the vails

The Great State of Arizona

2008-09-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

Our last stop was Arizona, which come to find out is a beautiful state. Desert, yes, but beautiful in its own way. From Hoover Dam to Grand Canyon to Flagstaff to Oak Creek Canyon to the city of Scottsdale, we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Arizona.

We didn't even know we'd be crossing Hoover Dam, so that was a nice little surprise. Just another thing to add to our list. Come to find out, the Hoover Dam supplies power to L.A. Hence, the enormity of it.

Finally, our first look at the Grand Canyon-something I've wanted to see for a long time. It's one of those things that can't really be captured in a picture partly due to the vastness of it and partly to due the fact that it is absolutely majestic and a picture just doesn't do it justice.
We caught it just as the sun was going down, so the colors of the sun reflecting off the canyon were amazing.

We decided that we would wake up and catch the sunrise the next morning. Since we had moved on into Mountain Time once we crossed into AZ, we set our clocks 1 hour ahead. We set our alarm for 4:30am, so we could be sure and make it for sunrise. We headed into GCNP and waited...and waited...and waited. Finally a good 2 hours later it started getting light. Come to find out, AZ is the only state that doesn't have daylight savings time, so we were still in Pacific Time Zone. So we ended up waking up at 3:30am. Nice. To top it off (as you can see below) it was cloudy and there was no sunrise. There was, however, a thunderstorm in the distance which was almost as cool.

This is lightning striking in the distance.

We drove around the park for awhile and pulled off to check out the Grand Canyon from different pull out points. Next time, we're going to hike down to the bottom, but we didn't have time for that this trip.

I like this pic. It looks like the clouds are just sitting on top of the canyon.

See the Colorado River winding through the canyon?? Pretty cool.

After we checked out the Grand Canyon, we headed on into Flagstaff-my parent's old stomping grounds. It was a cute little town. Not a whole lot there, but downtown was fun to walk around.

And here's mom and dad's old house-512 Zuni Drive. All they remembered was that it was on Zuni Drive and it was yellow. Since there were 3 yellow houses on Zuni Drive this was a pretty good guess. I mean, what are the chances that 30 years later, the house would still be yellow?? According to my dad, this was the place where Laurel was conceived. I'm glad I could see a little piece of family history :)
Dad recommended a restaurant called La Bella Villa. It was still here 30 years later. Him and Dennis used to play music here for payment in french fries. Supposedly they were breaded french fries and incredible, but unfortunately they weren't on the menu anymore.

After Flagstaff, we headed on down to Sedona. On the way, we drove through Oak Creek Canyon, which is absolutely beautiful. It's crazy that only a few miles down the road, it turns into stark desert.
Coming into Sedona, this is the landscape that you start seeing-equally beautiful.

When I was little, I used to get so excited when I saw this light shining through the clouds because I thought Jesus was coming back :)

Saguaro Cactus. This is one of those things that you know are real, but when you see them you realize that you actually thought they only existed in a cartoon.
They are absolutely HUGE. I just couldn't get over how enormous these things were. It also looked like a great place for a rattlesnake habitat, so I made Dustin carry me up next to the cactus on his back :)

This is probably a more accurate dipiction of just how big these things are. Dustin next to it instead of me...that makes more sense.
And they're all over the place!

And now for the grand finale...After Sedona, we left for Scottsdale where my Aunt Betsy (dad's twin sister), Uncle Jimmy and the Clark Cousins live. We absolutely had a blast spending some time with them. With all of the gourmet meals and desserts, the G&Ts, the theological discussions, and just an all around good time, they were lucky we ever left :)
Betsy and Hilary inspired me to be a good cook. They pretty well have it mastered.
Their house was beautiful-including the backyard...

...which is complete with a grapefruit tree.
Betsy modeling her house :)

Betsy and I on our shopping day. She took me to my favorite store...Anthropologie. She knows my love language. Pretty fun aunt, eh??
While we went shopping, Hilary slaved away on this lemon meringue cake. I think it took her about 6 hours to make, but it was well worth it (well at least to those who didn't spend the 6 hours making it).
One of many theological discussions. Dustin ate it up. By this point in the trip, I'm sure he was bored with me and my simple, shallow mind :) These boys were a treat for him...
Group pic
Another group pic.

Betsy, Jonathan, Hilary
The girls. Since everyone says I look like my dad, it would make sense that I might look like my dad's twin sister...never thought of that.

We loved hanging out with the Clarks so much, that we decided to stay an extra day. We came to the conclusion that we weren't all that ready to go home yet. Why not drag it out a little longer? Real world can wait...

Thanks, Clarks for such a great time!!! You can bet we'll be back :)

Oklahoma City-first and last stop of the trip. We just stayed for the night and afternoon, but we had a great time visiting Dustin's grandparents (below) and Grandmoi and Stan too!

We got home on August 21st-1 day later than our itinerary showed. 21,000 miles and 16 states later our trip was over. It was kind of bitter sweet for us. As we were driving home, we were trying to decide where we'd rather be than on our way home, and both of us concluded nowhere. So, I guess the trip ended at the perfect time. We were excited about seeing friends and family and sleeping in a bed, but our trip of a lifetime was over. Since we've been home, we've decided that the real world is over-rated :)

Vegas, baby!

2008-08-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Well, after Southern California, we headed to... VEGAS!

At first, we thought that we'd never go out of our way to go to Vegas, so we decided to make a stop and call it a once in a life time gig. Well... we actually enjoyed ourselves. Yes, Vegas is over the top and cheesy, but we had fun staying in a really nice hotel for cheap, going to the casinos, and seeing a really great show that won two Grammys.

Santa Clarita, home of the Big W, for all you "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" fans.
(MMMMW Subculture followers: The W is not there anymore... It was in someones back yard and one of the palm trees got blown over in a storm. Sad.)
(For those of you normal people who don't know what we're talking about, the Big W was a W made from palm trees. Click here to see what we're talking about.)

Arizona in late evening

One night, we decided to do the casino buffet. We chose the one at the Bellagio, thinking because of how nice the hotel is, we couldn't go wrong. And we didn't. It was incredible and we ate it well, strategically eating our way through the night, taking breaks and avoiding cheap foods. Seriously. Note, above and below pictures are courses number 1 and 2 of 5.
The fountain at the Bellagio. You've seen this on movies a lot (ie, the end of Oceans 11), but it's the real deal. This was one of the most impressive things we saw in Vegas.

The Bellagio's fountain and Paris Hotel and Casino

New York New York Hotel and Casino

At the MGM Hotel and Casino, they have a lion exhibit. The lioness (above) and lion (below) were a big hit there.. though we found it pretty sad that they were confined to the indoors in a small space with tons of people (like us) flashing their cameras into their cage... but it was still pretty neat.

Paris Hotel and Casino at night time.

The Bellagio, again, at night time

Our favorite part of Vegas. The show. We saw 'Love' by Cirque Du Soleil, all to The Beatles music. The show won two Grammys and we were blown away by our first Vegas show experience.

On our way to pick up the tickets

This is when we were picking up the tickets... the entrance to the show.

We even got all dressed up for it which was really fun. Nell was BEAUTIFUL.

Pre-show

The finale

After the show, with a good view of the strip.

The strip.

Well, we had fun. I think that it exceeded our expectations of Vegas. The show helped and I think if there was ever a good show back in Vegas, and the hotels were cheap, we'd go back.

Thanks for keeping up with us. We're in Scottsdale right now, visiting the Clarks - having a GREAT time, and will head to Oklahoma City on Tuesday, thus the end of the trip. We'll have our Arizona blog up soon.

We are very sad that the trip is ending, but life must go on, and we're really anxious to see what the Lord has for us in the future. Thanks for following us. Don't forget to check in on our Arizona experience. You're a good one for following us.

HWY 1 & SoCal

2008-08-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. We're trying to check up on our blogs (if you're still keeping up with us). The Internet access has been few and far between... but we're doing pretty good with what we got. After the Monterey Peninsula, we drove down the famous Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) to Southern California...

..I know, we've seen a lot. And I know I'm an extremist, but the fact that my wife isn't and said that it's some of the most beautiful things she's ever seen says a lot about this part of the world. I hope we captured it just a little bit...

We thought Big Sur was a town... which it kind of is, but mostly, it's a conglomeration of state parks, about 40 to 50 miles long, but if you do it right - about 8 hours

The day started of a bit cloudy, but it cleared up later on

This is one of the creeks that ran through one of the state parks

This is Pfeiffer Beach State Park. We stopped to get in some beach time.

While there, we found this little fella... a harbor seal just beaching it up for the day

We tried to pose for some pictures and we got this one... Nell's hair getting blown by the wind = a handlebar mustache for me.

My beauty.

I feel like I should preface the next few pictures. They were taken at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, specifically at McWay Cove. This is one of the most beautiful setups either one of us has seen. A cove, a waterfall, caribbean-blue water... just incredible.

We stared at it for a while, then finally decided we have to move on...

I'm not sure what we expected the PCH to be, but... it exceeded all expectations.

Beautiful woman

What's that squirrel looking at?

At the end of the state parks was a beach front with Elephant Seals. Neither one of us knew they even existed... but check out their noses...

Crazy, eh?

A pair trying to intimidate one another

Hearst Castel. We didn't get a chance to go in because it was so late, but we saw pictures of it... and it's pretty fascinating. Maybe next time.

Toward then end of our PCH drive, we finished it off watching the sunset over the ocean.

After Highway 1, we then headed down to Santa Barbara for a few days where we shopped and rode around the beach front on our bikes.

They call this Arlington West. There are 3,000 crosses here that pay tribute to all of the soldiers who've lost their lives in Iraq. It was pretty surreal.

We watched some sail boats for a while. I watched them with envy, hoping one day I might be able to do something like that. It's pretty fun to watch.

This guy was just hanging around Stearns Wharf there in Santa Barbara

We also saw a skate boarding park where we watched them in action for a while.

There were about 4 beach side weddings going on Sunday afternoon as we took a ride on our bikes.

We also went to UC-Santa Barbara. They have a pretty cool setup right there on the ocean.

