Doin' the Limbo

We are closing out July the same way that we started it out: Homeless. We woke up this morning to a cold, cloudy day. The kind of morning where you expect it to start raining on you, but it never does. The air matress has to be acknowledged as a success, because we didn't even wake up in time to go to the Farmer's Market. If you don't get there in the first couple of hours, all the good stuff is gone (Rule #1 of the market. Rule #2 is never talk about the market). We made up for the lack of fresh fruit with a nice batch of campstove pancakes, and around noon the clouds cleared away and we had another sunny, 80 degree day.

We are still camping out at the KOA campground outside of town. We spent a while going through the list of things we could do: bowling, watch a movie, go to a u-pick farm, drive to the coast, etc. We are still pretty set against getting back in the car for any extended period of time, especially with a Portland excursion planned for Monday afternoon to pick up Kirby and Mr. Plant. We stayed a little low-key today, stopping for lunch at a deli in town and then going to the cinema to see Inception. Actually, we walked up to the movie theater to see what the movies were, both figuring we would be choosing Toy Story 3, but it wasn't on for a couple hours, so we chose Inception. It was the first time I had ever gone to a move without the slightest idea of the plot or who any of the main actors were (you do not see many movie promos when you are homeless!), but it was great.

We left the theater and decided to get some ice cream. Jenny was convinced the Dairy Queen was downtown next to the Mexican restaurant we ate at last night (wrong, it was a Baskin Robbins). Robbie was convinced that it was next to the Safeway on the other side of town (also wrong, it was a Burger King). After driving around for a half an hour, we gave up our search and let Tom-Tom get us there. The sad thing is the town actually has TWO Dairy Queens, and we couldn't find either one.

Either way, we ended our evening back at camp. We are continuing to be patient, and are hoping (and planning!) that tomorrow is the day we hear about the house that we want!

The day of the falls

We decided to dust off our hiking shoes and head to the state park we talked about yesterday - Silver Falls State Park, which is just east of Salem. It's the largest state park in Oregon, and it has a trail that is 8.7 miles long called the Trail of 10 falls (which, appropriately named, winds around to ten different waterfalls). It was still fairly early by the time we got there, so we decided to undertake the hike. It was a gorgeous day with perfect weather - sunny (it still hasn't rained, people!), around 80 degrees (but very pleasant in the shade), and a clear blue sky. We hiked along, passing very few people along the way, and had a chance to see some amazing waterfalls.

Pictures of some of the waterfalls along the way:





Since the past few days have been composed mostly of laying around, our feet are understandably a little tired right now.

We made another important purchase today: An air mattress. Ours died a few months ago, so we were in the market for one anyway. We have been sleeping on camping pads this whole time, and we didn't want the trouble of lugging an air mattress across the country. Apparently camping pads are not meant to be slept on for weeks at a time because we keep waking up with aches and pains in muscles we never knew existed. We are now sitting on our luxurious queen mattress composed of air and happiness. We even went so far as to carry out a meal from a restaurant, come back here, and eat food on our new bed while watching old episodes of Arrested Development. We didn't exactly plan on that, but our tent is about 10 degrees warmer than outside. The temperature seems to drop off rapidly in the evenings here..it is usually in the 80s during the day and drops down to 50 at night. Our campground got really busy tonight (I guess because it's Friday? It is Friday, right?) so there are people all around us. One family of four next to us has set up some sort of small tent city, including various tent buildings (apparently one for sleeping and one as a living room?), a huge flat screen TV, and two cars.

We're not sure what's going on tomorrow with the exception of the Saturday farmer's market. We might find some U-pick farms in the area to go get some fruit. In other news, homelessness continues.

The waiting is the hardest part

Recap of the past 24 hours: We stayed up as late as possible so we could sleep in as long as possible. We woke up around 10 (aka 1pm Tampa time), and we briefly pictured ourselves getting out of work in 2 and a half hours if we had still been on the east coast. We then kept ourselves very busy by reading (Jen) and playing basketball (Robbie). We went out for lunch (laughing at MLB network because the evening shows had started and it was only 3pm..love the Pacific time zone), drove around some more, picked up some groceries, and came back to camp where Jen resumed her book and Robbie pretty much sat on the computer all evening.

Yes. Today could potentially win the award for the most boring day of our lives.

