Day 28 Tues July 27: Yellowstone Nat’l Park, to Grand Teton Nat’l Park to Dubois, WY

We choked down a hearty KOA breakfast and strapped up our boots for Yellowstone. Mammoth Hot Springs was the first on the to-do list. These natural pools of Calcium Carbonate solidify to form bleach white pools that cascade down into other pools and so on and so forth. In these pools were layers of the burnt orange, aqua blue, and mint greens. This whole park is straight out of any B-rate SciFi movie, complete with bubbling pools Sulfuric Acid, various geysers releasing steam along the road, and the alien-like tourist (pale skin, Tevas with socks, fanny packs, and Yellowstone t-shirts) people walking about.

We tour the park clockwise, leaving Old Faithful for the grand finally. According the Stacy (from our Nola home) almost every time traffic halts, there is something to look at. Following her advice we did this and got to see a momma grizzly with her two cubs in tow. SO sweet. A couple miles down the road we saw a herd of bison grazing in a meadow. SUPER sweet. Of course, Old Faithful was awesome.

Even though we short-changed our Yellowstone experience, we had to kick rocks and carry on. OH MY GOD, The Grand Tetons were mystic at sunset. Purples, blues, and greens were all reflecting off the Jackson Lake are straight out of a box of Crayolas.

Old Faithful

ice cream, hmmm

Mammoth Hot Springs

bison

Grand Tetons

Day 27 Mon July 26: Missoula, MT to Yellowstone National Park, WY

Not a whole hell of a lot to say about Montana. A wealth of wide-open space and cowboys, that’s about it.

When we got to the campground the desk clerk gave us a super secret Yellowstone insider tip. He told us that Old Faithful (or the Denise interpretation, Ole Geezer) was even more amazing by moonlight and it being a full moon just sweetened the deal that much more. He was more than right. Neither of us really knew what to expect as we drove to visit this epic road-trip mecca. Braving the elk ridden roads we arrived victorious at the geyser. The place was basically deserted and since we arrived at night it was a task to even know where to find the geyser. We found it and after about 30 minutes of waiting, we knew we made a good decision. The moon made the geyser glow bright white in deep blacks of the Yellowstone woods.

We were both excited to do more exploring the next day.

Sorry, not a lot of pictures.

Yee-Hah

Day 26 Sun July 25: North Cascades, WA to Missoula, MT

Today was a day full of driving, but mostly with amazing scenery the whole way to keep us entertained. Bob Ross eat your heart out. Our detour took us through North Cascades National Park, yet another visual pleasure to add to the list.

Our driving days have been wearing out our music and audio book collections, but here are some tunes that have been getting us through, our most listened to roadtrip playlist:

Into the Open- Heartless Bastards

California- Phantom Planet (on repeat through our entire California drive)

Hard Sun- Eddie Vedder

Ten Thousand Lines – Electric President

Four Winds- Bright Eyes

Basically Ryan Adam’s whole discography

Good Arms vs. Bad Arms – Frightened Rabbit

Twistable Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to Shel Silverstein

Lazy Eye- Silversun Pickups (night driving)

Little Lungs – An Horse

Lookin' Fresh

(check the flip-flop sock combo, oh yeah)

just a plain weird place.

This one's for you Bob Ross

...this one too.

Happy Little Mountains

Day 25 Sat July 24th: Portland, OR to Seattle, WA

Today was a totally Denise kind of day. We start the day off with a downtown Portland crafts market and after scoring a few good finds, we head north to check out the scene in Seattle. It turns out that Seattle is one of our favorite cities that we’ve visited so far. The Pike’s Place Market is just short of absolutely amazing. Salmon jerky, fresh flowers, antique print shop- they KNOW ME! A fresh salt water breeze filters through the beautiful architecture and finds us with happy faces. Seattle has started our official list of “Places We Would Like to Live, but Are Too Cold in the Winter.”

Hello Washington

The Best Salmon Jerky/Flower Stand/Magic Shop/Vintage Posters/Record Store/Fish Market/any other kind of cool store ever.

Evil Cyborg Layer?... maybe, Seattle Public Library?... definitely.

Day 24 Fri July 23rd: Crater Lake National Park, OR to Portland, OR

After escaping swarms of fist-sized mosquitoes, we packed up camp and headed deeper into the park to take a peek at this lake place. I swear the pictures below are not even kind of altered, it’s THAT blue. The legend goes that the blue bird was grey before it took a dip in the deep blue ink of Crater Lake.

The park gets a pretty epic forty-three feet of snow a year. So even though it was a crisp ninety-four degrees inside the park, I still managed to peg Denise with some leftover snowball. Ha ha. Apparently, I thought it was a bit funnier to me than it was to her.

The adventure continues toward the perpetual hippy festival that is Portland, Oregon.

not even half of this lake is shown

93 degree sled rides

snow up your shorts is an awkward feeling

epic mini picture #1003

we had to

...i had to

Day 23 Thurs July 22rd: Redwood National Park, CA to Crater Lake National Park, OR

Being in the presence of the tallest living things on the planet is humbling to say the least. You and ten of your buddies could not even come close to giving any of these monsters a full circle hug. Most of the sunlight is filtered in through the canopy of leaves, which is an easy hundred feet above. This cathedral of sight and smells takes you over, humbling you to a feeling of closeness with your surroundings that cannot be duplicated.

Sorry, I got caught up in the granola state of mind. Anyways, we carried on to Crater Lake to camp for the night. Second only to the Everglades, this place had the most intense mosquito experience I’ve ever had.

planning the next leg of the trip

and it was all yellow...

family of elk on the side of the road

epic mini adventure #1000: driving through a tree

paul and babe

matt is always short, but especially so next to this tree

live hard. ride hard.

Day 22 Wed July 21st: San Francisco, CA to Redwood National Park, CA

All I can say is “AMAZING.” I had always seen this drive in movies and heard about it in passing conversation, but it absolutely pales in comparison to experiencing it in person. The little towns along the way are a bit snooty, but acceptably so. Here are some pictures, because words are useless in this particular instance.

some crazy seashell house