as most of you know.........i am in the process of moving.......i just completed probably the longest road trip of my life (so far, at least). 2700 miles! my brother (who flew in from Alabama to help me travel) and i braved the elements and had a pretty awesome time!

so here is the story :)

day 1: after about 3 hours of sleep, my brother, Chris jumps on my bed to wake me up - somehow he seems way more spry than i do with such little sleep. realizing that i have a ton of stuff to do before heading out - i am pushed by stress to get out of bed and get ready to launch.

it takes us about 2-3 hours to get everything loaded up in the car (yes, i procrastinated really badly). unfortunately, not everything fits in my vehicle (i decided to only bring the essentials - dishes, clothes, dvd's, music and books.....no furniture). i had to part with a few items (there might be a few free things over at nathan's house if anyone is interested - let me know.) after making the decision on what to leave and saying bye to jon and nathan - i got in the car to head out - it was pretty sad - but Chris was determined to cheer me up and he kept telling me funny stories.......

we ended up taking a trip downtown so i could get Chris a Stumptown coffee - since that was unique and cool and he has never had one, he ended up liking it a lot. we ended up just going to McDonald's for breakfast, which is absolutely not unique nor cool. i drove around the 405 loop the long way to say goodbye and then we headed for the gorge.

it only seems fitting that it was cloudy on the day i headed out - so the gorge was probably not at its full glory - but nonetheless - it was still unbelievably amazing as i have always called it and always will - they should make that thing a national park.

anyway, our goal for today is to make it to Butte, Montana to my friend Newby's step mother's house to spend the night. we take the trek down I-84 and then head north to go through Washington and the Tri-Cities area, eventually stopping in Spokane for lunch.......or was it dinner? i am not sure.

i have a shell gas card so i can save 5% every time i get gas, so i went to the first shell station i found in downtown Spokane........and we are in the absolute ghetto.....actually the whole city seems to be a ghetto - sorry for anyone that is from there.......but i was not impressed with Spokane at all........i proceed to get out to pump my own gas - yes, this is new - and two of the three people sitting near us at the gas station (who appear to be homeless) proceeded to just about get into a strait up brawl - fortunately it was only a lot of yelling and one guy pouring water on the other dude, but it kept my brother from getting out of the car to go to the bathroom.

after getting gas we drive around forever downtown trying to find a decent place to eat. we end up finding an old railway car that serves breakfast 24 hours a day - i love breakfast no matter what time of day it is - we are thankful to find that this place is rated the best breakfast in Spokane 11 of the last 12 years - alright! as we walk in we find a couple from alabama - which is amazing - we end up not talking to them - but our waitress thinks it is amazing that all the people she is serving are from the south. the main memory from this restaurant is walking to the back to go to the restroom and being completely creeped out by a wax mannequin that is ready to take my ticket to the train - wow - there should be a law against wax mannequins everywhere. after we finish our breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever it was - and my brother completes his third call to his wife (at least) - we head out for Idaho and Couer'D'Lane.

now seems like a good place to talk about our soundtrack for the ride "home" so far - i enjoy introducing people to good music - especailly my brother - and there were plenty of opportunities for that so far with - The Cold War Kids, Mute Math, Imogen Heap and Wilco.......we are three for four on him actually liking them so far. we also had the old stand-bys such as Cold Play, Dispatch and Elliot Smith.

The rest of Washington was pretty cool but then we headed into Northern Idaho and it was absolutely stunning. Lake Couer D'Lane should also be a national park - it was glorious - glorious vistas around every corner.

it did not take very long to make it accross Idaho and enter Montana - obvioulsy the beauty continued here. we even took a couple pictures here.......the sunset was amazing in the background. we also stopped in a town of about 25 people at a quick shop to get some snacks - I got a Henry Weinhard's Creme Soda since they do not sell those down south - it was amazing.

on our way down to Butte, we stopped at the University of Montana to check out thier campus - i try to make it a point to stop at every major college along the way because they are cool. later on we stopped to get gas at a closed gas station - apparently if you have a credit card you can get gas anywhere at any hour - my card still worked and we got gas even though the place was a ghost town.

