I can't explain enough how much I liked Wind Cave National Park. Everyone keeps asking if we went into the cave. No. Honestly, I have no idea about the cave. It would be nice to see it someday.

We left the park around 7 and drove into Custer. Tons of bikes everywhere. Custer has an internet cafe. We uploaded the stuff, grabbed some bagels and zipped on over to Mt. Rushmore.

Mt. Rushmore wasn't a planned stop. We actually decided to go after we passed the road leading to it. I turned the car around and in about 15 minutes we were at the base of the mountain. They charged us $10, we walked up, looked at the dead presidents heads and seemed to feel sort of cheated. Not that it wasn't impressive. It was. But really, how long can you look at it and not get bored? It took us about 45 seconds. So we headed to the gift shop. Smash bought some postcards and Nikki conned me into buying (for her) a hat that is actually a buffalo head (not a real one). Check out the pictures, you'll see what I mean. 

We made her wear the hat the entire time we were at Mt. Rushmore. Which wasn't all that long. Just long enough to pee and to take pictures of a Japanese tourist family taking pictures of each other. It was wild.

Though it was the last day of the rally, We thought Sturgis would still be a bit of fun. Oh it was.

To find it, all we had to do was follow where the route taken by the many, many bikers. In about 30 minutes, we were in a traffic jam of backed up motorcycles.

This was very much not not kind of scene. It was cool to look at and I've always wanted to experience it, but I felt pretty out of place. Leather, meat, booze, half to mostly naked women, gambling... yep, the basics. Icky. But fun to make fun of.

We drove through Sturgis twice, just to get the full effect. Devil's Tower was next, but about 60 mins away. For the entire drive, we saw bikers everywhere. Certainly not complaining. I'm very pro-biker. Was pretty cool.

Devil's Tower was hyped up for me. We drove and drove and finally saw it about ten miles before we got to the base of it. It's not really all that big. I mean, it's not small, but it's not huge either. 

We paid the $10 and the $12 for the campsite (again, with no shower) and set up camp.  How about food? Where would we get it? All were hungry, but the nearest place was about 30 miles away.

Thirty miles seems like next door now. Only thirty miles? Sure! Let's go!  And guess what we found? Yeah, a Yawbus. After eating, I called my folks, turns out that the east coast is getting some kind of hurricane thing. It's sunny and perfect here. HA!

Anyway, soon after that, we drove back to Devil's Tower and Nikki and I walked the base of it. Smash stayed back to do some work (she really *is* working).  The walk was nice. Short, about a mile. All paved, so I wore my sandals. Nice. We saw a few climbers and got some nice pictures. Mostly, it was just relaxing. Lovely.

When we all met up again at the campsite, we talked about what to do for the rest of the trip. We made a decision. And this may come as a shock to some of you. We're heading for home.

No. It's not because we're unhappy or not getting along. It's not because we're tired of traveling. I think we all have different reasons. Mine is that I've taken everything I can from this particular trip. I've learned all that I can for now. And now I would like to apply it. I told my father, "I'm not anxious to get back to Pennsylvania, but I'm ready to not be traveling for now." 

On this trip, I've seen so many places that I would like to be, but I can't be at any of them. I'm not really even sure what that means, but it's what I'm thinking.

Maybe we're all thinking it in a way. We've all internalized a lot of this trip. And though I've written volumes about it, I've hardly scratched the surface of the essence of our travels. Like a soldier who fought a war, I probably wont talk about a lot of the trip. There are stories to tell and believe me, those who know me will hear about them forever. But there are some things, I think, that we'll always keep to ourselves. Nothing that is shocking or even interesting to anyone else. But things that words can't begin to touch.

This isn't a farewell, but the next few days will be driving days. I'm not sure when or even if we'll have a chance to upload pictures until we get home.

When we get home, we'll upload the pictures, update the site and a few days after that, we'll say our good-byes.

Until then, thank you for reading and keeping up with us. It means more to us than you could possibly know.

Stats
Miles traveled today: 269
Hours on the road: 7
Miles traveled in total: 9244

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera. NOT UP YET!!!

