(We Were Not) Sleepless in Seattle

Hello, Everyone!

We're back on the road and heading North!  This evening we crossed the border and are currently staying at a hotel in Vancouver.  The border crossing today actually led to Tammy's fun fact, which is that pepper spray is illegal in Canada.  This makes very little sense to us, since it seems like the only reason you would carry pepper spray is for defensive purposes, and it is not fatal; but, nonetheless, Tammy is now pepper-sprayless.  BUT, fear not, faithful readers, for we have bear spray canisters already waiting for us in Anchorage.

(NOTE: after further research, it appears that bear spray and dog spray ARE legal in Canada, and pepper spray is not.  This is getting weirder by the minute).

With that said, here's what we did this weekend!

Tammy went to a wedding in Atlanta.  She says it was great getting to see some of her old sorority sisters.  She is also the world's worst rememberer when it comes to taking pictures (she never remembers to do so), and thus she did not to use the camera that Steve lent her.  (Tammy argues that she took one blurry photo, and therefore the prior sentence is a lie).  Nonetheless, there are no pictures of Atlanta.  You can leave comments about how disappointed you are if you wish.

Steve went to Portland to visit his good friend, Alexis.  It was an awesome visit, and she did an amazing job showing him the sites around Oregon.  Highlights included:

Downtown Portland

Rogue Brewing Company, which makes one of Steve's favorite beers: Dead Guy Ale

And, waterfalls!

After meeting back up in Seattle, we explored the great coffee city.  First, we met up and stayed with Tammy's long-time camp friend, Gabe.  He lives in this amazing co-op downtown and has sweet decorations on his bedroom walls, including a HUGE version of Connect 4!

Once we were settled, we did all the typical touristy things, including:

The Space Needle

The first ever Starbucks

Pike Place Market (where they throw the fish)

And the Science Fiction Museum!

We then finished the tour by heading into the Fisherman's wharf.  Tammy has developed a great affinity for boats after watching the show "Deadliest Catch."  For those of you who don't know anything about the show, it is a reality show on Discovery Channel that follows a few crab-fishing boats as they go out onto the coasts of Alaska (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/deadliest-catch/).  It turns out that the boats dock in Seattle when not in season/use, so Tammy wanted to check out the wharf.  She got super-excited when we came across these . . . the pods used on boats of this type to catch the crabs.

Much to Tammy's excitement, we then came across the boat THE WIZARD!  It is one of the main boats used on Deadliest Catch, and she got pretty excited about it.  Really excited.  Like, jumping around the streets excited.  Some Seattlans (is that what they're called?!) got really scared by it.  Nonetheless, she was pretty happy for the rest of the evening.

Here's the boat in action:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxNhOsVpfyk.

So, that's all for now.  Tomorrow we'll explore Vancouver, and then continue heading North on the trek to Alaska!  Hope all of your summers are going well!  Let us know what you're up to!

Tammy is in Atlanta and Steve is in Portland for the weekend, so no real updates until early next week when we're back together in Seattle.  In order to not overload you with pictures then, however, we'll put some up now of our trip into Seattle.  We visited Mt. Rainier on the way into Seattle on Thursday:

 

Steve then continued on to Portland after dropping Tammy off at the airport for the weekend.  Last night, he visited the Oregon coast.  He has now officially driven from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 2 weeks.  Tammy will have accomplished the seam feat as of Tuesday morning.

Here are sunsets off of the Oregon coast last night:

Talk to you all soon!

One Week In: What We've Learned Thus Far

Hi, All:

Yesterday we drove across Idaho and into Oregon following along closely to the Oregon Trail.  For those of you interested, we have not yet died of cholera.  However, we did lose two oxen while trying to ford the river.  Very sad.

Last night, we stayed in a campground at Hat Rock State Park.  Hat Rock is named after the following rock formation:

It was so aptly named when Lewis and Clark, on their expedition, came across it and said something intelligent like: "hark, see that rock over there?  why, it looks like a hat!"  This is an actual true fact, although the quotes may have been paraphrased.

Thankfully, the rock and the river behind it made for some awesome sunset shots!

And, river time!

