Yellowstone, Montana. We entered the park from the Montana entrance and drove straight to Mammoth Falls, which looks and feels like you’re on another planet. There are lots of pools steaming with scalding hot water and letting off sulphur scented steam clouds. The calcite formations around the edges form a very natural hot tub, but the water is so hot and acidic that veering off the boardwalks could result in scalding to death. After Mammoth Falls, we drove around the eastern road to Canyon Village, taking our time with many of the scenic vistas and hiking around when the opportunity presented itself, where we found a campsite for the night. We saw an interpretive program by the Park Ranger, about well, Park Rangers, and went back to camp, where we saw the brightest moon we had ever seen (you could actually read by the moonlight alone), and fell asleep. We awoke the next day and found ourselves freezing again. We got ourselves ready and drove to the Norris Geyser Basin, which is an area full of geysers of various sizes, including Steamboat which lets explodes into action wuite frequently and ended up being Matt’s favorite geyser in the park. We then drove around the park, getting stuck in various traffic jams, the biggest of which all involved a poor mule deer that hordes of tourists were harassing for a photo. After this, we decided not to stop at any more hot spots. We then drove to see Old Faithful, which is cool and all, but to us not as impressive as the Norris Geyser area. We drove around Yellowstone Lake, which is massive, and lead us to a wetland area on the way out of the park which was beautiful. We took the east entrance so that we could go to Cody, Wyoming. Cody is an expensive place, because it’s a tourist trap. That said, it’s a lot of fun. Buffalo Bill built a hotel there for his daughter, Irma, which has a gunslinger show six nights a week. We showed up on the seventh, but no matter, we still had a lot of fun there. 
After Cody, we ended up driving without much else to distract us to get to New Mexico. We drove through Wyoming to Cheyenne, staying the night at a KOA on the outskirts of the city. The next day we drove through Colorado (worst drivers in the world!) stopping briefly at the Garden of the Gods, to the New Mexico border where we stayed in a tiny town called Raton at another KOA. The next day we continued through the beautiful New Mexico mountains to Taos, for lunch. Taos is a cool little place, especially if you’re into art and/or new agey stuff. Since we’re not, we continued on to Santa Fe, where we stayed in another KOA cabin. Santa Fe is an absolutely beautiful place, with red adobe houses and Spanish architecture. We were lucky enough to be there for a thunderstorm, which is a sight to behold. The food all has green chilies in it, which to me is a major added bonus. The roadsides in New Mexico are covered in wild growing sunflowers and beautiful trees.
After Santa Fe, we drove down to Carlsbad for two reasons: to see the caverns and use up some time before Vegas. The caverns were absolutely amazing as was the flying of the bats at dusk, when over 100,000 bats make their way out of the cavern entrance to feast on a smorgasbord of insects. We didn’t really bring our camera for this part of the trip which ended up being a good thing, since it allowed us to just take in all of the scenery without the distraction of trying to capture it. 
We then made our way through Bisby and Tombstone via Las Cruces. We didn’t really stop at either of these towns for reasons that we couldn’t explain other than we didn’t want to, but the drive was really nice with desert storms surrounding us. We ended up staying in Tucson after a long day driving, and then made our way to Jerome and Sedona via Prescott. We stopped in Jerome and checked out the faux ghost town, and only stopped outside of Sedona since it looked like more shops. If this part of the trip sounds rushed , that is probably because it was. It was a bummer to end on this kind of a note, being that the rest of the trip was awesome, but it was still good to experience our limits of touring without stopping. We then of course went to Vegas and stayed at the Stratosphere, which I am sure needs no explanation as gambling, eating, and lounging were “par for the course.” And now we are back, resting up and getting ready for our journey overseas to Australia. The flight leaves at 11:30PM on September 20th.
We drove from Birch Bay, Washington, over the border to Canada. The minute you see the customs area, you see a big Canadian flag made of flowers. Oh, you Canadians. We drove to the nearest visitor’s center, where we found out that a summer weekend in Vancouver means extremely limited accommodations. No matter… we found a campsite close by in Delta, near Tsawassen, where we could take the bus to Vancouver and the shuttle to Victoria. After settling in at the campground, we navigated Canadian banks, money, supermarkets, and the like. We went to bed that night eagerly anticipating our day in Vancouver. We awoke with big raindrops dripping on our foreheads. Well, that’s how I woke up. Matt woke up by me having a cow at my new wet head. A crappy rain fly on our tent, indeed. We went to the Safeway to purchase bus tickets, and then took the bus into Vancouver. We saw Gastown, the Waterfront, and a big festival in Chinatown. My advice when touring a big city: take a bus tour. Let someone else do the driving, find the parking, show you all the good stuff, and avoid places like east of Hastings St. in Vancouver, which housed probably the worst ghettos I’ve ever seen outside the Tenderloin in San Francisco. At least the Tenderloin is small.