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

Morning came slow and long and in the form of the lot of us not really sure what we wanted to do. Stay here? Travel? Drive like crazy? Well, we did a bit of both.

But first let me tell you about something that happened last night. Actually, it was right when we first got to the campsite. The bathrooms there were really wacky. It was one door. Just one. On one side of the doorway was the word "LADIES" and on the other side, "MEN."  However, as I said, there was only one door. What to do? Open it, right? Sure!

I was still in the car when this went down, so this is how it happened for me. Ashley and Nikki went to the bathroom. It's only about 500 feet away. You could see it from our site. I don't know who left first, but Ashley returned first. She asked, "We're Nikki?" I said, "She went to the bathroom, didn't you see her?" Ashley, of course, did not.

"How big are the bathrooms?" I asked.

"Three stalls." Ashley replied.

Hm. This is strange. "So where is Nikki? You're sure you didn't see her?"

She did not.

About five minutes later, Nikki comes bopping down the road to our site, decked out in her pink monkey pjs. We ask her where she was.

"I was on the Men's side!" She proudly boasted.

No, this wasn't some act of rebellion. As it happened, she didn't really look at the signs, just walked in past the word "MENS" (which was, by the way, written in big black letters on the men's side after you opened the door), undressed, put on her pink monkey pjs, brushed her teeth, washed her face and didn't think twice about why the heck there was a urinal in the Ladies bathroom.

Go Nikki!

Anyway, back to the morning...

I wake up and am in a slightly grumpy mood. The trip has been hardest on me, I think. It's because I have to drive all of the time. It's not that I didn't know this coming into the trip, but still, it's rough. So I really wanted to stick around Estes Park. But yet, I really didn't want to stick around Estes Park. It's just not for me.

The daily journal needed typed up, so I got to that and chatted with my Mom for a bit on IM. Hi Mom!  Our net connection at the campground was pretty crap, but we uploaded the pictures and the words and got on the road at (I'm not joking) 12 noon.

Our only destination: Carhenge. More on that later.

Coming out of the mountains, Colorado turns into Nebraska. Just flat and... well, it's like a slightly greener and less interesting Arizona. I really like Arizona and New Mexico. A lot. This part of Colorado wanted to be like that, but just wasn't. Looking behind us, the mountains seemed unimpressive. I wanted to look back and see huge giants towering over us, watching all that we did. But I just saw some pretty big hills. Kind of depressing.

We drove north on I-25 until we hit Wyoming. Looking into Wyoming, we could see a field of windmills. Tall white spires that just screamed "renewable recourse!" They weren't even ugly like some solar panels. They were sleek and lean and just all around cool.

Wyoming, this part of it anyway, looked a lot like the part of Colorado that we just drove. We jumped onto I-80 east, which was also Route 30. Route 30 goes through Gettysburg. When I get back, I'll have to spend a few days there. We've got some catching up to do.

For us, Wyoming lasted only a little more than an hour (we'll be back).  Nebraska was up next. And as soon as we hit it, it was very Nebraska. Everything you've heard about Nebraska (which is probably not much) is true. It's flat and pretty uneventful. In need of gas, we pulled into an old old gas station along Old Route 30 (still had the concrete from the 1930's). This was like jumping back in time. Old cars were rusting along site the garage, the girl pumping our gas has frosted blond hair, and everyone seemed kind of hometown goodness mixed with a heavy dose of "what are you strangers doing here?"  Neat experience. Someday I'd like to take Route 30 the whole way from Philly to wherever it ends up. Same with Route 50, The Loneliest Road.

We thankfully exited the interstate and were on a US Route. Two lanes and just wide open spaces. Small towns with old, mostly shut down shops. Even old movie theaters. It would be nice to spend more time in places like this, but you can't hit them all, right?

Alliance, Nebraska is the home of Carhenge, our main stop for the day.  The town was like most towns we've seen on this trip. It looked like something from Route 66, but without the charm. It was old and dusty and... Nebraska. We stopped for a Slurpee and headed out to Carhenge.

Now, what in the devil is Carhenge? OK. Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge, only, as the name implies, built out of cars.

