Trip Review

Now that I’ve had some time to look back, here are some of my favorites and least favorites.

Day 18 Recap

Finally home today. We drove straight home, stopping only for gas a couple times and Sonic once. My drink spilled all over the floor before I could drink any of it; it actually wasn’t my fault either.

Day 17 Recap

Day 17 was the last day we really did anything on the trip. We spent a few hours with Andrew on base. We bowled and ate. The bowling alley happened to have a really good deal for the time we were there; it was only a dollar per game. It was nice to see someone we knew besides each other. I left the camera in the car though, so the only picture I took was from right outside the car:

Day 16 Recap

After deciding there wasn’t much in the El Paso area we wanted to do, we decided to head to Wichita Falls, Texas to visit Andrew (someone Aaron graduated with and went to church with) at the air force base there. We ended up making only two stops along the way, although only one was scheduled…

Day 15 Recap

We drove from Tucson to El Paso. We probably could have gone farther, but there was really nowhere else to go beyond El Paso. Most of Western Texas is pretty empty. The only “stop” we made was at Saguaro National Park.

Day 14 Recap

We thought about going back to the Grand Canyon for awhile today but in the end decided the previous night was good enough (Aaron did; I had already seen the canyon so I didn’t really care). We went to Flagstaff and went up the ski lift that I hadn’t been able to the last time I was in Flagstaff because of this:

Day 13 Recap

Today was the Grand Canyon day. There were some problems though: 1. We slept in very late because we were up late the night before. 2. We got stuck in traffic in Las Vegas because we wanted to see a couple things we hadn’t walked by the night before. 3. We got stuck in traffic going across the Hoover Dam because it is a tourist attraction, a two-lane road, but also a state highway. It didn’t help that they were also doing road construction there. Here are some Las Vegas and Hoover Dam pictures:

Day 12 Recap

The nearest church to where we spent the night was about a 40-minute backtrack, so going was pretty much out of the question. We just woke up around 6 and headed into the park. We drove to the nearest parking lot to the visitor’s center to pick up a map or something. The visitor’s center was not open. It would not open for a few more hours, so we just started walking until we found a path that led to Yosemite Falls.

Day 11 Recap

I woke up in the morning and took a shower to see if I felt any better than I did the night before. The only thing that made me feel any better was the possibility that we could get out of there that day, so that’s what we did.

But we did take the time to see the city first. I had a 49-mile driving tour that I got from the San Francisco travel guide (about the only thing any of those were useful for–that and HotLips Pizza) that we more or less followed.

Day 10 Recap

Day 10 left me completely exhausted. It must have because I was extremely stressed out but still fell right asleep when I went to bed. In between hotel stops we spent nearly 14 hours on a trip that could have taken 6 hours if we had taken the most direct route without stops. Perhaps it was the long day that made me so stressed; perhaps it was driving around San Francisco looking for a place to park by the hotel before settling on a spot that I’m pretty sure was illegal to stay in overnight; perhaps it was the hour or so I spent on a winding road in the dark with deer and elk around and a drop into the ocean if I went too far to the right; perhaps it was all of those and more, but whatever the reason, I didn’t have a good first impression about San Francisco and wanted to be out of there almost as soon as we got there.

Day 9 Recap

We knew we were going to head toward San Francisco today; we just needed to decide how to get there. We could either drive down the Pacific Coast, drive by Crater Lake, or take the Interstate overnight and get there early the next morning. I did not care at all, so I let Aaron decide. In hindsight, going by Crater Lake was probably the worst of the three options. If we had driven straight to San Francisco, we probably would have done like Seattle–seen the city and then stayed overnight in a cheap hotel in the suburbs. That would have eliminated almost all the problems I had with the city (but I’ll get to that more in a later recap). We also ended up not seeing much of the ocean; I would have liked spending a day driving near it. Even if Crater Lake had been really exciting, I’m not sure it would have been a good decision.

Heh

Well, how’s this for irony:  Every hotel we stayed at had a computer in the lobby…until my computer broke.  This is the fifth night since then, and we have not had a computer.  I will do my best to make sure the next one does and will try to update everything then.

Computer Problem

Last night the power cord connection to my computer got messed up and will not work at all, so I have a little more than three hours of computer use for the rest of the trip.  I will only update this blog when I can use a computer at the hotel where we are staying, which does not include tonight.

Updated

Ok, I have the blog completely updated with pictures for every day.  I shortened the amount you see of each post on the main screen because all the pictures were slowing it down on my high-speed connection; it would have been completely unloadable on a slower connection.  Just click on “read more” to see the pictures and recaps.  I stayd up late to do this, so you’d better appreciate it…

Tomorrow we do…?  We don’t even know yet.