Now that we are one week into this trip, we have learned a number of things along the way about camping and road tripping in general.  We thought that since we are doing very little else right now aside from driving through Oregon, we would give you a quick list of helpful hints and tips we have learned, so you will be prepared for your own trip in the future:

• Unless you ride a Harley, early-August is the wrong time to be a tourist in South Dakota.  Driving a Subaru through South Dakota during this time will result in great fits of laughter from those watching you from either side of the road

• Do not be fooled.  Those of you East Coasters and Midwesterners may believe it is 90 degrees at night everywhere in August.  This is not true.  If you continue to adhere to this belief, you will end up with frozen toes in the middle of the night while in the mountains.  New comforter = Bought.

• There are many threats to a driver's ability to see while on the road.  Rain.  Dust.  Oncoming traffic at night.  Motorcycles.  But, BY FAR, the biggest and most disgusting threat to a driver's ability to see are bugs.  They will mercilessly die on your windshield like little kamikazes, and make it impossible to clean.

• The Coleman camping stove is the greatest invention to ever be developed.  Second in line, Coleman's portable dish washing station.

• Tammy's Fun Fact of the Day:  leaving toiletries or water bottles in your tent can be a threat to bears.  If a bear smells these, and seeks them out, the rangers will have to kill the bear since it is now accustomed to human food and will seek human food out rather than hunting its own prey.  Every year, an average of 14 bears in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons have to be killed due to human indifference. Bears.  Be aware.

We're back on the road in a few hours with an end destination of Seattle.  Tammy's going to be heading to Atlanta for the weekend for a wedding, and Steve is going to be heading to Portland to visit a friend, so we probably won't have posts between now and then.  Have a great weekend and we'll catch you all again on Monday!

The Last 2.5 Days

Hi, Everyone:

Sorry for being MIA the past 2.5 days but we were hanging out in the middle of Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park without wifi or cell phone reception.  For those of you who were concerned, no, we were not hurt by the fugitives who escaped from Arizona.  For those of you who were not concerned, why not?!  Don't you care about us?! http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hB0B5qIFEqMDeeaj_JGZgZMr6klQD9HG14T0; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/escaped-arizona-fugitives_n_675740.html

Anyways, we drove from Casper to the Grand Tetons on Sunday afternoon.

The views in the park were simply incredible.

On Monday, we went hiking around the mountains.  While we were hiking, we came across a car that reminded us of our friend, Jim, in Houston.  It's unclear why this reminded us of him, but it definitely did:

Authentic.

On Tuesday, we woke up early and spent a few hours in Yellowstone.  We made quick stops to the highlights of the park, including:

(1) the hot pools (in science terms, fumaroles), which are pools of water heated by the earth's core such that they get to temperatures above 110 degrees F.

Here's us at the pools!

(2)  Old Faithful!  Which, by the way, is incredibly faithful.  The rangers are able to predict its eruption within 10 minutes.  It is quite impressive.  But, as we learned from an informative video Tammy dragged us to (i.e. Tammy fact of the day!), it is also becoming less and less frequent due to a series of earthquakes.  In fact, in 2008, there were over 900 earthquakes within one month in the park.  Although Steve's lack of science knowledge precludes him from explaining this any further, as he understands it the earthquakes have some magical effect on the geysers, such that something precludes them from going off as regularly due to the shaking.

For those of you who have never been, and don't think you'll be able to go within the next 10,000 years when it may stop (so hurry and get your tickets now!) you can see it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWrklFuYnb0

Finally, we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve (note: it is not a national park, but merely a national monument).  This could be the most messed up place we have been to yet.  Basically, you're driving through the potato fields of Idaho, when you suddenly spot fields of black volcanic rock.  Miles of it.  Non-stop.

The volcanic eruptions created lava tubes, which are basically cave-like structures created by the lava flows.  We spent a few hours walking around the park-like monument and traversing the tunnels (with flashlights!).  We also ran into a group of Michigan students partaking in the Camp Davis program (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/geo/).  It was really cool seeing the Michigan vans in Idaho, and Steve (of course) left a note on their windshield saying "Go Blue!" Only 23 days until kickoff!

Now we're in Boise, Idaho on the way to Seattle!  We'll check back in soon!

Spotted!

Moose:

And 2 bears:

All in Grand Teton National Park.

Oh, and Mooses has made a friend.  Oscar, the dolphin:

Further interactions between the two still TBD.