Big, gray cars are stacked in the exact shape of the stones at Stonehenge?  Why would people do this, you ask? Why would we want to see it? Simple! They did it because they could. We're seeing it because it's there!

I was worried that it would a) be closed and b) be expensive. Luckily, it was open and FREE! This is REAL art, folks. Art is for everybody all the time! It's accessible by all people of any income bracket. Exciting!

It's really a hard place to describe, just check out the pictures. You'll probably never be going through Nebraska, but if you are, it's well worth a visit. I'm VERY glad we went. I'd love to go back for a solstice.

Though Carhenge was amazingly wonderful, we had to push on. We still had no idea where we'd be sleeping tonight. That's a fun thing, but still, it was getting late. OK, it was five, but we didn't know when we'd find something. And we really didn't want to stay in a motel.  Since Carhenge was open all the time, I suggested staying there. I would have loved it, but I'm not sure if we would have been hassled by the fuzz.

So we scrammed for the north, shooting for the Rapid City/Black Forest  (or was it Black Hills) area. We drove and drove and Nikki slept as Ashley read.  We wandered into a town called Hot Springs. They were big into Sturgis and tons of bikers were everywhere. Cool stuff. We found a movie theater that was playing biker movies all week. Mad Max was tonight, but Easy Rider is playing tomorrow, Beach Party, Wild Bunch, Mask and a few others had already played. What a cool fest!

This town was great! But we had to get going. Still no place to sleep. And with the bike rally going on, it might be tough to get a place. Only a few miles out of town was Wind Cave National Park. We were half afraid that they'd charge us $15 for just driving through it, but we ventured on anyway. We crossed a cattle guard and right to our left... a buffalo! We stopped and grabbed the pictures. This big fella was just sauntering along the road, keeping one eye on us and the other on whatever it was in front of him. Big ugly cow is what he was. But cute too.

Time to move on, it was after 7 and still no place to stay. We had a few hopefuls, but with the rally... yeah. Anyway, a few more miles and we came to a campground sign. We hung a left and were greeted by scores of ground hogs! They were everywhere! Nikki laughed goofily and the ground hogs laughed back! It was all very wonderful. We love fuzzy little critters and this trip has provided them in ways we couldn't even dream of! Thank you, trip!

Another mile and there was a mama deer with two fawns. This place is awesome! We better be able to find a site! 

What luck! It was one of those parks where you plop down in an empty spot, set up your tent and put your money in a little brown envelope. And we did just that! While picking out our site, we noticed that a HUGE Chinese family had claimed most of the sites in the trees. They had a gigantic van packed full of camping stuff. Just odd. You don't see that much. I don't know. Just interesting.

Our site overlooks some nice grassy rolling hills. A campfire was immediately set as we settled down for the evening.

All in all, a wonderful little day.

As I was writing this and the girls were away, an adult bunny hopped right past me, not noticing me until it was too late. He was five feet away and stopped in his little bunny tracks.  Slowly, he walked a big farther, stopped and for the next 15 minutes chomped down on some yummy grass.

Oddly enough, just as I was writing the bunny story, Nikki said to me, "There's something walking towards us..."

"How big?"

"Like human size."

Then I heard something big walking up to us and we could see something through the smoking glow of the fire. Something big.

"It's a deer!"

And there she was. Not 10 feet away from us. She didn't seem to mind the fire or us talking. Odd how tame they are here. No one can really (legally) hurt them, so they have no fear of humans. Just as it should be.

I took a few pictures with the flash to hopefully shoosh her on and it worked. She moved up to the tree line and away from the campers.

This place is amazing. I am in love. And sadly, we're leaving tomorrow morning.

Such is life.


Stats
Miles traveled today: 424
Hours on the road: 7
Miles traveled in total: 8975

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

This is what happens when I leave Nikki and Ashley alone in the tent at night....

http://www.sitproperly.com/bmm/images/zombie

Seriously. Be scared... be very ascared!

Upon waking up, I realized two things. 1) That the campsite we wanted wasn't occupied. None of them were. It was us, an RV thing, the campground hosts and another tent. One family came after us. That's it. Just one. We were VERY unhappy.

