a spot that gave us a nice view of the lake. With I-90 next to it. Those ‘hoans really love their interstate.
We left Beauty Creek (I just love saying that name) and headed for Yellowstone. We stopped in this cute little town, Wallace, ID and ate breakfast at this cute little diner. The owner told us about how the day before they had their annual Lead Creek Derby, where they go to the top of a hill and put a ball in the creek and then follow it down while drinking and placing bets on how long it will take to get to the bottom. That sounded more fun than Amish story time with Crazy Uncle Larry. We might have to go next year and check it out. And since Shannon decided she liked the town so much she wanted to move there, we will have a free place to stay. After breakfast, we walked around the town and stopped in a bordello museum, which again was just three rooms of someone’s junk. Funny how people get away with calling that a museum.
We finally made it to Montana, which is Jef’s favorite place so far and the place where he has decided to move. This is probably because the sky was huge and filled with clouds, his favorite thing in the whole world. Besides cheese. But seriously, Montana is beautiful. The sky and the clouds go on forever. I definitely thought it was the prettiest state on the trip. Until I saw Wyoming. But you don’t get to hear about that until the next post.
We are finishing our time in Seattle - this is the last night. Ben flew out this morning. We pick up Shannon tomorrow morning around 11:00 am and then head for Idaho - Lake Couer D’Alene and Wallace to be exact.
While here, we have had the best tour guide in the state of Washington. Carmen made us breakfast and then drove us all over town and made us dinner. I don’t think you could find a better deal. After breakfast on Thursday she took us all over town (set I). We saw the troll under the bridge. Then we went to a free trade organic chocolate factory. We didn’t get to take the tour, but we did get lots of free samples. We went to a park and played frisbee and saw a plane land on Lake Union. We found the two hills that are used as the background for Microsoft. Then we had lunch at a Mexican cafe on the water. Then we went to this beuatiful neighborhood, Queen Anne, which had lookouts where you could see the whole city. Finally, we went to Pike Place Market and got fresh salmon and asparagus and corn on the cob for a cookout. And Ben went to the first Starbucks ever, which made the rest of us feel dirty. We cooked a great dinner and drank margaritas. It was a pretty fantastic day. Especially since it was the first day we had seen sun in a week.
Today it was cloudy again, which was sort of a bummer. And Alton, Carmen and Jesse’s son, was sick so we hung out at the house until the afternoon. Then we all got in the car and went to see Bruce Lee’s grave (set II), Volunteer Park, Greenlake, and Carkeek park. Then we went to Ballard and ate cupcakes and drank coffee. When Jesse got off work we met him in Lower Queen Anne and ate some Thai food. I have really been loving the Thai food on the West Coast. I am going to miss it now that we are leaving.
It is sort of nice to be heading back towards home. Not that the trip hasn’t been great, because it definitely has. But I am starting to get tired of life on the road. It will also be nice to get back out into the open spaces where we can do some hiking and hopefully see the sun. Although the rain and clouds haven’t been all bad - they do make for some of the most amazing vegetation colors I have ever seen. There are greens here that I never even knew existed. We even drove next to a river in Oregon that was green. And not algae dirty green. But a beautiful clear emerald green. It is the best color I have seen on the whole trip. And the landscaping is unreal. It seems amazing that people can have such amazing yards and still have time to do other stuff.
So here we come, Kentucky! I know you missed us. See you in eight days!
Portland is wack. But I don’t think it is Portland’s fault. I blame the rain and clouds and gray and cold. All of which combined explain why they have such a high suicide rate. I actually don’t know if they have a high suicide rate, but I think that is a safe assumption.
We met up with Ben’s friend Spencer, who gave us a tour of Portland in his bright orange van with a couch in the back. We checked out Burnside skate park, Hawthorne St. and the giant Powell’s Bookstore. I think we also went to about fifteen bike shops where all the bike snobs silently judged us. It made me uncomfortable to be the judgee instead of the judger. We split up that night and I met up with a friend to see some bands play at Doug Fir. I think that is the name. It was a pretty cool place. And they had Miller High Life on draft. I liked the people there, but Ben and Jef felt out of place because they were the only people wearing pastels.
After 24 hours of gray we were ready to get the f out of there. So we got in the car and started driving to Seattle. But we didn’t want to get there during traffic so we decided to stop at Mount St. Helen. A very fortuitous choice, because it is super bananas. Not only can you learn about the volcanic eruption, but when when we got to the top there was a ton of snow. So we had a snowball fight. In June. On a volcano. I feel like that is a pretty unique experience. It was sort of a downer when we had had to drive the 50 miles back down and we realized we only had a quarter tank of gas. But we made it and with a couple fumes to spare.
We got to Seattle last night about 8pm. We are staying with Jesse and Carmen, who are great hosts. Jesse handed us some beers as soon as we walked in the door. And Carmen has cooked us some fantastic meals and taken us all over Seattle. AND IT IS SUNNY!!!!!!! Sorry, Portland - Seattle kicks your ass. And our faithful readers are going to have to wait until tomorrow for Seattle stories and pictures because we are getting ready to drink margaritas and grill fresh salmon that we got at Pike Place Market. Sorry. But not really.
Yet again we have been slacking on the posts. So again you are going to get back to back posts - this time about the Pacific Northwest.
