Happily Homeless

Hey Everyone — We just stayed two nights at my Aunt and Uncle’s place in Salt Lake City, had a wonderful relaxing time. We haven’t had time to update the blog or pictures – but we will have a lot to post up very soon.

Burning Man was amazing and I will write about it later – best experience ever though, such a great community and giving people – all of my friends from the East Village would have loved it.

Right now we are on our way to Alaska. We have to cut our trip short by two weeks due to the hike in gas prices… so we are having to skip our stops in Wyoming and Montana and drive straight to AK.

To all my Loisaida soccer players – do your best damage this season – I miss you a ton and good luck with you fall season!! I can’t wait to hear how it is going and I’m thinking of you all a lot. 🙂

Day 27 – Today we are taking care of our last minute preparation for trip to Black Rock City. We will arrive there tonight and stay for a week. And just found out we have much further to drive than we thought — So, no time to upload pics right now…. Sorry! But, you get a week off from reading our wonderful blog, but don’t’ think we are not thinking of you and pre-paring for our next entry 😉 I am excited for the rest of our trip along highway 50 and a week of staying in one location.

Day 26 – With the time changes we are tending to be good morning risers, usually getting up around 7.30ish but our bodies feel more like it is 8.30ish – I love it. We woke to nice cool temperature outside and a view of our red cliff canyon around us. We drove through the city of Moab, nice cute outdoor adventure town. Than, went to Cayonlands National Park. Again, another breathtaking experience viewing the canyons and rock formations – we could have spent hours there, and definitely want to go back and explore the area more. Our pictures of both national parks do not do it justice.

We went back up to I-70 and kept driving west to highway 50. This drive from Denver through to Nevada is one of the most scenic and spectacular drives I have ever been on. The one major area that sits right in there with the rest of the incredible landscape is driving through San Rafael Reef and Swell. It is an area where they had to excavate through this huge continuous reef barrier wall to continue I-70, they spent around 25 years and $4.5 million dollars to create it between 1957 to mid 1970’s, but once your drive through the wall to other side it is again, gorgeous.

We climbed and descended tons of mountains and finally made our way to the loneliest road in America, highway 50, and also found the longest straightest roads in the world. This continues as my most scenic and spectacular drive. One of the most surprising things we saw was as we were rounding a curve sitting there feet from the road in the flat grass lands and distant mountains in the horizon were a few sand dunes standing around 15 feet tall and sculpted by the wind. There were just a few of them sitting there in the fields of grass and farmland. Our resting point tonight was Ely, Nevada. An interesting town with tons of hotels, casinos, and very few hotel vacancies. We got the last room due to a cancellation at the Bristlecone Motel – a very clean and great place!

Day 25 – So, it is the second day that I have worn jeans due to the temperature outside and not the mosquitoes. Transitioning from the humid hot east and southern coast to the dry heat of Texas wasn’t bad. The temperatures were the same there was just less humidity, and of course we enjoyed that. Than, change of hot to the cooler very dry mountain air of the Rocky Mountains was a bit of a stun to the body, in a good way. We now are experiencing cooler nights and a very dry climate – we’re not sweating all the time and our noses are quiet dry inside. We have been drinking a lot of water to help make up for the dry air, and I even started using moisturizer on my face again (haven’t really done that since the beginning of summer).

Highway 70 west from Denver was extremely beautiful. As we started to ascend the mountains towards our peak of 11,990 foot elevation at Loveland Pass the mountains were sharp rugged rocks pretty bare except for some evergreen trees sprinkled here and there. Than, the trees started gathering more and some grass was appearing with a few bushes. The red rock started appearing the further west we drove and the trees came and went as they pleased. These mountains are very steep and made our car work very hard to climb up and than just cruising down the steep grades of 7 & 8% – I can’t even try to explain the views into the valleys and through the mountain range, that is what pictures are for.

We broke off of I-70 to take highway 128 south to Arches National Park. The drive down to the park was exquisite with red cliffs channeling us and the Colorado river through the canyon. We admired the new surrounding environment with gaping mouths full of ‘oh, look at that’ and ‘wow, that is beautiful’. We’ve both have been through areas like this before, but the splendor of it still is something to get use to.

pics of a cayon we drove through to get to arches

We arrived at Arches National Park at the end of the day and toured the park with very few other travelers – making it much more magical. We didn’t leave the park until after dark, the sunset and sharp shadows were magnificent. All the stars that appeared in the sky, I forgot when in total darkness how many millions of pin pricks there are in the night sky, shined like diamonds. We camped that night along the Colorado river off of highway 128, there were tons of campsites along the river. It was our first times using sleeping bags that night and gazed at the stars before falling asleep.

Pics of the rockies in CO…

Denver Skyline

Rocky Mountains

More Rocky Mountains

More Rockies

More Rockies

agian, some rockies

Day 24 – Denver, Co is a very appealing city with the Rocky Mountains in the background and so many various types of architecture. The one thing it seems to lack from our perspective is diversity in culture and money. The town’s first impression on us as we drove in yesterday was extremely yuppie-high class Disneyland. So many suburban stores dressed out and all name brands with prices so high it is crazy. Than, our second impression was a various amount of style in architecture, great outdoor spaces in downtown, very friendly people, very one seems to be in-shape (tons of bikers and walkers), and a lot of money for expensive stores.

Tonight we went to a cowboy establishment called Grizzly Rose outside of Denver for one of Angie’s friend’s birthday party. It was a very thoroughly country culture with line dancing, cowboy hats, a mechanical bull, and souvenir shop. We had a good time. Tomorrow morning we take off to go across the Rocky Mountains and had to Nevada.

Jason and our friends Jeremy and Angie — Thanks guys for the great time in Denver!!