Here's Nellie standing in for Laurel as an honorary alumni of UCSB. This was her first choice of school until she found out how much it costs. UCA will have to do...go bears.

After Santa Barbara, we headed to Ojai, CA in honor of Dennis Collins who grew up here.

It was a great little town with orange and avocado groves as far as the eye could see.
(This is at Friends Ranch, but we didn't get any of their world famous freshly squeezed orange juice because they were closed that day.)

A HUGE eucalyptus tree.

This is downtown Ojai at a park where we walked around for a while

We went for a drive up Gridley Road where the Collins fam used to live. This was the view from the top of the hill. Beautiful.

And Nell doing a little orange picking...

Here is the road that Dennis grew up on. We didn't know what house it was, so we took a picture or this one just in case it was it :)

For dinner, we went and checked out Boccali's, a local Italian restaurant that Dennis suggested. It was SO good. They grow their own vegetables and use that in the dishes that they prepare. And talk about amazing strawberry shortcake...they've got it there!

We absolutely loved Ojai. It was a beautiful, quaint town with such friendly people. All of the locals we talked to were very welcoming. Thanks, Dennis and Linda, for being our tour guide in Ojai! We enjoyed it!

After that... we headed to Ventura County.. just north of LA, where we stayed with Rex and Sherry Holt and got in some great beach time.

Sherry gave a pretty cool stop on our way to their house from Ojai. Grant Park is a huge hill located right off the highway and close to the beach so you can see forever (See above). Apparently, back in 1782, a Catholic priest who had started a lot of the missions there in Southern California planted a cross on the top of the hill (see below). They replaced the cross in 1912, but it's still pretty cool that it over looks the city and how beautiful the view is.

Also atop Grant Park.

We also spent a couple of days at the beach where we got good sun and I played in the water.

Rex took us to Skidrow where he works there with the poor. We went with him and another Baptist pastor to spent the evening

It was a pretty nice facility

The men before their service started (which they have different services for men and women).

Rex kicking off the service

This is Rev. Sherwood Haisty, a local southern baptist pastor from Filmore who preached that night.

This is Tracy, a tenant of the mission. He requested to sing a song that he and his brother in law wrote called "Jesus is Awesome." Let's just say... it was awesome.

This is the women's side. We met some very resilent women and also heard some very hard stories. We were really glad we got just a great experience while in LA.

The LA skyline from the mission. We loved the California sunsets.

Monterey, Pebble Beach, & Carmel-by-the-Sea

2008-08-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

We wanted to check out Central CA, so we decided to spend a couple days seeing the sights of Monterey, Pebble Beach, and Carmel. Since they are all so close, we were able to see these places pretty quick.

On the way over from Yosemite, we came across this nice little town. We really wanted to go to the bathroom here, but neither of us had to go, so we took a picture of the sign instead.

Monterey was a interesting little town. We really didn't know what to expect. I got a brief rundown from my dad (a John Steinbeck fan) on Cannery Row, so we decided to check that out.
A recent John Steinbeck fan, Dustin purchased Cannery Row on Cannery Row. Pretty cool, eh?
There were TONS of sea lions everywhere on this pier close to Cannery Row. We were so close to them, we probably could have reached out and touched one had we wanted to, but after watching those little feisty things for awhile, we decided against it.
To me, this one looks like Simon Foster. They may be long lost brothers, who knows? Simon, are you missing a twin?
Crazy! I was totally amazed at this little habitat. Check out the birds and all the sea lions. Plus, there were jellyfish all around. Really cool.

After Monterey, we headed on down to Pebble Beach via 17 mile road. It takes you to all the well known golf courses and points of interest. We felt like we got a good feel for Pebble Beach after the drive...minus the fact that we didn't play golf. This pic was at Poppy Hills Golf Course.
Nice Rolex clocks at the Inn at Spanish Bay keeping time for all the good golf destinations around the world. Let's just say these hotels are pretty upscale.

A quick little tide pool pit stop just for me :)

Another sea lion habitat. I was a bit fascinated by this as you can see.

And a bonus...a harbor seal!
And the famous Lone Cypress Tree, which is sort of the mascot of Pebble Beach.

Dustin on the 18th hole of THE Pebble Beach Golf Links

And now we're in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I guess most people drop the 'by-the-Sea', but I'll leave it on cause I like the full name. This was a cute little candy shop on the shopping strip.
And a cute little tea room...the Tuck Box as it is called. How cute is that?!
The Mission. I don't really know the history about this place, but it was really cool. The town itself has somewhat of a Spanish feel, so I'm guessing there is some sort of Spanish influence here.

The garden at The Mission

Next we went on to Mission Ranch. Apparently, Clint Eastwood bought Mission Ranch in the 80's and still owns it today. It used to be an officer's club for the Army and Navy during WWII. It's a beautiful place with an incredible view and now is a bed and breakfast type place with a upscale restaurant.

They even have sheep!

We enjoyed our stay in Central California very much! Beautiful places to see if you ever get the chance :)

Yosemite National Park - This is for you, Bob

2008-08-10T20:38:00.001-07:00

From San Francisco, we decided to spend a couple of days in Yosemite National Park. We enjoyed it so much, we decided to stay an extra day and really wish we could have stayed longer. We also decided that the next time we come, it'll have to be in early summer or late spring because of all of the waterfalls and rivers. What a beautiful place...

On our way in, just outside of the park, we drove by a huge field with a bunch of firemen from all over who had come to put out the forest fires just outside the park.

And here we are...

The first day, we hiked down to a Sequoia tree grove. They carved out this tree to make a road back in the mid to late 1800s.

Our camp. It was actually nice having a home base to come back to for a few days. We're definitely ready for a home.

The following morning, we headed down to the famous Yosemite Valley

Bridalveil Falls was a lot bigger than it looks here, but what's crazy is that these were barely flowing at all compared to what they do in spring/early summer. If you can see the black around the waterfall, that's how much it flows in the spring.

El Capitan

We also took a short 3 mile hike to Vernal falls.

Check out this rainbow at Vernal Falls.

At the top of the falls, there was a nice little pond that was a great refresher after the uphill hike. So, why not?

Huge cliffs and views like this were everywhere in the valley.

North Dome face...

The one, the only... Half Dome.

At dust, on the way out of the valley.

A Nellie original (the picture, credit the creation to Jesus)

S'MORES! If we're gonna camp, we do it up right.

After the day in the valley on our way to Tuolumne Meadows... Tenaya Lake.
The two black dots in the middle left are climbers going up Medlicott Dome. This is a climbing mecca. They were everywhere.

So, that day, we decided to go on a long hike.. we were shooting for a 13.8 or so..

Part of our hike was on the Pacific Crest Trail which runs from Mexico to Canada. This was Nell's second time to hike on a portion of this trail. She hiked on part of it in Washington, several summers ago with Laurel and Josh. That is also where Nell almost divorced Josh as a brother-in-law. He gets a little intense on his hiking :)

So, we kept hiking, but we soon (1.5 miles after) realized that we took a wrong turn. We met some people along the way that showed us a new route that would turn our hike into 17 miles instead of 13.8, so we got ambitious and went for it.

Picture break

The scenery was beautiful

..high up in the Sierra Nevadas.

Nell loved the trees

...and the streams.

We passed several beautiful lakes

And even got the energy for an fun pic every now and then...

...and of course a hardcore one too.

I mean, check out these amazing views!

We FINALLY made it to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp after hiking about 4 miles UPHILL. The '17' miles wasn't looking so fun at this point especially since we realized it was going to be more like 19 miles. Nice.

We came across this unidentified creature along the way. He's cute nonetheless.

You'll probably see this one again on our Christmas letter :) That is if I get crazy and decide to send one of those out. I feel like I'm not old enough for that sort of stuff. I guess this year might be one worthy of a letter.

And once again...Nell liked the trees.

Ok, so by about mile 15 we were completely worn out. Here is Nell documenting her face, so she will never do this again. So, we got a little ambitious on this one. That very well could be the problem when you put 2 people with big egos together.

Besides all the pain and soreness, we were actually glad that we ended up doing the 19 mile hike. It was SOO much prettier than what our original hike would have been.

And our dirty feet from the hike. What you can't see, is the huge blisters on our feet. After this we went and jumped in the lake to clean off a bit. And let me tell you, I've never been so tired or sore in my life.

Tuolumne Meadows.

The beautiful sunset on the way out. Nell still had a tiny bit of energy left in her to take a few sunset pics.

We left the next morning, but on the way out we went back down to the valley and did a VERY short hike to see Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. They weren't running all that much since it was August, but definitely worth the hike.

Now we know what all the buzz (mostly from my dad) about Yosemite is. It definitely met our expectations. It is a beautiful place. It would be a totally different park if you came in the spring, which we intend to do.

By the way, Dustin and I collaborated on the commentary in this blog. To avoid confusion, I (Nellie) had to refer to myself in 3rd person. This is a pet peeve of mine, so I felt the need to clarify. And I (Dustin) got tired and grumpy halfway through blogging and retired to my car seat/bed after handing it off to Nellie for finishing it up. Thanks, Nell.

San Francisco

2008-08-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

After seeing the beautiful wine country, we headed on to the great city of San Francisco (quite possibly my favorite city in the U.S. to date).

Our first view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm not sure why, but this massive structure fascinates me.

Our first stop was the famous Lombard St.-the most crooked street in the world. I bet the people that live on this street get pretty annoyed with all the tourists driving down it.
Then, on to Fisherman's Wharf, which is a cool little area down by the water. This was Dustin's first view of Alcatraz. Next time, we decided we'll take a tour of it. Since this was his first time in San Fran, we had too much to see and too short of time.
This is where all the sea lions congregate. It's fun to watch them play 'King of the Mountain'. They get pretty feisty. We couldn't tell if they were playing or being serious...
Here is an up close pic. They look like they are singing in an opera or something :)
Gotta have a picture of a cable car. This is North Beach, which is the Italian Community. We ate a nice little lunch there and walked around some. This is Washington Square, which is a beautiful park in 'Little Italy'. Not quite Italy, but they make a valiant effort.And my favorite...Chinatown. Actually, last time I was here, this place was a little overwhelming and actually kind of freaked me out a little. This time it was a bit better. My guess is, this is about as close as you can get to the real thing.

