mixtape monday 8/30/10

my good friends brian & amanda finally got hitched this weekend!

best wedding hands down. great music, ridiculous dancing, amazing food, vegan cupcakes, and tons of friends. our friend drew became a "minister" via the world wide web, and performed the ceremony. they had a bit of a back to the future theme for their entrance which included huey louis "power of love" while wearing plastic 80's sunglasses, and then a little earth angel. their first dance was to the ramones. brian's band covered the descendents "marriage" and pressed limited edition wedding 7" for favors. (almost) everything was environmentally friendly, including the corn based eating utensils, which once discovered, quickly turned into a fork eating contest. i didn't catch the boquet that was tossed way too high, although i did slap it to the ground. that might count for something.

road trip america part seven: nevada/utah/colorado

yes, we did indeed travel down the loneliest road in america.  and how appropriately named it was.  we drove through nevada and utah, passing through nothing but desert and ghost towns for two days.  

that's us in the nevada desert at sunset.   i think in the half hour we were out there, maybe 2 cars drove past us.  once the sun went down completely, we set up the tripods to photograph the sky.  i've never seen so many stars in my life.  it was truly amazing.  again we were out there for about an hour, and maybe 4 cars passed us. at one point the boys laid down in the highway to watch the stars.  the loneliest road in america.

yeah, that's the milky way.  no big deal.

we eventually found a campsite in the desert and set up well after dark.  we thought we heard the growls of a large animal in the distance, turns out it was the mountain man in the campsite next to ours snoring all night.  we caught him in the morning dressed head to toe in camo, shooting arrows at targets. 

we also found this little guy:

the parts of utah we passed through were full of nothing and crumby, run down towns.  that about sums it up.

once we hit colorado, we started seeing green and trees again.  it has been a few days.  we also caught up with a crazy storm.  about ten minutes after i took this picture, we got a flat tire.  and about five minutes after that, the sky opened up on us, and all of our gear out on the side of the road while the guys were changing the tire.  

we got the donut on and went into town for a tire change which held us up a bit, and we ended up camping outside of denver.  we got our first cabin of the trip that night because we didn't feel like dealing with the mud.  

the worlds longest yard sale  was only two days away and we had a long drive ahead of us.  we needed our beauty sleep.

mixtape monday 8/23/10

road trip america part six: california

so, we made it out of sunny valley, oregon alive. thank god, because i was really looking forward to seeing the redwoods:

the trees weren't the only things that were giant in the forest:

for reals?

we got to the forest a little too late in the day to enjoy it fully ,but the time we spent there was pretty unreal. by far the most beautiful drive i've ever take. the 101 rules. we drove straight to oakland, where we stayed with our friend kim for two nights. she took us around oakland, berkeley and san fran with the best food tour ever!!!!! my tummy was never happier. we also met up with my good friend jenn, (we go way back to first grade) and her husband, brendan, and caught up over some pizza and beers.

this is the saturn cafe in berkeley. a veggie diner with a spacey/sci-fi theme. hands down best breakfast burrito i've ever tasted. for breakfast dessert (yes, breakfast dessert) we went around the corner to cinnaholic for the reason i would move to california:

there are no words to describe the deliciousness that is depicted above. we went two days in a row. chris and i have both had dreams about them. i feel like a junkie. if you are ever in the area, go. seriously, you won't be disappointed.

mixtape monday 8/16/10

road trip america part five: oregon

while in oregon, of course we went to astoria to see mikey's house from goonies:

we also went down to cannon beach to see haystack rock from the beach scenes.  we had prefect goonie weather - cold, gray, foggy and wet.  we took the longest walk down the beach in the mist towards the rocks, which were much farther away then they seemed. it was amazing how much sand was in our shoes (and socks) once we got back to the car.  one of my favorite days on the trip.

we got in to portland late and met up with ken and his wife kyla for dinner at the food trucks. chris and i shared a vegan pizza and some crazy fried potatoes with rosemary ketchup.  food truck culture is so fascinating to me.  i love it.  where else can you get fried peanut butter pie on a stick?  no, i didn't go there,  i wanted to, but i didn't.  we spent the night with ken and kyla and their extremely talkative twin cats, fritz and colby.  why didn't i take photos of them?  for that matter, why didn't i take more pictures in portland period?  i think this is the only one i took, but i feel it sums portland up quite nicely: 

the net day, we ate some delicious strawberry chocolate chip pancakes and then checked out green noise records (ken's store).  we also went to ground control, an 80's arcade so the boys could play.  my reward for sitting through that was taking a trip to queen bee to look at fabulous and fun hand made purses.  i bought the cutest hand screened tote. hooray! after that, and a failed attempt at getting doughnuts from voodoo, we headed out.

