Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/22/11 Seattle Airplane

GET READY FOR A RECAP OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

Here I am, at the end of my Pacific Northwest adventure, literally on a plane back to Boston (well, LAX, but THEN onto Boston. Calm down about the semantics). It is 5pm west coast time, so I'll be getting back at 6:30am Boston time. NOT EXCITED. I have to work tomorrow too. Before I start reflecting all over the place (ewww), I'll give a summary of the day's events.

We slept until about 8:30 (our hangovers pretty much prevented us from getting up any earlier). After another shower (w00t), we headed to Pike's Place for some coffee from the first Starbucks. Well, I had some chai tea. But only because coffee objectively tastes like ass. Not much else happened after that.

We went back to our hotel for our free shitty buffet breakfast, where I learned that Nadkarns is wont to make up words. I asked her where the hot water for tea was, and she used some word, which I later learned means "liquid container," but the word doesn't actually exist in the english language. I can't even remember what she said, just the incredulous look I gave her for trying to trick me into thinking her false vocabulary was real. She apparently was not aware, but even our server was messing with her for saying ridiculous jumbles of sounds and passing them off as "words." I didn't even want the tea after her display of insanity.
We then bid our farewells to Colleen, who was going to meet her parents for another day in Seattle (she left us a lovely parting note too: I was all "awwwww"). Then the original four of us went down to check out Pioneer Square. I took an Underground tour before, but this time we walked around, saw a man-made waterfall, a fireman museum (really cool olde-timey fire trucks), and the Yukon gold rush museum.

Vroooom

We then went back to the hotel, divided up the smores chocolate we had left, and left the hotel to Pike's Place one last time for lunch. Great lunch spot: a chowder cafe: preposterously delicious. Good choice, past-self. Hopefully it will hold me over for this train-wreck of a flight home.

Omnomnom

Then Scott and I drove to the airport (Nads and Alex have a later flight). Hahahah, turning in that beast of a car to the rental company was hilarious. So dirty, bugs ALL over the front, 2700 new miles on it (we got it with only 500 miles on it!). The mud was caked on the outside, dirt and pine needles all over the inside. That thing is going to need some serious professional work. Goodybye, Beast.
Now I'm flying to LA, and then on to Boston. What an incredible, life-changing trip (ugh, bear with me as I get into this weird "emotions are happenin" kind of mood). I liked that I started "thorns and roses" for each day. It helped us with mini-reflections throughout the 12 days, and kept me at an all-time high for stoke levels. We went through our "Overall Trip" thorns and roses:

Thorns:
Me: missing seeing Mt. Saint Helens
Scott: same
Alex: same
Nads: not a very mobile knee

Roses:
Nads: wildlife up close and in natural habitat

"My head is so fucking big holy crap"

Scott: seeing the Grand Tetons pop into view right at the park entrance - I agree based on it having such a "this trip is going to be so fucking good. Also those mountains are insanely gorgeous" kind of feeling

MIND BLOWING

Alex: Prismatic Spring - I agree because it is definitely one of the 10 most beautiful things I've ever seen

HOW IS THIS PLANET EARTH?

Me: Seattle sunset dinner - great food, most beautiful sunset ever seen by human beings, great people, Joe taking close-up pictures of Alex - just a great, perfect way to end the trip

ok

I like the idea of the bookend moments: Grand Tetons coming into view and the Seattle sunset dinner. It entirely encapsulated the extreme awesomeness of the trip. It set the stage to pump me up and then it wrapped everything up with a wonderful moment that... pumped me up again. Excellent trip.

YOU GUYS. Hold on to your butts. I just saw Mt. Saint Helens. Really. We flew directly over it. I looked DOWN INTO IT FROM THE FUCKING SKY. The trip just became perfect. My thorn is nullified. It was so beautiful; I can't even describe this moment. Emotions be happenin. The conditions were PERFECT: Scott and I both had window seats over the right side of the plane, the Sun is still up, the cloud cover parted EXACTLY over it, I happened to glance out the window right as we were over it. It was meant to happen. The Universe wanted me to have a perfect trip. It was literally my ONE regret: not seeing it because of the fog. And I just saw it so crisply and clearly in the best view possible. We had gone there, and I saw postcards: I could identify it, but couldn't see it. It was MEANT to happen. I am beside myself, I can't even think about how to describe my thoughts or anything. Scott and I JUST saw it, knew the situation we were in, and now we can't even talk to each other. I am so overwhelmed. It was just so perfect. I'm never going to forget this feeling. Perfect trip. Perfect adventure. Absolutely fucking perfect.

