Day 5: Portland to Crater Lake-23 March 2009

The next day we woke up fairly early to go to the dog park and grab some breakfast before we left for Crater Lake.

Here is the view from Adam's friend April's apartment....Portland was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.

After a nice jog around the dog park and some breakfast from this cool little cafe called Dragonfly, we ended up sitting in traffic for 2 hours....how fun. A truck had turned over on the highway so our plans for an early start were foiled....

Many hours later we eventually made it to the outskirts of where crater lake was. And...wouldn't you know it...we were almost out of gas. Good thing there was a gas station on our way.....but wait, they're out of gas! and so is the next station we stop at! we ended up driving about 30 miles out of our way to fill up our tank...sweet. At least we wouldn't be stuck in the middle of nowhere without gas!

Once we finally made to the actual park, it started snowing - yay!! The further up we drove, the more snow we encountered...

Lots and LOTS of snow!!

But we finally made it to the top! and I'm so glad we did...it was so beautiful up there. A little cold (26F), but worth it! That's crater lake and wizard island.

BRRR!!! Blaze loved the snow. We met some people who were x-country skiing around the lake and they very nicely took our picture.

A winter wonderland!

Blaze playing in all the snow....it was like 5 or 6pm by the time we actually got the top.

It was very peaceful at the top.

After Crater Lake we wanted to head to Grant's Pass as a stopping point on our way into CA the next day....we also hit 2000miles!

After our long, difficult day of driving....we thought we deserved some nice wine to relax when we got back haha.

....and we watched some harry potter puppet pals haha.....soo funny!

Day 4-Drive to Portland: 22 March 2009

The next day began our trek to Portland, OR.


If you look really closely in this picture you can see Mt. St. Helens in the distance...to the left of the truck...it kinda looks like a cloud. Adam and I were going to go visit it...but it we realized that it would have been 4 hours out of the way...and it would probably be too snowy....so we were just happy to see it at all!

The drive through Oregon was pretty spectacular...here is a view of the Columbia River which we had to drive along for quite some time.

Another cool view.

We stopped off at some waterfalls which were sooo pretty! This one is called Horsetail falls. The landscape also got more rain forest-y which is what i imagined Oregon to look like.

There were lots of stone stairways and fences everywhere which I really liked.

This is Multnomah Falls...they were my absolute favourite...the bridge was soooo cool and reminded me so much of LOTR :)

Yayyy!!

This is a view of the top falls from standing on the bridge...we eventually hiked all the way to the top of the falls!

Adam and Blaze on the bridge!

View from the top....clouds over the Columbia River.

Here's a view looking down at the waterfall...you can see the bridge, the viewing area, and parking lot down below.

Unfortunately we got rained on during our hike down...it was kind of a damp ride the rest of the way to Portland where we stayed with Adam's friend April.

I don't have any pictures of this...but when we went out for drinks at Mcmenamins, a brewery in Portland, and then we went to dinner (and a couple more drinks) at the Rouge Brewery! Good Beer!!

Day 3-Salt Flats, UT-Balanced Rock, Malad Gorge, ID: 21 March 2009

We got up early to go better check out the Bonneville Salt Flats.


The salt flats were really cool...one of my favourite places that we visited! Since it was springtime, they were mostly covered in water creating some really cool reflections, but during the summer they dry out and races are held on them.

I tasted the water....it was wayyyyy salty...like even too salty for me!

That is a pile of salt on the ground behind us...not snow.

Here is the road leading out to the lookout points...we got the car up to 100mph on it (very good for a honda civic hybrid!)...everyone was testing out how fast their car could go on this road.

Races usually start from here in the summer when it is dry.

After the salt flats, we were making our way through Idaho to eventually make it to Oregon...Idaho is the most boring place to drive through...seriously....

We saw lots of cows (and baby ones!!)

I am convinced there are only 2 interesting places in Idaho...both of which we drove way out of our way to see haha.....one is Balanced rock...here is the entrance to the park.

You can see the actual "balanced rock" in this pic...these rocks were huge...like giants!!

We climbed up and walked around the rocks for a little bit...here I am admiring the view with Blaze. You can kinda get an idea at how big the rocks are.

While in Idaho, we reached our 1000th mile on 1000th st :) we're so cool...i know...

Another place we stopped in Idaho was part of the Oregon trail...we stretched our legs here for a bit.

We saw actual wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail itself!!

The other really cool place we stopped was the Malad Gorge. It was really big and really out in the middle of nowhere...We got kinda lost trying to find it, so by the time we got there we were both grumpy and tired and just wanted to make it to our final destination which was somewhere in eastern Oregon.

We continued on our way and thought it was cool that we were on 4 different roads at once!

And I hit a tumbleweed while driving...it hung out with us for a little while.

And once we finally reached Oregon, it started to rain....of course! I think today was one of our longest days of driving...we were so fried once we finally made it to the motel 6 where we were staying!

Chickenosaurus

Two articles on my dream come true :)


http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/should-we-build-a-dinosaur/?hp






http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/27-jack-horner.s-plan-bring-dinosaurs-back-to-life

Road Trip Day 2 Dinosaurs - Salt Flats - 20 March 2009

The Next day, we got up bright and early and continued on our way to Dinosaur, CO/Vernal, UT where Dinosaur National Monument was...a place I have always wanted to visit :)

As we approached it, more and more dinosaurs started to appear :)

Here I am driving...you can see the landscape outside has become a bit more desert like (and my aweseom sparkly mug :) )

We passed by a lot of deer on our way!

YAYYYY!!!!! :)

And eventually, we made it to the Dinosaur NP! I was SO Excited!!!

See? excitement :) This is part of the actual park where you could walk through and see dino bones! unfortunately, the main fossil wall and visitors center were closed :( but I still saw some dinosaur bones, so i was happy!

Here is a good example of dinosaur bones...it's the vertebrate of some type of sauropod...the guy in the visitor's center wasn't quite sure.

Here is Adam...and Blaze being camera shy. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere desert.

Me driving again...I had bought some dinosaur gummy candy to eat especially for the occasion :)

Everything was dinosaur related!!!

As we continued on our way through Utah, things became a bit more mountainous and snowy...

This is on our way to Salt Lake City....we were hoping to reach the Salt flats by nighttime.

Here is a not very good picture of the Great Salt Lake...about 90% of our pictures were taken from the car window haha...and the lake was really foggy when we drove by it...still looked cool tho!

We finally made it to the salt flats where we passed a salt mine...i think it's like Morten or something....you know the salt you buy with the little girl holding the umbrella on it? that one!

Oh yea, this is my little friend that i bought as a souvenir from Dino. NP :)

Here are Adam and I on the salt flats...they were so cool!! Since it was spring time, they weren't as dry as they usually are, and they were a little squishy to walk on...but it really felt like being on another planet....minus the cars driving by and all the tire marks on the flats!

Here are some more salt flats...perhaps a little more covered with salt...yes, that is salt, not snow on them!!

We ended our night at a motel 6 which Blaze was very excited about right outside the Bonneville Salt flats. The next day we were to go and explore them a little further!