by Liz
It was an amazing trip. During 30 days, we:
–Covered 6,621 miles (which costs $1,160 in gas, in case you were wondering. Don’t ask me why we took the longest driving trip imaginable during the SUMMER OF THE MONSTER GAS PUMP.)
–Passed through 13 states and 2 countries
–Packed and unpacked 21 times
–Took 1164 photos and a couple hours of video tape
–Visited six national parks or monuments
–Saw a sculpture made of sand, a building made of corn, and a giant peacock made of flowers (but not the World’s Largest Ball of Twine — next trip)
–Took a ride on 4 boats, 1 raft, and 1 inflatable kayak
–Hiked to 10,000 feet
–Slurped down the best oysters in the world on Orcas Island, Washington (yes, I said the world)
–Participated in 1 awesome talent show
–Played in snow in the middle of summer
–Slid down 3 super water slides, soaked in 2 natural hot springs, and dunked in 9 extremely frigid bodies of water (the coldest–The Puget Sound off Orcas Island–Ouch!)
–Traveled with 1 computer, 1 PSP electronic game player, 1 dvd player, 1 video camera, 2 still cameras, 4 ipods, 4 cell phones, and all accompanying chargers
–Saw 32 exciting species of wildlife (favorites: Orca whale, bald eagle, black bear, baby fox)
–Consumed 138 peanut butter crackers (Walker), 112 chocolate chip cookies (Graham), 24 Starbucks Frappacinos (Liz), and 3,265 cups of coffee (Tim). Ok, I exaggerated Tim’s … a little.
–Watched way too many episodes of the Gilmore Girls to admit
–Visited with some great friends
–Saw the license plates of Washington, D.C., 5 Canadian provinces, and 49 states (damn that Rhode Island)
The drive home was a little hard: 3,000 miles from Tuesday, July 15, to Saturday, July 19. We knew we were back when we opened the car door in St. Louis, MO, at 10 p.m. on Friday night and it was 86 degrees with 95 percent humidity. “Welcome Back to the South.”
But it’s all good. We’re glad to be back in our own beds, making coffee in our own coffee maker, and having our own dog Abby once again barking in our ears.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
–T.S. Eliot
Shore fog greets us as we approach the mainland on the Orcas Island ferry Tuesday
By Liz
Second day of driving since leaving Orcas Island, WA, and I’m beginning to think what actually happened is that we stumbled into a Twilight Zone episode. We have been driving all day and we haven’t made it off the moon yet. In fact, didn’t we pass this same exit 3 hours ago? The one with the sign that says “Next Services 128 miles”? Theoretically we are supposed to make it to Custer, South Dakota, by midnight tonight, but we’ll see. Luckily for us we didn’t pack any handguns.
We have run across occasional spots of interest: There was the Wild Horse Monument somewhere in Washington. It is a series of metal horse sculptures sitting at the top of a tall butte in the middle of 300 miles of other buttes. Of course, it might have been a hallucination – not sure about that. We also passed signs for the Testicle Festival coming up at the end of July. We may see about Liz&Tim performing there next year. I bet it’s a ball.
Oh, and I have just one word for the truck stops around here: Taxidermy.
Actually, I’m just joking around – the scenery out here is beautiful. There’s just way too much of it.
By Liz
They have a wonderful Farmer’s Market here in Eastsound on Saturdays. Actually, it’s way more than a Farmer’s Market. In addition to beautiful organic flowers and luscious locally grown vegetables, they have crafts, “happy” meats, musicians, and cooked foods like grilled oysters and homemade sausage. I bought some locally made chai tea, which was lovely.
We are into the last stretch of our stay here on the beautiful island of Orcas. That’s a bit sad, especially considering the fact that we have five long days in the car ahead of us. But it’s all rich, isn’t it?
By Liz
If you dislike crowds, I highly recommend Canada for the Fourth of July. Hardly anyone was at the lovely Minter Gardens in Chilliwack, B.C. It’s a lush, 32-acre park of themed gardens. Think “Alice in Wonderland” with a few gnomes thrown in.
Walker had an opinion about the roses.
The tourist town of Harrison Hot Springs was also not too crowded. If you visit in September you can watch the world championship sand sculpture tournament, www.harrisand.org. We got to see last year’s entries:
If they will let us out of the country, we head to Orcas Island, WA today for a week or so with our friends Wendy, Maggie, Emma, Paul, and Liz. Yippee!
We’re in Abbotsford, British Columbia today. Tim tried to call work, seeing as it’s a Friday and we’ve stopped for a moment, but he forgot it’s the Fourth of July in the U.S. and everyone’s out eating BBQ. Time and date tend to drift away when you travel.
Last post was from Fairmont Hot Springs near Butte, MT. We had a long drive through the rest of Montana, the top smokestack of Idaho and into Washginton in the direction of N. Cascades National Park. The terrain for a good bit of the way was picturesque open green valleys dotted with cattle and sheep surrounded by hills or mountains. Then it became wave upon wave of green hills with nothing to break it up — striking in its on way.