Dustin buying a new pink umbrella to block the sun. Later, he bought driving gloves.
This was totally mind boggling and pretty much the first thing we saw in Chinatown. This man in the picture was selling live chickens. Luckily, we got to witness a woman purchasing some. He grabbed them by their necks, stuffed them in a paper sack and stapled it shut. I'm glad we didn't have to witness what happened next.

After our Chinatown experience, we went to the Ferry Building. This cool fountain was in front of it.

The Ferry Building. There is a market inside and a place where you can watch the ferries come in.

It's really a beautiful building. We enjoyed walking around the little market inside. I'm all about markets. We have a system-I walk around the market, Dustin reads a book.
A view of the city.
We headed on to the Mission District, which is the Hispanic community. We pretty well covered the ethnic districts today. These murals are all over the place in the Mission District. Apparently, the Hispanic community moved here in the 1960's and brought their artistic abilities with them.
The muralists did a good job capturing the San Francisco spirit in this one. I like the pants on the man holding the rainbow flag.

Yes, we did. We went and found the 'Full House' house. Dustin was highly disappointed that there wasn't a park across from it like in the opening of the show. How cool would it be to live in the Full House house??

And the famous Haight/Ashbury. This is quite possibly my favorite part of the city. Good shopping. Great people watching.
One cool thing about the city is the amazing views you get. Because it is so hilly, you can go up on top of a hill and catch great views. Notice all of the sailboats in the ocean.
We went to watch the sunset at a beach along the Golden Gate Bridge. If you haven't noticed, I'm a sucker for sunsets. Sunset and Golden Gate Bridge-perfect combination for me :)

I'm not even really sure where we were here, but the houses were really cool.
The next day, we went to Sausalito before we headed into the city for another fun day. I love Sausalito, mostly just to walk around down by the ocean and check out yet another great view of the city.

If you can get past the chest hair and barbed wire tattoo, these 2 men who were fishing caught a leopard shark each. It was pretty cool watching them real it in.

Dustin getting creative with the camera. Great shot of the streets of Sausalito.

We decided to take a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge mostly just to say we did. It was incredibly windy up there, but really neat to be walking on the bridge.
After walking the bridge, we drove up this huge hill to get one more view of the city. It ended up being incredible. I think we could have sat there all day.
I mean, check out this view. Are you starting to understand my fascination with this city? Who knows, maybe it's just me.

We spent most of the rest of the day shopping around Union Square. We decided to leave a few things for our next visit to San Francisco...like Golden Gate Park.

I get a little passionate about this city for some reason. I just think that compared to most cities, this one has so much character. The houses, the streets, the structures, the views, the people...it just intrigues me. We recently learned that the mainland inside the city limits forms a 7 mile by 7 mile square. Crazy that all of that fits in 7X7 mile square! Hence, the houses all built straight up and connected to each other.

We are now in Monterey, CA and we will update with our Yosemite National Park pictures soon!

Wine Country, Emmy, and the Jay Kell Express

2008-07-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Ahh... Vino.
.
We headed down to wine country - Sonoma and Napa Counties - after the Redwoods. We went to go see our friends - Emily and Jay - but got there a day or so early... so we decided to tour the vineyards and see as much as we could... and, boy, we're glad we did it.

These signs are everywhere and it's a great indicator of how many wineries there are in this little part of the world.

Our first stop was in Sonoma, CA, where we ate a great dinner and spent some time in the park. We drove to Napa to stay the night, and woke up to sights that were pretty foreign to us...

While in Napa, we did some research and routed out 40 mile bike ride through the vineyards in Napa Valley. This is in the first couple of miles.

The ride was fun, and don't worry parents and grandparents, we had our helmets on and plenty of water.

The vineyards were beautiful and picture perfect...

...it also helped that the grapes were beginning to change color and harvest time is getting near - everything is great color.

Our ride was from St. Helena, CA to Yountville, CA and back with some zigs and zags in between. About halfway, in Yountville, we stopped at a great bakery, Bouchon Bakery and had a good rest in their courtyard.

As you see in the picture above and below, the entire ride was through the rolling hills of endless vineyards.

As far as you can see - vineyards.

After our bike ride, Nell showed the battle scars - a pretty great tan line from her bike shorts. We spent the next day by a pool trying to get rid of it (which, in all seriousness, was nice and the first time it felt like summer to us).
On our way out of St. Helena, towards Santa Rosa where we stayed the night.

After a good night's rest in a hotel (complete with a two o'clock in the morning fire alarm), we decided to do some wine tasting at some of the wineries that Emmy suggested...
Quivira, Preston, Bella, and Armida

The wine was good and we had fun going from place to place tasting and acting like we knew what we were doing.

In addition to some good vino, the wineries themselves were beautiful and pretty welcoming.

This is Bella, where their tasting room was in a 7,000 sqft cave...

...pretty unique.

Nell even got into it and we found her some favorite wine.

The view from Armida

In between tastings

After our tasting extravaganza, we headed over to Emmy and Jay's. They live on a vineyard and next door to this one (above). We took a stroll and were blown away by how beautiful it was.

A lemon tree... in the front garden.

Meet Emmy and Jay. We had such a great time with them. They moved out here a few years ago, interested in the wine industry. A few years ago, they decided to start their own wine label, Verge. They are doing really well and growing a lot.. you can get their wine at pretty nice restaurants in SF or just contact them. They've got a great thing going.

Emmy and Nell.

They fed us that night and even let us crash at their house and even more let us sleep in while they went off to work. So... we (and I mean Nell) got up and did a photo shoot of their vineyard they live in....

They have apple and peach trees in their yard...

http://www.vergewine.com/

After the photo shoot and free showers, we headed to where Jay works - Michel Schlumberger.

Schlumberger's courtyard.

So, Jay's pretty much a big deal around there and gave us our own personal tour of the vineyards and the wine making process... It was incredibly interesting and we learned a ton.

Schlumberger's wine celler-ish area.

These are primary fermentation holding tanks ... ish. Not exactly sure the proper name, but just know, Jay, that I really did listen. Thanks for not giving us a pop quiz.

Jay was totally great and gave us a wine tasting over our own, where we got to try out some 17 and 18 year old wine. Basically, Schlumberger's is a pretty ritzy gig, and with some rich winos in the room, I got intimidated and awkward. But Jay took it in stride and made us feel totally welcome. He's a good man.

The End
...of wine country.

So, now we're in San Francisco and all caught up on the blogs. Go us. Email us if you haven't talked to us in a while.. We'd love to hear from you.

Again, thanks to Emmy and Jay for being such great hosts and making us feel unbelievably welcome in their home.

Coastal Redwoods

2008-07-31T20:50:00.001-07:00

Apparently, if you head south out of Oregon, you run into California. So, while we were there, we decided to stop by and see the tallest trees in the world... the Redwoods.

Nell cuddled up in a huge tree.

While in the Redwoods, you really get a sense of how tiny and un-powerful you really are.

...and I'm a big boy.

These trees are huge. The tallest one in Redwood National Park is 379.1 ft.

Me climbing on the root system of a fallen Redwood...

Look at this Redwood... maybe the biggest one we saw.

John Muir said that these are the greatest trees in the world... Nell agrees.

On the coast in Crescent City, CA. Cold, but beautiful.

We even found a tree we could drive through.

Nell resting on a root during a hike
After the hike, we decided to drive down and ride the coast on our bikes to fern canyon.

We ventured from the road and decided that we might try the beach. But it was too soft, so we turned around and settled for the road.

In fern canyon. I love this picture of Nell. 1) her face. 2) her posture. 3) the wall of ferns behind her.

On the way back from the canyon. It was a really pretty ride.

We saw this on the side of the road and decided to dedicate it to Da-Me.

Why wouldn't you build a house out of a tree that big?

After this, we headed down to Sonoma county, but ran back into the coastal redwoods (Muir Woods) just north of San Francisco, where we are now... so we added them on this blog, though they are out of chronological order...

"This is the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world." - John Muir

If you look close, this tree has a ton of moss on it.

Again, we these trees are massive, but we learned that though they may be 200 ft tall or more on average, their root system only goes about 10 ft deep. The roots 100 foot spread makes up for it.

On our way out...

...from the Muir woods area. That's actually the opening of the SF Bay and on the other side of those rocks is the famous Golden Gate Bridge...

We're pumping these blogs out to catch up. Thanks so much for checking in on us. We hope you're enjoying it.

Portland, Oregon Coast, & Southern OR

2008-07-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! Well, were a bit behind on the posts, but we're catching up. Right now, we're about to head from the Redwoods National Park to central California. We got out of Oregon just a few days ago. This was my favorite state we've been too and it definitely lived up to my expectations, and you'll for sure see some of that here in our pictures, as Nell was on top of her game with the camera...

We came down from Washington State on Friday and woke up on Saturday and headed straight for the Burnside Bridge Market. This sign is right in downtown as you cross the Burnside Bridge.

The market had some characters from all walks of life. Despite this gentleman having one arm, he was actually pretty good.

Still not fully recovered from Bogota, we decided to get a hotel room and have date night. This night we went to a place called McMenamins Edgefield. McMenamins is a company that takes old properties and more or less, "flips" them. They turned this old Edgefield estate into a winery, restaurant, hotel. It was beautiful and their micro brews were great.

Nell is beautiful.

See?

This was taken from inside a tree from one of their gardens.

After a nice stay in a hotel, and church at Imago Dei, we headed east to the Columbia River Gorge where Julie's friend Gaby and her family have a house and opened it up for us to stay the night. Right down the road from her house, on the river, we ran across a kite-surfing festival, thus all the kites above and below. It was really fun to watch.

Sunset from Gaby's cabin. It was beautiful. Nell got some great shots of our setting.

If I ever need a cd cover...

She is so creative and has such a good eye.

We even had a little photo shoot in the window.

Nell's first self portrait. Except with a camera.

Gaby's home. What a great place and wonderful time we had. It was great just to have a place all to ourselves.

