Down the Pacific Coast

We left Seattle and began our journey south - one that will take us all the way to San Diego before turning east. We followed US-101 along the coast, and just as I would have guessed, the coast was beautiful. It's unique in the variety you can see; the coast changes quickly from beaches to rocky cliffs and back the entire way.

The California coast...

...and the Pacific Ocean!

We stopped in Oregon to hike on Cape Lookout, which juts straight into the Pacific. Here the forest was really cool - it was piney, dense, lush, and damp: a distinct Northwest feel.

Cape Lookout trail

The Oregon coast from Cape Lookout

We also visited the Tillamook Cheese factory. The tour was lackluster, but they were generous in handing out free samples!

In northern California, we camped in part of the Redwood National Park and drove through one of the old-growth Redwood forests. The forest is very quiet and peaceful, and the trees are bigger than I could have imagined - it took seeing them in person to really understand their size.

The "Big Tree" - 21 feet in diameter

Further down the coast, we also drove on portions of Highway 1, the Shoreline Highway. This was even windier than 101, but worth it - often the road cut into the cliffs that run right along the ocean.

Just before reaching San Francisco, we detoured from the coast to drive through Sonoma and Napa counties. They weren't the sprawling grape fields I was expecting; the valleys are actually pretty small. There's a lot of winery activity everywhere; it seems these two places are just the center of attention. Regardless, it was very pretty there - wineries from tiny to huge bordered the roads on both sides.

The typical view through Napa Valley

We also passed some very old and very famous wineries along the way.

The drive through Napa brought us straight down into the Bay Area for the weekend - more on that to come!

Seattle, WA: The Turn Home

On Monday night, we met Jenna's parents in Seattle. They were there on their own trip and had lived there in the past, so it was really fortunate to have them show us around. We ate at a small place on the water called Ivar's on Monday evening before heading back to the hotel. Jenna took the pull-out couch and I took the floor, but I was excited: even that was more restful than the weekend at the Gorge we were just returning from.

We started the next day by swinging by the original Starbucks and visiting the Pike Place Market. The market is huge and interesting; it spans an entire street and has multiple floors. There are all kinds of specialty vendors along the main stretch including everything from pasta and olive oil to dried berries.

A strange part of the market is the gum wall, which is neat, but somewhat disgusting. It's not anything more than it sounds - an alley that is covered in gum.

Between walking and driving around town, I noticed that Seattle was in the middle of a significant shift in architecture. More than anywhere else, there were dozens of modern, boxy, green-roofed, stainless-steel accented apartments and condos in the city, with more under construction all over the place.

Later in the day, we met Drew and Maddie one last time before Jenna and I would leave them for good the next day. We went up the Space Needle, which was good but less impressive after having been up the Empire State Building.

We also visited the new Chihuly glass museum next to the Space Needle. Chihuly is a glass artist with work around the world, but several pieces were collected and placed in the museum. His unique way of creating glass shapes made the place sort of eerie and odd, considering his pieces look strange and monster-ish at some times. However, it was very interesting - it's not often I find myself in an art museum.

After our final goodbyes with Drew and Maddie, we met Jenna's parents again for dinner. We went to a seafood place near Pike Place that was aptly named "Cutter's." It was a really nice evening, so Mt. Rainier was visible off in the distance throughout the city.

Mt. Rainier hiding next to the clouds

It was a neat place to visit - after Tuesday evening, we got organized for Wednesday morning, when Jenna and I would depart down US 101 through Oregon and California to the Bay Area. It was a pretty significant milestone: after traveling so long "up and over," we were finally heading "down and back," transitioning from a journey outward to a journey back home!

Post DMB: A Stop in Rodeo City

On our way back to Seattle from The Gorge, the four of us had one more stop together: the Labor Day closing round of the Ellensburg Rodeo. We more or less stumbled into this experience on recommendation from Jenna's parents and bought tickets since it was timed perfectly with the end of the Dave Matthews concert.

Ellensburg is really centered around this rodeo, a Labor Day annual event since the 1920s. The small town thrives on this event every year, and world-ranked cowboys come to compete for tens of thousands in prize money in several events.