we finally reached our destination of the Newby's house to sleep for the night at about 11:00. The Newby's were excellent hosts and it was a blessing to be able to find a place to stay for free. We hung out with them for a little while and made small talk - then we all decided we needed some sleep. we woke up the next morning and got some food and headed out for Yellowstone National Park.

we decided to fit in a one day excursion to the park just because everyone should go to Yellowstone before they die.

this was a pretty awesome day - on the way there that morning we saw our first Antelope of the trip and there were a few places we had to stop for glorious vistas/pictures.

we finally made it to just outside the park and got some Arby's and gas just before entering - we saved our food for an in-the-park picnic. we entered the park ($25 for a 7 day pass, that was the only choice) and headed out to the first picnic area to have our lunch. on the way we got to see a bald eagle's nest and that was about it. we picniced beside a cool stream/river and enjoyed the sunshine.

we then began heading towards the south loop of Yellowstone, we saw lots of hot springs, elk and buffalo on the way to our first stop. we went to an area that has lots of cool brightly colored lakes and geysers and stuff - truly amazing stuff - it feels like you are on mars - here are a few of my picturest:

apparently these little heated pools provide the perfect set up for certain colorful bacteria to grow which make the beautiful colors seen above. i tested the water, and yes it is very hot, it is like dipping your finger in coffee. trust me i did it.....i actually tried to insert the video my brother took of the hot spring bubbling up and me entering the frame and testing the waters while my brother calls me an idiot - i prefer to think of it as curious or brave.....whatever....

as we moved through the rest of the park we got to see many more awesome and beautiful sights including Old Faithful.........or Old Unreliable.....apparently they can only predict it going off within plus or minus 10 mins. - oh well, as we were driving up it was going off - so we had 60 to 80 mins until the next one - we bought some souveniers and decided to take a little hike to a more beautiful area on a hillside to watch the great geyser. in the end, this seemed to not be that great of an idea - we did have no crowds at all - but also we were like a half mile away and could not really tell how huge the geyser was........here is the pic:

just for reference - there is a big crowd of people around the geyser in a circle about 100 feet away on all sides, maybe you can see them maybe you can't - but as you can tell - we were a long way away :)

next on the agenda was to head over to Yellowstone Canyon where all the waterfalls are - this involved a long drive and a few stops to see animals.........here is one shot of me looking like a goob with a lazy buffalo in the background, i am pretty sure these buffalo were like 100 years old, we could have probably gone and sat on thier backs and they would not have done anything:

much of the rest of the long trip included a stop to see an elk (worth it), a baby wolf (absolutely not worth it - yet, literally 1000 people were stopped to look at the baby wolf accross the river approximately 5 miles away), and more buffalo.

during this portion of the ride our soundtrack was Pink Martini, Band of Horses and the Killers.......it was a long ride to the next area.

we finally made it to the canyon and it was amazing.......honestly i probably could not think of an adequate word to descrive the majesty of the canyon - so i will just post some pics.......and you can judge for yourself - on the beauty - not my crappy camera and photography skills :)

here is the lower falls of yellowstone - it falls about 300 feet:

and here is the money shot from just beside the falls:

that sight is way more amazing than it looks from this pic - the canyon is about 1300 feet deep and 4000 feet wide very comparable to the grand canyon in both hugeness and beauty!

you may also notice a yellow tint to the rocks - there is sulfur everywhere in yellowstone and thus the stone ends up being colored yellow - thus the name of the park........but you probably already knew that!

after this we decided to not eat in the park because it would be expensive so we started to head out towards the northeast exit through the Lamar Valley - and yes, once again - this was amazing! here are a few more shots.......

i wish i could say we were cool and made a long hike to get these amazing views.......but all of this stuff is literally right beside the road.

