some logistics

#1. We need to name a dog Cornelius. It's a Regier family name, as we found out at the cemetery in Henderson, NE (and not suitable for humans in this century).

#2. We're nearing the end of the road trip potion of our adventure year and are thinking about the following itinerary: Memphis, Little Rock, Jackson, Montgomery, Birmingham, and Nashville before we visit family and friends in Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Any thoughts or advice on those places?

NEWS!!!

Before we tell you about New Mexico and Oklahoma and Thanksgiving (we're safely and happily in St. Louis now) we must update you all on some VERY EXCITING news!

We have just bought plane tickets for January 1st to St. Johns island in the caribbean where we will be moving to work and play from then until the end of April. We've not gotten luxurious or high powered jobs, but they are ones that will allow us to live for cheap in a ridiculously beautiful and warm place for a few months. Our travels plan will continue when we return.

We'll be in the NY area from the middle of December until Christmas and would love to see you to say "see ya later, we're going to the beach!"

Arizona

We're in a Holiday Inn at the base of Canyon De Chelly. It is the second largest Canyon in the United States in Eastern Arizona. We spent the day driving through the Navajo and Hoppi reservations sad that we did not have a way to spend time there are talk to people. We stopped briefly at the Hoppi Cultural Center and Museum. The Hoppi reservation is on the original land of the tribe. They make the most beautiful silver jewelry, woven baskets, and have really unique farming practices that are successful in this arid climate. It's really hard being here - thinking about reservations in general and what they mean for our national history and the native americans living on them now and what their lives are like - thinking about Arizona in general and the immigration law. I'm not quite sure what the thought is exactly but it's been extremely upsetting listening to country music on the radio that glorifies parts of Mexico (women, the beaches etc) while at the same time knowing that those musicians represent, or are idolized, by a community of people who support such a discriminatory law. I know it is more complicated than that but there is something not right about how many somethings exists in Arizona - places of ingrained racial or economic or cultural prejudice maybe.

South West part 1

Looking for the latest in Matt and Ashley's Great Adventure...

Look no further than Ribbon of Highway. Currently posting from Holbrook, AZ home of America's Best Value Inn (where we're staying, the Wigwam motel, where I stayed last year, and a Dinosaur Museum).

Since we last posted in Los Angeles (where, by the way we saw the movie Fair Game - which you should see) we have been in Joshua Tree National Park, Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon.

Joshua Tree was very cool. It is a national park that hosts two different ecosystems - the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert. The Mojave is home to the Joshua Tree which is actually a kind of Yuca plant and the most ginormous rocks you have every seen. The Colorado Desert is home to small rocks and bushes. So we had a preference. We went for a really nice, short hike by Cottonwood oasis under the bluest sky you've could ever see and Matt practiced some freestyle rock climbing. It was very dry all around.

After Joshua Tree we were headed to Lake Mead National Recreation center to camp before the Hoover Dam. En Route I texted my aunt who had recently been to Las Vegas and asked if there was a not-to-miss restaurant. She pointed us, very enthusiastically, to a place called Locust of Siam. I wish I took a picture. It was in a pretty dark strip mall a few blocks off the main strip where most restaurants looked closed or at the very least were in need of new neon bulbs. As soon as we walked in though, the entrance walls were covered with rave restaurant reviews, and for good reason. It was the best Thai food we've had for sure.

We left the restaurant with the intention of throwing a few pennies in a slot machine and would like to tell you about it but we heard that What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas so ... sometime the following afternoon we drove to the Hoover Dam.

The Hoover Dam is an "engineering wonder." It was completed in three years, two years ahead of schedule! It is almost as wide on the bottom as it is tall (roughly 700 ft). And my favorite fact, throughout the concrete blocks that make up the dam are pipes that pumped cold water around to cool the blocks in place to speed up construction. Also, they just finished building a bridge over the Colorado River above the Dam.

From the Hoover Dam we drove to the Grand Canyon. When we were about 30 minutes away from the campsite I checked the weather for fun and saw that the low was 22 degrees. That was unfortunate, but we survived. Were pretty sluggish the following morning sat in the cold sun, had some hot chocolate and yogurt and granola and stretched a lot.

