it took this to land here.

MY WORD!. i need to tweet or something..I swear..we crammed so much into our roadtrip that its only very slowly coming back to me as I am typing now. We are back and running on the blog! I'm gonna try and bring us all up to speed.

SO! Point Reyes was only the super beginning of San Fran. After we left Muir Woods National Monument we camped a stones throw outside of the city so we could wake up and make coffee uphill of the Golden Gate Bridge. This was an AWESOME view of the city. We've never been much of paying parkers :) so we parked up at the overlook and walked down across the bridge and into the city. Loooong bridge it turns out. We hit up all of the NPS sites including Alcatraz. Bam. Touring the prison was soooo cool. We boated out, saw the campus for a half day(seriously we will spill in person, way to much to tell on this blog) took an audio tour that was narrated by old prison guards and convicts and boated back into the city.  We covered a ton of ground, stopped in some sweet neighborhoods and bookstores, had an awesome time accidently busing around the city for an hourt and a half(my bad) and walked back(breaking pedestrian curfew..silly) over the bridge to camp out once again. Three cheers for that city!!!

We hopped up and beat it for Big Sur. On the way we saw Rosy the Riveter National Historic Site and a few Spanish Missions. We ate at the bombest Falafal place in San Jose that Tyler found off of Diners Dives and Drive-ins or something rather. We left happy. We camped in Pinnacles National Monument(beautiful) for a night and headed further south. We LOVE Northern California. Such amazing countryside.

We drove the entire coast down Big Sur. Hands in the air for California not allowing development on this coastline. awesome. We also ran into a few colonies of migrating Elephant Seal. Thats one big pile of Seal...I thought someone poisoned the Pacific and we were approaching piles of carcass...seriously..this was a weird site. With great luck, all alive...mostly. We went to the National Steinbeck Center to learn about one of Tylers favorite authors and stopped down for a walk on Cannary Row..This was before the Sur..but who remembers the order anyway..We went the the Santa Cruz boardwalk which houses the oldest wooden coaster on the west coast. We also went to John Muirs home..another NPS historic site in our jumbles of sites and missons. Muir was a major contributor to the Park movement years ago,Tyler got a wild hair in his booty and decided to drive south until he couldn't stay awake any longer. I woke up in a parking lot in Compton outside of LA. eeeeeek.

We ditched the LA idea and went to San Diego. We were damn near first in line for the San Diego ZOOOO!!! awesome!! we saw all sorts of stuff..elephants getting manicures..hippos pooping..it was a dream :) We hung around in the Old Gaslight District and had some beers then went out to Point Loma to see Cabrillo National Monument in the morning. After the point we fled east to Stone Brewery and took a tour. Good beer. Alright tour. We will give our sweet lives for Sierra Nevada. :) No but really it was cool...we camped in the desert and inched over to Arizona. 

Before jumping states we went to see Salvation Mountain. This man has put half of his lifes work into building this monument of bible verse and message of God for all who can stand the heat to come and see. It really is kind of insane and incredible to stand in front of. After some fruit here we went to see what Slab City was all about.  This old pice of property previously owned by the government..owned by now..nobody really knows. People just live out there..have a whole community...rent free..law free..ish. We stopped in and talked to some folks that have lived off the map for 8 years in this made up town..they invited us to church. We went. We sang..and then split for Joshua Tree National Park.

In JTree we climbed and camped..Jtree is really awesome for climbing and for the weird gardens of cactus that it houses. We split from here to Flagstaff where we saw the best concert ever!! We lucked into the city the same night that Split Lip Rayfield was playing!! Our favorite bluegrass band right now. Gas tank bass equals. we love you guys dont forget us! After Flag we went to ThE GRAND CANYON! Tyler took me for three days since Ive never been....he's toooo good. GC was incredible..we hardly saw any people. magic. After The biggest red hole ever..we drove up into Navajo Nation and woke up early by the jeep to pop out of the sleeping bags and go to Canyon de Chelly...interesting NPS site. Beautiful...cliff dwellings were awesome...odd relationship between the Navajo and NPS.

We shagged booty north across his monument highway where all the old western movies were filmed. We made it to Colorado National Monument by night!! ahhh...where life really began...me and Tylers first park together is still home to Charlie and Annie. Really great friends of ours that need to migrate north. My old band got together to play some music(including Charles Runde) and the night was SO much fun. After Randys Southside Diner Breakfy ! whoop whoop!..we made a straight shot through the night up to wyoming. EXCUSE ME! we also went to Dinosaur National Monument. Everyone quite there job now and fall back in love with the coolest prehistoric animals again! GO THERE.

