Tillamook and Oregon Coast

After Portland we headed over to the coast where we made a stop at the Tillamook cheese factory!!! I had made it to my Mecca, the home of the most amazing tasting cheese! It was awesome, you took a self guided tour where you could watch the factory workers make, cut, weigh, slice, and package the cheese. They also make amazing ice cream. After the tour we got to taste a bunch of different cheeses. Joe and I then proceeded to the ice cream counter where we ordered some different flavors of ice cream. I got to try root beer float, pumpkin, and cookies & cream, YUM! After the ice cream we headed into the factory store and picked up some different cheeses and postcards. Now that we were stuffed with cheese and ice cream (good thing neither of us are lactose intolerant!) we headed over to the coast to find a campsite for the night. Now by this part of the trip Joe and I were having a hard time deciding where to go and what to see on our way back to California, I think that we were just really tired and couldn’t decide when to be home…
We found a campsite for the night and decided as much to drive down the Oregon coast for a few hours the next day.
The drive down the coast was really beautiful, not as windy as California. The only drawback was that it was very overcast. But none the less we drove down the coast for a good 6 hours, stopping at different spots to take pictures and run through the sand on the beaches. By the end of the day we were pretty tired and decided to head over to the 5 freeway and start driving towards California. We just kept driving until we got tired, found a rest stop and slept for a few hours. We woke up early the next morning and got back on the road, by this time we knew, we were heading home. We got home on Sunday July 12th, just in time to make Joe’s cousin Marissa’s birthday party, which was cool because most of Joe’s family were there and we got to surprise them with us being home.

Portland, OR

We got into Portland around 4 or 5pm and we got a hold of Katie’s sister Jessica so we headed over to her apartment. Jessica was going to show us around Portland. Once again we got lucky and the street right next to her apartment building was open and free parking so we could park the truck and trailer no problem. We walked to the main street of her neighborhood to grab a drink and plan out the next couple days so we could get a good feel for Portland. I forgot to mention but it was really cool when we were driving South into Portland, it is the town of bridges. There is a river (cannot remember the name) that goes right through the middle of Portland, so there are a lot of bridges that let you go back and forth between the two sides of the city, really cool. Anyway we grabbed some beer at a local place in Jessica’s neighborhood and talked about Portland and planned out what we should see. We went back to Jessica’s and BBQ’d some hamburgers and got ready to paint the town the next day. We had decided that we wanted to check out the Japanese gardens and the famous Powell’s bookstore the next day. So we woke up had some coffee and headed down to the bus stop, Portland has really good public transportation. We hopped on a bus and then took the MAX (their above ground subway train) over to the Japanese gardens. We walked up this steep hill to the entrance of the gardens. The Japanese gardens were incredible, so beautifully maintained. I took a TON of photos here, I was completely in my element. We spent a good couple hours milling around the gardens. We then grabbed another bus downtown and stopped and had lunch at Deschutes Brewery, Joe and I both got the beer sampler where we got to chose six beers to taste. They all were really good, Joe got more of the darker beers, and I tried more reds and pale ales. After lunch we headed over to the famous Powell’s bookstore, it is so big that they give you a map to figure your way around. We spent a good couple hours in here as well. All in all a really good day, on the bus ride home we decided to check out the Portland Art Museum the next day because they had a special MC Esher exhibit going on.
The next day we once again hopped on a bus and went downtown. We went and checked out the Portland Art museum and the special MC Esher exhibit. The MC Esher exhibit was totally worth it, even if there was no other art to see that would have been enough for me, it was really cool. It is so amazing how he made the metamorphosis drawings, and did you know most of his works he carved into wood and then stamped onto paper?!? He was an incredible artist. After the museum we went down to a section of downtown where they have a bunch of food carts and you could get any kind of food you want. Joe had Vietnamese, Jessica had Korean BBQ, and I, of course, had Mexican. All of our dishes were really good, and really super cheap! We headed back to Jessica’s for one more night before we headed onto the Oregon coast. Joe decided to hang out back at Decca’s apartment while I went with her to a friends BBQ. Now this was an interesting experience… let’s just say that I met some really curious people. There were hippies, weirdos, and just interesting folk at this BBQ. It made me sit back and think of how many different kinds of people there are out there and how people come together and converse. Joe and I did sort of conclude that Portland people are exclusive and very proud to live or be from Portland, that moving from another place it might be hard to break into the scene… something to think about when figuring where we want to move.

Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens

It was a pretty drive from Richland, WA to Mt Rainier. When we entered into Mt Rainier National Park we were greeted with lots of snow along the different mountains around Mt Rainier. We thought that it was going to be hard to find a campsite because it was the Monday after 4th of July and we thought people would still be on their vacation, but as it turned out the campsite we stayed at was creepy empty. We settled in and then headed up to the visitor’s center to take a small hike and try and get some good pictures of Mt Rainier. Well it turns out that most of the year there is a ring of clouds that hang around the summit of Mt Rainier so we did not really get that many good photos, but the trail we took was still really pretty. As we got back up to the parking lot from the trail we saw a pretty large mound of snow that we wanted to play in, well I ran up it and then ran down, but Joe decided to run up to slide down and while he was running up the camera fell out of his pocket into the snow. Go figure that when the camera gets dropped into soft snow it brakes, not the other few times it was dropped on the ground. It is not totally broken, it just makes a funny sounds every time we turn it on and the lens comes out. It was actually kind of funny for a couple days after “the accident” the camera would turn on and zoom for me but would shut itself off when Joe tried it. (I secretly laughed on the inside…) The next morning we took a long drive out of Mt Rainier to Mt St Helens, unfortunately I was not smart enough to think that Mt St Helens might have a ring of clouds around it like Mt Rainier, so when we finally got close enough, we could not even see the summit because it was under so many clouds. Even though we took the long way the drive was very pretty through different kinds of forests and scenery. After seeing, or not seeing much of Mt St Helens we drove to Portland where we were supposed to meet up with our old roommate Katie Bull’s sister Jessica.

Glacier National Park

It was about right hours from Yellowstone to Glacier so we stopped halfway and stayed the night in Missoula. The drive from Missoula to Glacier National Park was beautiful. Up through some mountains and then around a huge lake. We could not make reservations for Glacier because all the campsites were full but they did have a campsite that was first come first server so planned on getting there around noon (which is usually the time they make you check out) so we could grab a site before the rest of the world got there. We were pretty lucky and got a really sweet spot under a bunch of trees. We went to the visitor center and checked to see what roads were open and what trail we could get in that day. We decided on a 6 mile roundtrip hike to catch a glimpse of almost the entire park. This hike was very interesting, first was the fact that there are grizzly and black bears all over the park. As we started on the trail I was a little freaked out that we might run into a bear (my brother and I ran into one when we were running a trail in Yosemite) so I had read some material that said to talk loud while on the trail to make your presence known to the bear. I am not sure that I told Joe that I had read this because he thought I was acting really weird talking really loud while on this trail. Then when we were going up the trial we ran into some people who had bear spray (yes there is spray to fend off bears, but it only works once, then run!) but the woman said that she did not see any bears on the trial and not to be worried because all the bear scat (that means poop) she saw was really old. That made me feel better but then we passed another group of people and asked how far we were (because Joe and I were huffing and puffing) and they told us the not so good news that we were still pretty far. About ¾ of the way up Joe and I swear we were going to die (you could tell we were at the end of the trip and we definitely out of shape!) But low and behold we made it to the top and got a really awesome view of Glacier park. After our long hike we headed back to our campsite and were too tired to BBQ so we just had a snack and went to sleep, hoping to get up early the next morning for a long drive through the park.
We debated on whether to take the free shuttle or to drive through the park on the Going to The Sun Road. We waited for the shuttle for a while and just decided that it would be easier for us to just drive the road. They had just opened the road the week before we got there, they had to blast out snow on many different parts of the road. In the middle of the journey we were stopped due to construction, during the snowy winter the snow can destroy parts of the road and when they blast it or it melts off they find the destroyed parts of the road and have to redo them. We were only stopped about a ½ hour, but Joseph ended up talking with a gentlemen who lived in Clovis near his sister and worked for a company based in San Luis Obispo, such a small world. After we got through the road construction we decided to drive all the way into Waterton National Park, which is actually in Canada. I think the total drive to the Canadian border took about 4 hours, but when we got there we had some trouble. Turns out that the day we were trying to get into Canada was Canada Day (July 1st) and the Canadian customs officials were not having a good day (it just so happened that neither were Joe and I). Well our first mistake was that we had firewood in the back of our truck, apparently you cannot bring any wood with bark from America in Canada, the American trees have some disease that the Canadian trees do not. Then they proceeded to ask us a ton of questions, like if we had any alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and weapons. Not only did they ask us if we had weapons, but the woman went into this long list saying almost every weapon in the book, like we didn’t know what she was talking about. They really gave us a hard time and we even had our passports! They then proceeded to tell us to pull over to the side and wait while they checked our ID’s. Well Joe was pretty pissed by this time, especially since all the firewood we had in the back of the truck he had just chopped all himself in Yellowstone. So he went into the office to ask if he could leave it on the US side so that we would be able to pick it up on the way back out. They gave him a hard time again and the woman was not even checking our ID’s she was just sitting there chatting it up. Joe came back out and then went in again and then they told him that we were not allowed to come into Canada because of a DUI he got 5 years ago, and not only were we not allowed in but would not be able to come in for another 5 years because of this. They were freaking rude, she even had the audacity to say that they were lenient on marijuana but not alcohol. So we got to turn around and head back into the US. Well we had to go through the US customs, and tell them why Canada would not let us in, even though they watched us not be let in. They even pulled the drug dogs on us, freaking stupid. Well as you can imagine our day was just getting worse. At least on the way back out we got to see a grizzly bear, a black bear, and a baby fox. Later on in the day when we tried to go check out a glacier Joe saw a moose! We drove back down the Going to The Sun Road and stopped to take pictures of some Glaciers, it was kind of hard to tell if we were looking at a Glacier or not, but we took pictures anyway. You could say our visit to Glacier National Park was not what we expected it to be. The next day we decided to leave and head to Idaho where we were going to stay the night and head into Washington where we were going to meet up with my sister and some of her family for 4th of July.
We spent 4th of July with my sister, her husband, my sister’s aunt & uncle, cousins, and he mom. We had a wonderful time eating delicious food, drinking, and playing Wii sports. It was really nice to have a hot shower, and be able to do some laundry. After 4th of July we decided to get back on the road and head towards Portland, OR and stopping at Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens along the way.

