California Dreamin’

  We’ve fallen a bit behind on the blogging what with driving over 8,000km and all (that’s about 5,000 miles for our American friends). We’re currently chillin’ in Astoria, Oregon, watching TV and waiting for a pizza to get delivered to our Motel room (when in Rome…). Across the Columbia River from us lies the state of Washington, which will be our last visited on this trip before sliding into Vancouver for a short visit with friends and another short visit with my folks in Sorrento, B.C. Then home, and back to work. Which is starting to feel like an exciting change, actually. We haven’t put up much of anything from our time in California or Oregon, but we will. Starting now, I guess.  

Day: 3 Pocatello to Vegas, baby, Vegas…

It hasn’t slipped our attention that this little blog reboot has occurred without us having explained what this trip is all about. In the rush of packing, cleaning the house, and finishing up last-minute work deadlines, we just didn’t have time to properly explain where we are going, what we’re doing or why. And of course, life on the road has been equally busy. We’ve driven 2900 km since Friday, stopping only for quick snapshots of nearby scenery and to refresh ourselves with fatty fast-food and innumerable road coffees. Yesterday (day 3) was a blur of contrasting scenery and weather. We followed a line of rugged mountains down through Utah, from the freeway hell of Salt Lake City, through to the unbelievably beautiful vistas near Zion National Park and into the northwestern tip of Arizona, before finally hitting the wide-open scrub of the Nevada desert. Last night around dinnertime, we…Continue Reading

Day 2: Driving from Shelby, Montana to Pocatello, Idaho

When you arrive somewhere in the dark you try your best to get a feel for it, but when you look through the window the next morning, it’s amazing how different it actually looks. Chris and I arrived at Shelby, Montana at 1:00 am. It was dark, needless to say. When I pulled open the curtains the next morning, a dry snowless, winter prairie landscape met my eyes. “Montana”, I thought, “Is it a lot like Alberta?” After one hour on the road, it became apparent, no, Montana is nothing like Alberta. The landscape is prairie for the most part, like Alberta, but along Interstate 15 the curving hills glide into magnificant buttes and into angular, rugged mountains which are formed out of a different type of rock than the Canadian Rockies. If it’s not already clear, both Chris and I were blown away with the landscape of Montana. It…Continue Reading