Also noteworthy - in the half marathon my pinky toe nail which was apparently pretty sharp dug a hole into the side of the toe next to it. I neglected that for the first few days until Vegas when it seemed to get a little infected. We had to stop to get some supplies and so the last few days have been sprinkled with cleaning and wrapping my toe.

What else? The Grand Canyon is very big - walked along the south rim for a while then watched the sunset while making some pasta at a view point and then drove to Holbrook.

California!!! (and we're caught up)

Friends! We're in Los Angeles. It is 73 degrees and sunny every day. Trigger is camped out working on applying to graduate schools and I have been struggling to tan evenly while napping and reading. We are staying with close friends of Matt's mom - they have a sweet unattached garage that they turned into a little "love nest" so w

e've unloaded almost all of our stuff and have set up camp. We're supposed to leave tomorrow. Not sure if it's going to happen. If you're with other people's parents it's not really like you've just moved back home, right? :) Really though it is so wonderful being in a place for more than one or two nights, especially somewhere warm, with home cooked meals and nice company. Highlights so far: fresh lemons and limes from trees in

the backyard, being painfully sandblasted at the beach in Santa Monica during a awfully windy day, finishing the first season of Mad Men, and the key lime pie! YUM! Also - trigger is making good progress on his personal statements/essays for the applications.

We got to LA on Tuesday after camping in Big Sur right on the coast. We stopped twice along the drive - once to see a haven for Elephant Seals which are wonderful creatures. The consist of mostly blubber and have incredibly expressive faces and human like hands. We spent almost an hour there, mostly in awe of 1) how they scratched themselves like we do and 2) how similar I am to elephant seals. If I had to be an animal right now, it would not be that hard of an adjustment to add some pounds, hop onto the beach and rest in the sun for months.

We also stopped in San Louis Obispo for lunch. All I have to say is that California does vegetarian california cuisine as if they invented it.

Camping at Big Sur was breathtaking. We decided to light a fire because while we made it through Wyoming and Montana, camping in California was too cold! Unfortunately Trigger decided to buy a lighter without fuel in it which sparks well and can light the propane stove but can't light paper. We were struck, while basking in the overwhelming odor of campfire smoke, by how loud it was at our campsite. And before either one of us said something out loud we were both slightly confused by how well we could hear what sounded like the interstate. Route 1 in the dark however had maybe 2 cars an hour on it and the continuous rushing sounds was the crashing of waves. It is much more beautiful when you know it's water and not cars.

Getting to Big Sur was wonderful, we dropped Wanda, trigger's mom, off at the airport put on some alternative music and our sunglasses, opened the windows and at some beach town on the coast bought a Jamba Juice. You can tell we are both uncomfortable with the CA lifestyle. (notreally).

San Francisco (before Big Sur) is a crazy city. We drove into the city over the Golden Gate Bridge which was pretty exciting as we were going to run there for the half marathon. We first stayed with one of my mom's friends in a beautiful apartment just south of Golden Gate Park. Spent the next day walking around Golden Gate Park, went to the Conservatory of Flowers where we learned that Vanilla is an orchid which is why Vanilla yogurt always has that orchid on the front. We also learned that it was brought to Madagascar from South America but without the bees that pollinate it and so now all Madagascar vanilla is pollinated by hand (in a 24 hour window) making it as expensive as it is! We also walked through Haight-Ashbury where "the 60's took place." The next day we headed to Berkeley to get some Pizza at the Cheese Board Collective (YUM!) and moved into a hotel - the official "Race Hotel" with Wanda.

The half marathon was awesome. Matt ran in 2:02 and I finished in 2:56. It was pouring rain, not too cold, but very foggy. Important note - the five days before the run and five days after the run we’re in the 70s and sunny in SF. We both felt really, really good! A combination of training well, training at high altitudes, and taking it slow and steady during the run.

After the run we met two more of my friends from Haverford at Greens Restaurant at Fort Mason where a third friend is a cook. It was all vegetarian, mostly local, a lot of veggies from the restaurants own farm, and overall incredibly delicious. Matt and I hung out with them after lunch for a while and then met Wanda back at the hotel where we ordered pizza and spaghetti into the room and fell asleep blissfully early.