Let me begin by saying that we think Oregon is awesome. We really like it here, and there are hundreds and hundreds of cool things around for us to explore. Unfortunately, for now we are kind of sick of exploring and definitely sick of sitting in the car. We asked the campground owner for cool things in the area to do, and one of her suggestions involved something that was 2 or 3 hours away. We had a moment of dry heaving, picturing ourselves sitting in the car again, surrounded by our dreaded snacks.

We really aren't having a bad-attitude kind of day...just a lazy day. Totally lazy. The laziest day ever. We may go to a state park tomorrow that is about an hour's drive, or we may sprawl around, drooling on ourselves like slugs again. I guess we shall call that the "homeless prerogative"...we will do what we want, when we want. It's kind of sweet, but we could also go for a home sometime in the near future.

We have no pictures to share today...obviously. We'll see what tomorrow holds.

Still homeless

We went and looked at a house today that we absolutely loved. There is a slight catch in that it is not available until September 1st, but we may have a situation where the landlord will let us sublease another (four bedroom, 2 bath house) property for a month. I know this does not sound logical, but we absolutely love the place and we feel that a little complication is worth four years of living in a house we love. It's a little house (actually, a remodeled horse barn) with everything we are looking for, and it's close to campus (~5 minutes) in a really nice neighborhood. It's situated on 2.5 acres and contains a garden, fire pit, and a couple of chickens running around. We are still going to look around at a few more places for good measure, but we will know by the weekend if the place is ours. The landlords are cool and live right next door. Cross your fingers for us because this place is everything we wanted in a house (and meets everything on our checklist, with a bit of quirkiness mixed in). In the meantime, we are still homeless.

We went and explored more of Corvallis today, while attempting to not subject ourselves to too much car-time. We stopped by the school where Robbie will be interviewing so he could meet-and-greet the principal, then we had our first awkward experience of getting gas. In case you are not aware (as we weren't until Jenny's sister lived in Oregon a few years ago), you are not allowed to pump your own gas in this state. You pull up and sit there until an attendant comes up and fills your tank for you. The guy today was attending to about 8 pumps at once, which was pretty amazing. I suppose it will be nice when it's cold and/or rainy.

We then went and checked out a few grocery stores - Trader Joe's, and the Co-op. We were informed later that patrons of the Co-op absolutely do not shop at Trader Joe's because the food is not grown locally. Trader Joe's was cool and pretty inexpensive. The Co-op was awesome, and one of the weirdest grocery stores we'd ever been to. There was a whole section of bulk items, from granola to fig newtons to dried fruit to various types of flour. There was also a big row of taps where you bring in your own bottles and fill them up with vinegar, various types of oil, honey, molasses, or maple syrup. The kicker was a row of machines where you could not only grind your own coffee, but you could grind your own FLOUR, almond butter, and peanut butter. It was literally a big machine full of peanuts, and you grind the crap out of them until it squeezes out peanut butter. Amazing. They also had a huge refrigerated section with gigantic buckets of things you could scoop out - hemp seeds, flax seeds, olives, goat milk, etc. Needless to say we were walking around like a bunch of Florida morons, wondering in awe how the amazing flour grinding machine worked. We will have to go back and observe the locals.

We drove to the aquatic center in town so Jenny could check it out. It's huge - an indoor 50 meter pool with separate diving well, plus an outdoor area that is used in summertime. They do have a master's swim team in town, so hopefully once she gets all of her swim gear back from the relocube she can relish in some pool-time. We also drove out to our gym (we are members of a nationwide chain), which is in a town about five miles up the road. It was small, which we like, and there were a grand total of ZERO people working out at the time. We met the owner, who was really nice, so maybe we can entertain ourselves there a bit over the next couple of days.

We then went downtown for the farmer's market, which took up a good city block and consisted of more than a dozen local farmers. The berries were fat and cheap, and we bought some in addition to some dried fruit. It would be handy if we could have bought more, but we have no refrigerator. The farmer's market is a colorful place that is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays through the end of fall.

We are now hanging out at our camp, and we might watch a movie or something on our laptops. Wish us luck that we may have found the perfect place!

Home Sweet New Hometown

We have arrived at our destination City! Today's drive was much more tolerable in that we knew it would be our last day in the car, last day eating terrible snacks, and last day to endure car-induced back pain (sleeping bag-induced back pain will continue for another week or so). We set up camp at a site right outside of town, and this may sound weird but we are very thankful that our tent site is right near a major road. We have found that when our site is too quiet, we can't sleep. Our Red Canyon campsite was amazing, but dead silent (no bugs..no cars..nothing).

