5/11-5/23 Driving the west coast

I still need to try to write up some of the insanity of senior week ang graduation, but for the time being, let's stick with documenting the drive. If this all looks familiar, it's cause it's all on facebook :-p

5/11-5/16: Post-Graduation, still in town.
So a few days before graduation, my brother basically moved into my dorm room (5/11). We partied together, and he helped me pack out a bunch. I graduated (5/13), had a cool reception with sam sean and sarah (plus families and sean's friends, all good people), then my bro and I went to a party at the co-op later that night. We crashed on the floor of my parents hotel room the next 2 nights (mon and tues) while I ran errands around town. After my parents flew back home, we moved into Rob's place for two nights. While at rob's, my brother and I took a day trip (5/16) to joshua tree, which rocked.

5/17: On the road
From rob's, we drove north through sequoia and played near big trees. We even saw 2 bears! From sequia, we continued north on the 5 to yosemite, but decided not to risk bears tearing the car apart just to camp in a pretty spot and stayed in a motel outside the park. 5/18 yosemite and sacramentoThe next morning we had breakfast with some hungarians who were also doing a gnarly roadtrip, then drove into yosemite to enjo the park. As always, the drive in was gorgeous and the valley hard to navigate. we hiked up to lower yosemite falls and went off the trail to get wet under the waterfall (off course we forgot to bring the camera, as with most of our small adventures). We continued on toward mirror lake until we decided hiking without water wasn't going to be worth it, and walked a nearby road back to the car. We drove to this parking lot near some trailheads to make some lunch (the same parking lot I'd used when I went to yosemite over fall break with with the two laura's, nicole, ben, and aussie john). We hiked in to the woods a little ways, made quesadillas and cracked a few beers, theng ot back ot he car. we noticed this note on the car we hadn't seen earlier, but didn't read the note until we stopped for gas a few hours out in a town called oakdale. Turns out Sean Taft-morales from Rescue 2 was in the area for some rason and had recognised the stickers on my car! talk about small world, right?We took 120 out of the park, which was a ton of fun to drive, not to mention gorgeous. from there we took 5N to sacramento where we met up with laroi.Laroi's house was gorgeous. Small thing, hardwood floors, big garden out back with raspberries, different kinds of figs, sage, basil, kumquats....ridiculous, right? And he didn't ahve to plant or care for any of it, his landlord handled the whole garden. The house even came with these two awesome cats!

5/19: Laroi's house
Woke up, read some books laroi had thrown at me the night before and played with the cats while I waited for alex to wake up. laroi had work, so I taught alex how to drive stick for a little bit. When laroi got back, we hung out with some friends of his who graduated form pomona (jaqcqueline and her fiancee pete). Afterwards, laroi my bro and I went to a vietnamese place to get some pho for dinner; great great pho. We left, bought some drinks, and got drunk at laroi's house. We did some drunken qigong (I tried to teach laroi the dragon drill), then we did taco bell around 1:30-2am for chalupas. First taco bell i've had since high school. We didn't get to bed until around 3.

5/20: laroi and dave's
woke up, drank lots of tea and just generally hung out from 10am-1p. Laroi then taught me his wu dan qigong, and I finished teaching him the dragon and eagle wei tuo drills. Alex and I finally let his hose (after 3 days) at 5pm. We did some serious grocery shopping at the nugget, ate chinese in the parking lot, then drove to dave's house in oakland (piedmont).We arrived just as Dave's family and pete (his friend from pomona) were finishing dinner.dave, pete, alex and i then went to a park to slack line into the sunset. The line took a while to set up because we couldn't find appropriate trees, but we had plenty of fun when we finally got it together. We hung around that park until after dark, then went back to the house because pete had to get to bed early (had WFR class the next day).Dave alex and I were still up, so we found a park to go hango ut in, then wandered aroun the neighborhood taking in the piedmont view of the bay area and generally waxing philosophic. That night we all slept outside dave's house on this huge pole vaulting mat he has set up behind his house.

5/21: PCH, still not out of cali
That mornign we had bagels for breakfast in oakland with dave, then left to head north. We had al ittle trouble staying on 101 through the city, but ended up getting a nice driving tour of san fran as a result. We made our way across the golden gate bridge, and pulled onto the 1 (the pacific coast highway) as soon as we could. we drove the 1 all the way north from the bay area until it merged back with 101. lots of cool views and cliffs, pulled off a few times for pictures (much to alex's dismay). Blasted the beatles alot of the way. Had a nice picnic of sandwiches by this crazy view of the ocean, a few feet a way from what we didn't at first realize was a roadside toilet. That night, we camped at patrick's point just north of homboldt county.

5/22: Pacific Northwest
We'd slpet outside the night before, and i woke up to find that alex had moved into the car (that whole no-sleeping-bag thing can get kinda cold i guess). had a granola bar for breakfast, then built a fire to get warm while alex continued sleeping, or at least tried to as I kept going back to the car for different stuff.I'd hoped to see the lost coast brewery in eureka (or is it arcata?), but we decided we didn't feel like drinking so early so we continued north through redwood national park. beautiful driving through the old trees. stayed on 101 into oregon, had some coffee at a tiny local shop. checked out this wierd monument to a battle where a bunch of indians were killed (kind of a wierd monument), then got off 101 on the 42 to connect with the 5 a few towns north. From I-5, we drove north to portland where we checked in with Powell's City of Books. I called up Dan hoping to hang out, but he was running errands until we started to head out, and alex was getting impatient with the pace of our travel so we moved on.about an hour north of the city, we pulled off the freeway to make some dinner; pasta with onions, garlic, tomato, and parmesan. We were parked behind this restaurant about 20 feet away from a stak of used cardboard boxes, and periodically the restaurant folks came out to wierd us out about firesafety 9it was a propane stove...the thing doesn't even make sparks, come on). we think they were jsut generally wierded out by us. We ate and left as quickly as we could, then pulled into Kyle's house on mercer island (seattle) around 10 that night. We stayed up late listening to music, and kyle made us 12 mp3 cds for the road!

5/23: Hoh Rainforest
The next morning I had breakfast with Kyle's dad (since I always wake up earlier than everyone else). I started running some errands online, which woke up alex who was sleeping by the computer. We eventually decided it was time to wake up kyle. We all had some coffee, then left for this rainforest in olympic national park, west of seattle. Kyle thought it would only take a few hours to get there, but it ended up taking all day (another day in the car...). Whatever though, the drive was awesome and it was good hanging out.we arrived at the rainforest a few hours before sundown. The place was amazing. there was life absolutely everywhere, everything was green. Trees were growing out of fallen trees. ferns were growing out of piles of older ferns. there was this light moss hanging off of everything that looked like golden confettis, but was actuallly rooted prett firmly to whatever it grew off of (allegedly the stuff grows solely on light and air!). just an amazing place. Kyle and I drank water straight out of the glacial river that flowed thorugh the park, and also drank directly from a stream that was fed by mineral springs. yummy water.We had taken a ferry to get out of seattle, but it was pretty late when we drove back so we actually had t swing all the way down to takoma to come back. we didn't arrive at kyle's house until around 2:20am.