I even got to get up and enjoy a quiet morning reading, drinking coffee while looking over at Mt. Hood... ya know, what I was created to do.

Mt. Hood was on one side of Gaby's hill, and Mt. Adams (shown here) is on the other. Also, while looking over the gorge, if you look west toward Portland, you see green, where the rain comes in and spends about 300 days a year. If you look east... desert. The rain trickles out right around their house. It's pretty cool.

Leaving Gaby's, we stopped at cherry orchard. Before this, we thought a cherry was what they put on top of milkshakes at Sonic. Not even close. We might have found a favorite fruit.

Nell had been wanting to pick berries for a while, so the fact that we were picking fruit made her pretty happy.

Multnomah Falls

After that, we went back to Portland to stay with Duke and Caroline Revard. They are starting Lodgepole Fellowship Church there in Portland with Josh and Laurel. We definitely clicked with them and had a great time getting to know them.

One day, we got on our bikes and had our own personal tour guide, Caroline, of the city. This is Doug Fir Lounge, where, apparently, great music happens.

Nell and Caroline. Today, Duke was playing Mr. Mom and we failed to get a picture of him and the girls. Big regret... sorry Revards! But thanks so much for hosting us for a few days!

Me at Pioneer Square.

Portland's famous International Rose Garden.

Mmmm...

If I could describe Portland in a picture, it'd probably be this one... except, with a micro brewed beer in the kid's hand.

Portland

23rd St.

Powell's bookstore... my favorite bookstore of all time. It passed Dickson St. Used Books for sure.

We were on our way out of Portland and I had to stop in Powell's to get a new Moleskin journal.

We loved Portland and we're so happy that at least Josh and Laurel are moving there so we can see it more... who knows, maybe we'll end up there too.

We also went to the Oregon coast to Cannon Beach.

This is Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach, where they filmed the last scene of the Goonies.

We walked on the beach for a bit and enjoyed it. It was a little chilly, and so around lunch, we took off and headed south.

And by south, we mean Eugene. We spent a beautiful day on our bikes, touring the college town. (Ps, Oregon summers are incredible).

Duck fans? Why not. Here were are at Track Town, USA. Where, more or less, Nike started. This was really cool and we didn't realize the track and field legacy of UO until we went to the local Nike store. The entire town is about running, and you definitly get the feel of it.

Before we knew what legacy there was, we pulled up to their outdoor track center and were pretty surprised. Being from Fayetteville, record holder of the most track national championships, we were suprised that UO's track was way bigger than ours, then later, we understood it. Haystack Field also hosted the Olympic Trials for track and field earlier this year.

After Eugene, Nell got in the berry picking mood again. Specifically, blueberries. Apparently, cherry picking couldn't fill her void. So we did some research, and made a stop in Roseburg, OR.

The setting was perfect. 80 degrees, in the valley of the Cascade foothills. It felt a little like the Ozarks in May.

Well, this might rival for our longest blog. Thanks for following us. For all you who know Josh and Laurel, you need to go visit them.. they're moving to a pretty sweet place.

Redwoods National Park and Northern California blog to follow soon...

Bogota, Colombia

2008-07-23T16:15:00.001-07:00

After a few days of rest we headed off to South America. Geron Vail (Dustin's dad) sent us along with his family, my family, and the Eddleman family plus we had a few great additions to our team...the Necessarys and Nikki and Kim from Jonesboro. It was such a great trip, first of all, to be able to serve with our families, but most importantly to get to experience and be a part of the cool things that are going on at Children's Vision.

Children's Vision is both an orphanage and a school. Richard and Jeanene have 150 abandoned, abused, and/or orphaned kids that they have taken in and with the help of an incredible staff do an amazing job of making each child feel loved and provided for in addition to many other mountain children that attend their school (these children and their families have been displaced by the governent and live in shacks in the mountains).

Over the course of the week, the women on our team had the opportunity to go through the clothes donations and help the kids go 'shopping' for new clothes, which was so fun and totally right up my alley :) The boys on the team worked on the new school that was being built.

Children's Vision is an incredible organization that I would encourage everyone to research and get involved in. One way to get involved is to sponsor a child, so Children's Vision can provide them with food, clothes, and a quality education for around $30/month. I could go on and on, but this website gives more info about what this organization is all about...

http://www.childrensvision.org/

We were given a card with several kids names and pictures on them, so we could focus on getting to know those kids instead of being overwhelmed with trying to get to know 150 of them. It was so funny because as soon as we saw the kids they would grab our cards trying to find which 'Americano' they belonged to for the week :)

Taylor Eddleman helping Tatiana find some new clothes.
Alexia Necessary hanging with the boys
The medical unit. They use this for the kids and occasionally have people come down from the states to do medical missions for the community.

The new school that the boys worked on all week. It is really a neat school.

Nice looking hardhats, boys.
The madness of everyone trying to pick out their clothes at once. It got a little crazy, but it was so fun to see how excited the kids got when they found something they liked.
Andrea Wilson and Deanna Marcella-so cute! Me and Deanna Marcella. She was a shopper. She was trying about 4 outfits on at a time. She even tried on her socks!

Dinner at the Exodus House with the boys.

Mom arm wrestling her buddy, Juan Camillo.
Cindy Eddleman with cute little Angie. Angie looks healthy as can be, but has a malfunctioning heart valve and something off with her red blood count. She needs some major prayers.
Taylor, Laurel, and Mom
Andrea and Laurel

One of the streets close to where we stayed at the Bethel House.

Dad with his mando in Bogota, Colombia
Lovely outfits, girls! Needless to say, we had some fun going through some of the clothing that got donated. Many went into the 'non-appropriate' or should we say non-acceptable pile.

View from our window

Group pic (minus a few) on the streets of Bogota.

On our walk to Exito (the Walmart equivalent).
Family group pic.

All group pic. We couldn't have asked for a better team. We would be happy going with the exact same team next time!

Laurel and I with Jose. He was one of the mountain children that we helped pick out clothes. The cutest thing...when we were leaving, Laurel wrote him a note and gave him a ball. He let his friend play with his ball, but read that note over, and over, and over again.
Dustin with his favorite...baby Angie.
Look at all those bikes!
Brian. He didn't have time to find matching shoes this morning :)
Da-me with his 'Japenese' buddy, Angelica. One day, she ran around telling people, 'Me and my friend, we're from Japan.' She's 100% Colombian.

Richard and Jeanene...the amazing couple that does an incredible job parenting these 150 kiddos. They were on their way to a Rotary meeting. She got Honorable Mention for Woman of the Year in the entire country of Colombia, which is totally unheard of for an American woman to get recognition like that in Colombia.
Laurel and Brian at dinner.
Josh and Henry.
John and Arnold.
One night, we got to take the 4 roomies, Deanna Marcella, Angie (sisters in the pic below), Carolina, and Valentina for ice cream.

How cute is that?!?
Carolina was so sweet. We're not sure she had ever had ice cream before. While all the others were up running around, she was so intent on finishing that ice cream cone.
Angie.
Can't have it without music...not in this family. Dad, Derek, and Josh did a great job.

My 3 little girls (plus one that jumped in :)

The city of Bogota has a population of 11 million people. This pic only captured about 1/4 of the city.
We went up this mountain on a scary train that went straight up. It had an incredible view of the city!
Laurel started the feeding of the dog, which resulted in her following us the rest of the way.

Da-Me can even train street dogs :)

This was the scary gondola that took us down the mountain. It was pretty much like an amusement park ride.

Dustin and Da-me in front of the church on top of the mountain (along with our new little friend).

The kids loved the fact that there was a 'Chino' around. The squinty eyes was a frequent occurence.

Lisa with the kids at Crepes and Waffles in the mall. We got to take some of them on an outing to the mall, which was a great time to get to know the kids.
Cute little Carolina.
Lisa, Xiomara, Henry, and Laurel at our 2nd trip to Crepes and Waffles.

Xiomara, Tatiana, and John

Carolina and I at church. One night we went over to the Numbers house and watched a movie and fixed the girls' hair. It was so fun hanging out with the older girls!
Nikki fixing Beltsie's hair, which was quite a challenge, but it ended up looking so cute :)
Alexia helping a little girl with her hair. After we were finished with all the donations, we got to help with a quilt that Jeanene had been working on with the kids. The kids each got to design a square and they are making one to go in each house and 4 additional ones to auction off on ebay.

Kimberly helping with the quilt.

Taylor hanging with her little boy at the mall.

Gordy (hugging Anderson below) and Cory were such great additions to the team. Cory had been there for 5 weeks when we got there and Gordy and his granddaughter Shyann had been there for 2 weeks. We so enjoyed getting to know them!

Playing around at lunch.

Derek playing with the kids.

Dustin and I eating at the Numbers house with Tatiana.

Ken and Sophie (I think??)

Group pic at the Numbers House
Cindy doing her thing. She worked SO hard on hemming the kid's pants and on the quilt.

Da-Me getting besitos from Angelica.
The beautiful quilt that Cindy sewed with the help of Alexia and the great artwork of the kids!
Picture time. Getting these kids to be still long enough was quite a challenge.
Our favorite eating place was 'The Chicken Man' (name compliments of Nikki), where you could eat a huge meal of chicken, guacamole, and french fries for about $2 American dollars. Da-Me decided to venture out and get a steak, which was massive!

The last night we were there they had a 'Celebrate Life' party honoring a little girl, Karen, who died a year previous. The boys got to sing the song, 'God of this City', which is kind of a prayer over the city. It was neat to be able to sing it with all the kids and Richard and Jeanene.

Mom and Dad with Jeanene
Me and Jesus (my little crush)

Group pic with Richard and Jeanene

This trip was truly an amazing experience. It was sad leaving, but getting to be a part of Children's Vision and getting to know these kids will be something we won't forget and will do again for sure. Thanks to Geron for sending us and for Children's Vision for letting us be a part of your incredible organization!

Seattle, WA / Olympic National Park, WA

2008-07-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Well, it's been a while since we caught you up on what we were doing. We're now in Portland, but, as most of you know, we went to Bogota, Colombia for 10 days and never was able to catch up since our Victoria blog.... so here ya go...

