“three horns never play with long necks.”

for those of you who don’t know, that’s a quote from a lovely tale called “the land before time”. the first one, not one of the apparent twelve sequels.

today was a day of ups and downs, guys. emotionally, i mean. the drive itself was ridiculously flat and boring. but we did see these guys, which inspired the title:

but otherwise, it was pretty straightforward with construction and people who don’t know how to change lanes, etc.

we dropped by geronimo to see the world’s largest petrified tree (i’ve seen bigger), and then stopped at “chili kicks on 66″ for lunch, which was pretty awesome. we’ve actually been purposely avoiding eating mexican food for the past two weeks for exACTly this reason. because mexican food in the south is way better than in north dakota or minnesota. and that was a pretty solid choice, because this food was delicious.

and then three hours later we were at the urgent care room in santa fe! yeah, that’s right.

sad face for mariel! boo major temperature changes. boo elevation. BOO ear infections. boo. but she’s got some super pills now and is doing much better.

tonight we’re heading into santa fe to check out a few places per mariel’s friend’s recommendations. and then tomorrow is our nice long stroll over to stillwater, oklahoma, for some more awesome aib time with the lovely erin t!

check out the flickr picturs from today!

and thanks to everyone for their awesome responses to the polls! we’ll take your answers into deep consideration before making any major future decisions.

kenyans on top of kenyans?!

no, silly! CANYONS!

you are so jealous right now! check out the flickr stuff here because i don’t even know how to describe today. and the pictures themselves won’t even do the whole thing justice! but give it a shot anyway.

we got to the grand canyon national park

around 11 this morning (although that picture is technically from on our way out this evening), parked the car (NOT on the street because they tell you not to even though soooo many other people did), and walked to the shuttle bus, which was totally free, thank god, because it cost $25 to get into the park. but they have like three bus lines (red, green, and blue) that go in loops throughout the south rim of the park, so we were hopping on and off of it all day. and then we took these awesome, super fun pictures of ourselves:

AND THESE ANIMALS!

tomorrow, the plan is to go to santa fe, new mexico. mariel’s friend ian was raving about that particular area and how fun it is, so we probably going to leave early in the morning so we can hang out around there and see all the cacti and mexican gift shops and whatnot.short post tonight, kids! but we do have two surveys to conduct that have been on our mindgrapes recently.

POLL #1:
would you rather…. have sex with bill gates for $7 million, or steve jobs for $3.5 million? i know this is going to be really hard for you mac lovers. it was hard for us, too.

POLL #2:
mariel doesn’t have a middle name. her last name is reiter. do you think her full name should be a) mariel ghost reiter, b) mariel paperback reiter, c) mariel winona reiter, or d) a completely different one that you can think of?

and if my mother is the ONLY ONE who responds to these poll questions, i’m going to be wicked mad. i’m talking to YOU este, ross, steve, chad, and all the boston friends!

“That’s why I come out here… Naaaaature.”

that’s right, kids. love the nature. especially when it has wi-fi.

but before we were immersed in nature, we were in city city city! yesterday we met up with mariel’s childhood friend nancy, and she was also an awesome california tour guide. she lived in an a-mah-zing house in santa monica with a bunch of other dancers (she’s part of the los angeles ballet company), which is about five minutes from the boardwalk and beach. so she took us down there to walk on main street first (basically to torture us with clothes that we could never afford), and then down the beach. i’ve actually been to that area before, and i have to say, it hasn’t changed one bit. actually, that’s not true. there are medicinal marijuana shops now. those weren’t there before. but otherwise, it’s still the same ol’ head shops, lemonade stands, tattoo parlors, and homeless people.

we spent most of the day there, and most of the time after that stuck in traffic, but we eventually made it to nancy’s brother’s house in pasadena, which was conveniently 10 minutes away from maura! the four of us and dan and liz went out to a couple of places in downtown LA for drinks and photo booth adventures, and wound up back at maura’s. oh! and we saw another aib-er, leigh, and her boyfriend brian. they stopped by for a beer before we went out to the bars. we haven’t seen leigh since she FLED (yes you did, leigh) to the west coast last may, and it was definitely really fun to see her and hear all of hilarious stories.