We walked/hobbled around Fisherman’s Warf the next morning before heading south.

Seattle - South

We arrived in Seattle after one night in Spokane, at the Apple Tree Inn. We took US 2 the whole way instead of the interstate and it was a really awesome drive. The best part was getting into Orondo, WA where apple orchards lined the road on either side. All the trees were changing colors and there were a lot of fresh fruit stands. It turns out that Wenatchee County is the apple capital of the world. Other noteworthy fact, Washington has expensive gas (as does California).

We liked Seattle right away (expect for the rain) mostly because Ella lives there. Ella and I were co-captains of the Ultimate team and Haverford and I cannot express in words my fondness of her. We met Ella and her housemates, grabbed some vegetarian thai food and went to a funny little Halloween party. Being as awesome as she is, Ella took off work on Monday so we could all play and we had a nice adventure to Pikes Place market where we ate some killer mac and cheese and found a huge loaf of cinnamon bread, freshly baked, for only $1 (it was a Monday special!).

We had big plans in the seattle area of going to Olympic National Park and the puget sound and exploring the city and, and, and, but couldn’t manage it all - especially because of the rain. The next day we did stop at Mt. Rainer and Mt. St Helens on our way to Portland, both o

f which were very cool! Driving down Mt. Rainer was really exciting (LOOK!)

We wanted to get into Portland kind of early to watch mid-term elections result - mostly got angry - both at the results and the grossness of the Howard Johnsons and so were really exited the next day to head to the PACIFIC.

Portland Coast - AMAZING, then foggy for 7 more hours.

California border - we got stopped at what looked like a toll booth and asked if we had " and fruit or small trees" - very weird.

We ate in Cresent City, CA where there were many wonderful vegetarian options, because, well, California is cool like that.

Camped in the Northern Red Woods - “that tree is so big!” We also went for a short run in the Red Woods, our last before the half marathon and felt very very small.

Glaicer

We arrived at Glacier National Park last night after a three hour drive from Missoula. There are still a few campsites open in the park throughout the winter. We set up at Apgar Village which is right on Lake McDonald - it’s great, at this time of year winter camping is at the picnic site which is right on the lake. Lake McDonald is huge and surrounded by snow covered mountains. Unfortunately, just as we were ready to set up our tent it started raining. More unfortunately - it hasn't stopped. In fact, I’m writing this entry in the car because it’s too cold to be in the tent (it’s only 39 degrees outside but I’ve been in there all night) and too wet to be outside. I hope it clears up and we can hike today - we have to do something other than be in the car! The Going to the Sun Road which is the road that drives through the park, East - West, and apparently the mot beautiful thing to do in the park, is partially closed for accelerated construction so we can only drive 16 miles of it. We were also planning on hiking into a Glacier. We’re out of This American Life’s until we can get more internet so I think it will just be reading in the car if it keeps raining...

By 5:00pm we couldn’t stand sitting in a still car any longer and decided to take a drive into town. Reading the bulletin board in the post office took about 4 minutes. In the next town over we found the Huckleberry Cafe where we shared a piece of pie and checked out the gift shop before heading about 30 miles away to the movies. We saw Life As You Know It - the one where they get the baby - and it did the job of distracting us. We thought about seeing Red after we got out at like 9:30 because then we would be so tired that we would sleep really well but got pretty tired without it so headed back to the damp tent.

We woke up and it was not at all sunny or clear but it was not raining and that was nice. It was Saturday too so the park had a little more life in it. We headed out on a 3.6 mile hike to the Apgar Lookout where depending on fog there would be great views of the lake we were staying on and much of Glacier. Every few minutes Matt would call out “Hey Bear, comin through” like we learned to do on the Ranger movie at Yellowstone. It got snowy up top and the fog rolled in and out - but after sitting in the car for about 12 hours and sleeping in a tent my body was pretty unhappy and I wound up hurting my hip flexer - especially when we got to the top of the mountain and we had to talk uphill in the snow with no grip. All in all, we should hit up Glacier in the summer sometime and no one should go there in the fall. We finished the hike and headed west to Washington. Pretty excited to go to Olive Garden for endless salad and breadsticks (which also turned out to be a really big bust).