After some housing confusion at midnight...we slept..woke up in the Grand freakin TETONS and moved into our 2 room cabin in Colter Bay. Ive worked for 2 weeks. and Tyler for 1. We celebrated his 25th birthday(big boy) He took me to Yellowstone last weekend...and Ive lost count of how many Elk, Grizzley, Moose, Bison and Pronghorn that we have seen. We havn't stopped moving and we are going full throttle. Here we are. We are happy. We are back in the the mountains...

ill post pictures soon. -r

Road Trip WY: Week 1

Wow, it's hard to believe it's been over 3 weeks since we left Salem on our roadtrip for Grand Teton NP. It's a lot of ground to cover, so I'm gonna try and sum it up fairly quickly and let the pictures do the talkin.

Week 1

Our first stop was Smith Rock State Park, only a couple hours east of Salem. We stopped at a couple falls along the way, and got to Bend fairly early in the afternoon. The weather wasn't looking to good so we decided to hit up the Deschutes Brewery and buy a couple of pieces of climbing gear that we needed.

Smith Rock is a sport climber's dream! Sport climbing is basically this, climbing with gear that is already pre-placed (bolts). So basically you just climb, and clip your rope in along the way with a double ended carabiner connected by some nylon webbing. Not much equipment needed: Harness, helmet, rope, 10 quickdraws and climbing shoes. We had alot of fun and ended up camping in the park for 2 nights.

Then we headed down south towards Klamath Falls where my uncle Kurtis lives. During this time Rachel had her 2nd major experience with handguns, shooting my newly acquired Springfield Armory XDM .40 (thanks illinois), and Kurt's .22 1911 and custom made AR-15.

On down south we went to the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA. The tour was free and lead by a really energetic dude who gave us more info about the company and beer than we could ever remember. We got to play in some dried hops and drink 8 different kinds of beer! Heres what the hops looked like, they smelled delicious! And Rachel with our VIP passes ;)












Why stop at beer? We headed to Sonoma and Napa Valley's to try out some of that wine we'd heard all about.

It was beautiful country and they were having somewhat of a heatwave at the time, I think it was even hitting the low 90's. We searched all the local brochures and papers in search of free wine tastings, I think we found 3 or 4 places that  were having free wine tasting specials. The rest charged up to 30 dollars! All that world renowned wine has gone to their head. The first winery we hit up was Sutter Home, which might sound familiar to you, they're known for the large 1.5 liter bottles of wine that you can pick up in the grocery store for about 6 bucks. Yes, we set our sights a little low after seeing some $30 tasting price tags, but it was still wine and did the trick, as you can tell by this photo.

Sonoma seemed a little more down to earth than over-developed Napa, and is where we started our Mission Trail Journey. There are 21 missions built from San Diego to Sonoma, CA that were built by the Spaniards way back when to convert the native people to the Catholic religion. I had a loose goal of seeing all of them, which didn't happen. Hear is Rachel trying to see what it feels like to be an old Catholic 200 years ago.

Away we headed to the coast north of San Francisco, home of Point Reyes National Seashore. We tried to visit every park site we could along the way, and this was the first one saw. We managed to see Elephant Seals, Grey Whales, a lighthouse, beautiful scenery, flowers in bloom and then Rachel's favorite.....a cow birthing! If you don't care to see an image of the latter, well, stop reading here.

We also hit up Muir Woods National Monument, preserving some of the few Redwoods left on this section of coastline. None of the pictures really turned out. Week 1: OVER.

bueno. estamos listos.

I can't believe I havn't been on here since we hiked up Baru. Tyler would say he absolutely believes it because I tend to let time go in between posts until so much has stacked that I can't remember any of it..this may be true. I think he is so "faaayast" at blogging cause he can cover less and get in and out of the internet cafe like a jungle cat..very sneaky..very fast..undetected..few ticks..

The day after we hiked up Baru we got scootin' and packed all of our gear up to..as Tyler would say.. "hit the roooad". What he failed to mention about Baru was our unique experience actually getting to the trailhead. The morning we went out, we walked a few kilometers to, with great luck, be picked up by a worker heading up the hill to work practically at the park entrance. He gave us a local tour of the farms and waterfalls on the way up. Pretty awesome, yeah? After he drops us..only 3km away from the park..anOTHER truck immediatly picks us up and takes us all the way. This was nice cause it was a steep mother, this road. We hike in a half an hour and realize we are going down hill too much for a few fellas that intend on clawing their way to the top. We ask a dazed farmer..the only person in the middle of nowhere foothills panama volcano and turns out we were certainly not heading up..and no trails existed that would lift us to the peak upon which we wished greatly to be nestled. We walked back to the ranger station( the fact that it was shut down and the Baru summit hike is the most popular should have been a clue....eep) and find a farm owner who just happened to be heading to the OTHER park entrance where his other farm was. We got yet anOTHER ride..saw some amazing countryside and got a tour with a local whose family roots are buried deep into the hills of this refreshing mountain town we have come to love. We hiked up. it was "Good. Great. Grand! No yelling on the bus!" eh?? anybody? movie quote.