but this morning concluded our time in california. fortunately, we found an in-n-out burger before we crossed the border into arizona, though:

lucy was kind of into it.

after stopping there, mariel basically just busted out the rest of the drive real quick. it was actually pretty amazing. we stopped for gas once or twice in the middle, but otherwise, she handled it like a champ. and we found the hotel we’re at now in our superfun aaa road guide book thing. the strangest thing was, though, that vicki the gps lady couldn’t find it! not even the road it was supposedly on. so i called back joseph the quality inn front desk guy, and he said that they’re not an “incorporated” so they can avoid really high taxes, so they actually aren’t even IN a town! so weird. regardless, we found it, partially because joseph filled us in on how to get here, but moooostly because it sticks out like a sore thumb. a sore thumb with a pool and horses on it. no but seriously, there’s nothing else here. the other hotels that we’ve stayed at are usually within little clumps of town. this is pretty much all by itself here. thank god it has a restaurant attached to it, because otherwise i don’t know what we would do. well, probably play hide-and-seek with the group of like 9 brothers that are below our window. seriously, these kids are everywhere.

but more to the point, grand canyon tomorrow! rah rah! i read in the aaa tour guide thing that it’s about $80 to get into the skywalk and all that business, and joseph the front desk guy totally confirmed it. apparently it’s $50 to just get onto the reservation where the skywalk lives, and then about $30 to go on the skywalk for 15 MINUTES. 15! and you can’t bring cameras or cellphones or anything. laaaaaame. so we’re obviously going to go to the south rim instead, where they apparently have shopping and food and stuff. oh, and apparently there’s a view.

“you’re a virgin who can’t drive.”

hi everyone! this is going to be another long one because i know i let you all (mom) down by not blogging yesterday. but before we start, for some reason i can’t make it this far into the blog command center from my computer, so i’m blogging from maura’s, which means no pictures in the post. i know that disappoints some of you, and i apologize for that, but you’re going to need to stop crying and move on. but read the post first! and this is the perfect opportunity to suck it up and check out all the flickr pictures.

okay, now on to the stories: we finished up in san francisco with an awesome bbq that lucy totally commandeered and blew us all away. there were regular burgers, turkey burgers, skewered vegetables, pasta salad, mashed potatoes, wine, beer, and five awesome ladies. then lucy, mariel, and jamie went out and partied it up while catie and i stayed in and watched “the real housewives of new york city”, which is definitely not one of the BEST shows on the face of the planet, but you know i’ll probably watch anyway when we get home.

so the next morning we left for LA, and the drive was totally boring. and smelly. cow manure is disgusting, especially when its smell is wafting onto the highway. gross. the only interesting part of the whole thing was the windmills, really. freaky. in a good way, obviously. but we made it to the city and because maura (my bffaeaeae and person putting is up for the next few days) wasn’t getting home from work until seven, we decided to stop at a coffee shop and hang out and wait. but god forbid it be that simple. first of all, LA doesn’t allow street parking between 3 and 7 pm (where we were at that time), and it was 430 when we got there. bummer. then, i took a turn to go into a parking garage, and it was something like $9 for 30 minutes of parking. f that. but by that time we couldn’t back out so we had to be $3 to sit in a parking lot for five minutes decided what we should do when we leave. lame. either way, we decided to just go to maura’s to figure stuff out since her neighborhood would be a lot more residential and a lot less scary, and when we got there she recommended (via phone) chango’s, a coffee shop pretty close to her house. so we hung out there reading ‘the onion’ until morgan (maura’s roommate) got home from work.

we happened to come to LA on ‘margarita night’ day, so that was pretty cool. we went to masa’s for paninis and salads first, and then headed to barragan’s (sp?) for the $2.25 drinks. jonah hill was there. totally met him. no biggie.

and then yesterday we planned all sorts of touristy goodness. we went to chango’s again for coffee while we tried to decipher the tourbook we have. we decided to (slightly) wing it, so we headed over to rodeo drive. then when we realized there are TWO rodeo drives, and we were not on the right one, we went to the real one. we were all slightly unimpressed. i mean, obviously it was cool and over the top and stuff, but it was pretty much all the same stores you could find in nyc. obviously we took a ton of pictures, but we were all kind of over it by the time we got to the intersection of rodeo and wilshire. whatevs.