To Missoula

HI! Sorry it has been so long - we've been planning our trip back, applying to grad schools, and chillin out. Since we left off we went to Yellowstone and had a blast, the campsite our second night was snowed in so we headed to jackson, WY and stayed in a swanky hotel. We'll write more about that later, but wanted to get more recent stuff posted. Here is from leaving Jackson...

Okay. Well. We’re starting to get to the point where we don’t have much to talk about. Not on the blog, to each other. Trigger drove from Jackson, WY to Missoula and much of the ride was quiet. Thankfully we had watched sooo many episodes of Say Yes to the Dress the night before so inspired by the topic we had an interestingly vague and hypothetical conversation about each of our own independent weddings and what we would want. Our hotel room in Jackson had a TV in the bedroom and one in the sitting room and twice I tried to watch separate TV. Trigger didn’t like that idea and it came back to bite him in the butt because we could have at least talked about what we each watched on television the day before.

Anyway. We on 26 west because the other road out of Jackson required tire chains, passed idaho falls, made some PB&Js in the car for lunch and pretty much boogied through Idaho and into Montana. The landscape all around us on the drive was pretty much the same as we had been seeing cow covered plains - but getting into Montana there were amazing foothills of (we’re pretty sure) the Rockies.

About cows - we’ve seen a lot of them - grazing, munching, seemingly pretty happy. We’ve only seen two small scale feed lots. At first we thought some of the cows we saw were simply grass-fed and when slaughtered could be sold as such however after reading part of The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan and the section he has on corn I think that we are seeing cows graze before they are brought to feedlots and then to slaughter houses. There are a lot of small cows, so it could be that they go to feedlots and the mother cows stay to have more babies. The only cows I think are or should be grass-fed til the day they get slaughtered are the ones on 85 south driving through SD - there was just so much freaking grassland. Anyone know more about how this works? We need to ask someone here.

We pulled into Missoula - following directions to downtown! (not to the exit with all the hotels, but the real downtown) We got a room in the Holiday Inn Downtown at the Park for $35 on priceline a few days before and we’re pretty skied! The room was giant, no separate sitting room, but a king size bed and two couches and a chair. We pretty much dropped our stuff off and headed quickly out. I was Grump/hungr/y. Luckily we had service on the drive so I was able to tripadvisor research restaurants in Missoula. The 2nd best restaurant was called Biga Pizza (Biga like the dough starter). At first I didn’t even look at it because being disappointed by bad pizza is really sad and I figured in Montana there was a good chance that would happen. I looked through other restaurant reviews though and was surprised when a number of reviews commented that so and so restaurant was good but they like really liked Biga Pizza. I finally checked out the reviews and then their website and couldn’t help but laugh. Biga Pizza is as close to Paolina’s Way as I’ve ever seen. Thin crust brick oven pizza, not organic but “all natural, all homemade”, bluesky sodas, panzanella salad. It looked really good.

We had to wait about ten minutes for a table - it was PACKED and the food looked good. We got a panzanella salad and a caesar salad (which were not as good as PW’s) and a white pizza with roasted red peppers, artichoke hears, and kalamata olives. It was DELICIOUS! Here’s what we talked about: if you could only work with three ingredients (not including spices or water) for the rest of your life what three would they be? We’re settled on flour, milk/cream/, and tomato. After eating the salads we couldn’t finish the pizza so got to take it for lunch the next day! (oh, also, I might be kind of lactose and tolerant - need to look this up, I keep getting crazy gassy when I have too much dairy. It was unfortunate following the post-bison burger experience).

Thursday was a running day but while Matt layered up to run outside I took the opportunity to hop on the treadmill in the fitness center and watched more Say Yes to the Dress. They had a pool and hot tub but after Jackson it didn’t seem worth the chlorine.

California!

Lot's to update you with -- yellowstone, glacier, Missoula, Spokane, Seattle and Ella, portland -- but wanted to tell you we made it to California!

We are 6746 miles into our trip and have just entered our 23rd state.

