Post-PDX

Apologies for the lack of posting. Funny thing, there aren't any Starbucks in Wyoming.

We left Portland around noon on the 28th. We then headed east to Hood River, OR, to meet up with my aunt (Nancy) and uncle (Greg). The highlight of Hood River (aside from seeing my relatives) was definitely wakeboarding in the Columbia River. That ended badly for me, however, as I sought a bit too much adventure and tried to jump from wake to wake (I'd never wakeboarded before) and ended up wiping out pretty hard. So that made for two water-related injuries in three days.

The morning of the 29th, we woke up pretty early and got on the road to Yellowstone, about 12 hours away. Arriving around 7:00 pm, all the campsites were full so we headed to Rainbow Point, a local park. There was nothing notable about Rainbow Point. Ah, except that it gets much, much colder in northwestern Wyoming than it does in any of the places we had been to beforehand. I found this out the hard way, suffering through a fairly sleepless night.

The next morning, we woke up around 6:30 in order to ensure that we got a campsite for that night. Entering the park around 6:45, we then sat in traffic for an hour. Apparently, the NPS has been showered with Federal stimulus money and has decided to repair all of their roads. Good for them, bad for us. Anyway, we managed to get a site and spent the day driving around the park, seeing the sights. That's one strange thing about Yellowstone, actually: the entire park and many of its most famous attractions are within 200m of the road. So you basically just drive around the park, find a place for your car, walk a bit, and then you're there. It was much different than our camping experiences in all of the other national parks. So...we summitted Mount Washburn, saw the hot springs, walked through the geyser basin, ate at a Bulwinkle's, and then passed out.

Grand Tetons was the next destination, and was, thankfully, only two hours away (probably 45 minutes sans construction). We decided that the best way to spend our day in Tetons was to relax so I set up our hammock so that it hung from two pieces of driftwood on the shore of Jackson Lake and just chilled the day away. It was really fantastic.

Now, we've just left Rocky Mountain National Park, by far the most expensive national park...and we didn't even camp in the park. $29/night! Crazy! For comparison, Yellowstone was $14/night and Petrified Forest was something like $10. But I guess that's supply and demand. Anyway, the Rockies are very beautiful, though not as astonishing after having seen so many incredible places and ecosystems. For instance, we did a 7-8 mile hike from Bear Lake to Glacier Gorge and came up a fairly massive felled tree. By itself, the tree was huge. But relative to a felled Redwood (see above) it was quite small. But the Rockies have the best views from the highway, bar none. Ah, and we stopped in Fort Collins and went to the New Belgium brewery and Coopersmiths, which serves an excellent burger, called the Johnny Cash Ring of Fire Burger. Excellent, by far the best burger I've had on the trip. And I've had about 18. I'll talk more about that later.

And, finally, I am in a Starbucks in Boulder. Denver next, then Buena Vista to visit Mac, then Ruidoso, then Houston on Friday. We'll see if we can be a bit more consistent with updates on the homestretch here.