Anyway...the road we were on initially(confusing it for the path up the hill) was the Trail of the Quetzales. This connects our town to this smaller town of Cerra Punta. We hiked into the forest and camped along the trail. WONDERFUL. We made it out with out ever actually seeing this bird..I think it is made up at a talked up tourist trap..everyone wants an eyefull... I won't buy it. There is NO Quetzal! :) When we got out of the park we ate at a, should be illegal, bakery that moved my emotions and went up to David where we caught a bus to the Caribbean Coast.

We headed out to Bocas Del Torro, some islands off the coast. The first day was rainy. We have had job offers rolling in like CRAZY lately..so we sat up in the hotel and people watched and took care of some bidness back home. Next day we bussed out to the Boca Del Drago. There was this AWESOME beach nearly inFESTED with starfish. We took a snorkel under water and it was insane. Within 20 feet..like 20 starfish..all hanging out..possibly planning a barbeque or getting ready for softball practice..so many...a league.

We spent a few nights on this Big Island and a few nights on the less populated Bastimento Island. You can cut through the jungle to get to beautiful yellow sand beaches. Wizard beach was good for surf watching and had a wicked rip current that sucked you out little by little while you weren't paying attention. Tyler was diving into waves as if the trials for The US Olympic Swimming team were hosting trials on that island the very next day...look out for him on the tube...he'll be that guy in red, white, blue and blonde all over moving very quickly on slick surfaces and laughing over the sound system.

 We also took a lengthier hike the next day to Red Frog beach. Named, I suppose, after the tiny poisonous red frogs that inhabit the area above sand line. The rip was even stronger here..strong enough that it scared me Big Time. These kids were trying to show us red frogs(that was had been hopping over, on the hike in, like bananas in a Mario Kart race track) for money. We did not give them this and they through fruit and flower pods at us from a safe distance.... bunch of poos.

Bastimento was the BOMB. Great way to relax before the last city of our whole trip. We spent the day in

 transit to Panama. We hung out in David(2nd largest city in the country) for half of the day so we could sleep on the bus and dip out of buying a hotel. David was actually pleasant...busy cities seem busier from the bus station..I was happy we left that to kill the time. We hung out in the plaza and ate icecream and brownies and went to see a movie. Yeah Denzel! whoop whoop! Nothing better than seeing the timeless Mister Washington than doing it with a bag of edible loot. We were like the fattest people ever..Tyler bought a big bag of drinks and candy bars and popcorn for the movie and I made little progress with my cough and snap techniques while drinking my canned rootbeer... Anybody want to see a movie?? I talk alot..but I could use the practice at sneakishly opening tops in fast action scenes...

We got the midnight bus and woke up in Panama City, the best capitol city in Central America!! I can't believe that people might just pass through this place. We lOVEd it. We stayed in Casco Viejo. This was originally Panama City before the Canal. Now it is an active remains in decay and reconstruction. Really 80 percent of the buildings are gutted with these standing shells of once hopping eateries and churches and apartments. It had a really nice to feel to it and we scoff at the idea of what a brochure of this part of the city will look like in 10 years. I want it to never change.

We went and saw the Panama Canal!!! That was cool...we tried to watch the locks through the fence but in this city you may as well be back in the states. 'Cause ain't NOTHIN' free! We went in the museum and went to an observation deck to watch the Miraflores Locks in action. These are 1 or 3 sets of locks on the whole canal. They are used to higher from and lower boats to sea level from the ol' canal. Look it up!! It's actually really interesting and this engineering marvel plays a Goliath role in World Trade. AAAND..we saw some big boats! whoop! It was kinda like a ball game..everyone in the stands with hotdog and beer in hand...Panama Canal. Check.

Our last night we walked around the old wrecked glamorous part of the city we were staying in and glanced across at the vast city skyline. We walked around the narrow streets dodging the great street kitty population and looking through the doorways of old hollow buildings.. last day in town we took a bus downtown to Panama Viejo..where only ruins of a city exist..half stone walls..lone standing church arches.. we wandered around until about dark and grabbed a crammed bus to the airport. The plane was delayed..we said goodbye with a fairwell dinner of crackers and beans...a trip favorite and drink bad water from the tap. **sigh** its been good!!!