Oh and 2), the campsite we wanted was flooded with light from the very bright bathrooms.

We woke up early. before sunlight. My favorite time in the morning, actually. I love it. We were packed up and ready to go by 6:30.

Traffic into Salt Lake City was pretty heavy. There was some stupid morning show on the radio. It was horrible. I think radio DJs are one of the lowest forms of life on earth. It's very incredible. Makes me embarrassed to be a human.

Western Utah and eastern Colorado were pretty much the same. There were some differences, but mostly it was a lot of driving.

I don't want to belittle Colorado. It's pretty. I guess it all just looked like Arizona, but all crumpled up.

We drove on Route 40, yes the same Route 40 as earlier on the trip and also the same one that goes through Hagerstown. I really like Hagerstown. The park is beautiful. Anyway, we passed a ton of neat towns that used to be big tourist places before Route 80 came in. Dinosaur was neat. All the street names are dinosaur names! Neat! Some broken down motels and just fun.

Route 40 taunted us with signs: 56 miles until the next gas station... 43 miles... 36 miles.... Luckily, we had a full tank. No cell either. No cars. We were very alone on a very lonely road. I liked it though. Driving like that makes me quite happy.

We took Route 34 to go through Rock Mountain National Park. It was the only way to get to Estes Park, our home for the night. We drove about 10 miles then came to a toll booth. $15 to enter the park. Sure it's good for 7 days, but come on! We scrounged the money and bit the bullet. If we didn't have it, we would have had to  drive a couple hundred miles out of our way. We wouldn't have made it to anywhere near Estes Park.

The park itself was kind of boring at first. I thought, "oh great, more mountains."  But then we played with a ground squirrel and everything was ok! Yay!

We climbed higher and higher until we were above the tree line. It's a tundra up there. They don't get rain or snow much because it's above the clouds. We actually saw birds BELOW us! I was a little scared. You know? Me and heights.

Getting out of the car was like stepping into January. The winds made it feel like it was below freezing. The snow on the ground, in patches, didn't help.

The dissent down to the bottom was quicker than going up, but pretty too.

This brought us out to Estes Park, near our campground. Mary's Lake. It's a nice place. Pretty rustic. $25 a night for a tent. But it's better than a motel. And there's internet here.

The town of Estes Park is nice. Kind of like Ocean City, but with mountains instead of the ocean. Got Chinese food. Very good, but everyone who worked there was Scandinavian. Very strange. I just don't get it.

I wish there was more to write. I know the posts haven't been so interesting lately. Maybe the trip is just becoming normal to us. It's all new, but everything is new. We're used to new things, so new things don't seem so new. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Stats
Miles traveled today: 515
Hours on the road: 11
Miles traveled in total: 8551

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

We drove as far as we could last night. Wish it was farther, but what can you do?

I am, however, glad we didn't do western Utah in the dark. Eastern Nevada was beautiful. A lot like much of the other desert we've seen. And like the other deserts, it had its own characteristics too. The mountains here were a lot like California's, but came to peaks, where California's just rounded off. Both were about the same size.

Again, we were on Interstate 80, heading east. Utah was not far, maybe a hundred miles or so. Time flew by as quickly as I drove. Flow of traffic was 85. Sometimes 90. I have never gone that fast before. Maybe I'm just overly-safe, but I don't trust myself at that speed. These roads, though, were flat and straight and you could see for 15 - 20 miles ahead of you. What a site! A lot of people would say that it was boring, but I loved it. Nikki was mostly awake. Simon and Garfunkle were playing on the mp3 player and she asked, "Are Simon & Garfunkle the ones who do the tiger thing... and the one guy was mauled by one of them?" "No," I answered, "that's Sigfried and Roy." She hasn't been with us very long. Silly Nikki!

Smash slept until after we crossed the Utah state line. We work her up for the Salt Flats.

Almost immediately after crossing into Utah, it flattens out and looks like a fresh layer of snow is covering the ground. It was 85 degrees (give or take), so it was obviously not snow. Sand? We weren't really sure and assumed it was a mixture of salt and sand.

