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

Day 21 Tues July 20th: San Francisco, CA

Kara with her comfy apartment, washing machine, and Midwestern charm convinced us to stay with her in Alameda, right outside of San Francisco, for an extra day than we had planned. Matt and I had both spent a lot of time in the bay area on previous trips, but decided to explore for a day anyways. Plus I was really due for some clam chowder in a bread bowl from Fisherman’s Wharf. We crossed the fog –covered Golden Gate Bridge (three times) into the little sailboat town of Sausalito. Sausalito was officially put on the top of our list of “Places We Would Love to Live, but Will Never Be Able to Afford.” We walk a good couple of miles in flip flops to visit the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum, only to find that it closes in ten minutes. After Matt wiped the tears out of his eyes, we walked back to the car and headed back to Kara’s where she had an Indian (with a dot, not the feather) feast waiting for us.

Right away, Great Captain

“We should move to Sausalito. Living’s easy on a house boat, let the ocean rock us back and forth to sleep. In the morning when the sun rise, look at the water see the blue sky, as if heaven has been laid there at our feet.” – Conor Oberst

He believes he can fly

The Golden Gate

I don't know. San Francisco.

(we're a bit delirious at this point, but we got quite the chuckle out this one.)

I fell in love with the wall at the restaurant.

Thanks, Kara.

(Yeah, it's parked on the lawn.)

Day 20 Mon July 19th: Yosemite National Park, CA to San Francisco, CA

Rested as much as we were going to be and full of a greasy home-cookin’ breakfast at the Grizzly Bear Café (where they don’t serve strangers, only friends they haven’t met yet and where they refer to us as “kids”), we head toward Yosemite National Park for another fun filled day with our annual pass. Thanks Mom. The park was definitely the most crowded yet, but beautiful nonetheless. After driving past waterfall after waterfall, we debate about renting bikes but instead decide on rafting down the river. We kick back in the sun, keeping our water bottles freezing cold dragging behind in the water. In the parking lot, we struck up a conversation with a couple who we find out lived on Cottonwood Trail in Sarasota, in the same neighborhood where I grew up and where my parents still live. Then we put some flowers in our hair and drove to San Francisco.

Bridalveil Falls

Matt spots a dear

river raftin'