After our foray into a very sad part of town, we took another bus to Stanley Park, where we drank beer and walked around. We saw the Totem poles and then headed back to our bus. We had some trouble finding our bus stop, but eventually found it and headed back to camp. Matt had the great idea to use trash bags on the tent that night, as more rain and thunder was expected. It worked well except for the tiny corner we forgot. Sometime in the middle of the night, we awoke to find our foam pad and blanket slowly becoming drenched. Matt stuck it out like a champ, but I “slept” in the car. The next day, we checked into a hotel. Overpriced, but decent, and had a good pub. The next morning we went to Victoria. The ferry was fun, and we saw some beautiful inlets, coastline, and lighthouses. The boat ride was fun , too. It better be, considering the ferry tickets, and bus from Swartz Bay to Victoria cost us $110. Yes, you read that right. Victoria’s a nice little town, but kinda boring if you’re not on a tour and don’t have money to spend. There’s sea plane tours, the Fairmont Empress, and the Butchart Gardens, but just getting us there put us over budget. We wandered around and saw the Capitol Building, and then headed back on the world’s grumpiest bus.
The next day, we packed up the car and headed for Lake Louise, via Revelstoke. There’s some gorgeous scenery in British Colombia. We camped at our first KOA in Revelstoke. The next day we arrived at Lake Louise and hiked up to the lake from our campground. The lake was beautiful. We watched a fun program at the campground and retired for the night. We had a fitful night, however, and awoke at 6 am absolutely FREEZING. We threw the stuff in the car and drove to Lake Moraine, 13 miles from Lake Louise, and watched the sun rise. Lake Moraine is extremely blue, maybe even more so than Lake Louise. The rest of the day and the afternoon were spent driving to Montana, where we stayed in East Glacier Park. We drove briefly through Glacier National Park, and saw our first and only bear. It was smallish and slowly lumbered across the road! We continued on the next day to Southern Montana where we camped at another KOA just outside of Yellowstone. Next time, Yellowstone and beyond!
Well, it’s been quite a spell since the last post, and boy have we been busy. The last we left you we were in Astoria, a really nice little seaside town and one of our favorites that we visited. We took the town trolley that went along the boardwalk and found out that the town is where Kindergarten Cop and Free Willie 2 were filmed and was also the home of Goonies house. We were very impressed by the town’s movie credits, but more so with the lovely scenery. We also broke down and had some lovely seafood and beer. I had the razor clam sandwich and Diane had the tuna burger at the Wet Dog Cafe. The beer was also brewed on site and was very tasty. 
After Astoria we headed back to Portland so that we could check out the Flugtag presented by Redbull. It turned out to be a bust of sorts because it was so crowded that all the good views were taken. We saw many of the creative vehicles that were to be launched off of a towering platform into the icy waters of the Willamette. My favorites were a Back to the Future themed Delorean as well as the World of Warcraft zeppelin (For the Horde!). We even got to catch a couple of poorly viewed take-offs and “landings” before we headed out to see a little more of the downtown area, including the Chinese Gardens.
After that, we hung out a little while longer with Sterling and Carrie before we made our way into Washington. Kelso was where we decided to lay our heads at a crappy little Econolodge. Turns out they didn’t have any hot water in the morning. It was the coldest shower either one of us had ever taken. After swearing we were going to take our complaint to the folks on the internet, we made our way up to the 12 highway to see if we could make it to a good camping spot. Neither one of us really felt like making the trek all the way to Mt. St. Helen or Mt. Ranier, so we stopped somewhere in between at a great little hike-in campsite at Taidnapam. The lake nearby, lake Riffe, was absolutely gorgeous. It made me start really wanting to get a kayak or a canoe or something so that we could row off into the sunset. 
We then made our way back to the I-5 so that we could check out Olympia. Not much to tell about it other than that it is the Capital of Washington. I kinda wanted to see K Records where such wonderful bands as Beat Happening, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, and the Make-Up have made melodious sounds, but I didn’t really want to spend the time hunting it down, so we just wandered aimlessly for a while after consuming some stomach churning veggie Thai food. After our tour, we hunkered down at the Olympia Campgrounds for the night. It reminded me of something out of Meatballs, which is a good thing.
