Jill + Todd's Cross-Country Adventure!

After a year of planning and a good solid month of packing, cleaning and prepping we are finally on our way!

OK, wait, so let’s back up a bit.  Who the hell are these people (Todd and Jill) and why are they doing this? Where are they going and what do they plan on doing exactly?  All very good questions.  Questions even our close friends and family have asked.  OK, maybe not “who the hell are these people?”, except perhaps as a joking exclamation after some drunken public dancing.

Who?

Todd and Jill are a couple of Portland 30-something “kids” who work on websites and take photos and draw. Although Portland is “where young people go to retire” (as that show says) they actually worked for quite a while making websites for people. They made a lot of great friends in Portland and like it a lot, except for the weather 9 months out of the year.

Where?

The final destination for this trip is Vermont, where Todd and Jill are getting married at the end of July. But before they get there they are going to take their time driving across the country, and see as many national parks and other cool things as they can.  The original plan was to drive through Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, but because of weird, cold, wet weather up north they are now planning on going through California, Utah and Colorado.  After that: who knows!

What?

Whatever they want! What ya gonna do about it!?

Why?

So why are they driving and not flying like sensible people should?  Well, because this is only the beginning of a bigger adventure! Todd and Jill have rented out their house in Portland and won’t be back until Spring 2012.  After they get to Vermont and get hitched, they’ll be free to travel around the East Coast in the “go bucket” (Todd’s nickname for the car) and have extended stays in places like New York, Massachusetts and New Orleans. Nothing is set in stone yet, but you see: the possibilities, they are endless.

How?

Now this is just getting ridiculous. You really need to ask that? I think we covered pretty much everything.  If you really need to know more, you could always drop Todd and Jill (ok, enough third-person) us a line with the fancy pants contact form.

To start off our big adventure we stopped in Crater Lake — our first National Park! We bought our $80 annual pass, which will pay for itself after about 4 parks. We’re planning on hitting at least 5.

Crater Lake was gorgeous. It was the first time I had ever seen it with snow still piled up on the side of the roads and around the rim. You couldn’t get to the good viewpoints without hiking over a bit of snow. White snow and blue, sunny sky? Can’t go wrong with those conditions at Crater Lake.

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Tonight we’re camping out in the middle of nowhere. Well, not exactly. We’re actually just outside of Yosemite, in the Stanislaus National Forest. We couldn’t find a camping spot at any of the campgrounds near Yosemite (and the only first-come first-serve campground IN Yosemite was full by 8 AM) except for one at an RV park for $60.

We saw quite a few people camping just off the road towards Hetch Hetchy so we asked some kids and sure enough – dispersed camping is legal in Stanislaus. We pitched our tent, I prepped myself for the necessity of peeing in the woods, Todd made us some peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and we drank some beers to celebrate not paying $60 for a campsite in a big field next to a handful of RVs.

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Hi everyone – sorry for the lack of updates lately. Turns out, this whole updating-on-the-road thing is HARD.  Especially with the amount of photos we take.  Keeping camera/laptop batteries charged is hard enough, but blocking out time to download photos from the cameras, find a wifi connection, upload photos to Flickr, and create blog posts for them… well, it’s been impossible to keep up.

We actually decided to get a hotel room tonight (in Lone Pine, CA), check in early afternoon and allow ourselves time to catch up with photo processing and updating the blog before heading through Death Valley and Las Vegas tomorrow.  But we also had to do laundry. And clean/reorganize the car.  And of course, take more photos.  Here it is 10:00 PM and we’re far from being caught up.  We’re planning on getting up around 3:00 or 4:00 AM to get through most of Death Valley before dawn.  So it’s past bed time.

So while we had planned on updating the site with photo galleries, sketchbook drawings, comics and lots more journal posts while on the road, we may have to just stick with single images here and there (while updating the route on the map as well). We’ll come back later once we have more free time and fill in the blanks with galleries and legit blog posts. Is that cool, everyone?  I hope so.

Here’s a shot of the hotel we’re at tonight. Nothing fancy but the cost of the room sure hurt when we’ve been used to camping for $0 – $30/night! But they had wifi and laundry facilities, and we don’t have to worry about breaking down the tent in the morning so we really can’t complain.

Back in Chico, CA we stopped to get some cash out at the ATM for camping. When we stopped we noticed a loud WOOOSHHHHH sound coming out of the air vents. It went away when we turned the air off, so we just the air for a while thinking, “hey, whatever that weird sound was? Maybe it’ll just fix itself!”

Well, the WOOSH sound stopped. But so did the cold air. Our air conditioning was broken. On the second official day of our adventure. Now it’s a REAL American road trip!

We ignored it for a few days. We just drove with the windows down through the hottest parts of central California.

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There’s a hike here in Zion that goes out to a point called “Angel’s Landing”. So-called because it was originally thought that it was so inaccessible, only angels could get to it. You’d have to go up one nearly vertical canyon wall, up the side of a rock “fin”, and across the fin’s narrow spine to get to the top. The “Angel’s Landing” statement was seen as a challenge to the trail builders. So they created one of the most amazing trails in all of the National Parks, and possibly the world. Switchbacks, chains and stairways chiseled right into the rocks help you get to the top – it’s not for the faint of heart, people scared of heights or anyone averse to doing a bit of rock scrambling.