We got to drive along the Columbia River Gorge, through Portland, and down the Willamette Valley to our new town. The Gorge was gorgeous (har har), and we found it interesting that there was a distinct line between the dry desert-y side of Oregon and the rainy tree-ful side of oregon.

Columbia River Gorge, Pre-trees:

Columbia River Gorge, Post-Trees:

We drove around Corvallis a little bit, got terribly lost, and then found our way again. The good thing about Tampa is that you run into an interstate, the bay, or the ocean pretty much any direction you drive. Corvallis has the river, which is a nice landmark for finding direction, but that's about it. Luckily we have a month or so to get acquainted before work/classes start. Thankfully, Corvallis is as cute as we remember from last fall. It's sunny (see? All you people who told us the sun would never shine can just shut up!), warm, and the people have been really nice so far. We keep making jokes about latching on to various people (our campground owner, our waitress at dinner, etc) to be our friends since we have zero friends in town. Luckily we have each other, and I'm sure we'll meet people soon enough. Our campsite is unfortunately filled with people who do NOT live here, so there goes that pool for a source of new friends. Our campsite neighbors are pretty cool tonight, and they are from the eastern coast of Canada. Talk about a long road trip!

View driving over the Willamette River, entering Corvallis. Note that the speed limit sign does not say Speed Limit, only "SPEED":

Downtown Corvallis:

We have emailed a bunch of people about house rentals, so I guess the next week or so will consist of us getting lost, refreshing Craigslist on our laptops, and trying to find a home.

Our total mileage to get us to Corvallis from Tampa was 6,637. Our route was a little crooked, but we made it :)

Since we have officially arrived, here is our crazy route (and yes, we are aware that we made an almost-complete circle in Utah):

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It's the end of the road as we know it

Today's View:

Today's post will be boring because, well...nothing happened. We left Glacier this morning and drove through western Montana, Idaho, and Washington. Montana and Idaho were pretty and green, but eastern Washington is surprisingly flat and seems to consist mostly of a bright yellow grass and very few towns. We are staying right near the Columbia River near the Oregon border tonight. We are planning on arriving to Corvallis tomorrow and camping until we find a place to live. We've been scouring house/apartment ads, and we get to go through the fun process of finding a quiet place not too far from campus. We would love to find a house rather than an apartment (less of a chance of annoying/loud neighbors), but we'll see what we can find. We would also love to get set up in a place within a week or two to avoid extra storage charges for our Relocube. Plus, we miss our stuff. Wish us luck...this is always a fun process.

Robbie got some good news today in the form of a phone call to set up an in-person interview next week. Luckily, we are only two days away from our destination..also, luckily, he put an emergency interview-bag-o-clothes in the car for just this situation.

We passed the 6,000 mile mark of the trip today. Even though we will be finished driving tomorrow, the blog will continue until we are officially not-homeless.

Today's Route:

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Wow

We were certain that nothing could top Yellowstone. We are tired, a bit irritable, and nearing the end of our road trip. We have visited 11 national parks and a few national monuments over the past 3 weeks. Surely, Glacier National Park would just be a decent finale, a pretty drive with some mountain scenery, right?

We would like to add an addendum to our statement from a previous post telling all of you to go to Yellowstone. We would now like for all of you to go to Yellowtone, then rent a car and drive up to Glacier. Seriously, it will be worth your time. It has turned out to be our favorite park, which we didn't really expect. This area has been referred to as the "crown jewel of North America", and it's easy to see why. We have never been to a place more beautiful.

The main road through the park, the Going to the Sun Road, is famous for its beauty. It is delicately carved into the mountains, completed back in the 1930s. At the western entrance of the park, it starts meandering along a river, then climbs up a mountainside, winds to Logan Pass and the continental divide, then ends at the eastern end of the park where the plains meet the mountains. Every inch of the road provides you with the most spectacular view you have ever seen. Waterfalls galore, rivers rushing from melting snow, pretty royal blue and turquoise ponds and lakes, snow, glaciers, wildlife, wildflowers, and gigantic evergreens. The road itself is only about 50 miles long, but it has several pullouts and little parking lots along the way. Each stop and pullout was amazing. We don't want to be overly dramatic, but we were both literally left speechless several times, only able to state, "Wow. WOW!" So now, in the spirit of speechlessness, we will shut up and show you pictures of what we saw today.