The local Safeway's soda display

It was a complete cultural turn-around from the Dave Matthews concert, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. We got to see a variety of events, including horse- and bull-riding, steer roping, steer wrestling, barrel racing, and a strange (unofficial) event in which teams try to restrain and milk wild cows. The beginning of the rodeo was an extensive parade of pageantry, including countless people on horses riding around and numerous tributes to farmers and the USA. The invocation was preceded with a 5-minute diatribe about how despite what Mr. Obama and the media say, Jesus was watching over the rodeo, and praying to him was the right and legal thing to do.

The rodeo arena

The entire experience was great, and it was neat that the rodeo is part of the Kittitas County Fair, so we were able to eat there and see the diverse collection of 4-H animals being shown. Overall, it was a great stop on our way back to Seattle and such an interesting contrast to where we had come from.

The Gorge Amphitheather - and Dave Matthews!

The Gorge Amphitheater is a huge outdoor concert venue nestled along the Columbia River in the very middle of Washington state. The venue is unique and striking. Given our shared affinity for Dave Matthews, his love for playing at the Gorge, and the perfect timing, it was too good to pass up - Drew, Maddie, Jenna and I spent Labor Day weekend camping there and heard DMB play three shows.

Panoramic view of The Gorge before the Friday concert

The camping area: a sea of tents

We took some time to plan our meals and packing, learning lessons from Yellowstone. We made grocery store runs, stocked up on supplies, and packed the van to the ceiling: our camping pass would only allow one car in, so we all piled in the van. It was effectively loaded to the brim when we left on Thursday evening.

I have found along the way that for many places, I don't even have time to think about what to expect before we show up somewhere. And that was certainly the case here: this concert weekend is an all-in weekend for some people, and we had no idea what to expect. We thought we were prepared but realized quickly that others were veterans: people brought trailers, RVs, huge patio covers, tables, grills, kites, and even slip-n-slides. It was an event, an adventure, and a spectacle. Many people decorated their belongings accordingly:

Honeymoon with DMB (...?)

The days were long and hot; many people played football or frisbee, or just walked around. Standard attire for most was a bathing suit: anything more was optional. We passed time by cooking, doing crosswords, and especially by reading: I finished both Michael Pollan's Cooked and Cheryl Strayed's Wild that weekend. Saturday was both VT and UVA's first football games, and Drew streamed both games on his iPhone. For this, we devised a MacGyver-ed shade-tarp and power-strip-charging experiment that worked out.

There were other "this would only happen at the Gorge" experiments as well, including Drew and Maddie's fairly successful attempt at making solar nachos.

The concerts were incredible - I ate up every minute of them. Though the openers were average, Dave Matthews played three totally different, good shows. Friday night was a slightly sub-par warm up kind of show. Saturday night was a really great slower, mellow, very improvisational show (including encore, they played from 8:30 until almost midnight.) Sunday night was an upbeat, diverse, great closing show. It was truly a treat to hear those guys play so much.

Though I loved the music, the camping there was an atmosphere pretty different from our generally law-abiding, peaceful, early-to-bed and early-to-rise camping life. The experience of this kind of music festival was a great one to have, but one that was exhausting given the context of the trip (and because our neighbors were particularly unruly.) I don't know how many more music festivals I'll go to in the future - but I'm glad I checked it off my list!

Into the Pacific Northwest

Leaving Yellowstone, we traveled back north through Montana and across Idaho on US-12, a long and winding path through miles and miles of tall, foggy, green Northwest pine forest. I really enjoyed this drive - it was not crowded and wound along a picturesque rocky stream the entire way. We camped once along this route, and headed into Washington to the city of Ellensburg.

Here, the forests and moisture were gone - the flat, irrigated land of Washington was home to some of the most interesting farms I've seen, including hay, apple, potato, grape, and onion farms.

