looking out and the arrival of kevin

hello from (mostly) sunny portland!

all is well in the city of roses. we are having fun visiting with sam's oldest friend kevin, who came out here to relax for a week before he starts law school at tulane. this photo, though blurry, shows sam and kevin having fun. also, it was kevin's birthday! kevin is now 29 years old.


one reason that sam and kevin are so happy is that they just ate some of the amazingly delicious chocolate chunk cookies that sam baked us. for breakfast.


but we haven't only been eating cookies! we've balanced out our diets with a healthy amount of beer, which is plentiful here in portland.


there is more to come in the kevin adventure. we have lots of fun things planned, and also, kevin is really good at talking to the video camera, so you might get to see some live-action action. but that will be later. for now, i'll backtrack a bit to the old fire lookout, where we spent three nights.


this fire lookout was built in mount hood national forest in the 1920s. now it is used for fire-looking-out only in emergencies, so people can rent it out to see some beauty and spend some time relaxing in pretty much complete peace and quiet. in the beauty and the peace, sam wrote two beautiful new songs. he is very talented.


here is where sam spent some time writing, after chopping wood in the shed and starting up a nice fire. (it was surprisingly chilly up there!)


at night, we could see many stars. my nieces and father-in-law, far away on a beach in alabama, also happened to be stargazing from their porch. i like thinking that we all admired the same big dipper. and i'm sure rebecca and georgia, who are two of the smartest girls i know, could have taught me about a few other constellations if we had been looking together.


it was so fun to be in the fire lookout that we pretty much just stayed in there and enjoyed the view (which included many trees and three enormous mountains). i didn't even feel too nervous about being forty feet up in the air.


on our way back to portland, we drove around the "fruit loop," a little highway that circles through orchards, vineyards, lavender fields, alpaca farms, and fruit stands. we visited a blueberry patch, where we picked our own berries,




a lavender field, where we picked our own lavender,



a country store, where we drank a huckleberry milkshake, and a cherry orchard, where we got to wear special cherry-picker baskets and pick our own cherries.

we miss and love you all and hope you're happy where you are.

a pause in the roll

fellow citizens,

portland has been extremely hospitalitacious so far. abbie's folks just recently bought a lovely condo in a neighborhood called "the pearl," which we're told spent the last decade transmogrifying from a post-industrial wasteland to a magical dreamscape of granola hipsterism. a writer in one of the weeklies remarked that here "the streetcar rails are made of gold." the condo is next door to a park that features a terraced fountain with a constantly changing pattern of waterfalls and a fantastically high population density of small children.

our last campsite before we got here was in the columbia river gorge, a spot so windy that the tent pulled up three of its stakes during the night despite my enthusiastic malleting. so we have really appreciated staying in a place with, you know, walls.

we are very grateful to gloria and eddie not only for letting us crash at their lovely pad but also for excellent advice about how to live it up in portland.

abbie is taking the opportunity to scratch some of her nesting itches (albeit with the wistful awareness that we'll be hitting the road again all too soon). we've been hitting farmers' markets,



and also chipping in with the ongoing decoration of the condo, which like i said is brand spankin' new and therefore missing some furnishings. since we arrived, a couch, a lamp, and a bedroom set have appeared.

so you can imagine how tempting it would be to settle right in to a landlubber's life and give up our pillaging. but no - before we get too soft, we are hoisting the jolly roger and heading out to mount hood national forest, where we will spend three nights in a fire lookout. i plan to do some reading, hiking, and maybe finish a song or two. i expect abbie will be focused on actually looking for fires while staying well away from the edge.

we very much enjoyed seeing erica grossman, abbie's childhood friend, and her fiance dennis. erica came over yesterday and regaled us with tales of abbie's childhood deeds, many of which were shockingly unsavory. i feel all the luckier at how sweet-tempered she has become now that i know what a rascal she was circa fourth grade. and erica and dennis introduced us to their favorite brunch place in the neighborhood, a place called isabel that was quite tasty.