There amazingly cute dog Otis – hang in there buddy the cone will come off in a couple more days.

Hanging out with the cowboys and line dancing cowgirls.

Day 23 – We got up early and went to see the Cadillac Ranch off of I-40. The sculpture is extremely vandalized now and a bit beat up. It looks like it became the popular high school hangout. Though, it was still great to see and impressive – a bit depressing when you look down the line with all the taillights and underneath of the cars being exposed to you as if they were forced into penance.

We continued to drive through cattle country and I realized why it smelled so bad. The cattle farms that keep their cattle in fenced in tiny areas with no grass (stockyards) and hardly any breathing room reek as one would if you constantly live at rush hour on new york city’s subway in the summer heat. Compared to the farms that had their cattle wandering contemplatively in green grass pastures had no smell at all and the cows were eating their food at will with a more (to my eyes) pleasant surrounding and lifestyle.

Old use of wind for farming — and new use of wind for energy…

Sleepy man – our second rest-area sleep over with the truckers.

Cadillac Ranch

Day 22 – Some more driving in Texas, taking highway 287 north, it was a scenic drive. The green rolling hills turned into more flat plains with cacti and rock outcroppings, and always a distant view of the horizon. At night as we made our way further north it turned into more of a cattle country, the smell was the main give away.

To our surprise as we drove through one small town a truck pulled up beside us at a stoplight and had a quick conversation with Jason about the bike on the back of our car and the gas mileage. You can never think people are not friendly here – how could you when there are signs stating their slogan mile after mile “Drive Friendly”. Though, not all the drivers drive very friendly – some tended to like to get right up on your bumper going 80 mile an hour when the speed limit is 70 until you finally have a chance to get out of their way. In a VW Golf, a big truck or SUV (popular choices of vehicles here) it can be quiet intimidation knowing if I had to stop quickly their car is going to bash right up to my steering wheel.

Drive Friendly, the Texas way! 🙂

Texas is green too… very beautiful country side.

Day 21 – Austin is a very nice city. We are staying with our friend Tess, who is currently taking her first big exam right now to continue in the economic phd program at U of T. We have just enjoyed lying around a comfy house washing all of our belongings – clothes, the car, and ourselves. All I can say of Austin right now is that the neighborhood north of the campus has a lot of well kept homes and a lot of trees and gardens, some more well kept than others. And Jason is very happy to be out of the humid heat of the east and into the more dry heat of the west.

We celebrated Tess’s ½ mark on her test taking with some cool party hats and cake. Than, she took her first night off in the past month of studying and we went out for a drink and dinner to continue celebrating. Tomorrow she has to start studying again for her second and last big exam on Friday. GOOD LUCK TESS!!!!!!

Day 20 – We woke up with a dead battery this morning. The night was very warm, even with the windows cracked down, and so we were turning on the car vents for some air circulation. The last time I turned them on, I fell back asleep before I turned them back off and Jason woke up to a flickering of lights in the dash boarding telling us that we have spent too much of the car’s energy. Our car is a manual and we tried push starting it, but we drained too much of the battery to get it going. That lead us to testing out our AAA membership. The test went well, we were up and running after they finally found where we were ‘resting’.

The country side in Texas slightly reminded Jason and I of back home in Washington. The heat is now dry, a nice change from the past 19 days of our trip, the grassy hills and trees are different from the east coast and defiantly tells us that we are coming into the western part of the states.

We went down to Crystal Beach before heading up to Austin and enjoyed our last swim in the salty water for quiet awhile. It was the most relaxing enjoyable swim I have had this trip. Most of dips in the ocean so far have been not as simple as people usually experience when they say ‘let’s go to the beach today’. At South Beach a huge storm system was moving in all around us and blocked out the sun right as we stepped into the water (no rain but no sun), Crystal River the sirens went off, and we took a swim at Grayton Beach State Park with a little fish that kept wanted to play with us and trying to nibble our legs. Which is cute for awhile, but when it didn’t stop and starting going for my waist which I started to find be too aggressive for me and I got out of the water. Which I am sure the fish was happy to have it’s space back again. So, this time we were able to stay in the water for as long as we wanted and the waves were not too big, the sun was out, and I didn’t want to ever leave.

Jedi at the beach in TX

Day 19 – We took route 90 (future interstate 49) down along the southern part of Louisiana, the Cajun area. Stopping outside of Houma at Bayou Black Airboat Swamp Tours (www.bayoublackairboattours.com 504.628.2508) for a tour of the southern Louisiana’s wetlands given by Wayne Ponthieux Jr. It was a very informative and excellent trip through all the different parts of the wetlands that they have, though we learned that non-of them are what the swamp use to naturally be. He also was very informative with providing information about the history of the area and it’s lifestyles. The pictures below show some of the animals, plants, and landscape that we rode through.

baby gator

riding through the swamp weeds that are taking over the open water – they were accidently brought up from S. America

A lily field

Lily flower

a gator protecting her nest, but unknown to her – the hunters already took her eggs for farming the babies – they release 1/3 of the eggs caputered back into the wild after 2-3 years – the other 2/3 used for meat and leather.

Gator being fed a veggie – didn’t make him too happy…

more swamp

and more swamp

an owl – really cool … watched one try to land on the top of a tree and fall sideways down to the next branch – they are very big birds and I find them very fascinating.

pretty gator

an alley of trees

going back into the main canal

Behind the boat – it looks like a hurricane as we drive by…

Our guide and boat

Our swamp tour took a bit longer than we expected so we hightailed it to Texas that night to make sure we were in Austin by the next day. We decided to take our first night sleeping in the car at a rest-area right across the Texas boarder.