We camped two nights along the Yakima River with the sole purpose of taking downtime and planning. The last month of the trip would be busy with much ground to cover, so we planned out our days, drives, hikes, and contacts on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was generally successful: except for about a week in Utah to split between 5 major national parks, we know our stops and path for the remainder of the trip. So much planning went in before leaving that it's almost strange to be near the end of planning things out. Time, weather, and the van willing, we have a goal: travel south through California, explore the Southwest, then return to Blacksburg for the weekend of October 5 and head home the Monday after - 14 weeks to the day from when we left.

We drove to Redmond just outside Seattle on Wednesday to change gears completely: here, we met up with Drew and Maddie again and prepared to spend the weekend camping at The Gorge Amphitheater to see a 3-day Dave Matthews concert. We had had tickets before we even left Virginia, so the excitement and anticipation was high - and we had finally made it!

Yellowstone National Park: The Canyon

The second half of our Yellowstone stay was spent exploring the canyon area. Here, the Yellowstone River has cut out a large ravine, and it is unique because of the colors of the rock. The geothermal bacteria present in the area leaches out different minerals from underground, causing the rock to turn shades of pink, orange, and yellow and making photographs of the canyon look almost unreal.

We hiked around the area for a while, but the highlight was Uncle Tom's trail. The trail is really more of a 300-some step metal staircase which goes down the canyon wall near the base of the Lower Falls.

Uncle Tom's "trail"

The close-up falls view

Just upriver from here, there is a smaller set of falls called the Upper Falls, which are a mere 100 feet tall compared to the Lower Falls 300-foot drop.

Looking down the cold, thundering Yellowstone River

After spending Saturday around the canyon, we said goodbye on Sunday morning: we would not see Drew until the end of the week, where we would meet up again outside of Seattle. The company was great, and it was great to see one of the country's top national parks together!

Yellowstone National Park: The Geysers

My apologies for the delay in updates - they've been written, organized, and saved in various places, but I'm taking the time today to get them all up on here. 

The drive to Yellowstone - starting on Wednesday, August 21 - was good: it was pretty, bordered on both sides by parts of the Rockies and spotted with lakes. And like much of Montana, we saw few other travelers the entire time. We stopped in Helena, MT for one night and treated ourselves to dinner out after the long stretch of camping. It hit how far away from home we were when Jenna ordered a beer with dinner: our waiter, in his mid-forties, remarked that he had never seen a Virginia license before and that it "looked neat."

We met Drew and Maddie in the park, ending a two week stretch void of familiar faces while traveling through the barren Midwest. I was certainly glad to see a fresh, well-known face - especially from such an old friend. We set up camp on Thursday and did a small hike around Yellowstone Lake, and on Friday morning, we ventured out onto the lake in a rented rowboat together. We found out that rowboats, which require rowing in pairs, are more a test of strength and communication than a relaxing morning on the lake - though we definitely had a good time with it.

We explored Yellowstone's signature geothermal fields. I knew little about these going in - only that Old Faithful was here - but they were spectacular, and it was the highlight of the park for me. Hot magma flows close under the ground here, causing the groundwater to become heated and pressurized to the ponit of creating geysers and springs on the surface. This water deposits dissolved rock, harbors nearly-alien rainbow-colored bacteria, and creates a landscape that you might envision on Venus.

The springs and geysers are more than pictures can convey. The sounds are wild; some geysers dry up and become steam vents that whistle and howl so loud it sounds like a tornado. The smell is distinct too - reactions with acid, mud, and bacteria produce produce a strong, distinct sulfur odor that covers the geothermal fields. The water is generally about 150 F even on the surface, so there are always huge clouds of steam rolling off the top of the springs.

Anaerobic, heat-loving bacteria thrives in the mineral water

A huge hot spring: we could see down to at least 40 or 50 feet

A "mud pot" where the steam and heat bubbles up through mud pits

We watched the famous Old Faithful go off as well, which was obviously a popular attraction in the park. Interestingly, the geyser was named so because it went off every hour about 100 years ago. Now, it erupts every 90 minutes, and as the underground conditions constantly change, it could slowly die out - not really so old or faithful after all.

Old Faithful

And the crowd watching