we also had a cool experience last night: we went to see the taping of a radio show called live wire. (it airs on public radio here in portland, and you can also listen here. the shows we saw will air on august 2nd and 9th.) it's a variety show along the lines of praire home companion, but shorter format. anyway, did we ever tell you that we know someone famous? cause we do! our old friend curt ellis, who is most famous in my family for his deep voice (his rendition of "long black veil" makes my mom's heart go pitter-pat), is now famous to the rest of the world for making movies. he made this one movie, king corn, which is both about the food system and entertaining. and now he's made this other movie, the greening of southie, which is just coming out and is about the process of building a leed-certified (environmentally friendly) building on the south side of boston. it was great to see him - we went out for a beer afterwards and got to meet his brand new wife, caitlin. they're moving to austin in a few days, so we'll probably see them again.

assuming there are no fires to look out for (if we see one, we get to use a super-cool satellite phone! we think!), we'll be out of touch for the next few days. but we will look forward to making a full report once we've returned to these comfortable digs.

the flip lives!

the flip, our little video camera, survived its fall into the platte river! this (very exciting) footage was shot shortly before i capsized.



it seems we just needed to let the little camera dry out for a while. poor sam has had some experience with this, as it's not the first of our electronic devices i've submerged in water.

we failed to take very many pictures in glacier national park, but at least i can share the view from the edge of our campground.


some of the unphotographed highlights of the park were the grizzly bear we saw (from a distance, thankfully); a long hike to a pass where bighorn sheep were grazing and wandering through the snow; the herd of (wild?) horses that led us back to our campsite under a full moon; all the lovely wildflowers; and the two slices of delicious pie we ate at a cafe on the edge of the park .

after two nights at our peaceful campsite, we packed up and headed south to missoula, which is where we are now. sam will be back soon with another update! we love you all.

this one time, at yellowstone, abbie almost smooched a bison

hey everybody,

since our last post, we’ve covered a lot of miles and packed in a lot of madcap adventures. we left billings for yellowstone, where we spent one night in a motel and one night camping. we then spent a day recovering in scenic bozeman, and as i write to you we are in a hostel on the edge of glacier national park, poised for another plunge.

that last night in billings, abbie insisted that we go out and do some heavy drinking. i was about to ask her why when i remembered what the morning held in store: a drive on the aptly-named beartooth highway. i probably don’t need to explain that a winding, cliffside-ish highway through a countryside full of bears does not thrill abbie the way it might some other people. the only way you could make it worse for her would be if the car actually took flight, harry potter-style (or worse, thelma and louise-style).

i’m kidding about the heavy drinking, of course, although we did enjoy some fine beers at the montana brewing company, including a saison. it’s a style we had never had before, apparently originating with french farmers, but anyway worth trying if you ever come across one.

and the beartooth “could’ve been worse” according to sweet abbie. after a certain amount of white-knuckling during the initial climb, she got to where she enjoyed the amazing views.



we got out onto a snowfield, had a snack, and attempted to glissade (that’s where you sort of ski in your boots) while some daredevil types were skiing down the other side of the valley. ultimately, we just frolicked.



once we got to yellowstone, it took an hour or so to adjust to the scale. if like me your impressions are mostly formed by a certain cartoon, you sort of can’t really believe how big the real thing is... maybe ten trillion acres, give or take. anyway, we pretty much just drove through it that first evening, taking in the sunset and enjoying the sight of a few hundred bison.

our motel had a certain style.


we got a decent campsite that next morning and set out to explore the wacky volcanic features. we’d been told by ben and meredith, good friends and road trip veterans, that yellowstone made you feel like you were on another planet. we didn’t really get it until we started smelling sulphur and dodging flying bits of boiling acidic mud. i did not remember this from the cartoon.



stupefying as the geysers and springs were, probably more memorable was the time a bison almost kissed abbie on the cheek. we were on the way to the first geyser basin and some cars ahead of us were stopped. we had about five seconds to wonder what everyone was looking at before three bison came walking calmly down the middle of the road. they were walking around the stopped cars, seemingly not bothered at all by (nor particularly interested in) the cars or their gawking passengers. not so with my dear abbie. when they got to our car, two came along my side and the third on abbie’s. i was staring at mine when abbie let out an indescribable noise, and i whipped around to see a big ol’ bison head in her window... either just taking a look, or maybe she smelled good? or he was hoping she would scratch his shaggy chin, which she could’ve done without reaching out of the car. to her credit abbie “only freaked out a little,” and whenever we saw bison after that, she seemed to feel bonded, like they were her homies.