I can't believe we ended up seeing it after all

Just turned to my right and saw the Hollywood sign (cue stupid Miley Cyrus song) above the cloud layer flying into LA. Third time seeing it. Awesome.

Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/19/11 Mt. Saint Helens/Mt. Rainier

Bear with me. This journal entry isn't the most optimistic of the trip. I think this might have been a turning point where we were all tired, the weather was shitty, and we had been within 100 yards of each other every moment for literally the previous 192 hours. It wasn't the greatest day of the trip. And when I say that, I of course mean that it was SLIGHTLY less than the greatest experience of my life. Because I'm comparing it to the rest of the trip, which is like comparing winning 500 tons of delicious bacon in the lottery with only winning 499 tons of delicious bacon. SOMEONE TELL ME HOW I CAN ENTER THE BACON LOTTERY PLEASE.

Mt. Saint Helens
We woke up to leave the hotel around 6am. I got another shower, which was amazing. But there really wasn't all that much that happened besides checking out of the hotel and driving to Mt. Saint Helens. Good story, I know.
Driving along the curvy roads toward the mountain, we realized that the weather might not cooperate with us. In fact, we drove through a cloud literally the entire way to the observatory. We got out to see what was supposed to be an amazing view of the mountain, but as Alex so aptly described it, it looked like we were on the inside of a ping pong ball. Fog everywhere. No view. Hooray. I haven't been this downtrodden on the trip since our dealings with the Canyon Campground people in Yellowstone (I recently wrote a review of the campground. I gave them the worst possible ratings due to "extreme incompetence"). Sorry for the less-than-terrific start to the trip, Colleen. Now we're just waiting in the car for the visitor's center to open. Coooooool. But we saw the movie they play before they dramatically open the curtains for a view of the mountain/fog: kind of interesting?

There have been better views

Mt. Rainier
Driving to Mt. Rainier did not so much improve the weather. I feel like morale on this trip has decreased a bit due to the weather, or maybe the fact that we've been in each other's immediate presence for at least 23 hours a day every day for the past 9 days. Most likely a combination of the two. But we played some word games during the drive to lighten the mood, and then once we got to Mt. Rainier, my over exuberance was sufficient. It was so amazing! Super green rain foresty pine trees! LOOK AT ALL THE GWEEEEN (Katie Rizzolo, you've ruined the way I react when I see trees).

This isn't as bad as Mt. Saint Helens, but still kind of looks like the inside of a ping pong ball

We actually didn't do all that much in the park since it is really foggy and there was snow everywhere. Nadkarni wanted ice cream at one point, and I decided to make a note of it.
We drove to a cool lookout over a waterfall. The trail down to the lookout was snowy, cold, and icy, but totally worth it. We then ran up a huge snowy hill to ass-sled down. Still fun... but then my shorts were soaking wet after that. WORTH IT.

Ass-sledding: best kind of sledding?

Oh! Then fun news. Scott, who was driving today, just noticed that we were basically out of gas. I feel like more attention should have been paid to that, but hey, NEW ADVENTURE, LET'S DO THIS. We stopped at the visitor center first to hear a ranger talk about the first Summit of Mt. Rainier. Somewhat pleasant? Then we drove all the way out of the park for gas after a short hike over another waterfall.

Is it just me, or does Alex make the greatest faces of all time?

Almost ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS to fill that huge fucking car. Ugh: it gets like 17mpg HIGHWAY. We've driven about 2000 miles on the trip so far. Intense.
After that, we just cooked some dinner over a fire, trying to get rid of most things since we only have one more camping night. Scott, as he tends to do, messed with a perfectly good fire to the point where it went out. Classic (to his defense, we were trying to use the coals to cook, so we had to make sure it was arranged such that our food wouldn't come out super raw). But it was rebuilt and we cooked a successful fucking meal. We're planning on doing a morning hike, so we're heading to bed pretty soon. I sincerely hope the weather is good tomorrow. I've already given up on seeing stars on a clear night for this trip. It sucks that I'm somewhat pessimistic here, but that's just the way things are proceeding. I better see SO MANY TIDEPOOLS at Olympic tomorrow...
Another great thing we've picked up on this trip is that when Scott tells a story that doesn't elicit the reaction he was looking for, he adds "and then I found five dollars!" to add a little ironic "pizazz." Today, Alex added "and then you found TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!" at the end of one of Scott's stories for the same effect, to simply indicate "cool story bro." It was hilarious. Kudos to Alex, because we've started doing that whenever someone has a "seemingly nonsensical" story.
Just remembered my post about Mt. Saint Helens. I was SO frustrated with the weather. Sure it is really our only real setback for the trip, but that really did suck.