LAKE POWELL FTW

So we've been at Lake Powell for the past few days, and it is totally the man. You get the whole desert atmosphere, but when things start getting too hot, you get to jump in the water. This place is absolutely gorgeous. There's 96 canyons, (one of which we camped in last night)and it is also home to the world's largest natural arch, Rainbow Bridge. According to some of the locals, they say that it's wide enough to fly a Boeing 747 though it. I'd say you'd need to be one hell of a pilot to do that, but it sure is huge! Here's a picture I took of it:



Still, that picture doesn't do it justice. Also, while it is somewhat on topic, I've decided that I will only be posting a few pictures before the end of the trip. With the amount of traveling and the course load for the summer class, not to mention all the crazy things we've been doing, I just wont really have the time to be going through all of the pictures I've taken. I've tried editing and organizing on the road, and its slightly nauseating. I will, however, post a select few such as the above picture for your viewing pleasure. Other than that, just bear with me haha.

While we've been staying at Lake Powell, we decided that it would be a good idea to day trip back out to the Grand Canyon. On our way to the lake, we saw the South rim, which is pretty spectacular, but it is extremely touristy. With that in mind, we headed to the more secluded North rim, and managed to arrive just in time to see a storm tearing through the canyon. It's really a sight to behold: you can just see the walls of rain pouring down and lightning was everywhere. Speaking of, I nearly got struck by lightning. I was standing on the highest point around, some 8500 feet above sea level, and Mike made the comment that my hair was standing straight up. I thought he was just making fun of me because the wind was blowing, so I ran my fingers through my hair to be like, "Yeah man, this wind is something else", but it turned into something more along the lines of " Yeah man, this wind is...(bzzzzzz bzzzt bzzzt) HOLY CRAP IM GONNA DIE!" I dont think I've ever jumped down from somewhere so fast in my life haha. At the time it was absolutely terrifying, but looking back at it, it was totally worth it to be up there. It was like being on top of the world.

PROGRESS:



Anyways, we're heading to Zion National Park and then Arches shortly thereafter. I'm super excited and I cant wait.

It's been a loooong few days, but Vegas, right?

Ok so I know its been a while since Ive done this, but Ive been a bit on the busy side and wifi/adequate cell reception has been pretty elusive up to this point.

Joshua Tree was absolutely awesome! There was a little bit of a bee problem when we arrived at the entrance, as they are so desperate for water that they infest anything that even remotely has some water, including us (you should have seen the bubbler there!). After we got past the bees, we headed into the park and shortly ventured off into the wilderness onto some really cool looking rocks that have been shaped by years and years of high winds. There was a huge rock arch there that Mike Galvez and I took turns sitting on; it was a little too high up for Mike Gilbert's liking, though.

When we got back on the road, thats when Joshua Tree really started to shine in all its glory. There were just tons and tons of Joshua Trees in all sorts of bizarre and contorted shapes. We also saw one that was absolutely huge dubbed "The Tree of Life".

Now, we had been kind of challenged by Bjorn to try our hand at a U2-esque Joshua Tree shot, so obviously I made the three of us make it happen. Here's the final product:



I think it came out fairly well, and yes, there are plenty more pictures as soon as we get around to posting them all.

Also, we were unable to get to Great Sequoia/Kings Canyon and Yosemite as the roads going into them were on the other side of the mountains and would have taken about at least 5 hours more of driving to get there. We did get to see the other side of it, though, and that was kind of cool.

From there we went into Death Valley. Its hot there. Really hot. And for about 30 miles, there are no paved roads, just some dirt paths. It really is quite an experience driving through. It's so open and surrounded by mountains. Oh and its still really hot. But we did see some awesome dunes and other formations.

After we emerged out of Death Valley, we decided to head into the Nevada desert, as all of the land along the highways there is public property (read: free camping). So we spent some time there and burned up a little under the desert sun.

Since then, we've made it to Las Vegas, and let me tell you, there's nothing quite like it.

Heres our progress update up to this point:



So now that Ive ranted about the past week (or at least thats what it seems like anyways), I'll leave you with this and hopefully you'll hear back from me soon.

Our wolf pack has grown by one...

