Home again, naturally.

Well we made it home. After driving up I-5, we turned off toward Klamath Falls and stayed with a friend of Ben's. This morning, we got to see Crater Lake, which looked very lovely in the snow. We avoided I-5 after saying hi to DJ at OSU and made our way up back roads. We finally rolled back to Ben's house, where we started, at around 5:30 tonight. We've been gone 11 weeks and 1 day. It's nice to be home.

Crater Lake in the snow.

Over the pass and 88

The pass through the Sierra Nevadas.

Yesterday, we woke up at a weigh station near Topaz, right next to the road that we wanted to take. Unfortunately it was closed, so we kept driving and made our way back to the valley. As we were driving, we figured we'd go to the first church we found. At 10:29, I saw a church and Ben turned around and we pulled into the parking lot at 10:30 am, right when the service started. We ended up going to The Healing Word, a Foursquare Church in Pioneer right off of Route 88. The folks at the church were extremely welcoming and we had a great meal after the service. We really enjoyed hearing about the church's work in the community and how they followed their words with action. They even gave us some delicious food to take with us, which will definitely get us home.
We then made it to Galt, where Austin's dad lives and he treated us to dinner and gave us a warm place to sleep, which is awesome.

Our Whirlwind Tour of the Southwest

First off on our speed through of the southwest was the Grand Canyon. Teddy Roosevelt said that every American should visit the Grand Canyon in his lifetime, if he is able, and he is totally right. The Grand Canyon is majestic. We were able to drive up and down the south rim, do some hiking and see a ranger bellow and yell about how the Canyon is big and pretty. Good times. Our hike took us down part way to the Colorado River, near Santa Maria Spring and back up, which was way harder than going down. Our original plan was to get to the bottom and hike back up in one day, but there were numerous signs warning us not to and we each had reasons not to go. Mine was I didn't want to be sore for the next couple days (or get injured), Ben didn't want to further aggravate his foot and Austin didn't want to get up in the cold, because we would have had to leave before dawn. We would have done it anyway (well they might have, I was still unsure), but we came to a consensus that it would be better to go on a short hike and come back another time and conquer the Canyon.

Austin's looking at you.

View from the top of the Canyon.

Another view of awesomeness.

This is a view of where we stopped for lunch on our hike.

Austin's animal companion.

Next on our tour was Zion National Park, which was nothing short of incredibly immaculate. Just after the entrance, there's a cave that takes you through a mountain. Every so often, there are huge windows which offer you all too brief glimpses of red and orange rock monoliths rising out the ground. Upon exiting the tunnel, the monoliths surround you and demand that you gaze upon their epic visages. After that, it never stops. Everywhere you look, huge striped cliffs rise up and slot canyons carve their way below them. We did a short hike to the Emerald Pools, which was fantastic. After a break for lunch (cat food stew), we did some rappelling down into a slot canyon and explored around the area. I think Teddy would have also said (if he didn't already) that every American should also visit Zion, because it's not too far from the Grand Canyon and it's immensely beautiful.

Just after the tunnel.


Two views from the Emerald Pools hike.

Not the one we rappelled down, but still cool.

The view from near where we rappelled.

Las Vegas paled in comparison to what we saw previously, but we had to go because it's on our way and it's there. (And so we can say we've been there.) Fremont Street was what I pictured Vegas as being, mainly that it had neon signs, including that smoking cowboy. I'm fairly certain I pictured the Vegas from the 1950s in my head, so Freemont was perfect. We got some (slightly) cheap, but delicious, western burgers and set off to explore the Strip. On foot. For those of you who have never been to Vegas, or have never walked there, I will let you know that this was not a good idea. We ended up walking a couple miles that night and got back to the car way too late, not to mention that we felt like it was an hour later because of the time zone shift. On a positive note, we got to see several wedding chapels, including one with people getting married and several of the more famous casinos, like Caesar's Palace and Circus Circus. It's too bad that the inside of the casinos don't reflect the outside, because we went inside of Treasure Island and I didn't see any pirates, which was kinda disappointing. We also missed the last pirate fight show thingy by an hour, which was sad.

Neon is in this year.