Cody WY and Yellowstone National Park

We spent a night in Cody, which is the town right outside the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The town is best known for Buffalo Bill (William Cody). There was an entire museum dedicated to Buffalo Bill, but we did not have enough time to check it out. We woke up early the next morning and drove into Yellowstone, it was a gorgeous drive. Joe and I had no idea until we started driving into Yellowstone, how massive the park is. I also didn’t know how cold it was going to be, I actually thought that I might get to go swimming in one of the many lakes, but there was still snow on some of the mountains and some of the lakes were frozen over.
It took us about an hour after the entrance until we got to the turn off towards our campsite. By this part of the trip I had at least got the knack to make reservations before we got to a national park, because we had run into situations where all the campsites were full. Even in huge Yellowstone the first campsite I called was completely booked for 3 days straight. As we took the turnoff towards our campsite Joseph suddenly pulled over and I am thinking “oh shit not again”, thinking that it might be tire trouble again. It was not tire trouble for us but an accident that happened behind us. Joe said it was the weirdest thing, he watched it all happen in his side mirror. There was a van behind us and as we took a turn the van kept going straight into a tree, fortunately the couple in the van walked away from the accident. It was very strange.
We got to our campsite and checked in, we were right on one of the lakes. We set up shop and checked out the scenery right around our space. Joe BBQ’d and we played games, we knew we were going to be in Yellowstone for a few days so we could kick back the first night.
The next morning we woke up, made breakfast, and set out on the road. In the National Geographic book on National Parks, there was a planned out drive route to take in Yellowstone where we could explore all the Geysers (well not all of them, there are sooo many). We detached from the trailer and drove through the park to see Old Faithful. We were quite lucky because when we got there we found out we were only going to have to wait about half an hour to see Old Faithful blow! We walked around Old Faithful where there are other mineral pools and more small geysers. What is crazy is that the mineral pools look so beautiful and inviting but they are boiling hot and the chemical mixture could burn your skin. It was like this all over the park, you would see these gorgeous pools and want to touch them or get in them, but basically your face would melt off! After we walked around for a while we picked a good spot to watch Old Faithful blow. We got a lot of really good photos of it starting, it blowing, and then sputtering to a stop. We drove further down the main road and checked out more mineral pools and geysers. (check out the photos it is really hard to describe what they look like)
The next morning we woke up extra early to walk down to the lake and check out the sunrise. It was incredible, we watched the sun slowly rise over the mountains and the lake. It was totally worth waking up early. After we checked out the sunrise we got the wonderful pleasure of paying $2 to take a shower. The funny thing was, was my shower was this small hose spout where the water pressure was so high that I felt like the water was piercing my skin, and Joe’s shower was a fine Amazon mist! (but I should not complain about hot water for $2) From Yellowstone we were heading into Montana where we would make it to Glacier National Park.

ANOTHER FREAKING BUMP IN THE ROAD!