View of St. Mary's Lake, one of the most photographed points in the park:

View of one of the remaining glaciers in the park. All are expected to disappear by the year 2030:

A field of wildflowers on a short hike:

Finally, we saw some wildlife! Here is a mountain goat..its two babies are in the background. We also saw a bighorn sheep about three minutes later on this hike:

Beautiful view of one of the glacier-formed U-shaped valleys:

Jewel-colored ponds and lakes:

One of the rivers flowing through the park:

View overlooking St. Mary's Lake:

View of Going to the Sun Road. This area was called the Weeping Wall, where waterfalls cascaded down the mountain and splashed the roof of your car.

Glacier was a great finale to the trip, and we ended up with an even dozen National Parks. We are planning on driving the next couple of days to our destination city of Corvallis. We don't want to say we are "rushing" through Washington and Oregon, but we do want to leave ourselves with plenty of day trips and weekend trips to explore in our new stomping grounds.

Me want food

A dramatic shift has occurred over the past 3-4 days, where we are beginning to miss various types of "regular people" food. Toast, tacos, spaghetti, lasagna, cereal that does not come in tiny boxes, and any and all refrigerated items are now sounding amazingly delicious. The past 12-ish hours have revolved primarily around food. Our hotel had a free continental breakfast, so we woke up about 20 minutes before it ended to utilize the toaster for some delicious toast. We packed up, left, and decided it would be a good idea to go to Walmart to stock up on some food items. We don't love Walmart in particular, but the prices are a heck of a lot cheaper than when you try to buy your food at tiny grocery stores or camping stores that are both known to charge approximately $17 for a loaf of bread. Speaking of Walmart in Montana...our atlas was purchased at the Walmart in New Tampa, and it conveniently lists every Walmart and Sam's Club in the country. This has led to fun games of "Guess how many walmarts are in ____ city" while driving, but has also provided us with a fun fact involving Walmarts in Montana. There are a grand total of 13 Walmarts in Montana, which is 147,046 square miles. In contrast, St. Louis, which is 61.9 square miles, has 13 Walmarts. So, we went to Walmart not only for the good prices but for the novelty/rarity of the situation.

It's never a good idea to go to a gigantic supercenter when your diet has consisted of five main foods over the past three weeks: Trail Mix, Chex Mix, Cereal, Fruit Snacks, and Mentos. We were kind of like rabid animals, salivating over everything and imagining how good certain things would taste if we only had an oven or a microwave. We were able to control our purchases only by envisioning the 1'x1' space available in the car for any new items. We did get a few new snacks, though, so we've been happy today.

After such an intense delicious-food exposure, we decided that we were then craving bagels, so we went to a little bagel shop in downtown Missoula known for its homemade bagels and cream cheese. It was amazing, and a nice little brunch before we hit the road. We drove up a gorgeous scenic road, and we are now at a KOA campground in West Glacier, MT. People are very nice here. The lady who checked us in had her face frozen in a smile, and we are pretty sure that we're already best friends with the people camping on either side of us.

We've had a very uneventful day, which is why we are blogging random food stories. Basically, we drove up a pretty road past a pretty mountain lake, and we had a relaxing evening at our camp.

We realized today that we're about 15 miles from Canada. A few weeks ago, we were about 75 miles from Mexico in Alamogordo NM. We began our journey in Florida near the Atlantic coast, and we will end about 45 minutes from the Pacific. Quite an amazing trip. Aww, look. We're already getting nostalgic.

Today's route:

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Big Sky Country

Today's view:

This morning, we packed up and headed to Mammoth Hot springs and the north entrance of Yellowstone. After a few weeks of camping, we have our packing-up regimen down to about 5 minutes, which makes us feel kind of like well-oiled camping machines.

Mammoth Hot Springs, near the north entrance of Yellowstone:

Another shot of Mammoth Hot Springs:

The Roosevelt Arch, just outside the north entrance of Yellowstone in Gardiner, MT:

We are in Missoula, Montana tonight, and we're soaking in the view of pretty mountains from our hotel room window. The girl at the front desk offered us a room upgrade for $10, so we jumped all over it. We are sitting on a COUCH right now, watching TV. Robbie has been experiencing a weird pinchy back pain over the past few days, so he has a crazy jet-tub to look forward to this evening. I can't imagine why he has been having back pain, with the comfiness of the Civic and the whole "sleeping on dirt" thing. Anyway, the couch is awesome, and on our top ten list of things we miss in our relocube.