After we left Eureka, CA we went through the Redwoods. Those are really tall trees, in case you didn’t know. We parked the car to hike around and we were staring at this really tall tree, completely amazed, and then we walked around the side and the inside was completely hollow. So of course we had to take like a thousand pictures of us in a giant tree. Then we made some old Canadians get in it and we took pictures of them. Getting inside a tree is so much fun.
After we hiked around for awhile we got in the car and continued up the coast to Oregon. As soon as we crossed the border it turned cloudy and gray. And we all became morose. Funny how sunshine, or lack thereof, can do that to you. It was especially shocking after a week of super awesome weather in California.
Once in Oregon we got out of the car and played on the beach, Goonies style. Only five minutes into Oregon I managed to fall into the Pacific ocean, ass first, which was pretty cold. And totally hilarious. I laughed a lot. With a wet butt. Some guy told us that we could see some sea lions if we climbed over some rocks. So we did. Turned out he was lying. Oregonians are jerks.
There is another story that involves a giant talking Paul Bunyon telling us to get on his boot, but I’ve realized in attempting to tell it that it doesn’t translate well. I guess because it starts off with, “So we stopped to see a giant talking Paul Bunyon …” at which point people think you are crazy and stop listening. So I won’t even try.
Monday night we stayed with my friend Erin in Corvallis, OR. I got super excited because she took us to campus to see Sequoias. Which are really tall trees, in case you didn’t know. Only they were different. I hugged them, seriously, and they were really spongy feeling. Jef doesn’t like the city because he tried to order the early bird special for breakfast, but it was 15 minutes after the alloted time so the waitress wouldn’t let him. But rules are rules. If you let one person order the early bird special after the time then it will all fall apart. That is what lawyers call a slippery slope.
On Tuesday, which was again rainy and gray, we headed towards Portland. To be continued …. So suspenseful!
So here we are on part two. When we last left off, our duo had become a trio in San Francisco. We started off on Friday with some growing pains, but I think they have been worked out. We spent the day sightseeing, just the three of us. None of us know San Francisco and we didn’t have a map, so we spent the majority of the day just wandering around trying to find the Golden Gate Bridge. We took every form of public transportation available. We walked to the top of some park that gave us views of the whole city. We finally made it to the Golden Gate Bridge and walked over and back. We then made our way to Fisherman’s Wharf, which is stupid. We ended the tour being picked up by my friend Stacy.
We split up that night and Jef and Ben had girls night out - cocktails and gossip with some girlfriends. Stacy and I had dude’s night in with some other girls - drinking beer and playing cards while listening to the Bread Anthology.
We all met up again on Saturday after breakfast. We took a picnic to the beach, which I called Fort Funk, and sat on the cliff in the sun for a few hours drinking wine and looking at the ocean. It was a little hard getting back up the giant sand hill after some wine, but it was worth it. Stacy then took us on a driving tour all around SF, including a stop at a pet cemetery. Then we went to a bar with a beer garden, where for some reason there were two naked men and a naked woman drinking beer and smoking weed. I guess that is just what happens in SF.
That night we split up again. Stacy took me to eat some amazing Thai food. And then I fell asleep about 9:00 pm because a long day in the sun with alcohol really takes it out of me. Ben and Jef went clubbin’.
Yesterday we walked around the Mission neighborhood, including a stop at Dave Eggers’ pirate store. And we saw a homeless person taking a poop on the street. We packed up the car, which we had been lucky enough to park in a garage the whole time we were there. The good news was we can fit a third in the car, the bad news is that it is really uncomfortable. So after it took us an hour to pack up the car, we decided we should just go ahead and leave so that we wouldn’t have to unpack and repack the car. We heard that if you leave anything in the car it will get stolen. So we ended up saying our goodbyes and then starting up the 101. We made it to Eureka, CA last night about 2:00 am and found a Motel 6.
Today we are going up the Oregon coast to Cordallis, OR, where we are going to spend the night with my friend Erin before moving on to Portland in the morning. We will try and be better about posting so that you guys won’t think we were killed in an armed alien invasion.
OMG - we’re back. It has been so long since our last post that people are starting to get worried. Luckily nothing bad has happened to us, we have just been having so much fun that we haven’t had time to do anything else. We will try and remedy it by doing two posts at once with lots of pictures each.
So Wednesday we spent in Los Angeles with our friend Kazia. She took us around her neighborhood, Culver City, and then out to Venice. We had a nice lunch and a stroll around the canals. Then when saw Angelica Huston, we think. It could have been just a normal person, but in LA even the normal people seem famous. We had a drink at the Culver City hotel, where all the munchkins stayed when filming The Wizard of Oz. We saw the lady from The Practice, which was super exciting to me since that show taught me everything I know about the law. I never would have made it out of law school without the help of that lady, whatever her name is. We ended the day with some Mexican food and a game of Nertz.
On Thursday we had a goodbye breakfast with Kazia and then headed up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. It took a long time because we had to stop all the time and take pictures. It really is just unbelievably beautiful. Unfortunately we didn’t plan very well and we did it all in one day, so after Big Sur we didn’t see anything. We were able to stop in Big Sur and have a drink as the sun went down. Too bad I happened to pick the one spot in Big Spur, Nepenthe Restaurant, where you can’t see the sunset. All the seating faced east. Thanks, Nepenthe. It was still pretty anyway. The bummer part is that we missed Monterey and the Hearst Castle. But even seeing only part of the California coast was a great experience.
We finally hit San Francisco about 1:oo am on Friday morning and navigated our way to meet up with Ben, at which pont our travel duo officially became a trio.
Newer Posts »