we were able to make the rest of the trek out of the park relatively well, it was a really beautiful ride. we even finally got to see a bear. there was a little black bear just off the road in an awesome valley just muching on some grass, looking like he just wrapped up his latest gig with national geographic, pimping it for the cameras. there were not many parking spots, so we nearly flipped the blazer on the soft shoulder - but we were able to make it back and enjoy the bear........here is my best shot of him:

it was heading towards night fall, so we decided to head out of the east exit towards the nearest hotels. as we exited the camp, we had an instant feeling of, wow, we are in the middle of absolutely no where. the roads were crappy, there was no one to be found.......it was crazy. the few small hotels just on the periphery of the park were absolutely not worth staying in........so we decided to head towards Cody, Wyoming....it was just down the road. the only catch was, the road literally goes over a mountain and is a constant serious of u-turns on the edge of the mountain. i was cool with it, my brother was not at all.......it was like driving with a mental patient the entire way.

we finally made it to cody - where nothing was open for food and we decided to stay in a crappy hotel for a  hundy $. it was not that bad........we just did not eat dinner......

we slept well (or at least i did) - and got a decently early start to check out and head to McDonalds for breakfast. i think we went to the worst McDonalds in the US - it took us a million years to get our food, despite there being literally 75 employees in the McDonalds. unfornunately, the employees were outnumbered though - the city of Cody was apparently having a town meeting at the McDonalds - so everyone was there. when we finally did get our food, i proceeded to spill my coke all over the woman in line behind me - which was awesome - i managed to not get anything at all on me - it all went on her...........so that was a pretty annoying start to the day.

we finally made it out and were presented with another set of high mountain u-turns - Chris was driving this time and was not as tired - so that worked out ok.

the door on my vehicle for some reason seems to let in some wind a lot and can be annoying when you are driving - Chris will often just open and try to shut the door harder during mid-drive to remedy the situation. there was one instance where he did just this, only a plastic bottle got caught in the door as he began to shut it. given that we were on the side of the mountain there was nowhere to pull over and for some reason, the thought of abandoning the bottle out the door in order to close it did not cross his mind - he proceeded to drive a couple miles holding his door shut - it was pretty hilarious!

later that morning, we had to stop on the road for a wreck to be cleared - apparently the guy lost control of his car and had a really nasty wreck - everyone just stopped and started hanging out and talking since there was nothing else to do. fortunately, this did not delay us very long, we were only delayed about 30 minutes waiting for the helicopter to come and get him.

we then spent the rest of the morning trying to get accross the rest of wyoming and into south dakota so we could make our stop at Mt. Rushmore.

we finally made it to Mt. Rushmore - and boy was that a dissappointment. i will withold my complaints - but it did provide a lot of laughs as my brother and I deliriously made fun of everything. here is basically the only shot we got of the Mt. since we decided it was not even worth it to pay to go "inside."

"it is freaking tiny!" that was a direct quote from both of us..........oh well, at least we saw it for ourselves :)

the rest of south dakota was pretty stinking boring, but we were finally able to drive really fast and make good time on the long stretches of strait and open highway. we did stop at wall drugs (there were approximately 150,000 signs telling us to go there) - we kind of wished we had not gone there. we did stop at an awesome BP gas station with this on every pump:

i thought it was hilarious, you may not agree - but the picture of the semi-redneck cop is classic! "This guy is watching you, u better watch out!" i would like to have been there when they made the decision for who was going to be the poster boy for the precinct. did this guy volunteer himself, or did he get chosen? who knows, this is perfect nonetheless.

after our mt.rushmore and wall drugs experiences we were able to get some decent lunch - subway - our first sort of healthy meal of the trip! did you know that subway serves pizza now? what the heck? at the subway, Chris wanted to nonchalantly see how much houses were in south dakata - so he was going to open the little yellow holder for the "properties for sale" magazines - but he ended up barely making the lip of the top of the holder and proceeded to explode his coke all over the mini-foyer of the subway. he decided to just leave and not tell anyone - we are now 2 for 2 for spilling in restaurants on the day - it seems like a good place to mention that we are age 30 and 26 repectively........

after an eternity of driving we finally enter minnesota - i think it really was about 10pm or so when we finally got to minnesota - we found a diner to eat at that was actually pretty good despite being part of a gas station and looking really dirty. i had a 1/3 pound hamburger that supposedly came from local beef farmers. it was only $4.99 and it was amazing!

another interesting fact about driving cross country in the summer is that there are bugs everywhere. most of the times we stopped for gas it was a tough call for which we needed worse, gas or to clean off the windshield - it was literally raining bugs the whole way.