So, we got to Seattle on July 3. So for the 4th (and in prep for our trip to Colombia), we decided to get a hotel room TWO nights in a row, to get some solid rest before we took off. So we landed in Kent, WA, just south of Seattle, and went to see the fireworks at a nearby suburb on Lake Washington...

Before the show....

Nell's annual 4th of July salute.

The Space Needle

We went to the famous Pike Place Market

The one and only - famous Pike Place Starbucks - the first one.

If I came here a year or two a go, this would have been a bigger deal, but I've definitly had better coffee since this road trip (and I'm also in the coffee snob capital of the world right now - Portland, so that may be a reason for my backpedaling. I'm a bit of a poser??... so what.)

Fresh fish at the market-yummy.

Far back on the horizon is Mt. Rainer. We didn't see it the whole time we were in Seattle but as we were flying in from Bogota, it was a crystal clear day and it was beautiful...

So, that was it for most of our time in Seattle. We saw some of the downtown but didn't get a real good feel for it and we had limited pictures. But we enjoyed our time there. From here on is our time after Seattle when we landed there and headed west to Olympic National Park.

Olympic National Park...

This park is actually kind of split up. There is the main part that is mostly found tucked into the furthest NW parts of Washington State in the mountains and forests, then there a small strip along the coast. We went to both.

ONP on the coast. We camped out on the beach and heard about this that was just a few miles up from where we were.

This might have been Nell's favorite part of our entire trip. The reason: her passion for tidepools.

These are sea anemones. These, along with starfish, clams, barnicles, and other sea creatures cover almost every inch of these rocks.

My beautiful bride.

These were huge, actually.. maybe the size of my hand or bigger.

The purple and orange things are starfish.

Sea Anemones up close and personal.

Starfish.

Clams and barnicles covered this rock.

Nell.

The bridge we crossed from the trail to the beach.

The trail on the coast.

Now onto the mainland where we played in the biggest temperate rainforest in North America... (true story. We were in the Hoh Rainforest where you can hike amongst huge Doug Firs, Spruce and Western Hemlocks that are so high actually create a completely diffent ecology in their tops.)

This is a creek that we took a picture into. Look how clear it is.

On the trail.

Nell liked the moss on the phone.

Nell walking tall amoung the doug firs.

Nell did a cartwheel

I break danced

The ferns were pretty neat.

The trees are so big

The rainforest's fungus.

Big tree.

We have no clue what this was...Any ecologists out there want to explain?
(It's of a weird, jello-y substance)

Olympic National Park was amazing. It was definitely a cool thing to come back to after a great trip to Colombia. We're working on our Colombia blog, so it will be up in a day or so. We have a ton of pictures to go through, so it's taking a little longer. We're glad to be back in the blog world so we can update everyone on our whereabouts!

Vancouver/Victoria B.C.

2008-07-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

Our trip back down from Anchorage to Vancouver was looooooong...a 48 hour, 2400 mile trip. We both wanted to get the long drive over with, so we decided to do it in 3 1/2 days, which made for really long days of driving. One of the days we drove from 6am until about midnight with a couple stops here and there. I even had to pitch in on the driving for this part of the trip :)

These pics are on The Alcan on the way south...

By this time, bears were kind of a dime a dozen, but we still had fun watching them.

You can't really tell, but this is a REAL LIVE porcupine!

Dustin got about 10 ft from this one and I think he about peed his pants when the bear looked up at him :) Most of the time, bears just eat and pretend you aren't there. It's never a good sign when they make eye contact. At least he got a good pic!
A bunch of bison blocking the road.

Artic Lupine. This flower was everywhere. It's beautiful!
We finally made it to Vancouver! It's a really unique, very diverse city in many aspects, which we liked alot. They were having very unusual warm weather while we were there (they have a very mild climate-usually only gets up to about 70 and down to about 40 or so), which was really nice for us. The first 80 degree weather that we had seen! We enjoyed hanging out at the beach along with the rest of the city as you can see.

We used our bikes to get around Vancouver because they had such great bike paths. They had a path that went all around the ocean, which was cool. One day we rode about 20 miles just getting here and there. It's great exercise!

Happy Canada Day! We happened to be in Canada on their 4th of July equivalent. We realized they get way more into it than most Americans do for the 4th. (As you can see Captain Canada below).
We went to Granville Island for a Canada Day Festival and they were having a dog show.

This dog's name was Woody :)
Granville Island has a really cool public market, which we really enjoyed. The food was incredible.

Fresh mixed berry tart. Quite possibly the best thing I've ever put in my mouth.

Dustin got picked to be the assistant to this English street entertainer. He had a hay day making fun of an American on Canada Day. His trick was escaping out of a straight jacket and chains. It sounds more impressive than it was, but he was pretty funny.

University of BC

Canada Day celebration on the water complete with fireworks (not as good as the US). I might be a little biased though...The cool thing is we got to be in Canada on Canada Day and the U.S. on 4th of July. Since fireworks are one of my favorite things ever, two celebrations was great for me!

Me showing my Canada patriotism. I had fun with that Canada flag (as you can see I'm holding it up in every picture :)

We took a ferry over to Victoria, BC the next day. Our first stop was Butchart Gardens. Dustin's grandma has always wanted to go, so we went and took lots of pictures. It was absolutely beautiful. These are for you, Grandma!

Japanese garden.

Italian Garden...

...complete with gelato!! We were so excited since we hadn't had it since we were in Italy in November. Raspberry grapefruit is our new fave.

There was a play going on at the gardens that was for kids, but we actually enjoyed it too.
The BC goverment building.

The beautiful Empress Hotel

The art museum in Victoria had an Andy Warhol exhibit while we were there, so we checked it out. It was pretty interesting to learn about him and pop art in general. He's one of the few artists that I remember from my art history class, so that makes it much more interesting when you know who they are.

Andy Warhol self portrait.

And probably one of his most famous pieces - Marilyn Monroe.

Some of his early 1950's art.

We also went to see an artist that Dustin and I discovered in Whitehorse, Yukon-Ted Harrison. We found out he had a gallery in Victoria, so we went to check it out. We ended up buying this painting while we were there.

The coolest thing was that he was there! We got to meet him and he signed our art and a book that we bought that is illustrated by him. We even talked him into taking a picture with us :)
We wanted to see a more rural part of Vancouver Island since all we had been to was Victoria, so we went to Sooke. It was a quaint little place with beautiful views of the ocean.

A view of Victoria from our ferry to Seattle.

Our first step onto the lower 48. Feels good to be so close to home. Now I understand why Lindsey said that when her family used to make the trip from Alaska to Arkansas she would always get excited when they got to the US/Canadian border because they were 'almost there'. :)

We are now in Seattle, WA and will be leaving on Monday, July 7th for Colombia, South America for a mission trip to an orphanage with our families. We will be back in Seattle on July 16th to resume our travels. If you think about it, please pray for our safety and that God will use us in some neat ways while we're there. We hope everyone is having a great summer!

Homer, Seward, Kenai Fjords

2008-06-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone...

It's a little after midnight and we just got back to anchorage after a few days in Homer & Seward & Kenai Fjords, AK. We got this post up quick because we're leaving for Vancouver tomorrow (its a minimum 3 day drive), so we thought we'd share with you before we took off. Also, check out our Anchorage post right after this... we got it up yesterday.

Just to fill you in, Homer is south-south west of Anchorage about 200 miles and Seward is south about 115... the drive is beautiful but the destinations are well worth the drives. Though we've been here for about 2 weeks, we felt like we got to experience legit Alaska and we were glad we did....

On the way down. It might be hard to see because of the small pictures, but the colors are pretty incredible up here. The shades of green and blue are very diverse and dynamic.

We got into Homer right around dusk (aka, around midnight). The park where we stayed was having a kite running festival.
Homer Harbor. I was really excited to take a walk through it... In my idealist brain, I think it'd be cool to be a seaman.
Our favorite boat.
We took a few hours and hung out on the spit. I guess that's the beach in Homer. Everyone said it and we assumed they were referring to the beach, but we're still not exactly sure. Just say it with confidence, I guess....

It was a beautiful day in Homer, lots of boats out, the Cook Inlet was calm, and the weather was cool to mild. We heard that the record high in Homer, at least on the spit, was 72 degrees. You could tell that though the sun was shining, the wind off the cold water kept it that way.
Notice the row of seagulls atop the roof. Ps, I became deathly afraid of seagulls while in Anchorage when a flock of them began to dive bomb me in a parking lot, which resulted in me screaming like a little girl and running. Nell took much pleasure in the sight.
Our second night there, we decided to camp on the spit.

After Homer, we took off to Seward and went on a 6 hour day-cruise through Kenai Fjords National Park. This was probably our favorite thing we did while in AK.

Right out of the harbor, we came across this Sea Otter, which spends 75-80 percent of it's life like this, and the rest of it eating. (A little info: this little dude is about 100 lbs and eats about 25 lbs a day. I wish I could lay around and eat as much as this guy can.)

A bald eagle scouting out food.
Puffins. To me they look like a mix of duck, penguin, and toucan.

We also saw three different kinds of whales: the Orca (or Killer Whale), Minke Whale, and pictured above and two below, the Humpback Whale

This is Holgate Glacier in the Holgate Arm of Kenai Fjords. The glacier face above is about a quarter-mile long.
I love this picture of my beautiful wife.
The glacier was really blue and active that day
Some of those chunks of ice in the water are small - maybe the size of a volleyball or basketball, but they can weigh around 200 lbs because the ice is so compact.

Hard to see, but if you look right in the bottom center of the the glacier, the ice is caving. We have it on video we'll try to upload and show you. It was really great experience watching this glacier.

The white parts are seagulls.

The Alaskan version of penguins (though not real penguins, but they can actually fly (a little)).
The killer whale - Nell's favorite. This was actually pretty neat to watch because there was a huge pod of them and they were on the move.

Sea lions.
Another Orca. The other whale Nell saw (I didn't) was a Minke, which is the shyest of whales and was apparently a rare thing to see. Once he saw us, he didn't come back up, thus why I didn't get to see him.
Seward Harbor

Marathon Mountain. The picture doesn't begin to show how steep it is, but there is an actual race that takes place where people run to the top and back down. Word has it, it started with a bet in a bar... which makes me wonder how much stuff in AK started with a bet in a bar.

