Winter!

Decided to spend another night in Oregon and headed up Mt Hood to Timberline Lodge. It's a historic hotel at a year round ski resort. The lifts were just closing as Lizzy and I walked into the lodge today in our warm city clothes. Felt a little odd for us as it's almost June!? There's easily 10 feet of snow here, snowy trees and all (I think we're around 5000'). Had a hot tub outside with the bride and groom and some other AK friends. BBQ in the friends rented camper tonight with AK fare - moose, bear, and prawns. Looking forward to it.

Planning to head to North Cascades NP tomorrow in WA and driving hwy 20 as it just opened for the long weekend. Then the long drive to AK begins. Hoping to be in Canada for my bday on the 2nd if only to be in my own country.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Timberline Hwy,,United States

The problem with having a blog is keeping up the blog! We've been slacking on writing on here for awhile so I'll summarize what we've been doing. It's hard to remember details, seems like we've been doing a lot!

We met my cousin Pat in Augusta and had a great time. Pat if you're reading this, thanks again. It was really great to experience life on a ranch and learn about all my family out in Montana. I think Mike was pretty inspired, wouldn't be surprised if he started ranching!

The night after we left Augusta we found a weird and cool little hot spring near Mammoth ski hill called Elkhorn. They had just opened for the season the day we got there, great timing for us! We hung out and camped in the parking lot, hit the hot springs and had a really great time! It was a bit run down, definitely no Fairmont but felt pretty luxurious to us. Little things definitely go a long way when you're living on the road!

We both thought Idaho was amazing and very underrated. It had a lot of great drives through the mountains, tonnes of places to park and ski backcountry, just a lot of recreation areas (not that we did any of them! haha I guess we were there at the wrong time of year). We checked out Craters of the Moon National Monument. We thought the name sounded cool, which was the driving force behind us going there. It definitely wasn't what we were expecting - I don't know, when I heard the name "Craters of the Moon" I was expecting to see a bunch of craters or holes in the ground?! Instead it was a massive lava field... very moon-y? Haha who knows! It was an interesting spot to say the least. We toured around and spent the night camping in a giant wasteland of lava - pretty neat.

We're now in Oregon and we made it out to the coast! Oregon is one of my favourite places, the trees are huge here and everything is really lush! We camped out near the beach for 2 nights and had a blast. We're now in Hood River for the weekend and heading to a wedding tomorrow night. This town is super cute and there are a tonne of brewpubs and wine bars that we're excited to check out! Our hotel faces the Columbia River and we've got an amazing few of the river and Washington state.

Anyhow it's nice to be stationed here for the next few days and have nice showers, do laundry and eat in a restaurant... pretty much be humans again! We'll make sure to take tonnes of pictures while we're here.

Love and miss you all!

Lizzy

Photo time

Lots of travel since our last post and our last internet connection.  We're in Hood River for a wedding through the weekend.  Lizzy will update, I'm sure.  Here's some pics from the last little while.

Mammoth Hot Springs, the north entrance of Yellowstone

Idaho - desert and mountains

Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho - looks just like Hawaii, massive basaltic lava fields

Bonanza City, Idaho

Old gold dredge, Idaho

Yankee Fork Rd., Idaho

Custer Ghost Town, Idaho

Sawtooth Mtns., Idaho

Oregon Coast!

As you can see from Mike's awesome photos, we made it to yellowstone! Pretty interesting way to get there, we drove way out of the way, through Jackson just to get in. Well worth it! It was cool to see Jackson and the park was fabulous. I'm not going to lie, I'm having a really hard time trying to describe yellowstone. It was seriously amazing and everyone should go there if they get the chance. The pictures say the most, so I'll leave it at that!

We're in Montana now, about to meet my cousins in Augusta. My cousin Pat told us to check out a little town called Virginia City. We went down there two days ago and it was like walking on to a set of a western film. All the original old wooden buildings are in tact and the entire town is a heritage site. It was really cool, kind of a ghost town. I guess there was a big gold rush back in the early 1800's. You can see all the mining debris along the river which is pretty interesting.

Anyhow Montana is beautiful and I think my new boots will fit in nicely! Over and out.
LD

More Photos

I'm going to throw some photos up and let Lizzy do the talking.  In short, we finally got into Yellowstone and it was great - though still winter.  Saw Old Faithful erupt 3 times, saw lots of animals including a grizzly bear.  Had good campsites, good meals, good beer, etc....  I took 300 photos in 2 days and I was holding back.  Now we're exploring Montana.

Photo time:

Lizzy and I at Jackson Hole

Teton National Park

Yellowstone

Old Faithful!

Upper Falls

Jackson, WY

Heading to Yellowstone the long way, in Jackson WY.  Been here before, love it.  Good bars, great scenery.  Must eat pizza.  Anyway, here's a few pics from the last little bit.

Devil's Tower, WY

Crossing the Big Horn Mtns, up to 9000'!

Face lift from Cody, WY.  Needed protection from pesky animals on highway.  Ramming speed!

U.S. Hwy 212 - beautiful, but all for naught.  Had to turn around due to snow.

Turning around due to snow, 1 mile passed the 'CLOSED ROAD' sign.  Lizzy didn't like taking the trailer off on a sloped icy road so we could turn around.

This guy hung out at our campsite outside Cody, WY.  Blocking me from the toilet.

View from campsite, it was free.  2 nights here.

Lots of snow on the Tetons!  This pass took us up to 9700'  - the big V8 was hating the trailer.  It was -1C and 8+ feet of snow.

The Grand Tetons!  From Elk Flats near Jackson, WY.