I am writing from a Crown Plaza in Florida. Our flights got all jumbled up and the airlines put us in a hotel for the day and bought our meals! All this free soap and coffee!! We are draggin our heals to get to Chicago but I think my sweet Aunt Carole with be thankful that we could scrub somewhere else. Tyler says the hotel is like a decompression zone for us to sterilize our things and bodies and be , ever so gently, released back into the over sanitary clean cut states. We'll be up there tonight Carole, PROMISE!! Here comes the family, friends and states tour before our jobs start!!

Central America. A success. Stay tuned we are gonna try and keep this blog up.

Oh yeah..and we decided to take a breather from Colorado and try a Park that's new for the both of us. Our next adventure lies in between the peaks in Grand Tetons National Park.

Both working trails!! *sigh of relief* wonderful.

-rachel.

Corcovado

Corcovado sort of redeemed Costa Rica for us. We had been slightly unimpressed with certain parts of the country so far and Corcovado is painted as THE place to see wildlife along with a beautiful landscape, and it did not dissapoint. We woke up early in Puerto Jiminez to catch the early morning 4wd public transport out to Carate, from there it's a 4km walk along the beach into the park. The park is somewhat well known and there aren't many spaces available for camping, so all we could swing was 1 night at the Sirena ranger station, a 20km walk from Carate. Here is Rachel enjoying the bumpy ride out and a picture of the beach on the way to the park entry.










Corcovado was called ¨the most biologically intense place on earth¨ by National Geographic, and it quickly became apparent why. It seemed that every couple hundred feet we walked we saw a new insect, bird, animal or flower. In sections the beach was literally crawling with hermit crabs, by the thousands, a sheet of moving shells on top of the sand. Rachel said the sound of their legs reminded her of the sound pop rocks make in your mouth. These creepy spiders were also everywhere.











The hike was a flat 13 miles that went between beach and land, but there was so much to see along the way that it took us about 7 hours to walk to camp. Like coconuts full of hermit crabs and flowers.

Coatis and Tapirs (an odd sort of animal with a pig body, a flacid nose and elephant like eyes)

Cool trees

Spiky trees and soaring monkeys

Snakes (either a boa constrictor or the venomous pit viper) and beaches

Scarlet Macaws and forests

Whoo, this is a good example of a picture being worth a thousand words, or 160,000 words. Corcovado was AMAZING, nuff' said.

After we headed into Panama up into Boquette. It feels so nice to be back in the mountains, the heat on the Costa Rican coast was becoming unbearable. Yesterday we went up Volcan Baru, the highest and only volcano in Panama. The clouds actually cleared a bit and we had somewhat of a view, which I guess here is pretty rare. I´ll post pics when I´m able to upload them.

Costa Rican Havoc on yo wallet!

Man it is really strange how your mind just has to change gears at every border. It is a huge change going from Nica to Tico(That is what CR natives call eachother). New currency and new prices...Tyler likes to throw out how many Cordoba or Pesos something would be when we start thinkin its cheap here. The prices are pretty close to the states. But thats why Tyler is the banker...if you know him well. You get it.

Somehow we have managed to get to a ton of National Parks and bus all over this country in every Pacific nook and stay, for the most part, at or under budget. One thing different about Costa Freaka is the lack of Latin American culture busting at the seams and street corners. You get hit with a splash here and there but we have changed exploration gears also and are sticking to the hills.

Before we left Alajuela we took a trip up to Volcan Poas. One unique thing about Poas is that the bus takes you pretty much to the crater. Another is that we visited it on the first day of rain that the country has seen in over 3 months! We were SOAKed. It was super windy and cloudy. We hiked to the 2 lookouts but didnt get to see much further than 30 feet in front of us. We DID really scare some guy while we were hiding, under some braches, from the rain. That was pretty awesome. The visitor center was pretty cool and offered several comical English translations. It also put a stamp on the fact the the Japanese are really putting there fingers in the Central American cookie jar. There was a wall dedicated to natural disaster prevention and other related articles with photos and examples provided from Japan. Random(I mean...unexpected :)). We see Japanese companies often. Those fellas are just popping up all over the place! OH and I am pretty sure that I was fairly close to or was experiencing hypothermia. I have NEVER in my life been so wet and cold and unable to warm myself. My lips were purple and it kind of made us nervous. Tyler doesnt know I keep purple lipstick in my purse for occasions where coffee is expensive and we end up sharing it...oh gawsh he is too sweet. *insert maniac laugh image of fingertips tapping those of opposite hand*