Then it turned pure white. We stopped the car and all walked out onto the flats. It was pure salt and crunched under our feet. Some parts were still damp like a small pond was just drying up. My foot sank in about an inch or so, much to Nikki's giggles. Immediately following, Smash's foot sank in up to her ankles.  Hearty laughs all around.

The salt had crystalized over everything. Over the tracks, the sticks, the random litter and bottles too. We found a pool of water covered by a thin layer of salt. Our fingers poked through and Nikki and I wiggled then around in the water. I suggested that we taste it to see how salty it was.

Without a thought, we pulled our fingers from the water, put them to our lips and...

HOLY CRAP!!!

This was the foulest salt EVER! Seriously. If you ever find yourself in the middle of eastern Utah and are tempted to see just how salty small puddles of water are, trust me. Back away slowly and RUN! Nikki and I both spit it out repeatedly. We couldn't spit enough! Just gross! Do NOT try this at home!

But too late! The salt was all over our fingers and shoes... it was everywhere. Beautiful to look at, interesting to walk on... but seriously, don't put it in your mouth. I have no idea what we were thinking. Evil.

Back in the car, we drove to Salt Lake City, but skirted its western edge. No need for city driving unless we have to, right? Right.

Our destination, for now, was Ogden. More than anything, it was a town near a cheap state park. Willard Bay State Park. $14 a night. And we already paid it months ago! Nice!

Anyway, Nikki and I got chinese (very good too) while Smash sat and watched us. Then Smash went to a really cool Italian place and Nikki watched her eat. I, not wanting to just sit around, took off to find the older downtown area. This is where they film the TV show Everwood. If you've not seen it, check it out, pretty darn good. I found it on 25th Street.

It was an OK downtown. Nothing to write home about (though, I guess I am anyway). I got a few pictures and just milled about. None of the stores really interested me. Mostly specialty crap stores. No thanks.

Then it was time to find out campground and site. Nikki called and got directions, which were simple and I drove us the six miles from Ogden to Willard Bay. Our camp site was pretty crap, so we asked the front desk lady if we could change since we're pretty much the only people in the campground. Seriously. at 5pm when we got settled in there was the host and another tent out of 40+ sites.  The lady told us that almost every site was taken. There were a handful of other pretty crap sites that we could take, but we opted not to. She seemed to be very bothered by us bothering her. Like we were interrupting her TV watching. Annoying. Oh well.

We wanted site 7, but that was taken, or so she said. We'll see. I'm betting it's not. We stuck with our original site and more or less just dealt with it. It's not bad, I guess.

Nikki and Smash played some soccer (or rather, kicking the ball around) for pretty much the first time since buying the ball (which was on our first night). I watched and joined in occasionally.  The lake (the Great Salt one), is about 1000 feet away. Or maybe it's just the bay, but it's part of the lake. I guess. I really don't know. Anyway, we tried to see if Nikki could go swimming, but it was muddy as all get out. So we got out and played some more soccer.

I announced that I was going to "do the pictures." This means that I was going to take the pictures from the cameras, load them onto the computer, go through them and arrange them to put up on the site. It's almost a ritual by now. We all gather around the flickering glow of my trust little laptop and giggle at our antics from earlier in the day. It's something we do together. Fun stuff. Oh yes. Really, it is.

And that's about it for today. Not a lot of excitment, but then again, we left Route 66 weeks ago! Kidding kidding. We're still having a blast. Maybe we'll never come home! HAHA!

Stats
Miles traveled today: 412
Hours on the road: 9
Miles traveled in total: 8036

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

We're on our way home. It's official. We've started east. It wont be a direct route, of course, but we're definitely on the last leg. It's strange, we don't really seem to notice it. I'm not sure what that even means, exactly. We're coming home. We'll be home in about 10 days, give or take.  It's strange to think that.

I can't even remember what I did at home. I worked, but after that? I don't remember. Maybe I'll start doing something new. Maybe? I'm going to have to!