i guess i should mention that there’s a lot of what abbie called “propaganda” (fliers and posters mostly) that warn people to stay away from the wildlife in general, and bison and bears and wolves in particular. as far as we could tell, we were the only ones who followed this advice.

we managed to see some elk that day, including a big old bull with beautiful velvety antlers...


...and (abbie’s favorite non-bison experience of the day), a coyote that crossed the road in front of our stopped car and tripped daintily down the trail. it reminded me of a fox we saw in minnesota one morning getting chased across the road by a duck-sized bird that might have been a pheasant.

that night in the tent, as abbie lay awake with bearanoia, she listened to coyotes calling and bison grunting, both amazingly loud and echo-y in the valley.

we hiked a ten-mile loop through the grand canyon of the yellowstone. abbie loved the quiet meadow at the beginning, the canyon view in the middle (called sublime point), and the riverside part at the end, not to mention the yellow-bellied marmot that sniffed at us near the waterfall. we also got to see some more mudpots and springs (without so many people around this time).

happily exhausted, we got very lucky on the way out of the park: three pronghorn, three black bear cubs, and a glimpse of twitching moose ears and antlers. we didn’t manage to see any wolves or adult bears, but maybe that’s okay.

i’ll end this rather long post by mentioning just briefly that bozeman is a pretty great little town, featuring a truly spectacularly great co-op (where we ate two delicious lunches). also must mention the salmon fly honey rye beer made by the madison river brewing company, which rocketed its way onto abbie’s all-time top five beer list.

tomorrow we start in on glacier - depending on what the rangers recommend we’ll probably spend a night or two. see you on the other side.

laundry and scenery

hello! i am writing to you from a lovely hotel room, booked for cheap on priceline with the help of my very sweet father. we are here because we decided, after talking to a nice woman in a cute little food co-op in grand forks, that we should veer from our route and go southwest towards yellowstone. and since it is the weekend, and it is july, and it is yellowstone, the chance of getting a campsite or a cheap motel nearby seemed slim. so we called my dad from the car, and he logged in to priceline, and now here we are with showers! and a very comfortable bed! and a beautiful view of billings, montana!

but i should back up a little bit. in marquette, michigan, we spent a lovely morning doing some laundry. i like doing laundry on the road, because it's still a routine and it feels productive (both things i like), but it is different every time because you're in a new place. this laundromat was sunny and peaceful.



while our clothes spun around in the bright orange dryer, we played a serious game of boggle. for those of you who don't know, boggle is a word game that nerdy people like us play for fun.


here is the lovely campsite where we spent the night in chippewa national forest, minnesota. sam is looking out on the lake while the rain fly airs out. we were the only people in the whole place, except for the campground host family, who came to talk to us and were very nice. we learned about the loons and bald eagles and canadian geese who live on the lake there.


sam is happy here because he finally put on a long-sleeved shirt to protect himself from the mosquitoes.


we woke up in minnesota and decided to keep driving west into north dakota. i don't have any very good pictures of the beautiful yellow and blue fields we saw there, but this one taken from the moving car might give you a little idea.


sam drove amazingly well through the very windy plains, where we saw many tumbleweeds. later we got lucky when we pulled over at a rest stop to wash some cherries and saw that we were actually on the edge of the theodore roosevelt national park, where some badlands are. we got to wash our cherries and see some beautiful scenery. it was still very windy.



tomorrow we're planning to get a little closer to yellowstone. maybe we'll get lucky and find a campsite, but if not, we'll wait for the weekend campers to go home and then try to get a spot on sunday. our friends ben and meredith told us that yellowstone was one of the best parts of the road trip they took, so we are very excited about our new route.

we love and miss you all and will write again soon.

