Here is a map of where we think we might want to go: (click to enlarge)
If you are just checking in, here is a quick rehash of
WHERE WE'VE BEEN
(most photos courtesy of Amber)
last week of March: Had a great send-off from our friends in the steel city including many drinks, a home-cooked dinner, and a free (for us!) Kate Nash show. She rocked! Before hitting the road, we stopped off in Warren, PA to visit Rachel's family, then drove 1,500 miles through New England stopping in New Hampshire and Maine before crossing the border to Canada.
April: Nova Scotia
We roughed it in a seaside cabin at the end of the road, like really, as far as you can drive on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, that is where our cabin was. No one lived out there except monks and people who like quiet. We loved it. We had no electricity so we read, wrote, and listened to CBC radio late into the night (read: 9pm). When the winds weren't howling, we took animal tracking walks and stared at the ocean until we had it memorized.
May: New England
We stopped a night in Halifax before leaving Nova Scotia. It was sad to say farewell to the CBC radio station we had become addicted to as we crossed back into the United States.
We were thrust head-first into WWOOFing at a goat farm in Maine. But we discovered we like goats, dwarf goats.
We took a mini-vacation in the Hudson Valley where we stayed on a farm that isn't really a farm yet, so we mostly read and tried to start jogging.
The next week we were in the Finger Lakes working on an apple orchard and sleeping in a greenhouse. If you work on an apple orchard that is also a start-up hard cidery, then you are "industry" when you go to wineries to sample wines. Tasting is free and wines are discounted. It was a good week.
June: Ohio, Home again, Midwest
We volunteered at the Nelsonville Music Festival in Ohio. We had to work during Cat Power, but we saw Sharon Van Etten, and the Mavis Staples for the 15 minutes she played before getting rained out. We camped next to some great people including our Pgh roommate, Melissa. She and her parents gave us a tour of Athens, Ohio including drinks, lunch, and more drinks!
After the festival, we pit-stopped in Pittsburgh for a few days and enjoyed being in our city as vacationers. We biked everywhere, had an impromtu party on our patio, hugged our rommies, and saw Metric and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It was both great and weird to be home, and much more difficult to leave the second time, because we had to leave our dog behind for the next few months.
Rachel cried most of the way to Stockbridge, Michigan, where we stayed with Suzie, a motorcycle enthusiast who was a feminist before it was cool to be a feminist. You should know that the Stockbridge Diner has the best biscuit either of us has ever eaten hands down.
Next up, Chicago where we rode our bikes along the lake, visited friends, and went to Pride. We ordered deep dish pizza which is actually pizza filled up with cheese! Woah.
After Chi Town, we camped in Wisconsin for a few nights at a camp ground that saddled a natural marsh land and a great lakes beach.
Fear of an impending hail storm cut our camping trip short, but on the upside, we tried couch surfing for the first, and second time in the homes of generous midwesterners in Fond du Lac and then Eu Claire. They fed us well.
Speeding through the midwest, we couch surfed the Twin Cities a few nights, enjoyed our second Pride Fest of the season, camped a couple nights in Iowa, then bumped into Rachel's cousin randomly on the streets of Old Town Omaha, Nebraska. We spent the one night in a tiny house in Omaha.
July: COLORADO
We spent nearly the entire month in Colorado. Starting with a long weekend in Denver where we biked, ate cake (Rachel's birthday), and planned a camping adventure through the national forest lands of the Front Range. Leaving the city we headed west on I70 toward the mountains. We camped at the base of the ski slopes in Dillon/Frisco, hiked up to a mountain lake and camped next to another, equally beautiful mountain lake in Breckenridge.
We camped near Aspen, where the trees dwarfed our tent and all the bear warnings kept us up at night.
We spent a 90 degree day baking and soaking at Strawberry Hot Springs, then headed back east to Fort Collins. We spent three luxurious weeks pretending we lived in a quiet little neighborhood of Fort Collins.
We took day trips to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Poudre Canyon/Red Feather Lakes, Boulder, and Cheyenne Wyoming.
We biked everywhere, took several day hikes, toured breweries, tea houses, and rodeo chutes. We hid from the heat in dark movie houses enjoying matinees. Finally having access to a kitchen again means we cooked and baked up a storm. We love Colorado and haven't even explored the southwestern region which holds three national parks. We plan to return in the fall to explore that area when it is cooler.
August: Wild West, National Parks, Canada again
We plan to spend this month mostly visiting national parks. Our tour begins in Jackson, Wyoming where we will couch surf and try to con our new friends into hiking and camping with us in Grand Teton National Park. Then we'll head up to Yellowstone. From there we can't decide whether we will detour briefly west to Idaho, or head directly north into Montana stopping off in Cody, Wyoming to sleep on a porch with humming birds. Glacier National Park is our last stop before we are international travelers again. Banff Park, here we come. Dear moms: yes, we bought a huge canister of bear spray.
Our plan for the next few months looks like this:
September: Drive down Oregon coast to northern California. Do a hot spring tour! See Southern California and maybe Mexico.
October: Nevada, Las Vegas, and THE GRAND CANYON, Utah, parts of Arizona.
November: Ever had a goji berry? Neither have we, but we've tentatively reserved a writer's retreat on an organic goji berry farm in New Mexico for the month of November.
December: NO ONE KNOWS!
Don't forget the Hoover Dam as you leave Vegas! :)
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