August 2008 Archives

It is a beautiful state full of mountains and valleys. But we are staying in the mountains. We are staying in Ketchum and Hailey which are two tourist towns that are incredibly cute. In fact, today was Wagon Days in Ketchum. We were witness to the largest non-motorized parade ever. (I think Bishop, CA also claims the same glory, I guess they have more mules.) In Ketchum, there were all kinds of horses and wagons, mules, donkeys and even miniature horses. The grand finale consisted of at least 20 horses pulling six connected wagons. It was a feat for sure.

At the sandwhich place where Sarah ate an amazing sub, the bud on tap was only a dollar. A dollar.

It would be interesting to visit these places when they are ten feet deep in snow. The mountains we have crossed are breathtaking, but I can only imagine what they must look like covered in snow! Also, I want to learn how to snow skate.

We climbed the tallest summit to date 8701 feet. A motorcycle man slowed down as I, Sarah, was coming up and actually clapped for me when I was 1/4 mile from the top. Glorious!

We have crossed our first dateline. There wasn't a lot of fan fare, but we did take a photo.

Bend, Oregon was amazing. So much so, that we stayed there for almost a week. We took a float down the Deschutes River, attended the Bend Brew Fest, and Sarah got to go mountain biking for the first time. We stayed in Bend initially to wait out a heatwave, and then a storm blew in that brought hail, then we just were having too much fun to leave. Julia joked that we had already established a social life in Bend after only a couple days, and it turned out to be true.

Now, we are in Idaho. We stayed the night in the College of Idaho dorms since we have an RA connection and school isn't in session. We each got our very own dorm room. Last night, our host, Sam, and Sarah wiped the floor on a variation of beer pong called Beirut,  and sent many a frat boy crying to  their mothers.  We are now heading to Boise, and it's over a hundred degrees, literally. Thanks Davey for the sunscreen!

What an adventure. There have been a swirls of tears, blood and laughter on this trip so far. We have camped on front lawns, road close to a century in one day, climbed mountains, eaten hand picked veggies still warm from the sun, crossed bridges and farmland. And we are still in California.

All three of our bikes have suffered a little in the derailer department. We are in Redding learning how to fix them ourselves and taking a rest day to do laundry and redirect our route. Our plan shifted, so we are going to go through more of Oregon than we originally intended.

One thing that we realized is that we have overpacked.

Another neat thing is that Julia met a guy on the plane two weeks ago who works for the Democratic party. He sent us all little flip cameras to interview people across the country about change and the upcoming ellection. It's very exciting talking to people about their feelings on Obama and the US in general. We also get to tape interesting things about the trip. Once I figure out how to post the videos on the web, I will.


Oh, and we are having fun.