We woke up outside Vegas in an empty lot/trash dump/construction site and made our way to Death Valley. Death Valley was nice in its own way, although it's pretty much desert and barren everywhere. The most interesting thing there was the fact that we were below sea level for quite some time.

Below sea level in the desert.

Barren and kinda beautiful.

That covers our previous adventures and brings us to our current one, which is taking us the long way around Yosemite Park. Snow is supposedly blocking several roads into and through the park. This same snow will prevent us from seeing the park, so we'll just have to come back next time. For now, we're staying with Austin's dad in Galt.

we are still alive!

sorry this is going to be a really short post. we are currently trying to figure out how to get around a road closure in Yosemite national park which is preventing us from getting over to I5.

we have seen the grand canyon and Zion national park. Zion is AWESOME! we did a little climbing and some rappelling which was so much fun! we will do a better post later when we get around the road closure and find some internet. umm so there is bad news and worse news... almost all the east west roads that go over the pass are closed :(

The Freezing Southwest

We've made our way across Texas, managing not to run out of gas on at least two occasions. However, before we left Texas, we stopped at Immanuel Baptist Church, where the people were most welcoming and nice to us. Let me back up a bit and tell you how we came to get to the church. As we were making our way around Fort Stockton, we saw a van with the church's name painted on the side. So obviously, we started following them as they made their rounds picking up kids. (At the time, we thought they might have been dropping them off.) Finally, after we gave up, turned around and started following them again, Ben got out and asked when/where church was today. They told us to follow them and we went back to the church. (Which we passed earlier ironically.) After the service, they even let us shower and fed us sandwiches. Their ministry is helping folks who come through town, giving them a place to stay for a spell and helping them out. This is inspiring to say the least. Our thanks go out to the folks at Immanuel Baptist Church, who took us in and treated us most kindly.

Paisano Pete, the mascot of Fort Stockton.

We then wandered towards New Mexico and visited Carlsbad Caverns, which was beyond description. The underground beauty was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. Ben also made some enemies with the local wildlife and I was threatened by a ranger: "I will stab you." She used to work at Grand Teton National Park and she told us she always got asked where the moose were, much to her frustration. Austin then told me to ask her where the moose were, which gave way to her humorous reaction.

Whale's Mouth at Carlsbad.

Grainy group in the cave.

On the way north we cruised through Roswell. (Yes we saw aliens.) Historic note! - After WWII, Roswell housed German POWs and some of them stayed after being released. There was also a piece of the Berlin wall at one of the memorials in town. The west side had graffiti, the east side had none.

Ben's friend at Roswell.

This is how cold it was in the desert. (That's ice!)

Onward to Colorado, where we saw Mesa Verde. We managed to squeeze in a quick drive through the houses and temples before the last ranger led tour to the Spruce Tree House. Our hippyish ranger led us up close to the site and we got a very interesting history of the area and houses from the ranger and one of the archaeologists on duty. After Mesa Verde, we went to Four Corners, which cost money, so we looked and left. Now we're back to the present on our way to Tuba City and then the Grand Canyon.

Car update: The choke heater is broken, so the automatic choke doesn't disengage in cold weather. The motor is running very rich and causes poor gas mileage and sputtering at various times. Hopefully it'll stay in one piece until we get home because our pop can shielding doesn't seem to holding up.

The Spruce House at Mesa Verde

Speaking louder than words

Ben has kept you informed of our doings, so I thought I'd share some pictures to go along with his post.

In Louisiana, we hit a number that you don't see often.

Posing with the big star of Texas.

This way you know which way your lane goes.

The Alamo is kinda smaller than its legend makes it seem. But it was still way cool.

Sunset over the River Walk in San Antonio.