as we enter minnesota Chris and I have our first set of conflicts. the first one was our totally different driving styles.........for whatever reason, my brother is the only person i know under age 30 who drives the speed limit everywhere he goes. he also really enjoys letting the driver (me) know what the speed limit is at all times, as well as his estimate of how much i should have slowed down for a curve compared to how much i actually did slow down. this resulted in about an hour of me driving 55mph on the interstate - it was a really mature moment for everyone.

the next conflict was how far we were going to drive that night. i really wanted to head up to Minneanapolis/St. Paul to drive around the city at 3AM and feel like we owned the place. i have done that a few times in past road trips and i highly recommend it - it is awesome anytime you can go downtown in a major city and literally not find a single soul there and just check out all the cool places in the cool of the night while the city sleeps. anyway, Chris was not interested in this at all. did i mention that Minneanapolis is way out of our way.........it is/was!

doing this was put into even more danger by the weather. as we were driving through Minny - we were blessed with a literal strobe light of constant lightning. at first it was really cool and fun to watch. it was also cool that there was no rain at all - it was just caused by heat or something. well this was really cool for an hour or so - then we finally hit the deluge near the turn to go north (out of our way). i just about gave up when it got really bad. it was about 12:30 in the morning, there was intense rain, it was dark and we were coming up on a decent exit with lots of hotel choices. so i stopped and got gas and decided to go to a hotel and admit defeat - we went to the hotel and no one would respond to our calls for service - i decided to head back out - it had now stopped raining and Chris decided to let me drive on up to the city as long as he could get some coffee.

this was just what we needed. i went in and got some peanut M & M's and a Mtn. Dew. Chris did not quite have the same luck. he just wanted some regular black coffee. apparently, there were like 12 options and he somehow ended up with some Hazelnut Coffee which he hates. he always has to cool off his coffee with some water so he got some water too - only it was orange flavored water (what are the odds?). as he left the gas station - he tested the heat of his coffee and found it to be cool - so he took a big gulp and proceeded to burn his whole mouth. so he had to cool it off with his orange water.........anyway, another great story down in the records :)

to pump ourselves up we decided to switch to the pop music stations - where we heard Umbrella by Rihanna about 12 times. you may think i am complaining - but of all the songs we heard on the trip - this was the one song that i absolutely had to listen to every time it came on - it is awesome!!!!

"you can stand  under my UUUMBURRella............ella..................ella...................ay.............ay..............ay.........under my UUMMMMBurella...........ella...........ella............ay.............ay............ay

so we finally made it to Minny/St. Paul and drove around a little downtown and it was pretty awesome - but not as awesome as i thought it might be............so now we were done and needed to head towards a hotel........we ended up making it all the way to Hudson, Wisconsin before stopping for the night at 5AM :) remember we started the day in Cody, Wyoming - we covered a lot of state!

we did enter a pretty awesome delirious state where we were trying to be smart and call google 411 to find out what hotel options might be in the next town.........only the next towns were places like:

Computer Generatated Operator: City and State Please?

Me: Afton, Minnesota

Computer Generated Operator: Austin, Texas?

Me: AAAAFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFton, MINNESOTA

Computer Generated Operator: I am sorry can you repeat that?

ok, afton is not working what is the next city on the map.............are you kidding me?

Me:  Menemonie, Minnesota

Computer Generated Operator: Melimany, Wisconsin?

Me: MEEH-nimmmm-MO-knee, Minnesota

Computer Generated Operator: Menalomy Falls, Minnsota.......

and this proceeded for a while...........i am sure you probably don't realize how funny this was when it actually happened, but it was truly great.

we did find an absolutely ghetto hotal to stay at for just a few hours to sleep. it looked ghetto outside, but once you got inside it was amazing - really, really nice - we were both shocked. and it was only $55 - which was awesome.

we got up at noon and got some Wendy's and then headed towards Chicago. we only needed to drive accross Wisconsin and then drop into Chicago. We decided to abandon our idea of going to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, just because it was totally out of our way - and we did not have much time.