then we met up with another swampscottian (?), dave racki, who took us on the best tour of LA i’ve ever been on. he took us to a great pizza place near his house in hollywood, then we basically just sat in the car while he told us everything there was to know about the sunset strip, hollywood and santa monica boulevards, mulholland drive, and the hollywood and beverly hills. we got to see the walk of fame, and mariel bought a map of the stars’ houses, and we saw grauman’s and all the crazy ripley’s and guinness stuff (from the outside, of course), and we go the driving tour of the strip where are the famous restaurants and stuff are. not one famous person, though! kind of weird.

when we went up into the hills, we spent at least 30 minutes trying to go “up and right” (towards the hollywood sign) as racki kept calling it, and we fiiiiinally made it! we really did get surprisingly close. but who got more surprisingly close? the three deaf girls we ran into climbing down the hill who told us they “touched the ‘d’”. um… okay. we all TOTally believed them until dan samiljan totally shot the whole thing down and said it’s practically impossible. so anyway we obviously found the one road that takes you right back down to the bottom of the hills, no problem, and it was obviously sunset and gorgeous, and then we obviously got stuck in traffic forever.

then we saw a crazy car accident heading back to racki’s… some moron flew through a blatantly red light. it wasn’t a huge thing, it’s just always kind of weird to be that close to an accident. MOM DON’T READ THIS PART it was the car next to us that hit the moron. he just pulled out for the green light a little sooner than we did. creepy. OKAY IT’S FINE NOW so we made it back to racki’s in one piece, where we met up with dan and maura, and then we all left with their friend josh to get something to eat at the village idiot. super high ceilings, super good beer, super fun. and then for even MORE fun, maura took us to out the shortstop (bar) for a couple of drinks after that. and there was a photobooth. and it was awesome. but what was more awesome was giant dorky creepy white guy dancin’ it up in the room we were sitting in. pretty phenomenal, i must say. and he was only one of many dorky creepy white guys doing that. he just happened to be the only one that was giant. but yeah the dj’s were playing oldies remixes and i’m a total sucker for that so we all had a great time! the photobooth pictures will be included in the polaroid album i put up when we get home and i can scan everything.

so the agenda today is basically just to get as many people who don’t know each other together in one place! we’re meeting up with mariel’s friend nancy, lucy’s friend jarrett, and mariel’s and my friend leigh (another aib-er). they’re all in or near the santa monica area, so seeing as how it’s going to be almost 80 degrees today, we figured we’d beach it up and bring everyone along for the ride.

ps as of yesterday afternoon, we’re halfway through the trip!

everywhere you look (everywhere) / there’s a heart (there’s a heart) / a hand to hold on to

we’ve been rockin’ it in san francisco since sunday night, and if you’ve been checking the flickr stuff along the way (which i doubt) then you probably have the gist of what’s been going on. if NOT, then i’ll tell you.
sunday night was the aib reunion dinner, which i’ve already mentioned. then monday catie went off to work and lucy, mariel and i went off on our own, geared up with just our cameras and vicki the gps lady. so we went north to the golden gate bridge (which we did NOT come in on, which was a bummer), and decided to park it in sausalito (the first town once you get over the bridge) for a little while, and walked around looking at sailboats and the view and all that dorky touristy stuff.

then we headed back and went to haight-ashbury. obviously. and i’m such an idiot that i forgot to take a good picture of the streetsigns, but i do have this little guy where if you concentrate really hard and look in between the branches of the trees you can kiiiind of make them out:

lame, i know.

anyway, we walked up and down the streets, bought some sweet shirts and shoes, stopped in a lingerie shop that had bettie page pictures eeeeverywhere, saw lots of hippies and homeless people, ate some kickass crepes, and generally just freaking loved the whole thing.

following that, we went to twin peaks – the highest point in san francisco – and took some hilarious and sweet pictures of the city and the view and whatnot. unfortunately, a lot of it will be lost on you, lovely viewers, but you’ll have to take my word for it.