On our way out of Seward, we took a hike to Exit Glacier.

Well folks, this is it for us in Alaska. We had a great time and now we're on to Vancouver. Pray for us, that we keep safe on our journey south. It might be a while till our next post, but check back in 4 or 5 days and see what we're up to.

Anchorage, AK

2008-06-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

So, we were heading out of Denali NP down to Anchorage (slightly disappointed that we didn't see Mt. McKinley) when Dustin looked back to see nothing less than...Denali. We were 150 miles away and it was still incredible. The picture is pretty lame, but at least we got to see it. It looked way cooler than this picture portrays. (If you're having trouble seeing it, the snow covered top of the mountain is what looks like clouds.)

When we got to Anchorage, we decided to have a 'splurge night'. We got a hotel room (after a pretty long stint sleeping in the car) and went out to a really nice dinner. We had the best margaritas, best salmon, and best cheesecake we had ever had before. The salmon was caught that same day and cut up about 2 hours before it was on our plate. We were told by our waiter that they keep the good salmon in AK and then ship everyone else the leftovers. Nice of them. But, we appreciated this time. We weren't sorry for deciding to splurge.
Look at this huge cabbage!
We're pretty happy about actually sleeping in a bed instead of a car seat...

Since we weren't going to see a polar bear, we decided to go to the Hilton and visit a used to be real one.
Anchorage has the largest hub for float planes taking off and landing. It was pretty cool to watch.
This is a boring picture, but a cool story...This is gravity hill. When you go to the bottom of the hill and put your car in neutral, your car goes up the hill. Crazy! We have video proof for any of your skeptics out there.

At the last minute, Dustin decided to run the Anchorage 1/2 marathon even though he hadn't really trained since his last one in April. Since he was doing that, I decided to do a 5.6 miler. Due to lack of showers, we haven't been able to run as much as we would like, so we were proud to finish well. Dustin finished with about the same time as his last 1/2 and I ran the whole 5.6 miles without stopping. My motivation for running was the fact that if I did stop I would be completely eaten up by mosquitos.

We got to watch the summer solstice sunset, which was absolutely incredible. We found that summer solstice is actually a big deal in AK. For one thing, it actually means something here. After the longest day of the year, it's all downhill from there...shorter days mean closer and closer to winter. They have all kinds of summer solstice festivals, softball games that go all through the night and lots of other things going on. We actually heard a lady (obviously a tourist) while on the phone say, "Yeah, it's summer solstice up here in Anchorage". As if that doesn't exist in the rest of the world.

It was a beautiful drive out of Anchorage along the Cook Inlet to our next destinations of Homer and Seward, AK (posts of that to come)!

Denali

2008-06-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! Well, we had a really good few days in Denali National Park. We learned a lot and had fun and even ran into a few familiar faces...

This is Calypso Farm & Ecology Center. While in Fairbanks, we ran into some people selling really cool t-shirts and told us we should stop by their farm on the way down to Denali. So, we did. It's a nonprofit farm that grows lots of vegatables and people pay them to grow it, then come by once a week to get their share of vegatables. They promote local farms, and have a great relationship with the community. Their set up reminded us a lot of Holland Wildflower Farm and made us a little homesick, but it was fun to tour.

A baby moose calf we saw on our way down.

The landscape there was very curious. Most national parks we've been to so far have been heavily wooded with lots of trees... DNP wasn't like that at all. It was wide open with low brush. It made the mountains standout more which was pretty cool.

For those of you who are confused, one of the reason's we came to Alaska is because last year we both read John Krakauer's book Into the Wild about recent college grad who went to Alaska to live in the wild. He chose the Stampede Trail as his final destination, and eventually died there. The trail starts at the end of this road. If we would have had time and a local guide, we would have loved to go out to where he was. (If you don't know about this, and are interested but not a reader, Sean Penn made a movie about it last year... but the book is better).

Our abode. We wanted to give you a glimpse of where our mornings, afternoons, evenings, and nights are spent.
We ran into some people who looked a LOT like Grandmoi and Stan. Actually, they were passing through after their cruise up. We had a great dinner with them and really enjoyed seeing them.

The interesting thing about DNP is that unlike other parks, you can only drive into the park so far, then after that, you have to pay them to get on a bus and ride for about 11 hours roundtrip to see the rest. It wasn't that bad, but we got to see a baby fox on the way into the park.

We were on our way to the Elisen Center, the first place in the park you can get a great view of Denali (which Alaskans call Mt. McKinley, and rightfully so considering how it came to be called Mt. McKinley - which we now think they should change back to Denali).

I was reaching over Nell trying to get a picture of some bears far off, when came down from the window, this is what I saw.

Waaaay back there, behind all those mountains is Denali - which is the highest mountain in N America and only 1 our of every 4 visitors get to see because of the weather system it creates for itself is always cloudy.

You could get off your bus, play around, then get on the next one the came by. So, we did in this river.

We then decided to climb that huge hill behind us. It's way steeper than it looks.

We saw this little dude up there, an Artic Ground Squirrel.

The river is always changing because the mountains are so shaley, thus a huge river bed.

We hiked around for about an hour, then headed down. The interesting thing about Denali, is all the hikes are on your own. There is no trail system anywhere, so all the hiking you do is open range. Which makes it cool.

Nell got her cheer on.

The wildflowers were just begining to bloom. (I know it's been hot down south for a while, but we followed spring up, so it's just setting in up here.)

Well, that's all we have from Denali. We did like the pictures we took, but it was cloudy and rainy the whole time, so we didn't get any that really captured the park. Although, on the way down to Anchorage, we saw a glimpse of Denali from 150 miles away. I guess the mountain decided to clear up a little and give us a glimpse of how huge it is that you can see it from Anchorage.

Until then... cheers. We love ya and check back soon!

Greetings from Fairbanks

2008-06-15T22:55:00.001-07:00

We absolutely loved Fairbanks and have some pics to show of our stay here! We got here on Thursday and only planned on staying a day or two, but ended up staying until Sunday. There was nothing really special about the town, it was more about the people. Everyone we met was so friendly and carefree. We enjoyed meeting people and getting to see what the locals do.

The first day we got there, Dustin met a musician named Nate at a coffee shop in town. He told us that there was a good bluegrass band playing at a local bar, The Marlin (picture below-this was taken at midnight). They were really good and we enjoyed listening to music and people watching :)

The next day, we were at the same coffee shop and saw a flyer for some free Siberian Husky puppies that were oh so cute. For a second we thought we might be able to get one (not sure what we were thinking since we still have about 2 months on the road and have no idea what were are doing when we get back...not to mention I already have a dog). We ended up calling the lady and going out to her house to see them. This picture is of her sled dog team. How cool is that!
And the sled that the dogs pull...

Me and Homer. This was the cute one that we were going to get.
I don't believe I've ever seen this road sign in Arkansas
This is a muskox. I didn't even know they existed.
We went for a bike ride on the UAF campus, which was very cool.

They had a botanical garden at the university. We walked around and then had a picnic there.

On Saturday, we rode our bikes down to the local farmers market, which we heard about from the sled dog lady. We had the absolute best falafels and raspberry tea ever. Besides hitting up the falafels and raspberry tea at the farmers market, Hot Licks (local ice cream shop) is a must if you go to Fairbanks.

Dustin and his falafel

After the farmers market, we headed to Pioneer Park. A lady I met at the farmers market told me about a folk festival that was going on. It was neat because we kept hearing of things to do from the locals. None of it was really anything too special, but we enjoyed experiencing some local flavor. The folk festival was the BEST place to people watch. We both just sat there and took pictures the whole time, so here are some of them we took...

This picture was taken at about 2 am. This is about the darkest it gets at night. It's starting to mess with us a little.

So far, Fairbanks has ranked up there on our favorites. Alaska is a place that everyone should visit if they get a chance. It's really neat to see how truly diverse our country really is. Alaska is a good reminder of that.

The Alcan

2008-06-12T21:29:00.001-07:00

Hey there! Again, we're in Fairbanks, AK. We got here today and it we got on the official Alaskan Highway (Alcan) on Monday. (It starts in Dawson Creek, Alberta... which is pretty darn north itself. Then it's 1500 miles from there.)

So, we made some stops, got some good pictures, and thought we'd share our 4 day journey with you...

This is probably the longest straight stretch we had. Nell compared the road to a 1500 mile long Pig Trail, though not as curvy, and it gets worse the further north you get.

We saw some wildlife on our trip, such as this bear cub... which I think is the 11th bear we've seen

It really is a beautiful drive and looks about like this the whole way.

I think this is a stone sheep

Nell wanted to see how close she could get. About 10 ft before they ran off. She also saw two sheep ramming each other and one of the horns on one of the sheep fell off. I tried to go find it to get a souvenir, but to no avail, could not find it.

We stopped at Liard Hot Springs in northern British Columbia. It was very, very moist and wet and we saw these ferns, which is quiet rare for that far north.

It was about 70 degrees that day, but the water ranged from 96 to 128 degrees. We hung out in the cooler middle of that range.

It really is a pretty cool place. While there, we went to a Northern Lights exhibit and would love to see those someday.
We're in Watson Lake, Yukon and here is Sign Post Forest where there are around 60,000 signs from around the world. I couldn't even begin to capture the whole forest.

It was raining, but we found some cover to make Nell's really good fiesta pasta.

Beautiful. This was probably around 11-11:30 pm. It doesn't get all the way dark.

We took a tour, and it wasn't so good, but they were proud of it, and the tour and samples were free, so all in all, we had fun.

We went to Whitehorse, Yukon - the capital of the Yukon and the home of Robert Service and a new favorite artist of ours - Ted Harrison. Google him - he's good.

The world's largest weather vain. For real.

We saw wild horses just this morning. It's pretty cool to think they're still around.

Just about every gas station looked about like this, and they're about 100 miles apart. (By the way, the most we paid for gas about 5.68/gal. ...yeah.) Most of these little shacks were gas stations, hotels, rv parks, restaurants, and bakery's all in one.