We decided to head out for dinner, and had a brief moment of wondering about the appropriateness of our National Park attire of t-shirts and grungy shorts...then we remembered that we were in Montana. We found a little place called Ruby's Cafe in town for dinner. It looked like a very old-school diner from the outside, and we almost passed on the place due to Jenny's irrational fear of food poisoning..that is, until we saw several elderly local people emerging from the door. It is always a good rule of thumb to go to any restaurant favored by the local elderly, so we headed in. Our waitress was a very sweet, grandmotherly woman, around 112 years old, who had probably been working there since she was 8. Any questions regarding the menu received the reply: "Ooh yes, that's real good!". And "real good" it was. We both got enough food to feed a small army, and it was amazing. We noticed a cookie jar on our way up to pay, and we decided to partake in the most fantastic molasses and peanut butter cookies imaginable.

While we were paying, we experienced a weird phenomenon that we thought was extinct..we shall call it "Small Talk With Strangers." We recall some vague memories about small talk with strangers from when we lived in the midwest, but any interactions with strangers in Tampa typically involved someone flipping you off on the interstate or trying to recruit you for a weird cult. Our restaurant experience today involved a woman who looked at Robbie, laughed, and said, "I saw you eyeing those cookies!" Taken aback, Robbie just stood there in shock for a moment before he was able to fire back a witty reply. Upon arrival back at our hotel, another person engaged in small talk with Jenny in the parking lot.

The combination of "Small Talk With Strangers", Ruby's cafe, the presence of a University (so there is something to do), and the mountain view has encouraged us to end the road trip and take up residence in Missoula. Of course, we're kidding, but we have a really great impression of the town so far. Montana is really funny. Our campsite in West Yellowstone had a local paper from Bozeman that we have been reading with breakfast. The police blotter has been hysterical. Two snippets from the other day included: "Teenagers suspected of drinking. Police arrived, and they were not drinking." and "Woman called about raccoon in her house. Police arrived and discovered the raccoon was gone, but the woman wanted advice on how to prevent it from coming back." This morning, the "corrections" section on the second page said something along the lines of, "A story reporting that Bob Smith was blindfolded and tied up to a fence should have said that he was blindfolded and tied up NEXT TO a fence."

We're not sure of our plans yet for tomorrow. We are still a good 2-3 hours away from Glacier Nat'l Park, so we may just get up at a leisurely time, drive up north to our next campsite, and head to Glacier on Sunday.

Today's route:

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Yellowstone Day #2

We spent most of today in the more classically scenic parts of Yellowstone, including checking out the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, several mountains, waterfalls, rivers, and meadows. There were still some interesting Geothermal areas, but nothing to the extent we saw yesterday. We spent most of our day on the northern loop of the park, turning our eyes away from Mammoth Hot Springs which we will visit tomorrow.

View of Lower Falls from the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone:

View from the brink of Lower Falls..it was much scarier and more intense in person:

View of Tower Falls..the trail to its base is closed this summer:


View from a little hike along the Yellowstone River:

A few more geysers for good measure:

A few more colorful pools:

The more scenic, mountainous areas of the park were absolutely gorgeous. Every square foot of space was taken up by a river, a tree, or some type of colorful wildflower. It was busy again today, but the crowds really seemed to thin out around 5:00 in the evening. We are packing up tomorrow morning, driving through the park to the northern entrance, and heading north to Montana where we will eventually head to Glacier Nat'l Park.

We're almost out of laptop battery, so tonight is going to have to be a quick post! More tomorrow from a warm, cozy hotel.

Yellowstone, Day 1

We woke up, had some toast for breakfast (who knew you would miss toast so much after three weeks away from a toaster?), and headed to Yellowstone. Yellowstone is the coolest, creepiest, most amazing place we have ever seen, and we declare right now that every single person reading this blog must head there as soon as possible. We only completed about half of one loop today, focusing our day in the "boiling creepy mud" and "large gaping volcanic hole" section of the park. Luckily, we have two more days to go exploring.

