Final Pictures Posted

I finally posted the rest of the pictures to our Picasa Web Album. These include pictures from the Redwoods National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, and Portland, OR. Check out the pictures by clicking on the link on the left or going to this address:

http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/wayfaringstrangers#

The total miles driven in our rented Subaru Forester clocked in at 4790.9 miles, from our driveway in Knoxville to the car rental return at the Portland International Airport.

More pictures

Posted new pictures of San Francisco and Napa Valley. I've run out of time and didn't get to caption all of them but will finish updating when we get to Portland. We'll be without Internet and cell phone access while we're in the Redwoods this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow morning. We'll be in Portland Friday night.

Now we need to get on the road!

Yosemite National Park

We're in San Francisco right now getting ready to check out of our hotel (which was nice, but a little too fancy for our taste) and head to see some more sites on our way out to Napa Valley. I had a little time to post some more pictures from Yosemite National Park, where we camped for the 2 nights prior to arriving in San Francisco yesterday. Yosemite was by far our favorite thing so far. It offered some of the most amazing views of mountains we have ever seen. The only bad part was how crowded Yosemite Village and the Valley were. It wasn't too hard to get away from the crowds, however, by going to other sections of the park. The high country and Tuolomne Meadows were especially nice.

I have posted additional pictures to the Picasa album. I don't have time to put any pictures from San Francisco yet, but hopefully I will do that soon. Check the album out by clicking the link on the left or by going here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers

More Pictures

We finally posted some more pictures and are now caught up with where we are today. We're trying to get out of here on time once again and head to Yosemite National Park so we can get a good camp site (we only have a reservation for one night because that's all that was available at the reservation-only campground.)

Check out the pictures at the Picasa Web Album by using the link on the left, or going to the following site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers

Bye Bye Disneyland

We're getting ready to head out from Disneyland and see a couple quick sites in Hollywood on our way to the California Coastal highway. Before we got out of here I thought I'd post a few pictures to the picasa album and then get on the road. Sorry there aren't more pictures, but you can see them by clicking the Picasa Web Album link on the left or going to this address:

http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers

Pictures

I decided I don't really like the way Blogger posts pictures. They are too small and it's a pain to get them in the right position on the page. I figured it'd be easier to upload them to a public Picasa album, so that's what I did. You might notice the pictures in the previous entry have been removed. You can still find them on the Picasa album by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/twnich/WayfaringStrangers. I have uploaded a few new pictures and put captions describing what they are.

Right now we are sitting in the Grand Canyon North Rim campground general store waiting for the rain to let up so we can pack up our tent and head to Los Angeles (more specifically, Anaheim and Disneyland). They have wifi so I thought I'd take the opportunity to upload some photos for your viewing pleasure. The weather here has been chilly (low of 37 degrees last night) and cloudy but no rain until about 7:00 AM this morning. We had some great views of the canyon last night and took lots of pictures which will be coming in the days ahead hopefully.

Also I will place the link to the picasa album to the side bar on the page.

People and Places: Part One

I don't have much time before we need to hit the road for the Grand Canyon, but I want to share a few random details before heading out.

For those of you who may not know, I had large sections of my hair dyed turquoise a week before our trip. So, Tim suggested that we conduct a little social experiment while traveling and record the reactions we get from people in different areas. Although my brilliant turquoise has begun to turn the color that blondes get when they swim in chlorine for extended periods of time, I have still gotten several comments, but these are a couple of favorites:

At Angelo's BBQ in Fort Worth, Tim overheard a little girl and her father arguing over the color as I walked to the restroom. He was calling it green, and she said it was turquoise.

In the elevator at the Holiday Inn in Sweetwater, Texas, an older gentleman who was in town for his great grandson's wedding realized the color when I turned to face him. He gasped and let out an audible "ohhhh" and then reached out to touch it.

We have had conversations with several others along the way, but a few stand out.

I don't know if it's a pre-requisite for concierges at moderately-priced hotels to be naturally cheerful, but we have met two so far that lit up the room the second we stepped into the lobby and made us feel as if we were home for the evening. The first was a woman at the Airport Fairfield in Nashville whose name I didn't catch. She asked us if we were in town for "Fanfair". Neither of us have any idea what Fanfair is, but we told her our story, and in doing so, found out that she was from Southern California and has only been in Tennessee for 5 years. She told us what must have been a funny story (Tim laughed) about traveling across the country with a Japanese exchange student, but I was distracted by the absurd whiteness of her teeth, so I missed the punchline.

The other concierge was a woman at the Sweetwater Holiday Inn named Regina, who seemed genuinely happy to be greeting the 12am - 7am crowd. She offered us free snacks and bottled water.

Another woman who made an impression was our waitress at the High Noon Saloon in Albuquerque. Apart from the Carlsbad Caverns themselves, this was my favorite stop so far. The old town in Albuquerque is a hub for local Native American and Mexican culture. Every structure is original Adobe (most almost 250 years old), and there is art everywhere. The town is nicely populated, meaning we saw a lot of people but they were evenly dispersed, and not crowded, giving the town a very peaceful feel. Anyway, our waitress was from Arizona and had that really tan, almost leathery look, she wore a silver buffalo around her neck. She found out we were traveling to the Grand Canyon next, and in a soft, very New Age-y voice, enthusiastically recommended that we stop in Sedona. "I don't want to get into depth about it but it's just really cool, " she told us, "There are really great vortexes there." We politely nodded.

I'll wait until we post the pictures to describe our experience at Carlsbad Caverns, but I'm loving New Mexcio now that we have crossed the monotony of the plains into the mountains and the plateau in this region. The terrain in the West is strikingly untame. It seems different than the landscape back home in the sense that there are much larger stretches of land unspoiled by human beings. It is truly vast and makes me marvel at its Artist.