And we made it!

We're going to see a bluegrass band tonight and see what there is to do in Fairbanks. As soon as we can, we'll update ya and let you know. I hope all is well. Thanks for checking in on us!

Banff & Jasper National Parks

2008-06-12T19:36:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone! We're writing you from Fairbanks, Alaska. We finally made it today! (after a 4 day drive) So, here's our overdue pictures from the good ole Canadian national parks...

Nell got really good with the camera and got some excellent shots

The views were incredible, but the problem is that we got there on a day it was in the high 30s with a snow/rain mix...

Nell made a friend. He smiles when she asks him to.

This is one of the lakes there in Banff.

A Grey Wolf. Apparently they're a rare sight, but we got to see one (I accidentally went down the wrong road for about 14 miles round trip. No one else was on the road but us.) By the way, these guys howling at night.... eerie and loud.

We took a hike to some falls through Johnston Canyon. The trees were pretty cool.

Nell made another buddy. A Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel.

A tunnel that the waterfall and river had eroded out about 8,000 years earlier.

I'm telling ya, she's getting good.

We noticed the moss on the trees as we hiked. It should tell you how moist and damp it is.

The Castle Bluffs.

Caribou. Apparently, these guys are at risk in Banff. I don't think they know that. They were grazing on the side of the road.

The famous Lake Louise. The water was unbelievably clear and greenish blue.

A glacier you can see from Lake Louise. We learned that a glacier is a huge mass of ice, around 80 ft think (which most people know) and that it moves or has moved (which we didn't know).

From inside the chateau on Lake Louise

Look at that water!

On the way to Lake Louise, we ran into 3 grizzly bears on the side of the road. We were about 50 or 60 yards away. But they were gentle...

...and hungry.

Lake Morraine.
From the tops of some rocks.

On the way to Jasper National Park, we saw a black bear cub on the side of the road. I braved up and got within 15 feet of him in attempt to get some good pictures. I didn't get many, but it was a fun experience. (Note: I didn't realize it was a cub till I got back in the car and Nell told me. I then realized that if there's a cub, then there's a mom nearby. That could be bad.)

Again on the drive to Jasper... the best falls we've seen yet. You can't really tell from the picture but there are many tiers to these falls.

Leaving Jasper, we saw these two guys...

...playing... fighting...
...challenging one another.

We watched them for a while. One would pick a fight, then a few minutes later, one would run up a tree, then come back down and start at it again. This was the most entertaining of all the wildlife we've seen.

The day we left, we saw this... Our first sign to Alaska.

And we were on our way to the Great North.

Glacier National Park

2008-06-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

I thought this was going to be a short blog, but we had way more pictures than I thought! Glacier National Park was incredibly beautiful. Actually, probably our favorite so far in terms of landscape. On the west side, the forests are lush and green with much more humitity than we've seen yet. This is a crazy thing to say, but we actually enjoyed the humidity better than the dry. Maybe because we're used to it. I'm sure all of you in the south can't comprehend that since it's probably 90 degrees with 90% humidity. It's much more tolerable when it's 60 degrees :)

We've found that it is a little early in the season for the National Parks the further up you go. We probably were about a week early for everything to be open at Glacier. The famous Going to the Sun Road was only partially open and what we saw was absolutely incredible. I want to come back later in the season sometime and see the rest of it because we heard that we missed the best part! Dustin read that to clear Logan Pass they have machinery that clears 4,000 tons per hour and it takes 10 weeks to do it. Crazy!

Lake McDonald in West Glacier NP

Logan Pass was closed on Going to the Sun Road, but we were able to bike further than we could drive. As you can see, it is incredible.

This is on the Trail of the Cedars hike. Look how clear the water is here.

We saw all of these mountain goats while we were driving on the east side of the park

Note the one on the right taking a little leak. I noticed that after I went back to look at the pic.

There were tons of beautiful lakes, streams, and waterfalls

Sunrift Gorge

Jackson Glacier. You can't really tell it's there because there is still lots of snow on the mountain. Maybe some of you glacier experts can see it.
I'm trying some new techniques with the camera. I've decided to self teach myself on how to use our camera. I've actually learned alot by skimming through the manual. Who knew that manuals were actually helpful? Hopefully our pics will improve as time goes on.

Mom, Dad---what is this? I've been taking some flower pics, so you should be proud. I bet you never thought I would do that, huh. We forgot to bring a flower book, so I'll just use your knowledge.

I'm right next to the waterfall (look closely)

We've resorted to sleeping in the car every now and then (actually the past 3 nights). Nothing better than free lodging! We're getting it down to a T and actually are quite comfortable now. This is Dustin's solution to street lights.

We're now in Calgary, Alberta and headed to Banff tomorrow. Banff is the one I've been anxiously awaiting, so hopefully we'll have some really great pictures of it!

P.S. We also added a Bison Video to our Bear Video post

Itinerary

2008-06-04T21:09:00.001-07:00

I've been meaning to post this for a long time...

This is our very TENATIVE itinerary, so everyone can see where we'll be when-that is if you are interested.

2008 Roadtrip Itinerary (West)
May 6-10 Oklahoma City, OK
May 10-11 Denver, CO
May 11-19 Back to AR
May 19-20 Denver, CO
May 20-21 Boulder/Estes Park, CO
May 21-22 Aspen, CO (Maroon Bells)
May 22-23 Moab/Canyonlands National Park, UT
May 23-26 Moab/Arches National Park, UT
May 26 Park City, UT
May 26-30 Salt Lake City, UT
May 30-31 Jackson Hole, WY
May 31-June 2 Yellowstone National Park, WY
June 2-3 Butte, MT
June 3-4 Missoula, MT
June 4-5 Glacier National Park, MT
June 5-6 Calgary, Alberta
June 6-9 Banff National Park, Alberta
June 9-13 On the Alaskan Highway
June 13-14 Tok, AK
June 14-16 Fairbanks, AK
June 16-18 Denali National Park, AK
June 18-25 Anchorage, AK area
June 25-29 On the Alaskan Highway
June 29-July 1 Vancouver, BC
July 1-July 4 Olympic National Park, WA
July 4-7 Seattle, WA
July 7-16 Gone to Bogota, Columbia
July 16-17 Seattle, WA
July 17-19 Rainier National Park, WA
July 19-23 Portland, OR
July 23-26 Southern Oregon
July 26-29 Redwood National Forest, CA
July 29-30 Sonoma/Napa Valley, CA
July 30-Aug 1 Healdsburg, CA
August 1-4 San Fransisco, CA
August 4-8 Yosemite National Park, CA
August 8-11 Monterrey, Big Sur, Pebble Beach, CA
August 11-13 Santa Barbara, CA
August 13-14 Ojai/Simi Valley, CA
August 14-16 Las Vegas, NV
August 16-17 Grand Canyon National Park, AZ
August 17-18 Flagstaff, AZ
August 18-20 Phoenix/Scottsdale, AZ
August 20 Back to the great state of Arkansas!

Bear/Bison Videos

2008-06-04T20:54:00.001-07:00

Here are the links to two bear videos that we took of the grizzly and her cub in Yellowstone NP. One is kind of shakey, but worth watching. We were pretty excited about seeing a bear as you can see :)

Bear Video 1

Bear Video 2

Bison Video

Grand Tetons/Yellowstone National Park

2008-06-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

So, we're in Missoula, MT updating our blog with our Yellowstone pics. There's a lot of them because it was incredible! We saw lots of wildlife (which was my favorite part), waterfalls, geysers, and hotsprings.

Male moose we saw right outside of Jackson Hole, WY

Then right after that, we saw a female moose that made it very clear she was not scared of humans
Our campsite outside of Grand Teton NP and me with my Real Simple that my sister so graciously sent to me :)Beautiful Grand Tetons...we didn't get to see much of Grand Teton NP because we were short on time and ready to get to Yellowstone. It looked really cool as we drove through!
And we're here! When we first saw Lake Yellowstone, it was covered with ice.

A hot spring with beautifully colored mineral deposits at Biscuit Basin

A bubbling geyser at Biscuit Basin. These geysers are everywhere!
All of these are geysers or hot springs of some sort...
This was a hot spring with colorful mineral deposits running into Firehole River, which Dustin flyfished in and I'm so mad I didn't get a picture of it!
There are tons of elk and bison in Yellowstone along with lots of other wildlife. We even saw a wolf! It was entirely too fast to get a picture of though.
The ice receding on Lake Yellowstone

And the infamous Old Faithful, which was cool but we were kind of wondering why it was so famous since there are so many other cool things at Yellowstone. I guess you don't see a geyser everyday, much less one that goes off every 90 minutes.

Yeah, I start looking pretty rough by about day 3 of not taking a shower... Thanks, Mom for letting me know it :) I've come up with some pretty creative ways for taming my nappy hair without frequent showers.
We couldn't hike any further b/c Dustin had sandals on and there was lots of snow on the trail...

Lake Yellowstone again. We thought it was quite pretty and very close to where we camped, so it got lots of pictures taken of it.... By the time we left pretty much all of the ice was gone.

There were tons of pretty waterfalls at Yellowstone
We got sick of taking boring pictures, so Dustin thought he'd spice it up :)

These bison seriously couldn't care less if there are humans around or cars behind them...They just continue about their business which consists of eating lots of grass and that's about it.

This picture was not taken with zoom...That's how close this dude was to our car. These things are actually pretty ugly once we got upclose and personal. They are amazingly huge though!
A grizzly bear and her cub (which you can't see very well in this pic)! We have some cool videos of this for any of you bearlovers out there-Bob and Jules...It was incredible watching this bear from about 100 yards away. If you ever want to see a bear, go to Yellowstone in May. We decided our trip to Yellowstone was complete even if we didn't see anything else.

Mineral deposits from Mammoth Spring in northern Yellowstone

Bison were kind of a dime a dozen we realized. They were everywhere! But, these little calves were so cute.

A beaver that we thought was a bear when we first pulled over. If there are a lot of people with cameras there is a good chance there is a bear nearby...This time it was just a cute little beaver.