Quick update here:

So we've spent the last five nights in Valley Ford, CA (just outside Santa Rosa) working, making some extra money, and just kind of enjoying our lives and taking in the world as it is out here. We day tripped out to San Francisco and explore the whole Haight-Ashbury scene, which is one of the most laid back places ever, and then checked out the sunset from twin peaks. We do have some pictures of it, but I lost my SD card, (wicked bummer) and Mike has yet to go through his pictures, so it might be a while. Even though we have been enjoying ourselves, trying to keep up with the work flow is pretty stressful. Not having wi-fi available for about 15 miles really makes it so you HAVE to be doing at least some work while you're out on the town. Anyways, we're making due with how we have to get things done.

As you may or may not be aware of, we have inducted another member to our party: Mike Gilbert accepted our invitation to join us around the country, and will be an invaluable addition to our production/post-production team. Though the car is prettayyyy prettayyyy packed now...

PROGRESS:



With that, we'll be in LA for two nights, including tonight, and then its off to Joshua Tree and Yosemite!

OBLIGATORY GO CELTICS YELL

Sebastopol!

So we're hanging out in Valley Ford, CA (near to Santa Rosa) with our good friend Mike Gilbert, when we're asked if we want to spend another day here and go to a wedding thats in Sebastopol (a town that the Grateful Dead used to frequent, aka hippie central for the area). Not wanting to pass up an occasion offering us free food and beer, we quickly accepted the invitation and when morning came, we headed over. Mike Gilbert was on "camera duty" which essentially meant pointing a little sony handycam at the bride and groom and letting it go, but we decided we could help out and take a few pictures and video, too. It was a really cool, very causal wedding that involved the Bride and Groom riding off into the the city on a little Honda Trail 70 minibike. Excuse me for calling New England a little stiff and uptight, but I dont think you'll see something like this anywhere around there. I'm really liking the atmosphere around here; everyone is wayyyyy more relaxed and laid back, and most definitely more hospitable. Massachusetts is like "the land of no eye-contact" compared to around here. I really could get used to living here haha.

CALIFORNIA BABY

All I can say is that Rt.101 is freakin' AWESOME. There's sooo many cliffs and awesome rock formations that you can just go out and climb on. And get totally soaked. Or at least thats what we did. I'll try and work on uploading a clip of that to here, but I need a free video editing program to be able to cut these clips down to size and trim them up. I just found out that I can use photoshop to edit video, but it only lets me edit the whole clip, I cant mark in or out and apply changes to only certain sections. Or if you can, I don't know how to do that.

Anyways, Mike and I have really been enjoying the Pacific, but we aren't enjoying the rates for any type of lodging. So we spent last night in the car on the side of the road. We're under the assumption that doing so is most likely totally illegal, but either way we did it and made a funny little short out of it. Like I said, I'll try and upload those clips soon so you can be free to have some laughs at our expense.

So with that, I'll give you the progress update and from there, I'm going to try and make some sort of editing happen.



So as you can see, we're in Northern California. Tomorrow is Redwood National and then down to the San Fran area where we'll be staying with one of our friends from Bridgewater, Mike Gilbert, to whom we are eternally grateful for the free place to stay and time with familiar people.

Where's an Ewok when you want one?

Alright. It really needs to stop raining. The whole “everything is wet all the time” thing is getting old fast. It seems like we’re constantly driving into another storm. It sucks. A lot. We thought we were going to have a day of no rain in Seattle, which would have been kind of ironic, but it lived up to its name anyways. The good news, however, is that we hit the west coast for real today and are on the Pacific Coastal Highway (101). This means that there should be fewer storms that are stuck in between mountains for us to drive through and hopefully less rain altogether.

Now that I’m done griping about the weather, here’s the lowdown on Olympic National Park: its holy crap awesome! Its like a different planet out here; moss grows on EVERYTHING and really gives the place an extraterrestrial look and feel. Im sure Mike already made this observation, but whenever I’m walking around here, I half expect a fuzzy little Ewok to be just hanging out behind a tree. The park really feels like I’m on set for the Battle of Endor. The trees are huge; there are vines, all sorts of little creatures around and plenty of fallen trees to climb. I just cant get over how cool this place is! I went in expecting big mountains and that’s about it. But now, I’d love to come back to have a chance to explore it a bit more thoroughly. Based off of this, I cant wait to see what Redwood National will look like!

Anyways, as I said before, we’re on Pacific 101, so here’s the progress update:



We’ve still got a loooong way to go before we’re done with 101, and to give you an idea of distance, we’ll be on it until we get to San Francisco. So yeah, it’s going to be a long haul. The next stop for us will be somewhere just over the Washington/Oregon line at a campsite somewhere along the coast, ideally Point Lookout as it would minimize tomorrow's driving time. I’ll try to keep you posted, and until then, I’m going to eat some food.

HOLY TOLEDO IM TIRED

All this driving is really starting to catch up with me. Currently, I just arrived in Seattle, WA, and I'm already thinking about hitting the bar and just sitting back and relaxing. Or maybe thats just the west coast getting to me. Unfortunately for me, I have some work to do first. Mike does have the Celtics on as a bit of a distraction. I' not a basketball fanatic or particularly even a fan, but I've got to say, it is pretty funny listening to the commentary from the west coast's point of view. The announcers keep putting down Boston as, obviously, the west coast is going to favor LA. They keep saying that they expect the Lakers to sweep the series, and any little mishap that the Celtics might endure is pointed out and sharply criticized. It's amusing. But what is even funnier is how whomever is on censor duty is pretty terrible at their job. You see someone miss a shot, followed by some obscenities, and then two seconds later you only hear silence. Someone needs to work on their timing. HA! and right before the commercial break, I just heard Rondo say "MYYYY NIGGGAAAA". I mean, its hilarious, but I doubt censor-guy will have his job after this game.

So now that the game is taking most of my attention, I'm going to wrap this up. I'll be in Seattle for the next day and a half and I'll keep you posted with any updates. Oh, an before I forget, here's my progress up to this point (we've gone just over 3,000 miles. Time for oil change #1 haha):

Some like it country...I guess.

When you're in Montana, pretty much everywhere you look you can see a mountain. Also, every radio station you tune to is pretty much country.

Mike and I were driving around today to grab some food and figured we should check out the local radio stations while we were out. I hit the scan button and BAM! Four country stations in a row. We laughed it off, thinking how cliche it was, and then realized that there were only about 8 stations available and two were talk radio, one was a variety show, and the other was static. So we started listening to the variety show which had quite the interesting lineup (Flock of Seagulls to Sexy Back to some Katy Perry song), only to go back to a country-ish song. Needless to say, the radio was switched off at that point.

Today has been one of those days where you just kind of take it easy and try to catch up on some work between watching various Jim Carrey and Rob Schneider movies. So with that, I'll give you the daily progress update, and then its back to Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls.



Until next time...

HAVE YOU DUG WALL DRUG?

So Yellowstone is pretty awesome, but I really wish I could’ve come on a few better days. I still really enjoyed the park, (the landscape and vistas are breathtaking), but it has been raining for the past 3 days and the clouds/continuous haze have been obstructing the views and everything is just mushy. But we did get to see a whoooooole bunch of bison, elk, and deer, so that was cool. They just come up to the road, which makes it extremely tempting to touch them, but I decided my life was slightly more valuable to me than possibly getting gored to death on video. I would really love to come back sometime soon, preferably not in June when snow is still on the ground, so that I can fully appreciate the beauty Yellowstone has to offer. Oh, on a side note, if you want WiFi or even cellular service, you’d best be ready to leave the park. In regards to that, I obviously haven’t been able to update this on the daily basis I was hoping for. And my mom is probably pretty freaked out that I haven’t gotten in contact with her in a few days…I’m not too concerned because, hey, I’m still alive.

Now that we’ve been pretty much off the grid for the past couple of days, we have no idea as to what has been going on in the media other than some local weather updates. However, on the way here, Mike and I found the infamous “WALL DRUG” billboards and advertisements to be particularly entertaining.



They start advertising 400 miles in advance in each direction on I-90 and then gradually do more and more as you get closer and closer. They have the most ridiculous ads about dinosaurs, cowboys, and some just really trippy looking ones that don’t even say how far away it is. We began hypothesizing that it was some sort of crazy interpretive billboard art meant for conversation and that WALL DRUG wasn’t a convenience store at all. But we knew it had to be something because we started seeing signs saying, “WALL DRUG Only 29 Minutes Away!” and then eventually, “WALL DRUG NEXT EXIT! Don’t Miss it!” Turns out it’s just this little hole in the wall store that has some novelties and gimmicks to attract tourists. Whatever, I still liked the signs. Oh, and check out our progress:



Anyways, I’m typing this as we’re leaving Yellowstone, and all these mountainous, twisting, winding roads and the constant smell of sulfur is all starting to make me feel a little queasy, so I’m going to stop here. Until later…