After Olympia, we headed to Seattle where we got a cancellation deal on a B&B called the Hill House, which was more than we wanted to ever pay for a place but were freaking out because it was Seattle and we hadn’t made any other plans. Seattle was excellent and we spent a couple of days roaming Capitol Hill, Pike Place Market, and Pioneer Square. We didn’t realize the town had so many hills, the biggest one seemed to lead from the waterfront up to the Space Needle (one of the more anticlimactic apexes that we traversed on our trip). We also took the tour of underground Seattle, on top of which much of present day Seattle was built. We had a good tour guide, but the tour was mostly them trying to make a buck off of walking around in decrepit basements. The history was fascinating nonetheless with my highlight of the tour being seeing old toilets and wooden plumbing. We unfortunately met some really cool people during our last breakfast at the B&B who had some insights into what to do culturally speaking, but we were ready to move on.
We then headed further North and tried exploring a bit more. We ended up passing through Bellingham, which we had heard about and sounded cool but looked to us like another hip little town with a college, so we headed into Ferndale, a really cool sleepy little town with a Mexican restaurant that we ate at. The owner of the place told us to camp at Birch Bay, so we did. It was beautiful, but was a little sullied by our anticipation of Canada. That and a big RV tried to park perfectly for much to long way after campground quiet hours. And I am going to leave it at that for the moment. Although we are in Cody Wyoming at the moment, it is getting quite late, and the blog is getting quite long. So to be continued fairly soon…
On Monday we arrived in Ashland and spent Tuesday wandering around. It was a nice little town that boasted the Shakespeare Festival. We had a great lunch at a place called Geppetto’s. I had the 2x baked potato du jour and Diane had a Parmesan eggplant sandwich. After taking in all of the sites to see in Ashland, including the public library, Lithia Park and making an old hippie angry (pictured) with our California driving, we moved on to Medford because lodging was a bit cheaper. From there we went to go see The Dark Knight which was great. It was also nice to sit in a theater that could have been anywhere in the US, creating a nice little bubble of familiarity for road-weary travelers.
After we left Eugene, we drove out in the wilderness a bit to a campground called Olallie. I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce this. We had a beautiful spot surrounded by trees and ferns, and just below us was the McKenzie River, which lulled us to sleep that night.
After Bend, we drove the three or so hours over Mt. Hood and through the Deschutes National Forest to Portland. Portland rules. We stayed with Sterling and Carrie, who showed us all the cool stuff. Right after we rolled in to town, we went to the Screen Door, an awesome Southern restaurant. We ate so much good food! Then we walked around and visited Movie Madness, a crazy video store that had tons of movies arranged in all sorts of awesome ways, with sections including demented childrens' films, movies from New Zealand, movies directed by Roger Corman, and Nazi erotica. They also had tons of movie paraphernalia including one of the miniature sets from Bladerunner and the prop knife from Psycho. After that, we decided to kill some time with a hookah, a fancy drink called Kava, and some tea at the Pied Cow Coffee House (see stolen picture to the left), which is a beautiful, colorful old Victorian house, with a garden that’s lit and super pretty at night. We then went to the Bagdad theatre, which is an old opera house that looks Arabian and was converted into a movie theater. There’s balcony seating and pizza and beer, and the best part is the tickets are only $3. We saw the Incredible Hulk, which was incredible suck, but we still had fun.
The next day we took the light rail into downtown Portland where we visited Powell’s Books, which was HUGE, and ate lunch at Voodoo Doughnut, a hip doughnut shop that has a jelly filled voodoo doll doughnut, tons of cereal covered glazes, and the one everyone talks about, a phallic cream filled monstrosity. We then walked around in a sugary haze and ran into Carrie, who showed us the waterfront, which used to be the 5 freeway. The Red Bull Flugtag starts on the waterfront on Saturday, which we are considering milling around the general Oregon area to catch. After a bit of time crossing and re-crossing a bridge to check out the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, we went to Jack’s Crawfish, a famous restaurant and bar which has been open since the late 1800’s where we hung around for Happy Hour. After a little more walking and some resting in the park, we grabbed some cheap candy and soda and went to go see Stepbrothers. Sterling and Carrie were somewhat hesitant due to a low score on Rotten Tomatoes, but we were all pleasantly surprised with how much we laughed.
The next day we slept in and went to a café called the Tin Shed, which I’m convinced has the best breakfasts in the world. This was supported by the fact that we had to wait 20 minutes on a Tuesday at 2:00pm for breakfast. I think this town might just be the hipster/slacker capital of the world. We then walked around the Alberta district, and stopped by the Kennedy School (pictured) , another McMennamin’s theatre/bar like the Bagdad, but instead of an opera house it was a converted elementary school. They had Honors Room and Detention Room bars among other school themed areas for drinking and carousing. Carrie then made us a delicious mushroom burger dinner, and the next morning a pancake and scrambled egg breakfast. 