Well that's the best of the bad. Tune in next time for more plains, desert, and sunsets.

middle of no where Texas

so tonight we are camping at a rest stop off of I10 in west texas. we didnt find fuel for over 100 miles and as such are sitting with an almost totally dry tank. optimistic estimates for fuel give us 3/4 of a gallon and a realistic estimate is more like 1/4 of a gallon of gas left in the tank. the closest fuel we know of is 15 miles away so there is better than even money that we will run out of gas before reaching a gas station. hopefully though we can get gas in time to find a church to attend :) something will work out, it always does!

while we were thinking about our gas situation this team of 4 people came up to visit us because they saw our sign in the car window. they are a volunteer team for invisible children who spread the word about the longest running conflict in africa. they have been on the road for 2 months and have been living out of their van! we chatted about different places we had been and things we had seen along the way. it was neat to find other wandering people and Christian ones at that! we exchanged contact info in hopes that we might meet up again at the grand canyon in a few days and we took turns praying for each other. they took off, hoping to make it to new mexico later this evening.

expected route

View Larger Map

and for those of you who cant do flashy stuff heres a link to the expected return route

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

and now to bring you up to speed! it wont be the most indepth post due to us having not posted in a while but ill do the best i can. ok so we spent the night at a friend of Thomas's and the storm passed us in the night. we had some good warm food and then went to sleep on beds! in the morning we were treated to breakfast and some sight seeing. many of the things that got destroyed in hurricane Katrina were still deserted - emty lots, concrete steps and foundations without houses.

when we got back to the house Shane did a little welding on the broken clutch bracket! His daughter asked me "did my Daddy fix your car?" and i told her that he had. she replied "my Daddy can fix helicopters and cars, he can fix anything!" we got the car put back together did a little relaxing and then headed out. we drove into Louisana and saw New Orleans, bourbon street at night. we kept going a little further and then spent the night at our old friend Wal-Mart :)

in the morning we got up and did some more driving and made it into Texas! we got to Houstin and visited my friend Sarah. we hung out and i worked on the clutch bracket some more. the welds held fine it is the metal of the bracket that is bending. acutally given where its bending i dont know how it held the 230,000 previous miles. i put more wire in there and bent the bracket back and it made the clutch happy again. Sarah's mom was nice enough to let us stay at her house which was awesome! we got another shower and in the morning Sarah's mom made us breakfast! as we were leaving she sent us off with some fresh fruit and candy :)

we drove to San Antonio and saw the Alamo! that was some neat history, it was our own version of The 300 where few held out against many for freedom. we saw the river walk in San Antonio which is neat and then we drove up to Austin where we met Thomas's friend Matt. we got to stay at his house - two showers in as many days! we are living in the lap of luxury! today we got to play some video games and i spent a while working on the clutch bracket again. this time i used coat hanger wire because its thicker and i came up with a new way to twist it tight so it doesnt stress it and make it break. we will see how long this version will last. we did a little stop and go driving where i used the clutch a lot and it seems to be holding... tomorrow we are going to head west some more and see a couple more states :)

storm!

we just drove through a tropical storm! actually it was weak, not much worse than a good oregon rain storm really. didnt phase the subaru at all.

a mechanical update: the clutch cable runs through the firewall and then mounts to a bracket which also holds the clutch pedal. the pedal pulls on the cable and the bracket keeps the cable from moving. sadly the bracket has broken on one side and so its bending each time i step on the pedal so the clutch cable doesnt pull as tight as it should. the pedal goes all the way to the floor but the clutch doesnt disengage. its like not having a clutch at all. since i have a tach and a working spedo i can power shift but i have to turn the car off to put it into 1st or reverse :) sometimes ill just not shift and let the engine bog - its not really any slower bogged down than it is in its "power" curve. we wrapped some wire around the bracket and it held for a few dozen shifts and then it popped so i tried a zip tie and that popped on the first test shift. we wrapped wire around it twice and that has held longer than any of the other fixes. we are at a friend of Thomas's Dads house right now and he has a welder so if this tropical storm goes away by morning i might get a shot at welding it back together and maybe even take a crack at the exhaust pipe.

in other news i have a fatty footermellon!

its gotten kinda fatter and turned fun colors but it hurts less now so i can kinda run/hop on it.

A warm beach in November? We must not be in Oregon...