(jenna, if there had been a ‘twin peaks’ sign, i would have taken a picture with it. but alas… no.)

so we viewed the city from super high, and then headed back to catie’s, scrambled around, and then went to philippe’s apartment in the mission. for those of you who don’t know philippe is (so everyone who’s not blood-related to me), he’s my cousin talie’s boyfriend, and he moved to san fran last summer to work at google. so talie was here for the week so the six of us had a drink at his place and then went to this pizza place, delfina, which was phenomenal. what would have been more phenomenal would be not having to wait over an hour for a table, but life is all about compromise, right? this is us acting out what we wanted to do to the six people who sat at their table for 2.5 hours without ordering anything for at least half that time:

it would have been pretty badass.

but when we fiiiiinally sat down, the food was definitely amazing. and they kept us interested while we were waiting, too, with wine and sardine appetizers and whatnot, but good god.

anyway, it was great to finally meet philippe and to see talie (even though we both live in nyc) and to hang out and eat awesome pizza!

and then talie and philippe went home, and the four of us met up with catie’s friends at a rockin’ irish pub that was playing techno music. we meet some new people, had some drinks, wandered over to another bar (tiki-themed, obviously), had about 1/4 of a drink there, and then left because, well, we’re not cool. and then we had to drunkenly help catie get ready for work the next day, and mariel and i ended up having a half-drunk, super tired, totally awesome, hour-long convo on the back porch. what else are road trips for, right?

—–

so then today we slept in a little (wonder why) and then did some lame-o errands and checked out dolores park, which is apparently the almost highest point in san francisco. so we went for the view, and ended up paying more attention to the guy getting searched by the cops because he had an open bottle of alcohol and was “too close to the children”. after that excitement (they let him go!) we met up with catie and her little friend baby scott for lunch. this kid is 13 months old and disturbingly adorable:

awwwwww.

we ate at park chow which is right next to the golden gate park, and after we left we decided to go check out one of the most important land marks in san francisco the world:

the ‘full house’ house. we had a hell of a time figuring this whole thing out because in the show they call the street by a different name, and the official address is actually a different address than it is or something like that so we kept driving up and down the street looking for something that looked more familiar. but there it is! grassy knoll and all, courtesy of lucille.

then we checked out the MoMA in downtown san francisco which was fantastic, as well. they had a whole lee friedlander thing up of his way old stuff and some much newer stuff, as well. so we walked very slowly through there, not taking any pictures (okay, maybe lucy took, like, three, but shhhhh.), scoping out all the young artist weirdos, and occasionally checking out the art. and then since the museum was so close to union square, we walked down there and hit up h&m (because clearly we wanted to do something unique to san francisco) and saw the big painted hearts:

and by the time we got out of there and off of the highway (THANKS, vicki the gps lady…) we arrived at catie’s just as she was getting back from work. and now i’m in catie’s apartment all by my lonesome blogging on the bed waiting for everyone to get back from their respective adventures! or not really so much “adventures” as much as picking up jamie (mariel), and buying food to grill (catie and lucy). obviously i didn’t want to leave you guys hanging much longer which is why i opted out.

so, yes, we’re grilling for dinner, and then we (minus catie) are going out in the mission (i think) for drinks and whatnot because jamie finally doesn’t have to be up for work at 6 am, and then we’re leaving for los angeles tomorrow at nine! awesome awesome awesome. and leigh, if you’re reading this, we ARE going to call you in a timely fashion. i promise.

okay, i’m going to end this extremely long post with a string of dedicated photos. enjoy!

—–

jeremy:

ross:

david:

este:

hahahahahaha.

you have died of dysentery.

YES! lucy thinks that (the title) is too negative of a commentary of our time in oregon, but i think it’s hilarious.

today was another pretty long drive. the driving itself was only about 10 hours, but between stopping for lunch and gas and saying goodbye to lucy’s dad, we were actually traveling for about 12 hours altogether.

we left around 730 (pst) this morning with an additional passenger! lucy’s dad tagged along to eugene, or. as i said in yesterday’s post, it was super fun to hang out, and we definitely heard more awesome stories in the car. and i felt particularly special because i told him about earth hour, which he had not heard of yet. it’s my small attempt at helping to save the environment. check it out here, and tell all your friends, because it’s definitely important. you don’t have to do the whole song and dance if you don’t want, but i think it’s worth investing in. enough preaching.

so we dropped lucy’s dad off at a coffee shop near the university of oregon so he could attend a demonstration,

and then continued on our merry way.