After some last minute fly fishing at Yellowstone, we left the beautiful park. I highly recommend it for any of you who are planning family trips.

After we left, we started driving through Montana and realized just how expansive the West really is. It was such a beautiful drive with lots of countryside.

Tomorrow we are headed to Glacier National Park in northern Montana. It is supposed to rain the whole time, so pray that we won't get too wet camping!

Thanks to the Allgaiers

2008-06-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Allgaiers for hosting us for 4 days in Salt Lake City! We so much enjoyed getting to spend time with them and hearing about their time living in Salt Lake. They were so helpful on showing us the best places to go and even being our tour guide. We couldn't have asked for better hosts, so thank you all so much for having us, for taking time to spend with us, for the incredible homecooked meals and just an all around wonderful time! We hope to come see you all and Jessica in Atlanta!

Here are some more pics of our time in Salt Lake...

Teresa and I at a beautiful Catholic Church in downtown SLC

More Moab; Salt Lake City

2008-05-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! We're in Salt Lake City now staying with the Allgaier's in their beautiful home that overlooks the city (pictures below). We've had a great time here and have been here longer than expected because we're waiting on my fly rod that Laurel so generously sent us. (I got ALL my fly fishing gear but the most important thing - the rod). So, it should be here today (Thursday), then we'll head out tomorrow morning to Jackson, WY and Yellowstone (where I will use that fly rod).

Anyway, here are some pictures from the rest of our visit in Moab and our visit here in SLC...

The drive into Arches National Park

Balanced Rock. You can also see it in a broader picture above.

This rock is HUGE and amazing how it's balanced on there.

We hiked to Delicate Arch (3 mile round trip)

It was pretty incredibly huge, as you can see us standing next to it below.

Nell in an arch the over out onto Delicate Arch. We then hike to an arch called "Double O". It was a 4.2 mile round trip hike.

Along the way, we ran into this guy - Landscape Arch. We learned later that in the 1970s when Arches National Park opened up, they misprinted the maps and mixed up Landscape and Delicate arches, and they remain named wrong to this day.

Hiking...

This is "Double O". You can't really tell here, but under the big O, there is a smaller one underneath.

Nell = hardcore

2 Above: for all you plant lovers

A great canyon sunset

Baby big-horned sheep. We saw a lot of these guys
through Colorado and southern Utah

This is us after a 16 mile bike ride. We rode to "Klondike Bluffs" which you can see in the distance behind us. It was a really tough ride because the first 8 miles were up hill the entire way. At the top, it over looked Arches National Park. The ride down wasn't great because it was so bumpy. My back is still a little sore from getting jarred so much on that ride. As Mark Twain said, "I'm glad we did it. Partly because it was well worth it, but chiefly because we shall never have to do it again."

We then ventured into Salt Lake City. We were caught off guard by how much we love this city. It's beautiful, with the surrounding mountains, canyons, and ski areas. We'd love to come back here...

The first day we went to Park City and messed around. Then we went to the Allgaier's home, which over looks the city. It's very incredible...

This is on the drive down the mountain from the Allgaier's house. It was raining and we caught a picture of a great rainbow. (It was actually a double, but the other one didn't want to show on the camera)

We drove through "Big Cottonwood Canyon" and ran into this creek, fed by melted snow...

As we were approaching the end of the road (still closed because of snow), we ran across...
a porcupine! HUGE! Look at that thing compared to Nell.

Big Cottonwoood Canyon...

I think this picture is taken from the Allgaier's back porch. ...yeah.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Allgaier took us downtown to the Mormon temple square...

The temple.

Inside the square.

Brigham Young statue with the temple in the background.

The temple from the 10th story of the Joseph Smith memorial building.

The top of the temple. (Notice the pure gold statue on the top of it.)

While we were driving around, we got blocked off by the police. We walked down and a few minutes late a huge motorcade came by. And who was it, but the President himself.
It was pretty cool. Nell and I both have seen different Presidents speak, and we decided that their motorcade was much more exciting.

The car to the very left is the President's. So we think. Nell's swore she saw him in there. Short man with a smirk... couldn't have been anyone else.

UNTIL NEXT TIME...

quick note...

2008-05-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

hey you guys, just to let you know that the last post we had we were experimenting with some formatting and it didn't work out to well... so sorry if it looks a little weird, but we finally threw up our hands and gave up. maybe we'll learn how to do this in time. thanks!

dustin

Back on the road...

2008-05-24T09:30:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the delay in blogs. We haven't had good internet service. I guess there is a lot to be updated since the last post!

On the road (the first time):

We left for OKC on May 8th to visit Dustin's granparents and Grandmoi and Stan. We had a great visit with both of them. Lots of good visiting, good shopping, and good eating. You can always count on that at our grandparents. We didn't take hardly any pictures while we were there. We did take one of Dustin and I with Grandmoi and Stan at the Jazz Club, which we enjoyed so much. A night full of Hideaway Pizza and Jazz-it doesn't get much better than that!

After OKC, we headed to Denver. We ended up staying with Terah's college friends. They were so sweet to make us dinner and give up their bed for us! We really enjoyed hanging out with them.

The next day, we got the call that Dustin's aunt had passed away, so we headed back to AR to be with his family. We ended up staying there until Friday and then headed back to Fayetteville to hang out with the families. We had fun spending some last minute time with my fam and then spent Sunday with Dustin's family going on a motorcycle ride down the pig trail, which we really enjoyed! We took off again on Monday. This time our take off was pretty anticlimatic :)

We got to Denver on Monday evening and stayed with Terah's friends again.

Night view of downtown Denver

Tuesday, we headed to Boulder for the day. We rode our bikes around town, which is a great way to see places. We are REALLY glad we brought them. Boulder has lots of cool shops, which I thouroughly enjoyed. However, Dustin did not. He did enjoy being outside in beautiful 75 degree weather! He had a strawberry/nutella crepe, which lifted his spirits :)

Sweet picture of me on my bike in Boulder :)

After we spent an afternoon in Boulder, we headed to Estes Park. The drive was beautiful and we enjoyed riding our bikes around the town in Estes Park. We even encountered a herd of elk. Dustin got about 5 ft from one! It was pretty surprising how tame they were!

The hotel in the movie Dumb & Dumber

These elk were getting on their hind legs and fighting/playing with eachother

In Estes Park, we were looking for a spot to camp and hiked up to this beautiful view. We thought the Sube could make it, but decided against it since we've already had 1 flat tire on the trip...

Our first meal campfire style-spaghetti and green beans.

We left Wednesday morning and headed for Aspen. We tried to drive through Rocky Mountain National Park, but we were two days early and they were still closed for the season. Aspen was a cute little town, but a little expensive for our budget. They had stores like Gucci and Prada if that gives you an idea. We enjoyed riding our bikes around town after a day in the car.

Bighorn Sheep that we saw on the way to Aspen. This is for you, Mom and Dad :) We didn't even need the binocs for this one!

On the way to Aspen...

Close to Maroon Bells (also closed due to off season)

Our first bear sighting...See I'm not scared of bears :)

We stayed in a cute little ski town in Snowmass, CO. All of the camping areas were closed due to the fact that there was still snow on the ground, so we stayed in a hotel.

The drive to Utah was beautiful. It is crazy how much the mountains change as you go through western CO and into Utah. We drove down scenic 128 that runs along the Colorado River.

Our first views of the desert of Utah...

Colorado River...we'll be rafting this tomorrow!

Yesterday, we went to Canyonlands National Park. It was not the ideal weather for hiking-38 degrees and raining/snowing. We got some short hikes in and got to see some incredible views.

Supposedly, a dinasaur track... who knows??

After the Canyonlands trip, we went on a mountain bike ride through the desert. It was pretty cool with views of Arches NP.

Grandmoi, this is for you. We've been wearing our helmets :)

Today, we are going to Arches NP to hike and tomorrow we are going white water rafting on the CO River and mountain biking at Klondike Bluffs. We'll update soon!

back to arkansas temporarily

2008-05-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

We found out yesterday that Dustin's Aunt Linda passed away. We had just gotten to Denver on Saturday, but decided to turn around Sunday afternoon and head back to Fayetteville and then to Jonesboro to be with Dustin's family. They are a very close family and this was quite unexpected, so this is tough on them. Please keep them in your prayers...

We are hoping to resume our trip by this weekend, so we'll post more when we know more!

Nellie

trip detour and skype

2008-05-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

hey guys,

quick update...

1) we left nellie's grandma's house yesterday morning around 8:30 and headed for 40 west to go to southern colorado. but we talked and i had read about high winds blowing sand and small rocks in the great sand dunes national park - where we were headed. the more we talked, the less attractive it looked, so we turned around and went to denver. so here wer are now in denver.

2) we got skype. if you're a skype user, then add us. our name: "the.vails" we'll be on it once and again so be looking out for us.

thanks y'all..

dustin

And the roadtrip continues-Part 2

2008-05-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

After the marathon we headed to Memphis to eat some Rendezvous BBQ and walk Beale Street.
Room 306 at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis where MLK Jr. was shot

There was a lady sitting outside of here that had been sitting here for over 20 years protesting that the Lorraine Hotel be used to house the homeless instead of as a tourist attraction. Interesting....

Next, we headed to Indianola, Mississippi to visit my grandma for a few days.

But, not before a pit stop in Tunica. No money won here...we came out even this time, but don't you worry, there will be more chances to come....

There's never a dull moment with Memaw around. She's 85 and yet to lose her sense of humor :)

We ate at The Crown Restaurant. Talk about some down home southern cookin'. You've never had better sweet tea. You can't beat it. Dustin was in heaven.

Headed back to NWA to pack up and move out of Laurel and Josh's before we head out on the Western leg of the trip.

And once again, not before our casino pit stop in Greenville. This time we won $40 in 10 minutes. Not bad, eh??

I love me some family time...

Dad opening a bottle of Verge-our good friend's, Emmy and Jay, wine label. Impressive!

Me, Laurel, Chelsea (cousin)My handsome dog, Atticus. I'm gonna miss him, but he's being well taken care of at the Doggie Dude Ranch. Thanks, Mom and Dad :)
The best parents in the world and that's a fact...