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.

Every girl needs a forklift

Last night we had planned to drive from Portland Me right onto Philly PA by the time we realized the two were 8 hours away it was getting dark. Only hoping to go about half that, we immediately found a Starbucks and proceeded to drink coffee and work on finding a place to stay. Campgrounds are hard to come by in the winter and hostels in the surrounding area were all over our $25 personal price limit. It was at about this time I started thinking back onto a list I had made before we started the trip of people I knew on our planned rout.
A friend of the family Judy, lives near Hartford CT right in the middle of our rout to Philly. Perfect. I called her out of the blue and she was more than happy to oblige, we were given an awesome guest bedroom in her basement art studio in exchange for white wine and good conversation. We spent most of the morning milling about her fantastic house, drinking coffee and looking at all of her neat tchotchkes. We took a mid-morning bike ride on a path Judy had told us about, returned briefly to help unload groceries then we took off for Philly.
Parking was a disaster, but we found hummus and ying ling. We'll sleep tonight and explore tomorrow.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Vermont and then New Hampshire after Canada were pretty. We got smart and searched for winter camping and found several potential places in the region and headed towards White Mountain National Forest. It was getting chilly, so we bought firewood on the way in and found Waterville Campground about in the middle of the forest; of course we were the only campers and the camp hosts were nowhere to be found. We had put sweet potatoes under the hood to cook when we left Montreal, but need to tweak our cooking location because three or four hours on the engine didn't cut it and had to put them on the fire. It was super windy and hard to get the fire going, but totally worth it because it got pretty darn cold - maybe about 20 deg - and anything we spilled froze on contact. Yay for double sleeping bags and snow pants. Boo for having to pee at 4:30am! Saw neither moose nor bear. We got up this am and went in search of the river we heard nearby last night. As we left we discovered our campground was near a ski town and grabbed brunch on the way out - the first meal on the trip we didn't make! Sleeping in a hat gives you a trendy dirty hipster hairstyle that was necessary to tone down in the rearview mirror prior to Sunday Brunch.

On down to Portland, the backroads were the way to go, with better views and small cabin towns and craft fairs (?!) everywhere. Portland seems like a great town, but we're staying in Hebron, CT tonight - 4 hrs down the road. Photos aren't uploading, so wait on that. Philly and Shanna tomorrow, then picking up turkeys from the turkey farm and on to Fairfax, VA!

Also, we saw a hobo today.

Hello Vermont!

Both of us were actually relieved today when we decided to just get back into the states, we both thought we'd spend too much money if we stayed in Canada another 24 hours.
after two trips through boarder patrol we decided we really dislike the psycho-analysis done by the guards, it makes us uneasy....
It's really cold, Erin thinks I should just suck it up and throw on some long underwear.

accotement mou

Canada has adapted a horrible, horrible U.S. tradition and taken it to a whole new level: the Strip Mall. Oh. My. God. They're HUGE. There are whole oceans of strip malls that have multiple highway exits, and they contain about half the same crap stores you find in the U.S. Though, for fun, we've been driving slowly past each store until we find open wifi, then sitting in the parked car while we look up hostels and make dinner.

Last night we stayed at the Backpacker's Inn Hostel in Ottawa, Ontario. For $25, it was about as cheap as we could find, and kind of awesome. It was a 3-floor house downtown that must have slept 30 or so - there were eight in our room. I'm getting used to sleeping on any available couch/bed/tree root, and that thin bunkbed mattress was amazing! We made french toast in the morning with some of our bigger bread pieces that crumbled in the car crap tornado.

Ottawa seems pretty cool but we really couldn't stay long, especially when they charge for parking in five minute increments. We went running around town and took a shortcut running up a ton of stairs along a set of locks. It was laundry day, so I put on my last clean clothing remnants, including shorts over leggings and no bra and we killed two hours playing sudoku in a tiny laundromat. Next up, the National Gallery of Canada, which was way bigger than we expected and we got super lost in all the rooms and left with bugged-out eyes from art overload.