We made decent time and got to my friend Brad's house in Chicago about 7:30. He and his wife and kid share an awesome little bungalow on the site of the camp that Brad works at. I got to meet his son Wesley who was really cool - he would constantly look around the room making eye contact with everyone and then follow that up with a huge gummy smile that he would generously pass out to everyone - increasing the happiness in any room by 100%.

we hung out at the camp and experienced another deluge, toured the new facilities of the camp, watched a flood come into the downstairs of the offices, hung out with tons of kids playing ball. went back and talked a lot with Brad and his wife and ate our Chicago style pizza - which was wonderful!!!

we slept in a little the next day in order to avoid the hideous Chicago traffic and we headed out about 9AM the next morning. we checked traffic and got directions out of Chicago and were on our way. Chicago prooved to be a bit of an issue to get out of. i was driving and you have to make a bunch of clutch moves in intense traffic or you will pay dearly for a miss. there was one instance where i ended up going east instead of west on one interstate and since it was a toll road, you can't just get off at an exit and turn around - exits do not exist like this on a toll road - you are in for the duration. fortunately, we were able to make some edits to our trip and it worked out ok.

we ended up stopping for gas while still in the Chicago area and went again to the ghetto - it is now standard practice. while in the ghetto, i had to pay for my snack and there was a sea of people coming in and out buying lottery tickets. it was really sad - most of these people really probably did not have enough money to be doing this - but they were nonetheless.

we finally made it out of Chicago and said a sad farewell to our friend I-90 whom we met in Washington, now we were connecting with I-65 which was going to take us in the rest of the way. We hit this in Indiana.

Indiana has a lot of cities that are named after other cities in the United States - it was uncanny. lafeyette (LA) , battle ground (MI), dayton (OH), Lebanon (OR), Columbus (GA, OH), Austin (TX), Memphis (TN), Salem (OR), Nashville (TN) - just to name a few. We went through Indianapolis and encountered almost no traffic..........not really much to Indianapolis at all.

Next we were in Kentucky where we hit some of the most intense rain and thunderstorms of my life. This was during rush hour traffic in Louisville - which made it doubly intense. The weather was so crazy that the emergency broadcasting network actually interrupted the radio to tell us about it. For those who are not from the south, i will give you an aside. Often there will be a really intense, ear-piercing sound come accross the radio - and afterwards it is ALWAYS followed by - "This was a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System, this is only a test." well, this time it was not a test - they warned us of 70 mph winds and really bad thunderstorms. so it was really crazy for a little while. i literally had to follow the red tail lights of the person in front of me to know where the road went. it was like driving under a constant waterfall - or through a car wash. each drop was about a cup of water and there were lots of flooded places on the road.............did we ever pull over and wait it out? heck no!!

finally we made it out of the storm and actually found the sunshine relatively soon. it was not long before we were riding through the beautiful green hills of Kentucky and loving life and making good driving time again. we even went through Portland, KY - which had this surreal image:

the reason this image is surreal was because most every small city in the south has a water tower that they will commonly label with the town's name. it was crazy that is was Portland because i just came from Portland, OR which is most definately the opposite of a small, southern town in every way.

after Kentucky was Tennessee, before we knew it we were in Nashvegas...........we did not even stop - we pressed onward.........not long after that we were in Alabama.........and we made it to my parent's house about 11PM that night..........thus ending the both the fun adventure of living in Oregon as well as our Road Trip accross the country.........

thanks for reading if you actually made it this far..........shalom! maybe i will have more in the near future.

it has been a pretty long time since i have launched a "real" blog out there - but tonight in the midst of a coughing cold that renders one sleepless and in the midst of lots of thoughts - it is a bit of a salve to come and write out a bunch of these thoughts.

when laying in bed not able to sleep, i sometimes decide to at least make some use out of the time by praying for whatever pops in my mind. tonight i was reminded of various things that weigh heavily on my mind - one of the biggest being where the heck i will end up this time next year - i am still waiting on God to reveal that to me. in thinking of this and my fear associated with it and while praying for others in my circle who face different fears that may or may not make sense........i was reminded of a pretty weird story from the depths of my memory.