South Dakota (part 2)

It started getting really cold when we were watching Legends in Light at Crazy Horse and we got nervous when the bus driver/guide said that there was a chance of Rain/Snow. We headed down the mountain, with the heat on in the car, to find an RV park/campground that Matt found online for $10. One thing to note about Rapid City, SD and the Black Hills area is that there is no less than 4 possible routes to get from one place to another. Even though we drove around for a day and a half we constantly found new roads. This is relevant because on the way to the campsite - instead of going the way we came, we drove through Custer State Park which is an incredibly windy road down a mountain. (It was dark). At one point we headed around a bend and I saw a buffalo on the side of the road. This, as you now know, is not an uncommon sight for us, however it was pretty much pitch dark and in a forest as opposed to the plains - I was startled to say the least. Matt, concentrating on the road, asked me what happened and I told him there was a buffalo on the side of the road. While he too and seen his fair share of buffalo we decided to turn the car around so we could see it again (make sure it was there and that I was not crazy). OH MY GOD. Upon turning around not only did we see the buffalo that was on the side of the road (there were two by the way) but we say no less than 30 more buffalo on the other side of the road. Some sitting, some eating in front of the state park buildings, on the triangle patch of grass that separates the incoming and outgoing park traffic and in front of the large ceramic statue of Buffalo at the entrance to the park. Our pictures didn’t come out well - and honestly, we didn’t want to stick around too long to get more.

We made it to the campground, set up the tent and boiled water for pasta in record time and were asleep pretty quickly - neither of us wanting to acknowledge that we had to run a whole lot the next day.

Ashley started looking at maps for running possibilities when we sat in the car with WiFi in Medora and found something called the George S. Mickelson trail. It is a 109 mile trail that runs the entire North-South of the Black Hills National Forest. The trail is on a revitalized railway (rails to trails) and so is fairly flat. We were pretty psyched to find a trail to run on because it was a good way to see more of the area. Running was pretty hard. We ran 6.5 miles there and back, the town we started from was in a valley, so we were running up hill the whole first half. It wasn’t steep (being an old rail way line), but it was consistent. We also started the run at about a mile above sea level and reached almost 6000 feet at the highest point. Running at that altitude was hard for both of us, but the worst part was the sore feeling after the run as much as the run itself. We think a combination of low oxygen during the run and sitting in the car for hours afterwards was a bad combination for minimizing lactic acid.

We weren’t sure the time, having passed between the central and mountain time zone and back as we went down to South Dakota. But at that time we left Hill City and went to Mt. Rushmore.

Mt. Rushmore was disappointing after Crazy Horse. It was clearly much smaller, and only heads. We like the selection of Presidents that they had, but liked the back story -- of what it was supposed to be -- more. The original plan was to have a statue of three presidents: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, in full body poses. Teddy was added at the last minute because the sculpture was a personal friend of his. He decided to add him because he had done a lot to preserve the natural west -- starting the national park service, etc.

The sculpture died just before he finished the faces, the sun finished them and said it was done as it ever would be. When the sculpture of Crazy Horse died, his wife and 8 kids decided to finish the whole sculpture. The exhibits at Mount Rushmore completely gloss over that it is unfinished or how Roosevelt was added, but a park ranger at the information station seemed to know.

We left Mount Rushmore at about 5 with at least 6 hours of driving to go. The speedlimit was 75 so we couldn’t afford to get there faster by speeding (each mile per hour over 75 is about a half mile per gallon less in gas mileage).

On the way to Sheridan, WY for dinner, where there was promise of large mediocre chains as apposed to large fast-food chains, we called Ashley’s Dad to ask him to look up Olive Garden branches in Wyoming or Montana. Finding none on the way, we decided to stop at Applebee’s in Sheridan. There was about 100 mile from the Wyoming border to Sheridan. The first 50 miles we drove and didn’t pass anybody going the same on the highway. Matt had his brights on on the interstate, which was a first for both of us. The last 50 miles was much more eventful with getting passed once and passing 2 other cars. Wyoming’s license plate of Big Spaces Great Places, was very apropos.

We pulled into Extended Stay America Billings (another Priceline find), and had a much nicer stay. The internet was faster and everything.