In LA! All it took was one month and 6500 miles.

Ok boys and girls, we have a lot to cover. Sorry for the absence but it turns out that the west coast is not the best coast for wireless internet access. We will start from Bend, OR.
So, for those that have been wondering, Longboard Louie's was fantastic! Great food, great prices and cheap beer. Everything that you want in a place that includes outdoor picnic table seating. We loved Bend and found it hard to leave. Kathy had gone to school there as a teen and decided to visit her old school. We spent a few hours there and it was a blast! Kathy and her old teacher swapped stories and it was just a classic friendly atmosphere that made a great afternoon.
Before leaving Bend we decided that to summit Smith Rock. Not quite a mountain but, hey, it was still a 1000 foot vertical climb. The view was beautiful and it couldn't have been hotter. We started out at high noon and it was like 95 degrees. (We love to do the most difficult hikes during the hottest time of the day, sheesh)


Well worth the sweat and tears to see the view. After all this we finally decided it was time to move on. So we headed South.
We decided that our next stop would be Crater Lake
National Park. It's in southern central Oregon. Glacier National Park left me speechless but Crater Lake blew my mind.



It's the deepest lake in the country and the fifth deepest in the world. It also holds one of the world records for clarity. You can see 144 feet down! The water is bluer than anything you have ever seen and is cleaner than tap water. Anyone that knows me can probably guess that I had to swim in it. There was a great jumping rock that was about twenty feet high. (hey! Kathy jumped too!)We spent three days at Crater Lake but easily could've spent more.







But we had to press on. So it was on to Medford, OR.
Kathy's Mom has a friend in Medford that she has known for years. So naturally we had to stop and say hello. She owns and operates a Wild Birds Unlimited and was very cool. She even hooked us up with a free minocular that has come in very handy. Since she was a local Oregonian I decided to run our proposed travel route past her.
Do you guys remember the family that got stuck in the mountains of Oregon and the father died of exposure looking for help? It was a terrible story. Well that same trail was the one I had planned to take over to the coast. She strongly advised against it. I'm a bit stubborn and decided that since we were stocked on food and water we were still going that way. It turned out to be 80 miles of extremely windy one lane road. So after a few hours of white knuckle mountain driving we made it to the coast. We decided to spend one more night in Oregon at a campground by the ocean. The next morning we set out to Northern California!
We headed across the California line and started down the 101. What a beautiful coastline. The people all seemed very nice and we found the craziest gift shop/museum. It was made out of an old retired boat.


The main deck had a normal gift shop and the lower portion was a museum. Picture all the makings of a horror film. The boat was old and musty. There were very few people in the gift shop and no one except us dared to venture down into the free museum. To get to it we had to descend a very steep very narrow flight of stairs. That's when we realized that this was no ordinary place. It had whale eyes, a whale fetuses, and snakes in jars on shelves. All kinds of stuffed dead animals and was spread out all over the place. Each staircase we descended, every room we entered contained more oddities than either of us can remember. In one room there were five mannequins dressed as pirates and a few as gypsies. The creepy part was that someone had taken the time to hand paint all of their eyes and it felt like they were staring us down. We went further and found bones and skulls neatly arranged on shelves all labeled with yellowing old paper. We ended the tour by finding lots of World War I & II items. Full Nazi and US military outfits and flags and lots of gruesome war photographs. It actually turned out to be pretty impressive seeing it was free, but it was still creepy being alone down there.
We soon came upon the Redwoods National Forest. What can I say, they were big! We found a cool campground in an area called the Avenue of the Giants.

Our site had this really neat hollowed out tree stump that stood 10 ft high and at one point must have been 15 ft wide. We were fairly impressed with our drive to the campsite but there wasn't much to do except hike. To tell you the truth we were ready for a city. We headed out the next morning with San Francisco as our next stop.
Since we have been camping for so long we thought that we deserved a little break and checked ourselves into a hotel for three nights. Furthermore, where would one find camping in SF? My (Josh's) cheap-ness won out and we stayed at the barebones Motel 6 by the airport. It was a little outside of the city. It didn't have an alarm clock or anything on the walls. It may have been under giant powerlines that crackled at night. It was cheap, pretty clean and had free parking but no internet. It didn't matter much since we found that SF has one of the best public transit systems ever! We did it all. We spent 10-12 hours a day walking through the city and riding the bus all over.





We were blown away by the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and had dinner at Fisherman's Wharf. We stopped to watch a street magician and Josh got into a long conversation with him about how we started. He mainly began performing because he could do magic and he was homeless. Seven years later he had traveled all over and was doing pretty good. We also had some of the best sushi ever! The only thing that we couldn't do was go to Alcatraz. The tour ended up being booked a week out in advance. We figured it would just be a reason to come back. Finally the time came that I think we wore out our welcome. The reason I say this is that we didn't so much choose to leave SF as we were run out of town by a large colony of ants.

That's right, ants. Unknown to us the three days we ran around SF there was an ant army of engineers that had taken the one single leaf that was barely touching our car and created a bridge for themselves. They took over the engine compartment, driver's side door and center console by the time we found then. In the first few minutes of the attack hundreds were lost on the ants side and I sufffered serious post traumatic stress. I took back the engine compartment with a bottle of Deep Woods Off bug repellant. The fight lasted days and know as I write this I think we have won. Of course I was compelled to turn to chemical means to achieve victory. (i.e. we bought ant motels)
After a wonderful weekend we headed south to see the Hearst Castle. That was really cool. I could have toured the place for days. The thoroughness and opulence of the place is unbelievable.



Even the rain gutters were detailed with swirls and curlicues. We camped near by in one of the most decrepit sites we've been in yet. The California stars made up for it. We were only about 250 miles outside of LA. We had planned on getting there over two days later but we figured our time is running out. So we headed out and and did a hard day of driving. We ended up getting into LA around 8pm and (thankfully) were not greeted with notorious LA traffic. We met up with a few of my good friends that had moved out here from Michigan, Nick and Linnea. They were generous enough to let us sleep in the living room for a few days. Nick even called in sick to work and showed us around. For those of you that know Nick this was amazing considering it was the first time in like five years he's called in. We skipped most of the stereotypical LA sights, such as the walk of fame and the Chinese theatre. No tour of the star's homes for us. Instead we went hiking to an abandoned commune site, complete with empty buildings and amazing graffiti.



One of the days Jenn, Nick and Linnea's roommate, took us surfing. Josh was brave enough however I was not. We spent our time mainly hanging out and eating like kings.
Soon we'll be heading out to Joshua Tree National Park and back to camping and driving. Being in San Francisco and LA for about a week has been a nice respite from the grind of the road but it's about time we began our final journey home. Tomorrow we begin heading East for the first time.