South Dakota Fanning = Great Faces, Great Places

Hi, All!

Sorry for the lack of updates yesterday, but we were in the middle of South Dakota with no internet.  Thanks to Starbucks' new free wireless in all of their locations, this blog post is coming to you from Casper, WY.  Thanks, Starbucks!

It's been an exciting couple days.  After leaving the KOA in Mitchell, we drove through South Dakota to the Badlands National Park.  For those of you unfamiliar with Badlands, it is this amazing spectacle of crazy amounts of erosion.  Basically, you drive through miles and miles of flat corn fields (or, as Tammy likes to sing, "wide open spaces") and then, out of nowhere, you come across this:

We had originally intended to take a short hike through the park, but it was over 90 degrees and the rangers warned us that the hikes we were considering were not best suited for a hot day like today.  Thus, we settled on doing the 30 mile (air conditioned) drive through the park, which led to some pretty incredible views.

Of course, Mooses enjoyed the ride as well.

We also were able to see our first wildlife spotting!  At one point just outside the park there is a place you can get out and see a bunch of prairie dogs hard at work.  We got to get really close to them before they dipped back into their hole, which was pretty cool.

We then left Badlands and continued on our route toward Custer State Park (our stopping ground for the evening).  As we drove, we were surprised by the number of motorcycles on the road.  Literally every other vehicle we saw was a motorcycle.  While we both agree that motorcycles are awesome, it's a bit intimidating sharing the road with so many of them, and we were both confused as to why the road was so cluttered with Harleys.  That confusion ended, however, when Tammy opened up the Road Trip guide and realized we were heading right into the middle of South Dakota during STURGIS!

For those of you as unfamiliar with the Sturgis Festival as we were, you can check out the webpage here: http://www.sturgis.com/  or the wikipedia site here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgis_Motorcycle_Rally.  Basically, it is a giant motorcycle rally that happens in the middle of South Dakota the first two weeks of August every year.  Recently, attendance has been over 500,000 cyclists, which is a pretty incredible number given the size of these South Dakota towns.  These small motels and restaurants are literally sprawling with bikers heading into the rally:

Now understanding why there were so many cyclists, we decided to follow some of them to the local hotspots for Bikers.  Being in South Dakota, this naturally took us to the local favorite: Wall Drug.

Wall Drug is about as hokey, if not hokier, than the Mitchell Corn Palace.  Basically, this couple in the 1930s opened a drug store in the town of Wall, which did not succeed very well.  Facing financial difficulty, one of the owners realized that the solution was to offer free ice water to drivers coming through.  Since then, the drug store has exploded in tourism, now spanning a block long and including such favorites as an animatronic T-Rex, a fake shooting gallery, and lots and lots of souvenirs with your name written on them.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Drug

Tammy, however, viewed Wall Drug as a historical landmark given her recent reading of The Grapes of Wrath, and so she thoroughly enjoyed it.  I suppose driving through the dust bowl, and seeing an offer of free ice water, would be very appealing.  However, I think the billboard 350 miles away from Wall Drug pronouncing the exit you should get off at is probably a bit much.  That said, there are literally hundreds of billboards along the way, and in other foreign locations like both poles, Europe, and Africa.

We then proceeded to the National monument, Mt. Rushmore.

We went on an awesome ranger walking tour of the monument, and both came away with a lot of really cool information.  Tammy's historical fun fact for the day actually arose from the tour.  Apparently, the monument, as envisioned by the sculptor Borglum, is not finished.  Borglum had wanted the monument to look like this:

But, Borglum died before Lincoln's face was even completed.  His son, Lincoln, then proclaimed that the monument was finished, and it has remained as such ever since.

Finally, we spent the evening driving from Mt. Rushmore to Custer State Park, where we stayed for the night.  Along the way, we got to drive this amazingly beautiful 15 mile scenic drive through the park.

The roads were windy and thin, but it was so breathtaking that we couldn't both help but feel awed by the power that the Black Hills bring.

After camping for the night, we hit the road early again this morning and will be at the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone within a few hours.  It's unclear how our internet access will be the next few days, but we'll definitely try and update again once we're out of the park on Wed and back on the road!

Until then, we'll keep on driving through beautiful Wyoming!

Spotted

Moose = Spotted.