Then on the road again! We decided on Montreal, and halfway there, after checking out yet another misleading campground sign, did our strip mall internet thing and found another hostel. This is where we discover important differences between provinces: primarily, language! What the hell? We don't speak French, and Quebec is FRENCH. We practiced (butchered) all the signs we saw on the way here, and figured out enough to get around. Our hostel is a 2-flat squashed between two others on a narrow street that reminds me of Philly or Boston. Beer is way cheaper (what a relief!) and gas seems to be getting cheaper - 1.07/liter. This city is freakin huge; we'll have to see what's actually here and report back.

nord sud est ouest

Car vomit.

I crapped my pants?!

Not so much.

The strawberry for Canadian Tire. Still not sure what they do, but I bet it includes tires.

Canada is just a big expensive United States.....

We woke up to this:

We drove 640 km. you do the math, we.. I mean, Erin did.

We saw a lot of this...

there was some weather...
it got pretty bad actually... Like the beer, gas wasn't cheap...

We went shopping in a Costco type place called Loblaws (which we pronounced low blows) and set up camp in the car.
In all honesty, we probably ate one of the best meals of the trip so far.
Salad: mixed greens with herbs, avocado, cucumber, heirloom tomatoes, feta, and tuna.
tonight we might stay in a Jail turned Hostel, we'll let ya know how that goes with no reservation.

mass servesas cie vous pleie...

We made it!
Apparently camping season is over in Canada; pulled off highway 17 so many times to find a "for sale" sign or a locked gate... but for some reason after last nights stay we remained calm, decided we wouldn't pay more than $50 for a shitty hotel and settled here, in Blind River..... Canada.
Beer is really not cheap, $11.85 for a 6pk of PBR... fuckin' import.
We settled on "Canada" beer.... literally. it tastes like the crap my mom drinks. But the room is warm, there's a microwave, and a shower. life is good.

Real pictures

Our film pictures from the last few days. Weird how so few places sell/develop film anymore.

You Pee

We've crossed the UP and stopped for a bit in Sault Ste Marie, MI to develop film and prepare for Canadian Adventure. We found a free National Park Service campground last night in the dark and pitched our tent on wet, sandy leaves and cooked dinner on the stove under the picnic table. We had assumed there'd be water there, but found none and had only a few cups, which was not enough to cook with, drink, and save for coffee in the morning, so we had to make some tough decisions. I slept like a rock in my snowpants and two sleeping bags, but Kelly had a harder time, and we woke up around 9 and finally saw our campsite in the woods. We packed to the sound of hunting gunshots. Moving on, we drove along Lake Michigan in simultaneous sun and rain and took hobo showers in a grocery store bathroom and probably have been drinking too much coffee. We hope Canada has the internet and good, free campgrounds. And no snow. Yay! iphone photos:

The lake of Michigan!
Spongy seaweed.

Seaweed (lakeweed?) piles and driftwood.
Our campsite in the mornin.
Cooking in the dark and rain! Quinoa with pepper, sweet potato and apricot. We'll have to work on our manifold stew skills tomorrow.

Things that go BUMP in the night, and/or shit that woke Kelly up.

2:52am Erin messing with her sleeping bag zipper
3:10am it started raining
leaves rustling
4:02am Truck of hunters parked in camp spot next to us, thought about raping and killing us then thought against it. drove off. Erin thinks it was probably the park ranger.....
4:47am Erin farted loudly
leaves rustling
5:02am loud airplane
leaves rustling
6:00am morning came and went
9:30am we woke up

In Search of the Hodag

We set out north from Iola in search of a vicious beast. It may spit fire, it may have three sets of teeth. We aren't sure because we forgot what Google told us. It's said to be a Hoax, but we believe it may be real. We're traveling to the home of the Hodag, maybe it's only home, in Rhinelander WI
We found it:
We peed there, It was probably really scary at night because it had nice up-lights.... but in general, we were slightly unimpressed.