So anyway, today started late. We've been lazy. We didn't really get on the road until about 10am. We said our good-byes to Santa Rosa and made one last stop at the market for our last organic junk food haul of the trip (probably).

There's no direct route from Santa Rosa to I-80. Yeah, I-80. It goes right through "home." and here we are trying to get to it. Go figure. Originally, I-80 wasn't in our plans, but with our second stop at Santa Rosa, we could hardly avoid it.

But all roads lead to 80, so we found it no problem at all. 

Since my camera bit it yesterday, our first stop just just to the east of Sacramento so we could pick up camera #2 of the trip. It really sucks that it happened, but hey, that's life. In this world, everything in temporary. Cameras included. No need getting upset. And besides, new camera! Well, actually, it's the same camera exactly (same model). But hey, good camera, right?

Near Sacramento there is a town called Placerville. I really wanted to stop there because I have an ancestor (from only a few generations back) who was known as the Goat Doctor. He was kind of a local legend. There's even a book about him. We were going to stop by the historical society and see if anyone knew anything more about him. He used to live on a ranch, I'd love to see it. But the historical society office is open every day except, you guessed it, Mondays. Today is Monday. Go figure.

As we passed Placerville from I-80, I saw ranch after ranch on top of hills and in valleys all around. Any one of them could have been his place. I just wish I could have seen it.

His mother was a contemporary of Edgar Casey and she herself was a well known clairvoyant.  She had predicted the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and since she was respected, people listened to her, got away before it all went down and saved their necks.  Her great great great grandfather was Admiral Andre of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. He was best buds with a fellow named Benedict Arnold. Guess who convinced who to switch sides in the middle of the game? Yeah. I have cool ancestors.

We knew we'd be traveling through Donner Pass, but I was the only one who really knew the story (and I barely remembered it). We exited 80 and transversed Donner Lake where a few families from the Donner Party built cabins to hopefully survive the winter of 1844. It's now a resort. Go figure.

The museum was marginally helpful, but didn't really tell us how to get to the site. I had to look through a teacher's guide to Donner Pass to figure it out. Near the museum were two or three cabin sites. Six miles to the northeast was the camp of the actually Donner family.

While trying to get to California, 80 or so settlers broke off from a much larger group to try out this cool new short cut. Well, the short cut wasn't so short and it took them WAY longer than they expected. So long that winter set in all around them in a very bad way.  By October they were immobilized. Stuck in the mountains with little food and hardly any supplies. The Donner family (who came up with the idea of the short cut) had broken an axle. The rest of the party, feeling slightly bitter, moved on westward. But because of the snow, only made it six miles. 

Both groups realized that they would have to resort to extreme measures. They ran out of actual food and hunting in the winter is nearly impossible. So they boiled hides and leather.  Soon, members of the group that went on ahead started to die. It was not too much later when they figured out that to survive, they'd have to eat the flesh of their loved ones, wives and husbands. The Donner family had the same hardships, but there is no hard proof that they ate human flesh to survive.

Rescue parties were on their way by February, but the last of the party did not leave Donner Pass until April. Out of 80, only 42 survived.

The snow was 12 feet by the Donner family. 22 feet by the other group.  How anyone survived is well beyond me. Oddly enough, more children survived than adults.

I wish the place would have held onto the meaning better. But with the resort only a few feet away and a horribly interpreted park, what can you do?  Rick Burns (brother of Ken Burns who did the really really really long Civil War documentary for PBS) did a documentary on the Donner Party. I saw it a few years ago and highly suggest you go to the library and see if they have it.

Donner Pass was a nice break for us. It was right on the California-Nevada border and gave us a chance to try to figure out where we'd be staying tonight.

We decided to just drive until we couldn't handle it.

I-80 is beautiful out through these parts. It kind of reminds me of Arizona and parts of California, but it's very much its own thing too. The sunset was breathtaking and no pictures could convey that. We took them anyway.

The sun set and it was dark. Stars. So many stars. Smashers saw a shooting star. I, as usual, missed it. I've only ever seen a shooting star once outside of a meteor shower. That was in Gettysburg on a real special night.