We have driven through North and South Carolina, Georgia and are now in Florida. As mentioned, we spent yesterday on a beach. In November. For those of you who aren't from Oregon, you should probably know that beaches in Oregon are cold all year round, especially so in the winter. The beach was quite enjoyable and a welcome change from the biting cold up north. Last night we parked and I slept in the car, as I'm not feeling too well. (Sickness comes as easily from each other as strangers.) Around 2 in the morning, a police officer informed me, not unkindly, that if I stayed where I was, someone might "mess with me" and he proceeded to direct me to Peter's Point, where it was okay to park. The funny thing is, where we parked, no one had bothered me up to that point. After I reached the parking place at Peter's Point, some people decided it was a good time (3AM) to come drink beers and play loud music. (They left their cans to my dismay.)
Regardless, I didn't sleep as well for the rest of the night, but I did get to see this:

And that made it a little worth it.

beer cans and wire

so we were cruising down I 95 when all of a sudden the engine gets super loud and there is an awful dragging noise. i pull over and we peak under the car to find this looking back at us :)

now we have had an exhaust leak for quite some time but it wasnt bad and there wasnt much we could do about it. the thing was cracking at the weld joint and today it finally failed. being as we couldnt leave the pipe there and we couldnt drive with it dragging on the ground i set to work with some wire i had in my box of goodies. we picked up a budwiser beer can from the side of the road and wired it onto the pipe in hopes of it making the poor car just a little less loud.

i pulled a tire off to get a little more room to work and while looking at the tire i noticed a really bad wear patch on the outside. the outside of the tire is more or less bald all the way around, likey due to some toe in from the tie rod ends being loose or the suspension being bent from my other adventures with this poor car. sadly i think we are going to have to drive on this tire till it blows out from baldness because we cant replace the parts or have it alligned professionally i guess i could rotate tires front to rear on the passenger side but thats a lot of work becaus i have to use the spare in place of a jackstand.


our finished product! it sounded less loud for a bit but now it sounds like we have open headers or a helicopter is flying near by...

hopefully this doesnt get us a ticket!

Slightly down South

After some good times in DC, we headed south through Virginia, stopping in Richmond to visit Ben's friend Tamurlane. She very kindly bought us drinks and we thank her. We reached North Carolina that night and crashed at a rest stop just inside the border. This morning we set out for Fayetteville, home of the Airborne & Special Operations Museum, which was very interesting and enjoyable. A large portion of the exhibits focused on the use of special forces deployment via parachute during WWII. The rest followed the use of said forces up to their role in combat today.

War posters are cool.

Also, we wanted to thank Clare, who is helping us go ten miles. (She gave us a dollar.) I also wanted to thank the good folks at Harvest Church, who were most welcoming last Sunday and treated us to a most delicious lunch. We also appreciate the Metro tickets that you gave us, they helped immensely.

Deliberately in DC

Personally, I really enjoyed DC and would gladly have spent several more days there. Unfortunately, we couldn't, so there you have it. Anyway, for those of you who might be wondering what geocaching is, click on the link and you can find out. It's easily one of my favorite activities.

Since I don't want to bore you with all of my experiences in DC (which would be long winded, basically: lots of walking and museums), I'll show you some of my many pictures, these being some of my favorites.

A Zero in the Air and Space Museum.

T-Rex in the Natural History!

Kermit the Frog.

The Washington Monument

United States Capitol.

can i have it back?

today we mostly saw museums. we saw all kinds of neat stuff in them but im starting to get museumed out. now the funny part is that each building has their own silly policy about whats ok to bring in and whats not. the air and space museum x rayed your bag but didnt care a bit about what was in your pockets. today (but not yesterday) they found our butter knife for making sandwiches in my bag and wanted to take it from me like they do in airports... a butter knife - really? needless to say we left the museum, solved this problem and went back in. at the national archives they xrayed everything and didnt even flinch at the butter knife and my pocket knife but made me check my bag of food in the coat check place. at the Holocaust museum they noticed the butter knife but decided it was as harmless as it looked and let me take everything in. Thomas is still out geocashing or something i think.

reflections

well we have been on the road for almost 7 weeks! this is us a couple of days ago packing the car. we look like ... well vagabonds :) from now on we are generally heading back toward home. we may take detours and whatnot and we may end up staying put somewhere (you never know) but this really is a turning point in our trip.