Later that afternoon we went out to Multnomah Falls, which was extremely pretty but crowded. So we moved on down the road to get a campsite at Ainsworth State Park and hiked to a waterfall that was even prettier with no one around. After we got back from our hike Sterling and Carrie left our company. They were just about the best hosts you could ask for. 
Today, Thursday, we headed to the coast. It was a great drive and we stopped off for a lovely walk on the beach in Lincoln City. We also took a self guided tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory. There was a lot of cheese! We also had grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream. Yummers! We traveled a little further down the road to Seaside, and after getting some unfair prices on rooms decided to move on down the road to Astoria, where we are now at the Rivershore Hotel. 
Not having any reservations is only turning out to be a minor hassle. We are using our camping book as more of a guide rather than the gospel truth. We learned this pretty early as our first destination, which strangely got 7 points out of a possible ten, was Oceano Dunes. It was basically a parking lot for people to sleep in between shifts of ripping up the dunes in their ATVs. The beach was actually quite pretty minus the cars driving up and down the shore. Lots of jelly fish were washed up on the shore for some reason. Anyway, we didn’t get much sleep because some dude with a modified muffler woke us up at around 1 AM as he spent about a half hour trying to park his ride and hitch. So we promptly moved on the next morning bright and early.
Next potential stop was Morro Bay. We rolled on up there in about a couple of hours, but it was totally packed. Instead, we stayed off of the bay in the awesome El Chorro camp site. Diane and I both really liked it and met some mountain bikers from LA who gave us some good tips about where to set up, find some trails, etc. It was a pretty nice place to stay and we did a couple of nature walks, one of which had some old Chumash bowl shaped markings in a large rock. Diane and I thought it would be funny to make a joke about Lucky Charms, but I can’t really think of a good punch line.
Next we ventured up Highway 1, a beautiful drive indeed! A little nerve racking with the all windiness and speedy drivers, but it was breathtaking nonetheless. We made quite a few stops along the way, including a really nice turnoff where we walked along the beach, and a lunch stop at Ragged Point at the beginning of the Big Sur area. We skipped taking a look at the elephant seal colony which the nice man at the Ragged Point mini-mart told us we should turn back and see, but we decided not to because there were a ton of people there. 
We continued on for the rest of the day through Big Sur. There was no camping to be found anywhere. Everything was still closed and you could see why. The fires had definitely taken their toll on the beautiful landscape, but it was still amazing to see. There were many signs praising the bravery and thanking the kindness of all of the firefighters who protected the natural beauty. Someone was even offering free fireman kisses. 
We ended up forging our way ahead, past Carmel and into Monterey. Diane had the wonderful idea of going straight to the visitor’s center where we found out about the cheapest rooms they had at the Casa Verde Inn. It was $39 bucks for the smoking room the first night, only ten more bucks than our night in the Pismo parking lot, so we took two days. Monterey was awesome. We took our own personal tour of the historic area, including the old customs building. We read a lot about the history of the place, from the time that the peaceful Rumsien Indians were the caretakers, until Spain and then Mexico took control of the area and Father Junipero Serra forced them to become Christian. We walked all around and ate some food and had some beer at a pub. We talked to some folks from Houston who were very nice and were down for the Grand Prix (which is why we were taking off the following morning). I also went into Hellam’s Tobacco Shop that had some really good pipes and tobacco. I had never seen a Dunhill in a store before, but they had these cool limited edition Christmas Pipes from a decade ago for a paltry $1200. I ended up getting some Navy Flake from Chris, a really nice guy with an eye patch who learned me a little more about pipe smoking than I knew before. Bonus: he looked just like the sea captain from the Simpsons, or Captain Crunch, depending on who you asked. Diane says Simpsons, Matt says Crunch. 
We then made our way back to the motel room for the night so we could wake up early. We headed out the next morning and decided to head up to Sonoma County to a place called Doran Bay. We were hoping to get a place there, but weren’t sure how it would turn out. As we got close to our destination, we noticed a Visitor’s Center and stopped there first. It was good that we did because the nice lady told us about Ocean Cove, a private campground that never gets filled up 28 miles north and she loves it better than anything else around. And it was beautiful… and cold! We stayed a couple of days there and took in the beautiful scenery before heading out again. 
We spent most of the day after Monterey driving up the 101 and ended up at Richardson Grove State Park. We were shocked to get a spot since most places on 
So, we drove all day Tuesday up to Ashland Oregon where we are now, enjoying a nice big bed and television in an Econolodge. We should be here for a couple of days and will check out the Shakespeare Festival. 