Anyway, I wanted to drive until I fell asleep (not really). We talked about finding a Wal-Mart and borrowing their parking lot. But then we saw a sign that read "REPORT GUNFIRE FROM THE HIGHWAY".  We weren't exactly sure what it meant. There are a few different ways to take that. So we just forgot about that idea and pulled into Elko. A casino town with a stupid name. 

A motel again? Yeah. Last one of the trip since we'll be back on track as of tomorrow in Ogden, UT.  Ogden is where they film the TV show Everwood. It's a pretty good show, but the town is really pretty. I hope to find it.

Internet availability will be iffy from here on out. Hopefully we'll have something, but don't count on it. We'll post as often as we can. If we miss a day, we'll post it as soon as possible.

Woo!

Stats
Miles traveled today: 554
Hours on the road: 11.5
Miles traveled in total: 7624

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

This one will be real quick-like. It's late and I'm sleepy and not sure when we'll get net access again. So here goes...

We went into San Francisco again today. Lovely day! No pictures though because my camera... well... remember how the camera was somehow dropped? Well... the button finally popped off. No button, no camera. Evil.

After "The City," we took in a documentary on surfing called Riding Giants. It was pretty good. Ashley enjoyed it. Nikki napped in the car for the whole thing. Funny.

So after a surfing movie, we thought, "hey! let's go to the beach!"  The only problem was that the beach was sort of hard to find. It was getting dark and the fog was coming in.

We finally got to (where else?) Bodega Bay. Cole wandered off and in the dark and fog, we just couldn't find her. Getting worried, Nikki and Ashley walked back up to the car to get flashlights. What they found at the car was Cole. However, I was still on the beach... the cold, dark, foggy, CREEPY beach with a big ol' case of the willies. Nice.

They came back down and got me. We then drove back to Cole's. The girls got food. I wrote.

Yep!

Stats
Miles traveled today: 163
Hours on the road: n/a
Miles traveled in total: 7072

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

Well, well, well. Back in Santa Rosa. At Cole's house, of course. Many kitties!

Funny thing is that while we were gone, Princess was wondering around looking for us. Could you blame her? Nope. Hehe.

Cole had to work from11 - 7, so most of the day was spent wandering around looking for things to do. Nothing stressful, of course. Nothing really that exciting to the reader, either.

We ate lunch at Slice of Life, which is an all vegetarian pizza (etc) place. We had pizza and it was freakin AWESOME. Why can't we have vegan pizzas around where we live? I just don't know.

There was a healthfood supermarket (yeah, supermarket, just one of many out here), and Smashers got a thing of organic strawberries. Wow. Just yum.

After Slice of Life & strawberries, we thought it would be fun to drive up to Bodaga Bay to see where they filmed some scenes from The Birds. You know, Hitchcock's lovely little flick. We were driving up Route 1, and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the school house from the film. Turns out we drove past it last time we went to the beach. Same place! Cool! 

This place was fun. It was turned into a house, but part of it is a gift shop and part is a house now. The inside looks nothing like it did, but the outside is much the same. Bippity Boppity Now Now Now.

I got a tshirt! Woo! Has birds chasing kids down the street in front of the school. Fun!

Then we got to the beach. Which was the exact same beach where we were before. Only this time it wasn't with Cole since she was at work. Nikki and Smashers braved the icy cold water and waded up to their ankles. Smash sat down and Nikki changed into a swimsuit (sort of). She walked in up to her calves. COLD! I caught the face with my camera. Classic.

I thought she was going to totally wuss out, but no! She amazed me by actually fully submersing herself while trying to body surf. It was funny and sad and just... well, it was hilarious. She had a blast though and that's what matters.

Nikki had plans to meet up with Jo Jo around 6, so we sped back to the house, and then to Jo Jo's. Smashers and I stayed at Cole's, mostly because we had to pick Cole up from work at 7. That and we weren't sure if it was just a Nikki and Jo Jo thing or if we were invited too. But Smash and I bought food to make and then confusion reigned as normal.