Our first night in Wyoming we stayed in Sheridan which was about half way to Yellowstone. We woke up pretty early the following morning so we could get to Cody and check out the city before going into Yellowstone. We were about two hours from Cody when we decided to make a pit stop at a rest stop and switch driving. I hopped behind the driver’s seat and started driving towards Cody, we were only about 5 minutes from the rest stop when I noticed the trailer bouncing all over the place, we knew something was wrong. We pulled over at a truck stop and the other trailer tire was smoking! Joe immediately knew that the bearings on the other trailer tire were busted. Luckily when the first tire bearings blew out Joe watched the mechanic very closely and he felt that we would be able to fix this side on our own. We figured out where the auto parts store was and Joe went and got all the things we needed to try and fix it. As Joe was taking the tire off and the parts off a Truck Driver that had parked next to us came over to check out what we were up to. He ended up hanging around for a while “supervising” and putting in his two cents. It took us (yes I actually helped a little bit) 6 hours to get things almost fixed, by then we had lost all light and decided anything else that needed to be done we could get done in the morning. In the morning Joe double checked everything and we crossed our fingers and got back on the road. For those of you that do not know anything about bearings (like I did) let me give you a little run down… when you take the tire off there is a hub that you have to take off and there are bearings inside of the thing that holds the hub on (you can tell that I do not know all the technical jargon!) so these bearings need to be lubed up all the time with grease, otherwise there is too much friction which can cause a fire (hence the trailer tire catching on fire…).

Crazy Horse Memorial & Hill City

We woke up in Custer State Park to another beautiful sunny day. We packed up the Lance (our trailer) once again and headed out on the road. Crazy horse is less than 20 miles away from Mt Rushmore but a world away from it in what the memorial is trying to achieve. When we arrived at the memorial they charged us $10/ person, and I thought wow that is kind of stiff. What I learned throughout the visit to the memorial changed my mind entirely. Once we got inside they showed us a short film on the story of Crazy Horse, the memorial, and the sculptor. I do not have all the facts about Crazy Horse, but the jist of the story is an 1868 treaty had deeded the land (the black hills and surrounding areas) to the Sioux Indians, but their ownership only lasted 6 years. When gold was discovered in the area, the U.S. government reclaimed the land. In 1876 the government ordered all the Sioux onto reservations, but three Indian chiefs, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Gall organized a resistance. (which eventually destroyed the 7th Calvary at Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn.) Their victory was short lived, Crazy Horse was stabbed in the back by an American soldier and they were ordered back to the reservations. Joe and I were really taken aback by listening to this story. It is sad that we do not know this and other pieces of our history, even if we did things that were not right. As we walked through the exhibits you had this sense of shame that our fore fathers drove these people of their lands into reservations. It was eye opening.
The story of the memorial and sculpture itself is just as interesting. The chief of the Sioux Indians commissioned the sculptor. This was in the 1940’s, the sculptor was not offered any payment for working on the project, which was okay with him. The sculptor (sorry cannot remember his name) actually worked under the sculptor of Mt Rushmore for a while, and was actually fired by the sculptor of Mt Rushmore. (lots of interesting crazy stories around both memorials) The project is solely funded by donations, entrance fees, revenue from gift shop, and money made by the sculptor and his family. When they arrived at the memorial site, the sculptor had to build his family a home, and he also built a farm to be able to earn money to take care of his family while working on this project. Currently they have the face of Crazy Horse complete. In the museum you can see a scale model of the sculptor and also what the memorial grounds will look like when they are finished. They are planning on building an Indian University, medical center, and cultural center, along with the memorial and the museum. All of the granite that they are blasting off they are reusing for all sorts of things, they grinded it down and built many of the roads around the memorial. They will also be using the granite to build a lot of the buildings for the medical center, school, and cultural center. The original sculptor passed away in the 80’s but the project is being kept in the family, one of his daughters is now the head sculptor, and 7 out of his 10 children work on the project everyday. It was such an interesting day, very educational!
After Crazy Horse we headed over to Hill City where we were told that we could get a steak dinner for $8.95! Hill City was on the way out of South Dakota heading towards Wyoming. We got into Hill City around 3:30pm and we walked around looking for the Alpine restaurant where this famous cheap steak dinner was to be served. The Alpine restaurant was actually part of a small bed & breakfast type hotel. We went to check out the restaurant and realized that they were not serving dinner until 5pm, so we walked through the town looking for somewhere else to eat and decided that it was still worth it to eat the steak dinner and we would just waste the next hour and a half window shopping. We headed back to the Alpine restaurant at 5pm and it was already packed! We only had to wait a few minutes and got a table. The waitress arrived and ask Joe and I if we had ever been to the restaurant before and we replied no. She said there were only 2 things on the menu, either a 6oz. Or 9oz. Filet minion steak. The steak came with a wedge salad (just iceberg with dressing), baked potato, and texas toast. 6oz. was $8.95 and 9oz. Was $10.95. Joe and I each had steak, wine, and dessert and the total bill before tip was $37!!! Amazing, it was delicious! After our awesome dinner we got back on the road and headed to Wyoming. We were going to Cody for a night before heading into Yellowstone National Park.