After Poas we collected our tent and things from our hostel and booked it to Puntarenas. I need everyone to understand our sleeping situation in Alajuela. The hostel was ran by a Dustin Hoffman look-a-like from Spain whom I am certain was, at one point in his life, a professional body builder and lives life as if he is being filmed for some sort of an Eat Right/Live Right/Move Right type of video. He was always in short gym cloths and had really pump you up kind of music playing all the time. We were his first ever campers and this made him laugh everytime he looked at us or our tent in his perfect garden space. He was obsessed with the garden and watered it as often as he ate...which was all day. We stayed mostly dry. Just having him available to observe was worth the sprinklers.

We got into Puntarenas late and used it as a launching point to Montezuma. Puntarenas is referred to as the Pearl of the Pacific as its a port city at the tip of a 800km long by 100-600m wide peninsula. Cozy a nice for not much more than a morning walk through to the port. We caught the hour long ferry in the morning and bused a few hours to get to the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. We found an awesome quiet place to camp out of town right on the beach. The camping was actually the best part of the town. We had a wood burning stove, 2 chairs and a table for the beer. No rain fly. Fell asleep and woke up to waves crashing on the rocks. We walked the beach and found these nooks where maby 100 crabs or more were scurrying away from us. We also hiked out to this waterfall that had a swimming hole. Tyler would relay this as a [hippy dip].

We missed our bus out to the  Reserva Natural Absoluta Cabo Blanco so we walked the 3 miles and hiked around the reserve for the rest of the day. It is the oldest protected wilderness area in Costa Rica and was hot and sticky. We saw a ton of monkeys and read alot about the regrowth of the area and different plant species that are abundant. We hiked down to the beach and found a ton of floundered lobster and some fish..maybe a result of the red tide this coast is enduring. A man from the area said its an annual algae bloom that causes the water to turn brown and pollutes the water affecting many sea creatures. It also keeps surfers out of the water and kept us out as well. This was a really cool bat house in the reserve.

We bussed back up to the ferry..sliced through the red sea back to Punta and caught a bus as it was literally pulling out over to Quepos. Not much for cheap sleeping and smelled like doody. We bused up to Manuel Antonio(named after the National Park we went to visit) We were pointed all over the coast for seriously a few miles to find a camping. Ya wont let us pay to camp? Fine! We slept for free on the beach and made a fire to cook dinner over. While Tyler built our fire for coffee I discovered my skill in cracking open coconuts. We drank a toooon of milk!! We also camped right by a lagoon where Tyler saw a crocodile and was sprawling with monkeys!! We found out in the morning we were pretty much sleeping in the Park. We walked into the park via the rocky beach and Tyler got whistled at by the guard!! We decided we saw enough and ate some beans and tortilla and left. we got to look at the beach park from our breakfast spot anyway. PRETTY!

Waiting for the bus to San Isidro we got emails from Denali National Park!!! Both of us!! It seems like job offers are just rolling in now and giving us alot of hope for the future!! Ive been contacted since by Yellowstone and before, both of us, by a few parks in South Dakota. After the rush and excitement of the offers we slowed down and decided to stick with Black Canyon. We get everything we want and all the time in the world to play in the mountains. We win!

From San Isidro we bused up to San Gerardo de El General and camped there as a base to hike Cerro Chirripo. It sits at 3820m as the highest peak in the country. We camped 2 nights in town so we could reserve a spot at the lodge up on the mountain. This gave us a whole day to sink wash cloths and lounge by the river..its nice to have a sec to slow down since we are hitting Costa Rica so fast and hard!

We left the second morning and realized we had mixed up hike info and the hike was actually about twice the distance we had thought it was!!! It was about 7000 foot elevation gain. Alooot of up hill, hah. We got to the lodge in the afternoon which was super chilly!! It was too late in the day to summit so we were stranded at the lodge to drink boxed wine and eat beans...what a sad life. The next morning we summited and hiked back into town. Our hike was about 17 miles that day but the view from the top was worth the push. The summit was beautiful and private and we ate about half of the grocery store when we got back in town!!! After a super long day of bussing yesterday we are back to the HOT coast on the Osa Penisula.

We will be backpacking through part of Corcovado National Park and getting ready to head into Panama in a few days..We found a good place to camp here in Puerto Jimenez...complete with a kitty, a few cute dogs, nice bathroom, plug to cook and a brah surfer body mind and soul healing sort of guy for Tyler to laugh at...we have it all......ahhh Costa Rica -rachel.