And it ended exactly as it had begun

So Erin headed back to Seattle today. Real life will not be as fun as an open road and a car full of crap. Well, first off we'll have to get jobs. I think we're both better at doing other things and it'd be great if someone just decided we were worthy of being funded and decided that they want to (financially) support our lifestyle. If you know of such a person please, by all means, send our info along. We spent most of our time since Thursday in my apartment crafting. I'm fairly sure we'll meet again whenever roller derby brings me to the pacific north west, and so I remain hopeful that more good times and good crafts will come out of that.

My dining room table My Diorama Erin's assemblage

Cheesy conclusion:

I've had a blast, I've learned a good deal about the eastern part of North America, and I'm in a better place than I was two months ago. So, all in all, this trip did exactly what it was suppose to: give me a better perspective on things in general.

Signing out,
Kelly

Snow for the first time since Canada

First, I'd like you to look to the right of this page for a moment, you might notice that we've added a new feature. Please help us in this very important, however, unurgent decision.... feel free to select as many or as few as you choose.


We arrived in Chicago at about 9:30pm this evening. long pause. sigh. it's really hard to believe we were snorkeling 3 days ago. Today we traveled from Kansas City to St Louis to Chicago. Yes Ada, we went to the super awesome City Museum If you are ever within a few hours of St Louis you owe it to yourself to head over and climb on some amazing art.

We threw two hours of change in the parking meter, strapped on our knee pads and resolved ourselves to not make good time from MO to IL. There is such a blast to be had scrambling through tubes 4 stories off the ground and caves so small you resemble a child being born when you emerge on the other side. The amazing part was how totally charged with positive creative energy this place was. So, with my desire to learn how to weld solidified we spent the last few hours of our car trip making a list of things we want to do before Erin gets on the plain. I can't believe it's just about all over and I think we're both already mentally planning other trips similar to this one. They don't call it travel-lust for nothin'.

Final conclusion still to come.

The end is near

The day we hit 6000 miles (er, B to A):

Tennessee. I take lots of bad photos from the car and I am unashamed.

Grandpa Frank's hen house at the Sewanee River resort in Mayo:

Sewanee River at sunrise:

We try to go to the beach like normal pasty tourists, and what happens?
We go to the bathhouse to change into our swimsuits and come out to this (Venice, FL):

Burns Lake camping in Big Cypress National Preserve (free!):

We drove 1100 miles yesterday; Mayo, FL to Lee's Summit, MO where my mom lives. Dude. 1100 miles. It got cold enough along the way for the window washing squeegees to freeze in their buckets at gas stations (where we filled up FIVE times), and since we hadn't done any real driving yet, we thought we'd just keep going and got in at 1:30am CST and ate apple crisp my mom left for us. Yay. Highlights of driving: laps around the car at rest stops; big peach sculptures in Georgia; Tennessee is pretty; our favorite recurring sign: "Speed checked by detection devices," and my favorite business name: "Tubs n stuff."

The night before last we stayed at Sewanee River Rendezvous in Mayo. It's totally creepy (and yet, fun) looking up and calling backwoods places in the AAA campbook and looking for them in the dark because you never know what to expect. This place was probably the best camping yet - like a little summer camp community, and we had a site overlooking the river and hot showers for the brilliant price of $10! It's kind of a paddler's resort with a warm lodge where we checked in with Grandma Susie, little cabins, someone's tent decorated with string lights, canoe/kayak rentals and hooting owls to wake you up before dawn. We could have stayed there a week, but then drove 18 hours instead. I think we got out of Florida just before a cold snap and are now reconciling our December tans-in-progress and mosquito bites with actual winter.

A day off now, doing laundry and checking out teenage-me territory. One more day of driving, hopefully stopping at City Museum in St. Louis on the way back to Chicago.

Please stay 15 feet away... from the tourists....

Florida is a postcard....

yes, that is a donkey kicking "high prices"

Erin lounging and making coffee @ Truck-stop

We try and start the morning off with a good hearty breakfast

Erin took about 100000000 pictures of these air plants.We saw alligators and ficuses in their natural environment...
The largest avocado i've ever seen.Mangroves!!!

We've been to several galleries and art museums...... but the best art we've seen on the trip thus far was definitely in the Keys...

we might be too cool to snorkel

Glades and Keys

Whoa. The Everglades and then the keys deserve a lot of space. There's not much reception/wifi 'round here. I don't really remember much from the day we arrived in the Everglades. Most Florida campgrounds close at dusk, and when dusk is 5:30 that doesn't give us a lot of time. We picked up a hotel coupon book at a rest stop with a coupon for a $40 motel as a last resort, but fortuitously found a little parking lot of a conservation area that worked just fine for camping; we're low-maintenance and generally leave no trace. Then getting up and leaving before dawn was great - we jetted down the coast and hit the Miami area by noon and were finally able to get to a campsite before sunset and see some stuff. We camped at Flamingo and within an hour of arrival were swatting mosquitoes like pros. It's the dry season currently, which supposedly means there are fewer mosquitoes than usual, but we threw the clothes back on that we had stripped off in the morning and retreated to the tent early.

The Everglades are amazing - a sea of marshy grass river with islands of mini-jungles and birds everywhere. It turns out you can't make it far off the roads/boardwalks on foot; there are a ton of water trails if you take a canoe/kayak, but that's for another visit. We did a couple of boardwalk trails and listened to a ranger talk about alligators and moved to a different campground. On one of the trails packed with fellow tourists, anhingas dove in ponds for fish and alligators dragged themselves up on the paved trail while nutso tourists took photos with their DSLRs and 1000mm lenses three feet away. It was insane - like a zoo without cages and the animals weren't fazed by humans! We watched from afar as a family walked right up to an alligator despite the warning signs to keep back five meters (not to mention the gator opening its mouth in warning), including an old woman who loudly scraped her walker closer to get a better look.