Finally we got to the desert, passing by the Grand Coulee Dam while listhening to the audio of “Alex and the Ironic Gentleman,” a bizarre but very entertaining book. I recommend the audio version because of the great voices by the person who read it.
Grand Coulee Dam
We didn’t quite make it all the way to the park, stopping instead at Pearrygin Lake State Park — clearly a summer hangout for local families. We watched a raucous game of miniature marshmallow war (blown through plastic pipes), swam in the lake, and woke to the marmots outside our tent.
Yesterday, we got coffee at a great little town called Winthrop on the outskirts of the North Cascades National Park — a little tourist town with a great western personality. I liked it. Then on to more breathtaking vistas (OMG! as Graham would say), stopping for a little hike through the moss- and fern-filled forest and to eat a picnic. I would have gladly stayed in the campground there which is the loveliest one I think I’ve ever seen, but we had promised the kids a hotel night and actually it was raining. Plus a bed didn’t sound so bad. So … on to Canada.
Overlooking Ross Lake in the Cascades
Entering Canada was no big deal but there appeared to be a long line to get back in the U.S. Perhaps we will stay here, eh? We stopped in Abbotsford, just over the border. Tim says it is the Richmond, KY, of Canada, which is to say — not much to write home about, like I am doing at this moment — but it is a central location to some interesting sites, which we plan to explore today. Plus it has a very cool water slide in the pool.
– Liz
It has been an incredible few days in Grand Teton National Park, then Yellowstone. The wil
dlife, the gorgeouse fields of wildflowers, the cool air, the scenery — like I said — Wow! I loved walking along the boardwalks over the mineral springs in Yellowstone because I remember doing that as a kid. And I loved sitting in our Grand Teton camp site at dusk watching a gray fox walk right by me. (He gave me “the look.”)
I loved swimming in cold mountain water, watching a bald eagle fly over our heads as we rode a raft down the Snake River, and seeing my kids get so excited about the natural world.
And of course there is the wildlife. 
Here is our list to the best of my recollection: gray fox & bald eagle (mentioned above), baby red foxes, elk, mule deer & fawn, moose with calf, Canada geese, sandhill crane, osprey, magpie, raven, pronghorn antelope, bison, chipmunk, pika, marmot, grizzly bear, black bear, oodles of birds and ducks, and some plain old white geese hanging around looking for a handout at the hot springs motel we are staying at in Butte, Mt. tonight.
Here are three things I learned from Colt, the young man in the polaroid sunglasses who guided us down the Snake River: Sagebrush is the cowboy cologne. “Grand Tetons” is French for “Big Breasts.” And Canada geese do not come from Canada. They’re named for some guy named Mr. Canada — isn’t that a rip off?
I’m having a grand ol’ time,
Liz
p.s. We are doing pretty well with the license plate game. Only Alaska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts to go. Walker wants me to mention that he found the Hawaii plate!
The air is different here — lighter — and the sky is huge. I feel like I could swim through the sky. And the luscious stars at night. The curl has gone out of my hair, and Graham’s, but that’s okay. It’s the tundra-do. Rocky Mt National Park was amazing, and you can read all about that from my fellow adventurers below. When we left the park we drove through some of the emptiest landscape I have ever seen. Not a tree or a building or a cow as far as the eye could see — just rolling hills covered in scrub. It felt a little like swimming in an ocean of desert.
We spent the night in the middle of that ocean — Rock Something, WY, and did laundry and swam laps in the Holiday Inn pool. Today the Tetons and then Yellowstone.
More later,
lizard
Kansas stretched on and on today, starting with rolling hills in the east and gradually giving way to flat plains stretching in every direction. We could see the rain coming for miles and finally hit thunder storms about the time we passed into Colorado.
We used the personal electronic devices a lot today: DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, PSP video games, books on tape (Nevada Barr with a very disturbing Anna Pigeon ranger mystery set in Rocky Mountain National Park, where we will camp tomorrow, if all goes well). I listened to a podcast about improving family communication.
– Tim
High action on the high plains
1. All systems go.
2. Ice cream break in western Kansas
3. Ever present fast food and grain elevators in western Kansas.
Liz here – Okay, we’ve seen a lot of asphalt fly by and spent a lot of time digging around in the bottom of the van for the right plug-ins for this and that, but we’ve also seen how beautiful our country is and how varied it can be from mile to mile. I love the long stretches of grass and plains and the big big sky. The clouds look like live animals.
The trips I took out west with my family in the 1960s keep coming to mind. Tonight we are in a motel in Denver that I think we stayed in when I was about 9. It looks about that old. Anyway, tomorrow we head into Rocky Mountain National Park for hiking and camping so we will likely be away from the internet for a few days. Yay!
–Liz