The first thing we noticed about Yellowstone is that there are signs everywhere warning you to stay on the paths because of "geothermal activity", AKA if you are dumb enough to go off the path, you will likely collapse through the thin layer of soil at the surface and get scalded by either boiling hot water or boiling hot creepy mud or sulfuric acid. We didn't see any animals for the first half of the day, probably because they were concerned about the whole being scalded thing. There were colorful, steaming, deep little pools and springs, geysers, and boiling pits of mud and sulfur everywhere. At one area we stopped at a sulfur pond that was bubbling, smelled like rotten eggs, and contained a warning sign that the pond lies somewhere in acidity between lemon juice and battery acid. Creepy and amazing!

Of course, we had to go and see Old Faithful, which did not disappoint. There were many people around, but we still got a good view. She erupted about 10 minutes later than predicted, leading to many antsy kids around us.

Old Faithful erupting:

Us posing near the sign. It's not only cool but it contains the word/name Faith!

Some of the colorful pools:

More colorful pools, colored by different types of heat-loving bacteria:

We started driving, still disappointed that we had not seen any animals yet besides chipmunks (and for good reason. We kept picturing the chipmunks going up in flames like the poor cat on the movie "Christmas Vacation"). We drove up the road and spent the rest of our evening in lines of cars, pulling over to observe tons and tons of bison, a coyote, some elk, several deer, and lots of other cool wildlife. We went on a little walk to see some more boiling pits of mud, when this character decided to cross our path:

He walked over near one of the steaming pools, and Robbie got this fantastic picture of him:

Later, an elk:

In all, we had an amazing day and took close to 100 pictures. It was very, very difficult narrowing down the batch to choose which pictures to post. We are heading back tomorrow morning!

Wish us luck, because it's cold out there:

Jenny's very own lake

Today's view:

We drove from Idaho Falls to the Grand Tetons this morning following a terrible hotel breakfast. We miss juice and SKIM milk. We arrived at the Tetons and decided to have a picnic lunch before our hike so we would not attract any bears. We decided by the end of the day that this whole bear and "cool wildlife" thing is a sham at the tetons..we saw nothing more than a squirrel and a few chipmunks. The tetons are cool and very bumpy-scraggly looking. They are some of the youngest mountains in the world, which is why they are so rocky looking (less erosion). We went on a little hike around Jenny Lake, avoided bears, and generally had a good time.

View from Jenny lake viewpoint:

View of Jenny lake on our hike:

Hidden Falls:

Jenny posing in front of her store:

After leaving the Tetons, we had a sneak peak of Yellowstone..we had to drive through part of the park to get to tonight's campsite. We are staying in West Yellowstone, Montana, which is kind of a big, fake, flashy tourist town. We were afraid of bears until we realized that we are situated between about 30 tents and about 150 RVs. We will not show you a picture of our campsite because it is not only lame, but sad. The gigantic family staying next to us grilled some delicious burgers/steaks/corn/carrots/etc, and the wind was blowing the delicious smoke right on to our tent. So we'll go ahead and forget that whole "Don't have your tent smell like food to not attract bears." Come on over, there are delicious people inside wrapped up in steak! Mmmm. With all of the people around, though, the odds of us getting eaten are slim.

Heading to Yellowstone tomorrow, which is about one mile from where we are laying our heads tonight.

Today's route:

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Land of the potatoes

Today's view:


Today, we woke up and drove to a laundromat in American Fork, Utah to re-wash/dry our clothes that were not finished by the terrible, crappy hotel dryer. At the laundromat, the owner's 3 or 4 year old son was a holy terror, ripping the couch cushions off the couch and jumping on them, pushing the laundry baskets around into people, and randomly coming up to Robbie, screaming and throwing things at him. Everyone in the laundromat looked miserable, and this experience re-affirmed our necessity for an apartment with its own washer and dryer in Corvallis.

After laundry time, we went to breakfast and hit the road. We heard from our local tour guide, Jen's friend Stephanie, who grew up and went to college near where we were staying. We lost cell service, but we got a few suggestions for things to see. We went to a cave near American Fork, but we were told it would be a few hours to wait for a ranger-guided tour (and you weren't allowed to tour by yourself). We decided that would be too long to wait, so we just decided to make it a scenic side trip and head back to the highway. We wanted to see the Great Salt Lake, which we did, if only from a distance:



Our GPS helped us to navigate up to Idaho Falls, where we are staying for the night. Our GPS has been a bit grumpy lately, leading us to abandoned buildings that are supposed to be post offices and ignoring state parks right across the road from us. We have determined that Tommy (our name for our TomTom GPS) will also occasionally give us directions that are not entirely helpful, such as: "Turn right in 350 meters." I know that we probably should have converted to the metric system by now, and I know that a yard is approximately a meter, but when you are driving it is very difficult to know exactly how far 350 meters is. Jen can picture herself swimming in a long course pool (50 meters), but that's about it as far as accurate comparisons. We have gotten a kick out of mimicking our GPS voice, saying equally un-helpful things such as, "Turn left in 3600 decimeters," or "Make a U-turn in 450,000 millimeters."