do you ever randomly somehow sort through a couple thoughts in the wasteland of the forgotten trash bin in your head? i felt like i did that tonight - as i was sifting through a few things i found one thing that was connected to another and yet another and then went to this.....

so go back in time with me to, i think, 1996. whenever i think back in time i usually think of dialing in a radio station with all the white noise and snow until you find exactly where you want to go.......if you were on the radio station back then you would be hearing a lot of jewel, matchbox 20 and 3rd eye blind all over the radio.

during my first year of college - while still wondering why they let me into the greatest place on earth and working hard to be a good student, discovering exactly what that meant - i spent most of my weeknights going to a bunch of the different christian groups on campus. when you are in college, there is literally something going on every night of the week - and i enjoyed all the christian clubs and whatever free food they wanted to give me.

on this particular night, i ended up at Campus Crusade for Christ, they met in one of the auditoriums on campus and filled it up with lots of rich kids and pretty girls. this was one of the places i just went to "enjoy the ride" so to speak - i just popped in and out and usually did not really talk to many people. they had fantastic worship always with two acoustic guitars and the speaker was usually humorous.

for whatever reason, and this happens in lots of situations in my life, i seemed to look cool and safe for this completely random dude to come up and talk with me.  it would be safe to say that he was one of those people who hangs out in the margins of society - he really was not all there - and in some ways seemed somewhat childlike in the ways he interacted with me. anyway, i somehow got talked into giving him a ride home. he told me where he lived and it was literally a block away from where i lived and was not a big deal at all.

so we went out to the car and he was with me. it was an ironic thing - given his appearance and weird aura he gave off - i was sort of uncomfortable being seen "with him" - for him it seemed to have the opposite effect - he now was more comfortable and really happy to be "with me"

anyway, we got in the car and headed to his place. i can't really remember what it was - but he was really into something and he talked about it constantly - which is kind of annoying and usually not a good social thing to be so totally into something that you freak other people out and quickly bore them with your constant talk of it. i remember becoming quickly bored of this with him and he told me a lot of the same things over and over - anyway - i knew i would only have to put up with it for like 10 mins at the most.

finally, we got to his apartment and i drive him near his door and proceed to attempt to drop him off. at this point, it got kind of strange. he said he was scared, and he would not get out of the car. now, i knew i had a problem on my hands. this was obviously a kind of messed up dude with some issues - maybe more so than i thought. so anyway, i agreed to walk him to his place. when we got there, none of his roomates were there - and again - he was scared - so i was talked into staying with him until they came home. i was now even more invested in this - what the heck have i gotten myself into? when we got inside the apartment - i was relieved to find the guy actually did have roomates. he even showed me his bedroom where he slept in the same room as one of his roomates. i kind of felt sorry for his roomates, but respected them at the same time for taking this dude on.

anyway, since we had talked about some christian music on the way to his house (maybe that was it) i asked him to show me his CD's - and that was kind of interesting - some of our tastes overlapped - not sure if that was a bad or a good thing......but anyway, it honestly seemed like an eternity until one of his roomates finally arrived. i think it was only about an hour or so in reality.

finally, they did arrive and all was well - and i was free to go and was forever linked to this random thursday night memory.

anyway, flying forward to the present - i wondered where this came from and why i was reminded of this story i had completely forgotten in such vivid detail.

i think God may have been showing me what it is like in His shoes to an extent. some of us (me) sometimes have fear and issues with things we should not worry about. despite this guy being an adult age-wise - he still held onto fears that only a small child would have. perhaps God was showing me that maybe i was doing the same thing. the coolest part of the story though - was that God also was showing me that He is with me - even though i am freaked out over nothing - God has chosen to hang out with me until it is all good. and in the same way that the guy repeated over and over the stuff that he was interested in - i feel like perhaps that is what my prayers are like. i am sure God does not get annoyed with them - but He does hear them and knows my needs and knows that i probably lift some of the same things to Him over and over and overly concern myself with things that are going to be OK - and maybe i should not be so concerned over them.

in a lot of ways, this whole story served as a good reminder to know and trust God. it is sometimes amazing how God can teach us things in high definition detail.

thanks God!