Austin and I thinking about stuff at the Harvard campus.
a sweet fountain.



there are some wise words written on the walls of this building.
there is a lot of water in DC and Thomas caught a cool reflection off of some of it.

yesterday Austin and I met a guy who was writing his 3rd book i think. one of his other books was about an adventure where he walked across America titled "Walk about America". he asked us what we thought the most important issue currently facing Americans was and i decided that it was freedom of speech. we had a good chat with him and then headed back "home" to our tent which is pitched in Thomas's friends yard. we cooked some dinner and then went to bed.

this morning we got up and cooked again (yay for cooked food!) and then found a church online instead of our usual wandering method. it seems the Lord can use the internet just as well as the path of our subaru :)

the church we visited was good and had a good message. we met a bunch of nice people and two couples took us out to eat! as i write this i am still completely stuffed from lunch. i had chocolate cake and chocolate milk (in addition to other food) which i had been craving for quite some time. we talked for hours about our adventures and got to hear their stories as well. it is really fun to talk to people who have more life experience than we do. a lot of the topics we hit on were really spiritually uplifting and encouraging which is really good for us. another couple overheard our conversations and came over to visit with us. it turns out she had been in the room with Ronald Reagan during the evening of his inauguration! we got to listen to even more awesome stories of other peoples adventures which was really neat. story time is good time :)

i guess this about brings us up to date. tomorrow we are going to see even more museums!

DC shoes

so we have seen a lot of DC lately and all of it has been on foot. friday we walked around for a little over 5 hours and today we walked around for another 10 ish hours. yesterday Austin and mostly saw monuments and stuff while Thomas geocashed.

today we saw the American history museum among other things. the top floors were normal every day museum stuff, stuff we had more or less seen in every museum we have been to so far but the bottom floor was were the cool stuff was kept! they had old steam engines, water wheels, turbines, electric generators, the DARPA grand challenge winner and the motorcycle entry! it was awesome to see the computer rendered images of the roadway and see the final product of a project that i spent some parallel time working on.

after that we saw the natural history museum. they openly admitted that they used dice when determining ages of things ... ok so they didnt but some of it was really contradictory and funny to me, circular logic and the like. on one floor they tell us about global warming and on the other they tell us that the last 30 years have been on a cooling trend. there were some other holes in their story that made me laugh too. we saw the hope diamond and one of the only red diamonds on public display.

early in the morning we got tickets to see the Washington monument from the top and so at 4pm we went up there. we were saddened to find that they had an elevator and we would not get to climb several hundred stairs. it makes it a lot less cool at the top if you just zip up there you know? we waned to see the white house but sadly we didnt know that we had to talk to a congressmen or senator 2-3 months in advance to get a white house tour.

we moved on to the air and space museum where i touched a moon rock!(it was not in my nose) we are going to have to go back to that museum because we didnt finish before it closed :(

hopefully Thomas will find some time to put up more pictures of all the neat stuff we have seen.

All the way from Boston to DC

Too long has passed since our last post. Here's one to hopefully make up for that.

After our day in Boston, as was mentioned, we had a wonderful dinner with my dad at the Wayside Inn, which was full of history and delicious food. Our waitress deserves another special thanks for giving us all those extra treats.

My dad went with us on a whirlwind tour of the Lexington/Concord area and we saw everything from musket demonstrations to the place where Revere, Dawes and Prescott were stopped by the British. We also stopped by the Wayside Inn during the day and saw the chapel and the Grist Mill, where they still make flour. Some of our other stops included Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the Colonial Inn, Harvard, MIT and Walden Pond.

Musket shot.

The Minuteman Monument.

After those quick days, we were on our own again. We made our way toward Springfield, home of the Springfield Armory.

Safety first at the Armory.

That Sam I Am.

After we saw the multitude of guns and history, we saw the Dr. Seuss memorial sculpture garden, (he was born in Springfield) and headed toward DC. We stopped by Ben's relatives in Maryland, (I think I left my scarf there.) and headed into Virginia.

When we last left our heroes...

Well Ben asked me to put up some pictures, so here are some images to convey the previously posted words:

Old Ironsides herself.

The USS Cassin Young.

Paul Revere's house. And Tacoma.

The fog over Boston. Not pictured: the rain from the clouds.

Two Redcoats.

Falcon Punch!

Sunset near Boston.