Day 8 Recap

We didn’t really do much today. We drove around some scenic routes just to kill time because we had nothing better to do. If we had just flown into Oregon from Illinois, that would have been one of the coolest things I’d done, but it was actually somewhat commonplace. There were some nice views of the Columbia River and Mount Hood, but if we had better things to do today, I wouldn’t have thought it worth driving a few hours to see it

Day 7 Recap

We drove pretty much all day this day, but it didn’t seem like it. We headed around the Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula to see the only rain forest in North America, and then down to Portland. We drove from about 11:00 until after 10:00, and only stopped for about 1 1/2 hours total. But it still seemed like a short day. The drive around the sound has some great views and some nice, small towns to drive through. About half of the towns were named “Port” something–Port Orchard, Port Townsend, Port Angeles, etc. That gives you an idea of what the area is like.

Day 6 Recap

We stopped for breakfast about 15 miles away from downtown Seattle. Aaron had wanted to find a place to stop for a couple hours, but he fell asleep so I just went until traffic slowed down and broke my rhythm.

From breakfast we headed straight downtown Seattle. Traffic was slow but not difficult…until we actually got to the city. The city streets in Seattle are easily the most confusing I have ever been on. We drove around the city for nearly an hour just looking around and looking for a good place to park. It wasn’t that bad though because we were able to see the city.

We parked near the waterfront and walked straight there. We were actually just north of downtown, so we were able to get a great view of the water and of downtown. The water was surprisingly clear for a major seaport.

Day 5 Recap

We had the most time to kill all trip up to that point on Sunday morning before church…and we pretty much wasted it. I don’t really have any comments on the church, well, just because. Aaron said something about not singing any hymns, but they did; they just didn’t use their hymnals on Sunday morning.

It’s unfortunate that this day happened to fall on a Sunday. It was a really long day that we couldn’t really start until 12:30ish. An extra 2 1/2 hours would have been nice to spend in Yellowstone or to be able to nap a little bit before Seattle. But we knew the day was going to be long, and we were prepared for it.

Day 4 Recap

Day 4: Today was another mountain day. We had some alternate plan ideas for after Denver but none of them worked out, so we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park and then out to near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

Backup in posts

I’ve had a backup on posts because every night I’m either driving, really tired, or at a hotel where the Internet is not working.  Plans right now (although they haven’t been mentioned to Aaron yet, so it’s not for sure) are to stay a couple nights in Portland and just relax, wash clothes, get the car straightened out, etc.  I should be able to get everything updated through day 7 by tomorrow night.

Day 3 Recap

Day 3: We spent most of Friday in Denver and most of that time was just walking around the city. There were a ton of restaurants that looked good but not a whole lot of things to do, especially when none of the sports teams were playing and Six Flags was closed. It was a fairly interesting city though and was very walkable. If I lived in Denver, I doubt I would own a car because there are bike/walk lanes everywhere. In fact, the entire area is very biker-friendly. There were people on bikes on every road (besides the Interstates) everywhere between Denver and Estes Park, where we spent the night.

Day 2 Recap

Day 2: We knew it was supposed to storm in the afternoon so we decided to get up the mountain as soon as possible. We didn’t realize that we’d still be up there when the storm came. Every part of it was amazing, from the drive up to the drive down. For people who had never been in real mountains before, even the drive up through smaller hills was amazing. We have enough pictures that you can pretty much figure out what happened without my telling you.

Day(s) 1 Recap

Forgive the small number of pictures on this one. The first memory stick I used in the digital camera doesn’t work with my computer and the equipment I have. You’ll have to wait until I get home or until I happen to see a really cheap memory stick reader. You can click any picture here or in any other post to see a description.

Day 1: Can you say looooooooong? Between the time we left Aaron’s house and the time we entered our hotel room, we spent about 28 1/2 hours out there. When we finally reached our location we couldn’t find the hotel because I forgot to print out the reservation info and the hotel was not listed on the gps. Eventually I decided to just pick a random address on a street that I knew was near the hotel. On the way we saw our hotel, and the gps finally found it. The day(s) wasn’t all that exciting though.

Rough Draft Itinerary

I did this just for the benefit of Aaron’s mom.  It is not only subject to change, I’d almost guarantee it will change on the fly.

May 15: Leave home
May 16: South Dakota area
May 17: Colorado Springs area
May 18: Denver area
May 19: Head toward Yellowstone National Park
May 20: Yellowstone area
May 21: Head toward Seattle
May 22: Seattle area
May 22: Washington state
May 23: Portland area
May 24: Oregon state
May 25: Oregon/Northern California
May 26: San Francisco
May 27: San Francisco to Yosemite National Park area
May 28: Yosemite area
May 29: Head toward Las Vegas
May 30: Grand Canyon
May 31: Phoenix/Tucson
June 1: Head toward Dallas
June 2: Dallas area
June 3: Oklahoma City and Kansas City
June 4: Arrive home

Date Set

As far as I know, it’s official now: We are leaving Tuesday, May 15. I’m thinking around 5:00 so we’d get to where we want to be in South Dakota around sunrise. I’ve added a lot more details to the map, so you might want to check it out. The plans will stay up there until the day we leave when I clear it all out and start over with what we actually do.

Link to Map