Cole, Smash and I hung around the house and just sort of hung around the house. Nikki called several times, but I think we were just so beat that we didn't feel very sociable. I completely apologize to Jo Jo for that. In retrospect, I (at least) should have sucked it up.

Smash and I picked up Nikki from Jo Jo's around 11. Jo Jo has an incredibly cool house. I wish we could have taken pictures. I forgot my camera. HUGE surprise there. Anyway, very cool house. Very cool girl. If she doesn't come visit us in Pennsylvania, I'm personally waging war on California. Got it? Good.

Oh and then sleep. Yep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

Stats
Miles traveled today: 112
Hours on the road: n/a
Miles traveled in total: 6909

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
No Pictures from Ashley's Camera today.</a>

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

So today was a driving day. And not like other driving days. We drove two days in one. Oh yeah. Fun? No. Did we stop anywhere fun? No. Did we eat Yawbus? Yes, of course. Did we take a lot of pictures? Oh my yes. Will you see all of them? Most of them.

It's even boring to think about. Did anything fun happen? I don't think so.

Oh wait!!! Something fun DID happen! YEAH! We got water at a healthfood store in Garberville! Where is that!? No idea! But wow! Fun!

We also passed a Reggae Festival with a bunch of really dumb looking white kids.

Pretty much it was the same route we took to Eugene.

So I guess that's it. Sooo... check out the pictures. We got bored and took them. Nikki annoyed me (Eric) by trying to take a picture of my ear. Yeah, it bugged me for some reason. Crazy. Those pictures will not be shown. I was not amused. She almost got a plane ticket home. Oh yeah. Big time.

Enjoy the pics!

Stats
Miles traveled today: 556
Hours on the road: 10.5
Miles traveled in total: 6797

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Ashley's Camera (finally!).

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today! (Coming tomorrow)
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)

Twenty days! Wow. This is crazy. We've been on the road for twenty days?! It feels like forever. Twenty days seems like months ago.

And I love it. We all do.

We were talking today about how we never want this to end. I wish it didn't have to end. Sadly, it does. Very sadly. But not for another 13 or so days. That's good news!

So we wake up. Morning at the Motel 6. Yes, they did leave the light on for us, thank goodness. Well, we woke up, showered and packed everything up and drove to the Travel Lodge, only a block away! Why? Well, it was the same price PLUS they have internet access. Free. Yep.

We unloaded there and when drove into Eugene. Our first stop was Cosmic Pizza! Wow! Cosmic Pizza is AMAZING. Why? Well simple! They have vegan pizza! Vegan Pizza? Do I mean pizza without the cheese? Well, sort of, but the cheese was replaced by tofu! Sounds bad? Well, you've never tried it. I was iffy on it, but wow. good.  Nikki got a pepperoni pizza. WAIT! Nikki is veg, right?! Yep! They were veggie pepperonis! Yay!!!  Ashley got boring cheese pizza. But we love her anyway.

Before the pizza, we got VEGAN peanutbutter cups. OH MY! AMAZING! I'm just stoked. I want to eat them everyday.  I'm kidnapping Eugene.

After the pizza, we walked around Eugene. This is one of my favorite places ever. We hit some hippy shops and some CD stores. Mostly we just hung out. Walked around and enjoyed the town. Santa Rosa and Eugene are wonderful. I'm not sure which would win.

The last place we hit was Planet Goloka. It's this cute little cafe where we had smoothies and I bought TWO tshirts! YAY! This is one of my favorite places so far on the trip. I could have hung out there all day.

What struck us all as cool was that everyone in this town is just SO nice!!

After Planet Goloka, the girls hit a piercing place. Each were tempted by the serpent of the needle, but in the end, they just bought new ear rings. Nice ones too. You'll see in pictures, probably tomorrow.

Then it was back to the hotel. Sort of early, but we have laundry to do and it's nice to just relax.

Eugene is amazing. And it's only the size of Williamsport, but there are seven or so ALL vegetarian places. Why were we cursed with living on the east coast?!

BLAH!

What a GREAT day!


Stats
Miles traveled today: 23
Hours on the road: n/a
Miles traveled in total: 6264

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Ashley's Camera (finally!).

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)