The hammocks (tree islands) and the rest of the area have some crazy diversity. Pines, lots of huge ferns and tiny ferns, mahogany, palms, mangroves, strangler figs, airplants, orchids, cypress, and tons of other stuff I've never seen before in a dense pile of of a jungle. And then the birds, which are everywhere you look - vultures, hawks, ospreys, herons, egrets, grebes, anhingas, etc.

We left the glades this morning feeling like we saw a good cross-section. We thought about skipping the keys entirely, but a big point of this trip is to see things we have never seen and might never be motivated to see again. Which is the case with the keys: beachy, touristy, tipsy, cheesy, sunburned and seashell-themed. It's beautiful as well and might not be intact our entire lives, but if you weigh the pros and cons...

So we went snorkeling in the chilly ocean off Key Largo! And we went to Shell World and Sandal World and a crappy flea market at a storage facility and a reef state park in search of a beach, though it wasn't so hot by then.

Back on the mainland, we've stopped at Denny's to enjoy their wifi and $2 menu. We'll stay in Big Cypress Preserve and inch back up the west coast tomorrow.

so it's become "that" part of our trip...

last night driving through South Carolina there were times where we didn't want to stop. Myrtle beach is truly frightening, the sheer number of discount t-shirt shops was appalling. We made it to Edisto beach state park last night. It pounded rain until about 12am but we stayed mostly dry in the tent. It let up by morning and we realized that we had again chose the most beautiful camp site despite the dark.
We're stopped in Savanna GA at a strange Cafe where the coffee is so weak I'd shower in it and the gospel music is just a touch too loud for anywhere public. With a full pocket of sugar packets and shelf stable creamer we're headed to Florida today where we hope to bask in sun and see at least one alligator (while safely in the car).

It's getting downright tropical around here.

Edisto Beach, SC:

Waking up in the jungle! That's our campsite:

2 hr ferry from Ocracoke. Crazy sandbars:

I'm on a boat.

Between ferries:

Sea stuff:

Go forth and be jellatinous!

Post-dishes nap in the sun!

Hatteras National Seashore:

Hatteras.

How the east was wung

Outer Banks! The ocean is beautiful, the sound is beautiful, the beach sunrise at 6am - amazing! We biked around the national park today, took hobo showers in the bath house, cooked lentils and quinoa that'll last us for days and saved a doomed jellyfish. We're kinda at a loss as to what to do in the dark, because there's SO much of it these days. We bought a deck of cards last night and played Go Fish and War in the car, but the top of the cooler doesn't make the biggest table and neither of us actually know/remember that many good card games. I wrote some postcards that I bought in Canada and we listened to This American Life and ate peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches before opting to go for a walk on the dark, dark beach. We slept on a shaded side of a vacation house deck, which was pretty cozy. Back to today, we woke up with the sun at 6, which I hope will be a sticking habit for the rest of the trip. We ate lunch at the Canadian hole, a beach that has the most fantastic sea stuff in great density! You can squat down by the edge of the water looking at stuff and not have to move along in search of better stuff. I'm used to northwest ocean beaches and marvel at the (dead, mostly) lifeforms around here.

Also, it's HOT! Well, not hot, but 70ish, and don't think I'm complaining. It only gets better from here!

Photos not loading again, so you must wait!

On the road again

Time totally flies. Our thanksgiving break has officially ended and we're on the road. We got to the Outer Banks today at around dusk and went for a walk on the beach. I'm sure it was beautiful but it's so dark we had to pretend. It's a bit chilly and the wildlife that you'd normally see here in early September is limited to stray cats, everything else must be hiding out until next spring. We stopped at Conner's supermarket to get beer and carrots and now we're scouting for places to sleep for the night.

Here are some pictures for your' enjoyment: we'd like you to take note of the lovely hand crapted salt and pepper shaker we found at the NC/VA Border station...

Need More Greens

We were both excited to stop driving for a full 24 hours, but really, 48 is too long and now, we're feeling the itch to get back on the road, especially when the weather reports coming from southern FL are 80 degrees and no rain. We planned out our southern plot today and fixed up the bikes for warm weather. It's about damn time. There's snow in Seattle and the temp finally dropped in Chicago. So screw it, we're going to the Keys. eventually we'll have to get back to real people winter, but not yet. We have another day here to screw around and make.... art? but who really knows. We're out of here Sunday AM headed for Frisco NC (One of my favorite places) in search of adventure, squatting, and cold showers.

In the straw

We got tired of driving today, and paper/rock/scissors was a draw, so we let the turkeys take over for a bit while we napped in the back. They're short, so one had to be on the floor working the pedals and one steered. The third tried to watch the road and tell the other two what to do, but they bickered a lot and it got quite loud, with all three trying to gobble over the others. A good idea in theory, but we hardly got any rest with all the noise and thankfully traffic wasn't too bad and we didn't have all that far to drive from PA to VA.


We drove three hours northwest from Philly last night to a farm in PA to pick up turkeys for Kelly's mom. In the morning, John the farmer and bear hunter gave us a great tour of his farm and woods before we got back on the road. The childhood home of our new turkey friends:

Bear poop. Now you know what it looks like.

Thanks, John! We're now at Kelly's parents' house preparing for feast and a break from driving for a few days. Yay!

new to old.

Trees are cozy in PA.

Trail bike ride in Hebron, CT:

They're onto us!!

NH: almost ski season!!

Hat head + bed head = Bhat head

Adorable moss in NH.

Cooking, part two.

Cooking, part one.