We have also been experiencing an ongoing battle with Robbie's visor. It will not hold itself up to the ceiling, and despite Jen's pleading for him to spend the stupid $80 to fix it before we take 30-day residence in the car, he was stubborn and would not get it fixed. We have since developed new, intricate methods of adhering the visor to the ceiling, typically involving anchoring various corners of the visor to sturdy plastic parts of the car using masking tape.

Robbie's Visor Battle:

Giving the visor the stink eye:


We eventually made our way into the great Potato State, even passing a "Potato museum" at one exit. We are now officially in a state that shares a border with our destination state! There are starting to be more and more trees, the evenings are getting cooler, the people care less and less about what they are wearing, and the grass is getting softer. All good things in our book.

Robbie laying on the soft grass near the Snake River in Idaho Falls. You can see the Idaho Falls LDS temple in the background:


Tomorrow morning, we are going to the Grand Tetons, then heading to West Yellowstone to camp for a few days. The lows in West Yellowstone are going to be in the 40s at night.

Today's route:

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Happy halfway

Halftime statistics:

• Number of days on the road: 18
• Number of miles driven: 4,393
• Number of National Parks visited: 9
• Number of days encountering scary wildlife: 18
• Number of times eating at Subway: 5
• Hotel visits: 3
• Number of nights sleeping in our car (at least part of the night): 2
• Number of nights sleeping in our tent (at least part of the night): 9

Things that we have found to be overrated, i.e. things we thought were important but have not been used very frequently:

• Camping stove. We have been cooking most things over charcoal or over our campfire.
• Clothes in general. We brought way, way too many clothes.
• Shoes. We only needed one pair of flip flops and one pair of hiking shoes, but of course we both brought several pairs of shoes (what if I want to go running? I'll need running shoes. And hiking shoes! And regular tennis shoes!)
• McDonald's Wifi. Supposedly, all McDonald's restaurants have Wifi. We have only successfully used this free Wifi once. It exists, but we are unable to connect. Annoying.
• The dryer at Motel 6. This is a recent addition to the list, as we are currently surrounded by heaps of damp laundry.

Things we have found to be underrated, i.e. things we didn't think would be important but we either miss them or use them every day:

• Towels. We both have these little sammy towels, but we really wish we had regular, human-sized towels
• Quarters. We've had to pay for most of our showers, requiring lots of quarters.
• Sunscreen
• Electricity
• Free, warm, bug-less showers
• A tiny citronella candle we bought at Walmart at the beginning of our trip that has proven to be extremely important for keeping away bugs at campsites

Random things we have learned, or tidbits we would like to pass along:

• Hand sanitizer does not remove dirt
• Canvas walls do not make you feel safe from wildlife
• Driving really far in a Civic gives you back pain
• Getting away from the city allows you to see lots and lots of stars
• Tiny grocery stores with questionable refrigeration lead to an intense fear of food poisoning
• 110 degree heat will melt the interior of your car

We are in Utah just north of Provo, hanging out at our hotel and watching The Invention of Lying. We are getting used to this new time zone thing, with live sporting events occurring two hours earlier than usual. Thankfully, we have a few weeks to get used to the time zone change. We learned last summer on our trip to Alaska (AKA the trip that ruined our lives, made us realize we miss the great outdoors, and motivated us to quit two perfectly good jobs and move across the country) that Robbie does not handle jet lag very well. He spent the first few days in Juneau drooling on himself and squinting into the sun, rubbing his eyes and wondering why it was so bright.

Anyway, we've seen some pretty cool things so far:

We are more than halfway through our homeless adventure, but we thought it was time for a little recap. Thanks for following along with us, and we hope you are enjoying the journey so far!

Today's route:

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Overdue Bryce Canyon pictures

Here are some of the pictures that we would have liked to post yesterday.

Bryce amphitheater, the most well-known and most photographed canyon in the park:

Another view of Bryce Amphitheater:

The Natural Bridge:

View of another canyon:

You can see the rain rolling in. Thankfully, we did not go on a long hike that day: