About 3500 miles and 217 hours.

It really is good to be home.

I’ll put up the last set of pictures from Nashville and driving though GA and FL. We have just over an hour of video from the trip that I’d like to try to edit and make pretty. It’ll be pretty lame to sit through and watch us talk to ourselves .. but there are some pretty cool things on the tapes.

Now to fit both of us in my little condo. Our stuff is still in CA .. it should be leaving sometime this week, we’re keeping our fingers crossed. That gives us plenty of time to get rid of anything left here from the first time I moved out

Looking forward to Tishi’s wedding this weekend, and catching up with all my friends down here.

I expect to start the job hunt this week .. yay.

[Day 10 Photos]

Spending the night in Nashville, TN .. I actually like it here. We have a hotel that overlooks the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ol’ Opry is around the corner and there are tons of little country bars down the street, each featuring a musician trying to make it We had dinner in a neat little place called The Merchants, which was a former pharmacy, and drug company .. had a long history on the back of the menu (check out the website). Headed back for a coffee in Eddie George’s Restaurant here in our hotel. So far I think Nashville might be the nicest city that I’ve visited, super friendly happy people, lots of history. There is lots of construction going on .. so I guess they’re making improvements here as well

Today we spent an hour touring Hot Springs, AR. Pretty neat place. We walked through a park that had springs running under and through it coming out in mini-falls and collecting in pools. Then we visited the National Park’s Visitors Center which was inside one of the old bath houses. There were a bunch of bath houses along ‘bath house row’ that were all functional in the Springs’ hay day. The visitor’s center let you walk around a bath house full of its historical equipment .. it was pretty far out, I think I video taped the walk though, more then anything else on the trip. I was totally fascinated for some strange reason.

There really wasn’t much between Hot Springs and Nashville. We went through Little Rock and Memphis. The signs for Graceland said to take a different highway then we were on, we didn’t really feel like getting off track just for Elvis .. so we just kept going on to Nashville.

Tomorrow we’re going through Atlanta .. don’t really plan anymore stops until Gainesville.

[Day 8 Photos]

[Day 9 Photos]

.. childhood home of Bill Clinton. Looks like we’re doing the Bill Clinton life tour. We already passed through Hope, his birthplace .. the next big town is Little Rock (Of course there are big signs announcing every historical place). Though we did experience the same kind of stuff with Bushland, TX and President George Bush Turnpike in Texas.

We decided to stop in Hot Springs because we were told you can go swimming in the springs, but we have yet to find them. We have a nice little room over looking Lake Hamilton.. kinda neat around here. Though alot of the hotels were filled because of Katrina and Rita evacuees. The check in girl said we were crazy for driving across country now. We spent all of yesterday in Texas with Sean’s family Haven’t taken any pictures lately, there really isn’t much to see in Texas.

Tomorrow we might visit Hot Springs National Park. Then we head towards Tennessee, hit up Memphis and Nashville then we head south to GA and FL. We’re more then half way home!

Woke up in Wichita Falls this morning. Yesterday we did the most driving we have done in a day on this trip. We left Albuquerque about 1pm and checked into the hotel here at about 12:30 am. We picked a Hawthorn Suites, and I’m pretty impressed with this little place. Full kitchen, nice little living room area. Free highspeed and breakfast (but we didn’t get up early enough). Plus they have a laundry on our floor so I can wash our smoky clothes from camping. Maybe it’ll help the car smell better, though I dont think we’ll be so lucky.

Didn’t stop too much yesterday. Once for Sean to buy some firecrackers. He was soo excited to see a real fireworks store. He wanted to stock up for next 4th of July, I had to calm him down by telling him about Neptune fireworks in FL. Anyways he picked up these firecrackers that you can light by striking them on the box they came in .. no nighter or matches necessary .. that was pretty cool!

We stopped in Amarillo, TX for dinner and to use Barnes & Noble’s internet. Sean was supposed to attempt to eat a 72 oz steak here .. but wasn’t feeling up to it last night. Unfortunately, it looks like Sean might be coming down with a cold, which would suck to drive the rest of the way with.

After Amarillo we drove for about 3 or 4 hours til we got here .. We had a full moon so I could see that we were driving though farm lands (not missing much) The towns we went through almost all had a population less then 1000 .. one was as small as 325.

Today we’re going to meet up with Sean’s family .. then I think Tennessee is next.

Gotta go jump in the shower and start packing up.. til next time

[Day 5 Photos]

Hello from Albuquerque, NM. This is probably the biggest city we’ve been in since Vegas, so we took advantage and got a hotel with highspeed I can’t believe today is day 5 already ..

The days are starting to blend together .. I need to start taking notes while driving.

After leaving Vegas, we drove down 215 and 515 to 93. 93 goes through Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam .. Apparently the road goes right though a National Park, so they can charge you $5 to drive on it. We picked up a National Park pass because the entrance fee to the Grand Canyon is $20 itself, so I’m sure the $50 would be worth it. So that drive was pretty cool, big rocks and a big lake. I even saw some big horn sheep climbing on a rock, well jumping up a cliff, so cool. The Hoover Dam was busy .. and under construction. So we just drove through, trying to video tape it.

AZ starts after the dam. We wanted to get to the Grand Canyon while it was still daylight, so we pretty much just kept driving there. It was alot further then we thought. We left Vegas at around noon and made it to the South Rim at 6:30pm. I could’ve sworn that it was only supposed to take like 3 hours, but I can’t remember stopping anywhere (except 1 picture point at Lake Mead) .. Oh well. Because we were running late, we had our first encounter with the highway patrol. We were on the home stretch to the canyon, about 20 or 30 miles away and Sean got pulled over. Luckily he let us go (after we told him about why we were driving across country, he didn’t want to give us a big ticket with me being unemployed) .. he did however warn us that it is elk mating season, and if we hit an elk going 70mph it would be in our laps .. and it would take a half hour to get an ambulance up here… we have yet to see an elk on this trip, and there are elk crossing signs everywhere.

So we get to the rim just as the sun set .. so the colors were pretty neat, but it was getting very dark. We got back in the car to find a campsite (we lucked out and got one) and then picked up some firewood and food at the General Store. Its illegal to gather wood in the park. Even though its a forest. The weird thing is that there is like, no wood to be found, Sean tried. But because of that law, the General Store can charge $5.99 for a bundle of wood, and by bundle I mean 3-5 quarters of a log .. crazy! We picked up 2 bundles, and a bag meal and headed back to the camp. The fire didn’t last long after dinner, and it was cold. Sean wanted to try to trade people beer for firewood .. I was just tired and wanted to climb into the tent. I took a few pictures of the full moon from our site. I thought about going to the canyon to see it by the full moon, but it was really cold! Once we finally got into the tent, and were almost warmed up .. and found places away from rocks. The people across from us start making coyote calls .. and then .. coyotes started answering. Ugh its really terrifying to hear a coyote howl, not knowing how close or how far away he is, being in a tent, with only a machete to defend you. And every so often, there’d be a call that was even closer, or one that sounded like squealing .. needless to say we were up almost all night. The last call, just before sunrise, was truly beautiful, since I could tell they were much farther away then earlier. I managed to get a couple hours of sleep, I don’t think Sean slept much at all.

We were up at 7:30 am .. packed up the site, somehow managed to get everything back into the car, and visited the canyon one more time. We went to a different lookout point, and saw some mist in one area. It was really pretty .. and amazingly huge. Now I know why everybody says you have to see it in person. There’s just no way to really understand how big it is until you’re standing next to one of the cliffs. It just keeps going and going .. We stopped at an Internet cafe just outside the park entrance for breakfast. Such a cute place. Then headed back towards Flagstaff via 64 (I think) and 180.

180 ran us through a couple National Forests, and by some huge mountains and ski resorts. There were fields of little yellow daisies everywhere, we stopped on the side of the road to take a picture in a field, but its on my film camera so you cant see it yet. We got back to 40 and visited a meteor crater. Apparently this crater was privately owned, (how the heck can somebody own a crater!) .. and they can charge $12/ adult to see a big dent in the ground. They have a museum and tours around the rim, but they wont let you go down inside it. Actually .. its pretty deep and wide across .. The impact through chunks of limestone up to a mile away and some chunks are as big as a house. Got back on 40 and got off to see the petrified forest. I remember reading about the petrified forest, and I think the petrified wood is pretty neat .. but I never expected what we got from the Petrified Forest National Park. It was basically flat desert land, with some tree like rocks on it .. but they were all lying down. I guess I expected to see a few standing up, or stumps up. Also I expected the trees to be bigger, wider .. I dunno .. Basically the park is another one of those drive through parks .. where they can charge you $10 this time to drive on their road. It also goes through the painted desert. Had we known this ahead of time, I would’ve filled up my gas tank. But since I had a half a tank and the park was supposedly only 18 miles away .. I didn’t fill up. We realized we prob couldn’t make the full drive back to 40 from that end of the park so we back tracked and got gas and stopped at the north entrance later on. We decided not to go through it again, and opted to finding food instead. We stopped at a truck stop and had some food, then continued on to Albuquerque.

Next state is Texas. Sean has family he’d like to visit there, so we’ll see if we can reach them.

That’s all for now .. sorry its so long! I fixed the link to the photo album, and I should have pictures up from day 3 and 4 in a few hours.

[Day 3 Photos]

[Day 4 Photos]

.. who knows how many left to go. Thursday afternoon after turning in our keys, we rushed into LA traffic so I could meet Arielle, Bobby, Nicole and her co-worker for dinner. We had Shabu Shabu style food, it was like Japanease fondue .. so cool. After a great dinner Bobby and Arielle dropped me off at Sean’s friend Drew’s place and we hung out at an irish bar.

Friday morning I woke up early and drove around Hollywood. Johnny Depp was getting imortalized in cement later on that afternoon, and the crowds were already huge. Then I went back and picked up Sean and we started heading east.

We didn’t really stop, except at a ghost town that looked totally fake and they were charging $6/ person to see it (we turned around) .. Eventually we passed the Mojave desert and talked to the information center and she told us that they had the sand dunes we’ve been looking for.

The Kelso sand dunes are one of only 30 dunes that are ‘booming’ dunes .. they make noise when the sand rolls down them! So we had to go see them, and climb them. It took us at least a half hour to drive into the Preserve to where the dunes were .. then it was at least a 2 mile hike up really soft sand dunes to get to the tall ones .. in the desert, at 3pm, with cameras. I made it maybe 3/4s of the way there .. and ended up having to hide in the shade of a dune for a little bit. Eventually I sent Sean on to the big crests, I stayed back to get pictures of him on the dune. I’m so glad I bought the video camera, Sean taped himself at the top of the dune, and you could hear the noise they’re famous for .. (I’ll try to get Sean to describe it in his own words) Then he climbed back down and hung out on a little dune with me and showed me his technique .. and I got to hear (and feel) it for myself! It was awesome. We trudged back to the car .. and drove back to civilization .. We got to see the sunset and the moon rise over the desert. So beautiful.

Last night we ended up in Vegas. Figured they’d have plenty of places to stay .. boy we were wrong. I called at least 4 hotels that were sold out. The Excalibur was nice enough to give me a list of all the hotels on the strip. Ironically we ended up at the Venetian, the hotel we both stayed at the year we met each other.

I’ll try to add some pictures before we leave here.

Now we’re off to breakfast, then onto the Grand Canyon!

[Day 1 Photos]

[Day 2 Photos]