The Yellowstone Mission

The past couple of days have been pretty crazy! After leaving the KOA in Cody on Thursday we were all excited to get on a beautiful road that took us out to the mountains, towards Yellowstone. At the first scenic stop we made, we got out of the car to take some pictures, so excited about what was ahead of us. Suddenly a little old man pulls up beside us in a golf cart and tells us to hop on and come to the visitor centre, oh and Yellowstone's closed so you better not be driving there. Mike "you're kidding right", little old man "who are you kidding son". This went back and forth for a bit, and the conversation left us wondering who this little old man was, and what on earth he was talking about. We kept our mission on course and drove to the Yellowstone gate to see what was what. "Park closed due to 20 foot deep avalanche". Damn, the old man was right. We turned around and headed back towards Cody. We found the coolest little campground right along a river that was free to stay at. We hiked around, saw bear tracks, got suntanned and chilled out for the rest of the day - ended up being a fantastic night! The next morning we decided to get up and drive to the north east gate and get in the park that way. The drive was unreal, got up to about 9000 feet, meandering through mountains. Driving down one mountain we were stopped by a construction dude. Hey folks, how y'all doin,.. Hope you're not driving to the park, the north east gate is closed.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Mike: "we're driving there anyhow, I don't believe this guy like I didn't believe the little old man".... Fast forward 2 hours and find a Road Closed sign. We knew this was coming but were hopeful that it wouldn't. Next thing we know, we drive passed the road closed sign and looked for places to turn the big rig around with no luck. Middle of the highway, unhooked the trailer and turned our boat around.

Lessons learned:
1. Trust people who know what they're talking about (never undermine a little old man on a golf cart)
2. Make sure you have lots of snacks when you're aimlessly driving through the mountains. Some people get angry without food...!

Altogether it was an interesting day with beautiful roads, plenty of animals and lots of time looking at a map. We ended up going back to our campsite from the previous night after restocking our beer supply.

Good-night!

LD

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Almost Yellowstone

Visited and stayed at Devil's Tower in Wyoming yesterday.  Another sight ticked off my list, it was pretty impressive to see and nice place to camp at for $12. 

Basically hit the road early from there and headed west on I90 going over the Big Horn Mountains on a smaller state highway.  I had no idea you could drive that high.  We hit 9700' from the town below which was at 4300'.  It went from summer down low to full on 10 feet of snow winter 0 degrees up top.  I have photos but the internet here is too slow, so it'll have to be another time.  Needless to say, it was a 10/10 for scenery and turns.  Would be an amazing (cold) motorcycle ride for another time. Right now we have a view of the Tetons, they are some of my favourite mountains.  So things are good.

Heading into Yellowstone today, hopefully for a few days so things might get a little quiet around here as I doubt we'll pick up much wifi.

Mr. Richmore + the sharp needles

mike just gave a pretty thorough account of todays events so i'll keep this short. the motorcycle ride through the needles felt like a deathtrap. it was beautiful and terrifying and super fun all at once. it was like the first time you ride dropzone, you kinda think you might die but it's so exciting and fun and you wanna do it again right after! haha what a day. i definitely won't forget that ride, ever.

i managed to take a few pictures while we were blasting around turns. mike didn't stop so the photos are a bit on the motion-y side:

Rushmore

Ticked off the bucket list.  Was very cool to see something I've seen pics of my whole life.  We pulled into another KOA (much nicer than last nights in Rapid City - only about 30 miles from here) today about 6 miles from Mt Rushmore, took out my motorcycle and rode the Needles Highway.  Hands down the best motorcycle ride I've ever done, lots of super sharp turns (think New Zealand), and unreal scenery the whole way (b/w 4000-5300' elv).  Several narrow one way tunnels through the granite were fun.  Having Lizzy on the pillion was bittersweet - bitter because I had to be safe, and sweet because I had to be safe.

Off to Sturgis and Deadwood, SD tomorrow and then hoping to end the day in/around Devil's Tower in WY.  Then we'll be doing a longer drive across the state to get to Yellowstone where I hope we'll spend a lot of time being geyser/geology nerds etc... n

LD live from SD!

South Dakota is insanely hot. I think its flip flop season now, time to ditch the wallabees and socks! I'm writing this blog from Rapid City, South Dakota at the KOA, outside at our campsite, on a picnic table, with an Arnold Palmer. Why are these drinks not everywhere in Canada? So amazing!
What beats a cold drink on a hot day?!

The drives we did both today and yesterday have been beautiful. Yesterday we crossed along the I-90 briefly then decided to take a more interesting route up to Pierre. For anyone watching our map you might be aware of our random route-navigating.. Definitely been interesting and far from boring! The route to Pierre was vast and barren. The type of drive you would hate to get a flat tire on. Ranches stretched far and the landscape was savannah-like, a lot different from the ONT! After spotting hundreds of cows along the way, we stopped and got some great beef and had homemade burgers. Sorry to any vegetarians reading this! Haha but we are in cattle country. We ended the day at a state park, filled with tones of RVers. It's amazing to see some people's setup. One man we saw was building a deck around his RV, I think he's an experienced RVer. Anyhow we got our bicycles out and rode around the state park for a bit. It was so nice to use our legs and I'm loving the new bike!

The drive through the Badlands today were bad..ass! So large and hard to comprehend. It looked like a back-drop you'd see at a ride at Disney world. I guess that's where they get their inspiration from..!

My Palmer is almost gone and I think I might have gotten my first sunburn of the season. That's a sign for me to end this blog!

It's been a great trip so far and we're looking forward to Mt. Rushmore tomorrow.

Happy mothers day to my mom and to Judy! Hope it was wonderful!
Xoxo



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

...and some photos

Tahquamenon Falls, MI

Lake Superior, MI

Sioux Falls, SD

Getting hot and buggy in SD

Fort Pierre National Grassland, SD

Badlands National Park, SD - I picked up some western duds for the occasion