san francisco!

from ukiah we drove back up to the redwoods so that i could drive the car through a tree. yep, we drove an hour north, paid 5 bucks, waited in line for 5 minutes and then i drove through. went into the gift shop to see what crazy stuff they were selling and then headed back south to san francisco.

as we were heading into san francisco, i noticed something that looked like storm clouds in the distance. i pointed it out to amanda and she said 'oh that is probably just the fog.' what do you mean, 'the fog?' she then looked at me like i had 3 heads and she told me to stop joking. i said i was serious and didn't have any idea that san francisco was foggy. no one ever mentioned it to me! not one single person.

there were some other things that we did in san francisco but i am going to make another post for that.

salt lake city is pretty mormonrific. i don't remember the whole reason why they decided to stop there next to a lake that they couldn't drink the water. doesn't make much sense to me.

we found a vegetarian place that leaned more towards vegan so we were pretty excited about that. i got some sort of burger and amanda got a philly cheese sub. we brought her car over to get the oil changed and while we were waiting we ate our sandwiches. now, granted, we really shouldn't be complaining about vegan food in the middle of america but the sandwiches were not that great. they both had patties made out of corn or something like it. they were not the best we have had and they were not the worst meal we have eaten either.

last night we stayed in laramie, wyoming. it was a bigger town/city than i thought it would be but still pretty small. there was a health food store and some decent coffee shops and also a vegetarian restaurant that had an okay selection of vegan options. the waitress we had sounded very southern and she also seemed to be annoyed when we asked for things to be made vegan. we said it with smiles even though we had not had any coffee yet!
i ordered the farmer's market sandwich and amanda ordered the falafel. mine was on wheat bread with avocado, cucumber, granny smith apple, tomato and lettuce. i don't remember if it had any kind of dressing or not. it was pretty good. amanda's falafel was better than the ones she gets in new york, which doesn't surprise me one bit. at least this place in the middle of wyoming knows not to put ranch dressing on a falafel.

nebraska is almost as boring as saskatchewan. but at least there are some trees and the grass is a bit greener. the sky is really big and blue and filled with lots of puffy clouds. the road never seems to end.
we are now stopping at a wagon rut rest stop.

right now, we are in ukiah, california. we're about 2 hours from san francisco. our plan for today is to drive back an hour to leggett to drive through a tree, then head back down to SF.
yesterday, took about a billion AMAZING pictures. we stopped high up on the california coast and climbed some rocks to check out some tide pools. then we stopped a bunch of times in redwoods national/state park.
i guess i'm just going to post a bunch of pictures. they should explain our day pretty well.

coast and tide pools:
















redwoods

i'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and then do a new post to catch everyone up on where we are now, ok? ok.

michael forgot to mention that we went to the archie mcphee store in seattle:



we also stopped by mt. st. helens on our way to portland. it's smoking!


mt. hood coming into portland.


japanese gardens:


foodz: breakfast at vita. tatos, burrito, nachos, mac n cheez





pirate dinner (it was dark in there so the pictures suck somewhat). mushroom stroganoff, hawaiian chikn, club sandwich, chikn fried steak





herbi-peeps
george


me and josh at breakfast


bye michelle! (at the herbistore)

portland is full of vegans. tons of them. and restaurants, stores and all sorts of vegan things. it's kinda crazy to be able to go into places that are vegan and see other people there. back in providence it seemed that when i was able to go to the only vegan restaurant in town, my friend and i were the only ones there. that might be why it closed. anyway...

amanda and i arrived in town the other night and headed for Herbivore: the house. we are staying with our friends josh and michelle, their super adorable daughter ruby and their awesome dog george.

we have been trying to fit in as many things we can in the small amount of time that we have here. so far this is what we have done:

we walked a couple of blocks to brunch at vita and had some super good food. i got nachos and some broccoli mac and cheese and amanda got a breakfast burrito. i think we are going back there this morning to try out some more food! after we ate we walked over to Herbivore: the store. we looked around at all the stuff we wanted to buy, amanda bought some things and then we left before we bought more stuff. she will probably buy more today when we go back. i will probably buy some things too. amanda got so many compliments on her hooded zippered sweatshirt that i think i need to get one.

after Herbistore, we got in the car and headed downtown to check out Powell's bookstore, get some vegan soft serve and hang out with amanda's friend melissa who was super nice. we three went over to the Portland japanese tea garden and looked around. it was very nice and authentic as the sign said.

our next stop was to meet up with another friend from the ppk, jdfunks, for dinner. at a pirate themed vegan restaurant. it was pretty good, we were the only people there so the service was super fast and the food was good. it was just a bit pricy for what it was. and there was not enough pirate talk for our tastes. he didn't even ARRGGGGH! or YARRRRR! once. kinda disappointing. amanda did get a crazy good peanut butter shake though!

next stop on our whirlwind tour was to head to jd's house to watch the Lost season finale. she made lost themed snacks that were super tasty. a couple more ppkers showed up a little later, suzytofumonster and tommy2gears. so far everyone has been super nice and it has been great to meet everyone.

i am going to go play blocks with ruby now.

amanda and i arrived in vancouver yesterday and met up with our friend 'vulchy' from the forum we are on and had a super great lunch. it was raining but i guess that is what it does in vancouver in the spring. it was a pretty nice city from what we could see through the rain and fog. i would like to go back there sometime and see more of it.




after leaving vancouver, we headed for the border and the border police asked amanda if she had bought any food and she said yes.

doritos. lots of doritos.



our next stop on the vegan trans-north america express was olympia, washington to meet yet another friend from the ppk forum, vwam.



we got to her house and met her and her kids and her cats and guy friend. amanda and i were both hopped up on caffeine so we needed to eat something stat! luckily, vwam had made a super delicious stew that hit the rainy caffeinated spot oh so perfectly. we stayed up and chatted for a while eating cupcakes and then headed to bed.

today amanda and i got up and did vwam's dishes because we promised her that if she made cupcakes we would do her dishes. or actually i promised and amanda was nice enough to help me.

as we were doing the dishes, i started to clean the french press and while taking it out of the holder it jumped out and smashed itself against the wall, most likely because it knew that amanda and i had been drinking gas station coffee for the past few days and that we most likely did not appreciate how wonderfully it pressed and brewed the coffee for us this morning.

so of course, our first stop was at the local target to buy a new press for her to replace the broken one. after our trip to our first olympian target, we drove over to our first national park on the trip. Mount Rainier.

it was so freakin awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so green!!!

and the trees were so big!!!!

and we saw a stellar's jay that was so beautiful and blue!

and then it was snowy!!!!!