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.

road trip america part two: wyoming

after we left biker country, we crossed over into wyoming en route to devils tower. we pulled into a town called aladdin to fill up the gas tank, since it was the only place for miles, and i'm so glad we did. what a weird place. their sign said "aladdin - population 15". for serious. the gas pumps (which looked as though they had been there since the dawn of time) sat out in front of a 1890's general store whose second floor was transformed into an antique store/museum. after we fueled up and weirded around the shop for a bit, we made our way.

on the way to devils tower we passed through a prairie dog town, which was super fascinating to me. i must have recorded 10 minutes worth of video of them just barking at us. hysterical and way too cute.

hi there.

we took a two hour hike around the base of the tower, which is much, much larger than the pictures make it out to be. there were actually some people climbing it, who looked like ants.

after our hike, we continued on to cody, wyoming where our campsite awaited us. as did the laundry room and a warm shower. ahhh.

road trip america part one: iowa/south dakota

i figured the best way to deal with editing and sharing three weeks worth of pictures was to just focus on a state or two at a time. stay tuned for more soon.

3 friends

21 days

19 states

8,141 miles

= a lot of pictures

drew and i left nj on a sunday morning and ended up at a dive bar/pizza joint in dayton, ohio, twelve hours later. that's where we picked up chris, who had been touring with our good friends, black wine, for the last three weeks. we stuck around for a great set and some great townie dance action. the next day we hit up some antique malls as we made our way through indiana and ended up in chicago for dinner at the chicago diner, a vegetarian place with killer vegan milkshakes! didn't spend much time in the city, as the sun was starting to set and we had yet to find a campsite for the night.

the next morning we headed into iowa, where we made our first stop: antique archaeology in leClaire (american pickers). it was neat pointing out different items from episodes we'd seen before. heaps and heaps of weird junk and treasures to look at. i'm glad we made it there.

while on the road to our next destination, we were sidetracked by some more roadside junk: old cars on the hill , a graveyard for classic cars and heaps of rusty skeletons. it took a few tries to get there from the highway, but we found it eventually.

by the next day we reached mitchell, south dakota, home of the world's only corn palace. yes, that's right, a palace made out of corn. as you can tell by my lack of pictures of said palace, it was not as impressive as we had hoped, so we just walked around town for a while and hit some thrift stores before we made our way to the badlands.

unfortunately there wasn't much of a sunset happening once we reached the badlands. it was a pretty gloomy day. gloominess aside, words and pictures can hardly do the landscape any justice. it was one of the most incredible sights i had ever seen, until the storm rolled through, and then that was the most incredible thing i had ever seen. lightning for miles and miles against the rocky horizon. we were lucky that rain held out for a good hour and half so we could sit and watch with our cameras.

we were so absorbed in storm watching that none of us had for a moment considered the fact that it was about to rain, really hard, at any time, and we had plans to camp. so much for that! by the time we hit the park's exit it was pouring. after about an hour or two of driving, and dozens of "no vacancy" signs, we found ourselves at the starlight inn, in good ol' sturgis...

mixtape monday 8/9/10

road trip usa 2010. gonna take my little honda down to the car wash today.

8,141 miles worth of bug guts to get rid of.