the end of up (the beginning of over)

loyal readers,

we greet you from the land of the yoopers, who are so far extremely nice. if you were hoping to indulge yourself with our snide and/or catty remarks or mocking observations of the locals, i must regretfully disappoint you. even our fellow tourists have comported themselves gracefully.


i do have a few comments, however, about the insects. in the above photo, i am standing next to the tent wearing my favorite pair of skin-tight white slacks. i like to wear them while camping because they put me in mind of my dancing days back in middle and early high school. why, you gentle readers are no doubt wondering, do they appear so dark-colored? the answer may shock and revile you. my marvelous trousers are completely covered in flies.

they're called stable flies, apparently, and while they can live on the nectar of flowers, they are really psyched to bite humans. they look just like houseflies except that houseflies usually aren't all over you.

we made the best of it by wearing non-white clothes and installing a system of airlocks around the tent. [warning: the next sentence is gross. feel free to skip it.] our neighbors across the way put out six or eight flypapers every day and also a water trap about the size of a bucket that was see-through (for some reason!) and was completely full of dead flies.

otherwise, pictured rocks was just about perfect. our campsite was right on the lake, and the beach was covered with very pretty rocks.



we took a bottle of wine down to the lake and drank it right out of a paper bag, just like they taught me in that wine-tasting course in college.



we awoke refreshed and ready to hike. the ranger recommended a ten-mile hike called the chapel-mosquito loop. abbie is strangely drawn to any coincidence of seemingly unrelated words, so we went for it. she's also drawn to nice flowers.


and to amazing sandstone formations. this one is called chapel rock. it's hard to get all the amazement into one photograph, but we tried.


it's a huge column, and it's right on the water. the part that looks like a tunnel through the column is in fact a tunnel through the column. and there is in fact a single, stately tree right on top. and those two tree root looking things that go across to the mainland are in fact tree roots. i'm sure the tree grew under more or less normal circumstances and the landscape sort of fell away around it, but anyway it comes out looking pretty badass.

here's another view where it looks like it's coming out of my lap.


we kept hiking along the coast for a while. the eponymous pictured rocks were starting to seem cool. we took this admittedly not spectacular photo just before The Fog came.


so, if you take this one, and imagine it along twelve miles of coastline, and add some spectacle, you'll have about as much sense as we do of what the fabled rocks are all about. we really enjoyed the trees and just got used to "scenic overlooks" that were completely white - no horizon, no nothing. sometimes you could hear the water.

abbie doesn't like heights under normal circumstances. not being able to see how high she was (or even whether the edge was actually the edge) understandably intensified her fears. i made sure to stay well back as i frolicked.




towards the end we climbed down a little ladder thing to check out a beach that wasn't really a beach.


it was more layers of sandstone. they were cool.


now we've made it to scenic marquette, michigan, which provided us with sorely-needed beers and fish suppers and a clean and reasonably-priced motel with internet.

and where tomorrow? we don't know. but we know that we love and miss y'all, and that we don't have cell phone reception here or else we'd call. good night!

sleeping bear dunes

we have left our sleeping bear dunes campsite and the leelanau peninsula for michigan's upper peninsula. we spent last night in st. ignace, just over the mackinaw bridge, and plan to drive north today towards the pictured rocks national lakeshore.

the leelanau peninsula was really beautiful, and i'm sorry to report i don't have pictures of the lovely forests we drove through, the many deer we saw (two of them fawns frolicking in a field!), the vineyards we visited, or the cute towns we walked around in. i do have a few pictures of the dunes, though.




one of my favorite things about hiking across the dunes was spotting different kinds of wildflowers. of course i have no idea what any of them are called, but i was surprised by how many of them there were, just growing out of the sand.




on our last night in the dunes, we took a scenic drive which led to panoramic views of lake michigan. the lake looked enormous, which it is. it's hard to believe it's the same lake we saw in chicago and at sylvan beach, and now here in st. ignace (though we can see huron now, too!)


crossing the mackinaw bridge yesterday, i felt like we were entering a new and foreign land. it's exciting up here! we'll post more about it soon.


hope everyone is doing well.