after a couple of hours we finally crossed into california and decided to grab some lunch. vicki the gps voice directed us to a creeeeepy place that didn’t actually end up being any sort of deli, as she promised:

but luckily she redeemed herself after we got back on the highway, and led us to this gem:

which was pretty perfect.

and then it was basically just five hours of driving after that. we got stuck in traffic for a little while on 80W, but still ended up getting to our friend catie’s in record time.

driving through san francisco to get to her place was gorgeous, despite the blinding sun, and her apartment is equally as awesome.

i’m doing the same thing that i did with the whidbey albums… as i type, i’m uploading one flickr album dedicated to the drive from portland to san francisco, and i’ll continue adding to “adventures in san francisco” as time goes on. we’re here until wednesday, so there’ll be a lot. but the ones that are in there now are from tonight. we hung out at catie’s and had some beers, and then the three of us met up with jamie in the mission for dinner. it was a lovely little aib reunion, and we had a great time. most of the pictures, though, are from clarion st around the corner from the restaurant (luna park) where there was a ton of awesome graffiti. not to mention awesome kung-fu poses.

and catie JUST reminded us that tomorrow is st patrick’s day, too, so things should get pretty awesome up in the flickr. but considering that catie and jamie both have real-people jobs, they’ll be working for the weekend for the next couple of days while we explore the city, and we’ll do the partying at night.

expect the pictures and posts in the early afternoon the next couple of days.

ps – we learned that california cops hang out at starbucks, not dunkin’ donuts. classy.

and we’ll all float on, ok…

can i be honest with you, guys? i’m running out of witty titles for all these blogs. but modest mouse is from seattle, so i feel like it’s at least appropriate if it can’t be clever.

but technically we’re outside of portland now, at lucy’s aunt’s house in hillsboro. gooooorgeous. i wish i had pictures of it to show you, but honestly i don’t think it would really get the point across. but i can tell you this: as i blog, i sit across from a fireplace that you TURN ON, and i can see into the bathroom through the glass that protects it. and there are heated floors downstairs. so yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

we had some family time today. first we met up with mariel’s cousin taylor and had an awesome seaside bbq lunch.

check out his blog here.

then it turned out his parents were in town all of a sudden, so we got to see them for a minute, too. and then we arrived in portland, we were greeted by lucy’s aunt lois who graciously gave us a giant bed to crash in for the night, and lucy’s dad, vernon, arrived later on.

i totally jacked that picture of lucy and her dad from facebook, but it’s up, and that’s what counts.

so anyway, we left this morning and jumped back on the ferry to the mainland and went straight into seattle. we hung out in pike place market and saw where they threw the fish in the real world: seattle opening credits, and checked out the semi-famous pig that’s there,

and basically just walked up and down buying trinkets and taking pictures! all the awesomeness can be found at our usual link to flickr, right here.

it was a pretty short day, actually. we hung out at the frontier something restaurant for a while, really, eating delicious comfort food and letting mariel and taylor catch up. the ride to portland from there was pretty short – less than four hours – but the day really flew by.

and tomorrow we’re leaving early (surprise!), but we’re acquiring another passenger for a little while of the trip. lucy’s dad’s going to hitch a ride to eugene, or, which should be fun. based on the stories he told at dinner tonight, i’m looking forward to hearing about the rest of his hitchhiking in blizzards days. it’s ten hours from here to san francisco, where we’ll see (hopefully) a handful of awesome people. we’ll be in the area until wednesday, and the people on our list now are catie b, jamie, logan, and talie. if you’re not one of those four people and you live in san francisco and want to see us, call.

we’ve been battling rain pretty much from the second we crossed into washington, so hopefully things will clear up enough that we’ll be able to walk around and get the full experience. not to mention that st. patrick’s day is monday. rah rah.

so it’s there until wednesday, and then la until saturday! we’re shocked and awed that we’ve already traveled so far. whenever there’s a moment of silence or we’re somewhere that’s a completely different setting than we’re used to, the only thing we can say is that it’s absolutely insane that we’re out here.

you’re jealous.

“All right meow. Hand over your license and registration.”