When looking at the list of hikes to do in Zion, Angel’s Landing was immediately appealing to me – it seemed like an experience we’d always remember. But would we be able to do it? I was a bit doubtful and nervous at first, thinking we might only make it to “Scout Lookout” (which still has an amazing view) and stop before the most intimidating final half mile. Well, we’d just see when we got there.

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Up early at Bryce Canyon, trying to get some sunrise shots from Sunrise viewpoint. We were a bit late though; the sun had already come up, and according to Todd the best light would be before the sun rose. So there’s always tomorrow!

Yesterday morning we were up at dawn as well, to go for a sunrise run down the Pa’rus trail and see the first sunlight on the West Temple, Sundial and the Altar of Sacrifice. It felt good to run again, though my legs were definitely feeling a bit sore from the Angels Landing hike the day before!

Yesterday afternoon we arrived at Bryce, scooped up one of the last first-come first-serve campsites, set up camp and went out for a hike.

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Hi ho from Mesa Verde, Colorado! We just set up camp at a nice little secluded campsite here and have a little bit of downtime before bed. We’re eating hot dogs from Pendleton, while drinking Pendelton whiskey!

We had a great time in Moab. We spent THREE whole nights there, in the SAME campground. That’s definitely a first for this trip. It was nice to have a place to come “home” to, where our tent was already set up along with our mattress and sleeping bags.

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Enough canyons! Let’s look at some old, human-made stuff! Let’s go to Mesa Verde!

Mesa Verde is the first and only national park dedicated primarily to preserving a man-made archaeological site. This park visit was fascinating, educational, and — dare I say it — a bit spiritual. Though perhaps saying “an experience with grand feelings of interconnectedness” is more appropriate than “spiritual”.

Ancient Puebloans (also referred to as “Anasazi”, which means “ancient enemy” in Navajo) lived in the region of Mesa Verde from about 550 to 1300 C.E. But it wasn’t until the late 12th century they moved from the top of the mesa near their farms, to the cliff dwellings that Mesa Verde is known for. The cliffs offered them shelter from the elements, and also helped to preserve the remains of the dwellings so that we can see and learn from them today. (thanks Wikipedia).

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Greetings from Kansas! Exhilarating Kansas! We’ve officially entered the Midwest. Our trip has definitely entered the second stage. Stage One: See amazing National Parks. Stage Two: Drive as quick as you can through the corn.

Before crossing into Kansas we spent one more night in Colorado after Mesa Verde, camping at our ninth National Park of the trip: Great Sand Dunes!

After crossing the Continental Divide on Highway 160, you come out onto a flat area of high desert and farmland. Off into the distance is another range of mountains. Veer to the north. After a while, you see something strange ahead:

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What’s the perfect way to end a drive across Kansas? A stay in Kansas City of course! The BIG city! Well, it’s definitely the biggest city we’ve seen since Las Vegas.

We stayed here two nights, enjoying some time off of the road and in a real bed, and also partaking in some great “city food” as well as some good old fashioned BBQ.

We came into town a couple days ago after driving six hours across the rest of Kansas. It was a pretty uneventful drive, made more entertaining by listening to the audiobook for “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson. It’s a memoir of his childhood growing up in the midwest, so we felt like we were really “THERE,” if you know what I mean.

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Man, we’ve seen a lot of corn the last couple of days. And freeway. Lots of freeway. We’re kinda tired.

Yesterday we were in the car about 10 hours from Kansas City to Richmond, IN. We spent the night in an almost-deserted KOA (funny, most people didn’t want to stay at a KOA on the Fourth of July, where fireworks were banned). We had asked a local the next morning where we might find a good breakfast in town, thinking he could recommend a local diner or something. But all he talked about were chain restaurants (after he told us how big a catfish he’d caught the day before).

So we hit the road, pulled up Yelp and looked up some breakfast in Columbus, the next major city we’d be passing through. Yelp never steers us wrong. We found an amazing little coffee shop in a cute neighborhood, called Katalina’s Cafe Corner.

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Before we left on our big road trip, we watched a PBS series on the formation of the National Parks. Niagara Parks was held up as an example for what might happen to Yosemite were it not put under the protection of the National Park Services. According to the documentary, “[b]y the 1860s, the country’s most famous natural landmark, Niagara Falls, had already been nearly ruined. Every overlook was owned by a private landowner charging a fee.” Although it’s now a state park, and you only have to pay for parking to get to most of the overlooks, I couldn’t help but wonder how Niagara Falls could be different (better) if it had been preserved as a National Park early on.

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The last few days of freeway driving were pretty dang trying. The landscape didn’t really change at all from eastern Kansas to eastern New York. Once we got off the freeway and into the little towns and rolling farmlands north of Albany we finally got some new views – a breath of fresh air for sure!

This was my first encounter with the toll thruway in New York. For west coasters (or folks from anywhere else without toll highways), you get a ticket when you get onto I-90, and depending on how far you go, you pay a toll when you get off. From Buffalo to just west of Albany it was about $8.00 if I remember correctly. You want to avoid getting off the freeway until you reach your last stop on the thruway – I’m not sure if it actually makes it more expensive, or if it’s just a hassle to stop at the toll booths more than twice – so they have these service stops where you can get gas, coffee, food, etc. but you’re actually still “on” the thruway. You can’t go anywhere else, and you can only get to the stop from the thruway. For most people that’s probably not very exciting, but it was a fascinating experience for a transportation geek like myself. :)

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