this was the last nice memory of oregon i had.   weird a-frame motels at a rest area.  

the remainder of the evening was quite memorable, to say the least.  we ended up at random back woods camp site, which advertised the following: pool, laundry, monthly rates.  the only thing they actually had were the monthly rates.  people lived there in trailers.  we were eagerly greeted by "mike brown, owner":

 "new jersey!?!?  whatch'yall doin out here? jersey! they got tents there?"  

good old mike gave us the most secluded tent site, which was out of view from the other campers, surrounded on three sides by a stream.  when i asked where their laundry room was: "ehhh them thangs haven't worked right in three or four months or so."  the pool had so much algae in it that it looked radioactive.  on the way back from exploring said pool area, mike brown stopped me to give warning about the bear problem they've been having lately.  as if i hadn't already started to feel like we were going to die in this place.  after dinner, we all climbed into drew's tent to play some uno, and after a few rounds,  "splash! splash! splash! tromp! tromp! tromp!"  "BEAR!!!"  yes, there was a bear/bears catching dinner about four feet from the tent.  we all agreed we wouldn't fall asleep that night, so we broke down the tents in record speed, in the glow of the headlights, and hauled ass out of that dump,  only to end up at the seediest motel i've ever stayed in.  i don't think any of us ended up sleeping that night after all.

road trip america part four: montana/idaho/washington

some things i discovered on my travels through montana and idaho:

nothing is offensive.

there are indeed aliens.

pepul are bad spellars.

our first stop in washington was north bend, the town that "twin peaks" was filmed in.  super exciting for me.  we went into the double R diner, which had apparently fallen prey to arson in 2000, which explained why the inside wasn't looking familiar at all.  i bought a (sad excuse for a) map of the film set locations for $2, which needless to say was a bust.  most of the places were either impossible to find or no longer existed.  we did get to the great northern though.  the falls were beautiful.

once we arrived in seattle, we met up with our friends chris and ali at gas works park, and stayed to watch the sunset.  best view of the city.  one of my favorite places we visited.  i may have enjoyed it so much because we just sat and stared, and were not in a car.

the next day chris and ali took us around the city and showed us some sights.  they took us to the seattle public library, which had some of the most bizarre architecture i have ever seen in a library.  super modern and futuristic.  i never would have asked to go on a tour of a library, but i'll tell you, i'm glad we did. 

chris & ali 

the entire sci-fi floor is red and mars like.  

we headed down to the waterfront and popped into the oddities museum, ye olde curiosity shop, and saw handsome dudes like this guy.  and of course we hit up pike place market, the gum wall and the original starbucks. 

my one requested stop in seatte was here:

the apartment complex where the movie singles was filmed.  yippie!

we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the fremont area.  chris and ali took us out for thai food and then we wandered under the bridge and found this guy:

road trip america part three: yellowstone national park

welcome to yellowstone, where the earth's crust is as thin as cardboard, water boils furiously underground and everything smells like eggs. warning: do not let your brother wander off the trails or he may fall into a geyser while your father is not paying any attention, and his skin will melt off, his hat will shoot up off his head, and most important, the film in his camera will be lost forever.

when you hear the name yellowstone, the first thing you think of is old faithful, is it not? well, either that or jellystone and pick-a-nick baskets. or maybe that's just me. but anyway, in all honesty, old faithful loses some of it's splendor once you have the chance to take in all of the other geysers and hot springs in the area. it's pretty unbelievable just how many there are. one right after the next, each one different from the one before it. old faithful was pretty unreal to experience, it just puzzles me that with all that bizarro geothermal activity going on, that's the famous one. i mean look at this stuff:

*note: no, the color of the water has not been enhanced in these photos. it's actually that beautiful. and yes, it really does ferociously boil like a cauldron full of sulfur soup.

riverside geyser (above) & old faithful (below)

aside from all the fun geological phenomenon we saw, we also made a lot of furry friends:




i was so excited to see wild bison just hanging out. one actually crossed the road a few feet in front of my car. a little intimidating, especially since a woman was gored by one at the park the day before. we saw a ton of gigantic elk roaming around, too. no see any grizzly or moose sightings, but that's ok. maybe next time. some other critters we saw over the two days we were at yellowstone (that i didn't get decent photos of): black bears, bald eagles, and pelicans.

i took this picture on our six mile hike. i don't know how long ago the fire was, but it looked fairly recent, maybe in the past 4 or 5 years. there were a few tiny shrubs, but mostly just tall grasses, with charred, black trees standing around like skeletons in a field. it was really quite beautiful.