BUSTED!

in order to compensate for the weight of the car, mariel has been switching into the inside lane of whatever highway we’re on during those crazy drastic mountain pass turns. well, one particular inside lane had a cop in it. the sheriff, actually. and we cut him off going “slightly” over the speed limit.

word of advice to everyone: be cute in washington. because if you are, sheriff’s don’t give you tickets even though you did at least two things wrong.

but let’s start from the beginning…

idaho was gorgeous, and it was weird only driving through it for about two hours. granted, we were actually within state lines for an entire night, but we got there after dark, and left pretty early in the morning, so we missed most of it.

it only took about six hours to drive to whidbey island, which is surprising because of the (again, crazy) mountain passes. it was actually raining through most of washington, and then when we got up into the mountains it started getting all snowy. we got a little nervous that we might need chains to get through the rest of it, but the nice man at the gas station told lucy we should stop being such paranoid wimps. no, he didn’t say that, but we didn’t end up needing them.

what we did need, though, was an awesome diner on the side of the mountain pass. and we got it.

awesome.

so from there we only had about an hour left, and then it was time for baby’s first ferry! the mukilteo ferry took us across to lucy’s lovely island.

that’s the lovely david schlangen’s house in the upper right corner, there.

so we took the ferry across, grabbed the car, and went to lucy’s, where we were greeted by not one, but TWO adorable puppies. TWO!

the brown one is emma, and the black and white one is frank. awwwww. you love it.

we hung out with those two for a little while, and then went into “town” and had dinner with lucy’s mom, laurie. a truly lovely evening. plus, we even made it home in time for (most of) lost! yes.

(side note: betsy, we still haven’t watched the first fifteen minutes, so shhhh.)

then we all simultaneously fell asleep at 11 pm, and woke to the puppies and other fun noises this morning. we set the alarm for 10 this morning, which we were all really excited about, but no one made it past nine, despite all the exhaustion and whatnot.

and then today we got up and took another ferry to port townsend, where we had an awesome lunch at a seafood restaurant where none of us really ordered seafood.

tonight the plan is a big dinner with lucy’s family, which should be really fun. we get to meet leaf and liam and annexea (lucy’s brother, nephew, and niece, respectively), and have our first homecooked meal in about a week.

i’ll be making one flickr album for the drive in to whidbey, and a separate one for our fun times on the island, but the pictures take a long time to upload and the only internet is in a restaurant down the street. there are about twenty up there now that you can check out if you’re desperate.

discover the spirit!

that’s actually the motto for north dakota, and we were really only there for about 45 minutes this morning, but i meant to use it on yesterday’s blog and forgot. deal with it.

pretty landscapes!

montana is crazy. we went through the entire state today and it was pretty remarkable. the north dakota/montana border was beautiful, and we left so early we got to catch the sunrise coming up over the canyons and whatnot. and it stayed beautiful for a long time before all of a sudden we were in the mountains! and i finally figured out what a mountain pass is, so that was cool. there are ton of pictures of the rolling hills and pine trees right here.

we stopped in billings, mt, for lunch. these past few states have been so strange because there are periods of HOURS where you see no sign of civilization whatsoever, and then almost completely out of nowhere you’re in the middle of a town. so weird. but billings was… cute. they really like ford trucks out here. we found a brewery, which was pretty cool, but after (finally) going to the brooklyn brewery last weekend, it didn’t really compare. but it was a nice try, for sure.

anyway, we did that, and then continued on through miles city and butte, both random cities in the middle of nowhere. and then the last random city we ended up in today is coeur d’alene! we drove a total of about 13.5 hours today so we didn’t get here until after it was dark (despite passing into pacific standard time right at the montana/idaho border), but the town is right on coeur d’alene lake which did look really gorgeous. hopefully we’ll get to check it out in the morning.

luckily, we have a bit of a shorter day tomorrow – only six hours – until we land in langley, wa, finally! hooray! lucy’s island should be super fun, despite the predicted rain. we’re all super excited.

related note: coeur d’alene translates to “heart of the awl” because the indians here were apparently all about trading and whatnot.

shoutout.

we’d like to briefly interrupt this blog to send a birthday shoutout

to the lovely erin thompson.

altogether now!

happy birthday to you!
happy birthday to you!
happy birthday dear eriiiiiiiiiin!
happy birthday to you!

xo