From Rainy Hikes to the Rodeo Nights

Our two month van-aversary has officially come and gone! Before our adventures in Wisconsin with Cheryl, we spent a little time in Minnesota. We found a job via Craigslist gigs, working for Magic Bounce, an inflatable ride company that needed people to work a small township fair. At first the job was fun and easy — we started out working a little inflatable slide and quickly realized we were not actually supposed to enforce any rules in particular. Under 48 inches? Eh, go ahead. Only one ticket, but no one's in line? Ride five, six, ten times! No one cared about much of anything.

But the second day we were stationed at the biggest ride in the area, a four story water slide and that's when things got a little...slippery. Our 12 hour shift included next to zero instruction, lot's of criticism for our grumbling old man boss, who was incapable of actually answering questions, lot's and lot's of mud — essentially standing in a mud pit for hours on end while trying to wrangle children and clean kiddy pools that were supposed to serve to clean kids' dirty feet before they got on the ride, it included horrible parents actively encouraging their kids to ignore our instruction, forcing their too-small kids to climb up the ride, even when they'd failed to do so three times previous and ended up in tears, incredibly rude children and ultimately a soggy, filthy, disgusting sense of loathing for all humanity and especially for everything related to inflatable water slides. We both concluded that we preferred a rice-only diet and perpetual constipation to this kind of horeshit employment. Thanks but no thanks, Magic Bounce. Instead of working our third shift, we went to Minnesota and stayed with some wonderful humans at a cooperative in Minneapolis, took some hard-earned showers and enjoyed a musical potluck.

After our adventures in Wisconsin, chronicled in our guest blog by Tressa's mom, we turned back West and re-entered Minnesota. This time we headed to Duluth, a cute little town where we stayed with a wonderful grandmotherly goddess named Gene in a magical colorful house full of treasures and treats. Gene talked to us about her huge family and her many adventures, she fed us, gave us wonderful thrift shop suggestions, and sent us on our way with beautiful stones and even a hearty plant to replace some of our more miserable succulents.

We continued West from Minnesota and met up with Evan (Tressa's boy) and his father, who were on a big fast-paced road trip around the country together. We joined forces for a little trip to Yellowstone, where we were rained on relentlessly, but still enjoyed the vast and beautiful national park with its incredible plains, and its colorful and smelly mud pots, hot springs, and geysers. We spotted elk, moose, more bison, and lot's of other small critters. It was fun joining up with another traveling duo, sharing meals and sharing stories, even in the rain.

After we parted ways, the two of them continued into the Pacific timezone and we two meandered into the Grand Tetons where we took a gorgeous and rainy lake-side hike and spent some time with a goofy looking moose before heading back into Idaho.

We broke our record for not showering, 5 days for Tressa and 6 for Kelsey, but were lucky enough to find another great host in tiny Twin Falls, Idaho. Tasha had a super creative space, filled with handmade art and thrifted knick knacks, and we were able to make some new friends, both human and animal. We also got a chance to meet with one of Kelsey's mom's childhood friends in Twin Falls, and did some more Burning Man thrifting. Kelsey even got a  bike, which is now haphazardly bungeed and bike locked to our roof!

Kelsey's cousin Riann lives in Idaho, so we scooped her up on our way into Logan, Utah, where we got our first taste of the rodeo, a rowdy experience made all the stranger by the fact that Utah is so vehemently anti-alcohol that you can't even get beer at the fair. However, junk food was in hot demand.

Now, we're spending a relaxing day in Logan, working on all our various projects before we do some more CouchSurfing. We both feel quite strange creeping our way back towards the West Coast, knowing we will eventually be less than four hours from home, but that our journey is only a third over and we will not be re-entering California for a long while yet.

Couchsurfing & Camping in the Midwest

The demolition derby in Casper, Wyoming smells like dirt and exhaust and fried food. Tressa is wearing an absurd red cowboy hat she got from a thrift store for four dollars and an old man calls her cowgirl, so we know we’re not blending in. It’s hot and loud and thrilling for a while. We see mothers bouncing three-month-old babies at intermission, while the announcer says not to go nowhere, corrects his own grammar, and then does it again. The little boy behind us is cheering for his mom, driving a red white and blue striped beater that gets shoved out of arena.

Hot Springs, South Dakota is like traveling back in time, all faded red brick facades in one little strip. We drive to the Cascade Falls natural pool and swim for a while, hoping the chilly water will wash some of the sticky Midwestern heat off our skin. We are officially in the Midwest. We see bumper stickers like, “Don’t blame me, I voted for the American” and big billboards proclaiming, “Life is a gift, not a choice.” We park in what we think will be a quiet neighborhood to sleep, and are perplexed by the voices carrying up and down the street, footsteps at 1am on a Sunday in a town less than four square miles in total. We wake up between roadblocks in a construction zone and while Kelsey jogs Tressa discovers that the two coffee shops in town have both been shut down.

The Wind Cave National Park is obviously renowned for it’s cave, but tours are expensive so we opt out and amuse ourselves photographing bison, meandering through the hot, windy hills and trying to get close to prairie dogs. We have a couchsurfing host in Rapid City that warns us that parking for Mt. Rushmore is absurdly expensive, so we cruise past the monument, which is strange and small in the face of the awe-inspiring black hills, all that immense rock, jutting out in round, bulbous formations. We pull to the side of the road and take a few photos.

Every now and then you meet a person and you wish they were a character you had invented, that their life was a story you’d written. Our host in Rapid City is like that, this tattooed twenty something with a beer in hand, two kids, and a quiet tow-headed friend that lives in a tent when he’s not sleeping on the couch. He shows us the wine he’s making, the kombucha he’s brewing, the greenhouse he’s building and the aquaponics system he envisions for it. He shows us the squirrel he is training squirrel to eat from his hand, and takes us to Cabela’s in his beat up hotwired Ford with a chair nailed to the floor as a backseat, a much more legit rape van than even our bulky Chevy. At Capela’s we lay on cots, try on absurd camo outfits, photograph the stuffed bears and buffalo, and Skyler shops for his new home — a hefty 16x14 tent with a chimney. All he needs now, he says, is somewhere to put his couchsurfers.

We don’t know what to expect when we head to The Badlands National Park, and it blows our minds. It’s insanely gorgeous, chalky red striped rock formations where big horned sheep take leisurely naps and then rolling prairie hillsides full of more bison and more prairie dogs and unfortunately, biting flies and mosquitoes for days. But their primitive campground is free. We camp there for two days, hike around, enjoy an incredible sunset over the rocks and some beautiful clear starry skies. On the second night, we nearly run into an ENORMOUS bison that’s lurking in the ditch, contemplating crossing the dirt road we’re driving down in the pitch black. Later, we read that the bison is actually considered more dangerous than a grizzly bear. Terrifying.

We find a couchsurfing host in Sioux Falls, one of the easternmost cities in South Dakota, and actually the biggest city in the state. We arrive loopy and full of weird energy and are excited to find that our hosts are a group of fabulously entertaining goofy men. They try and teach us to play a drinking game that we fail at miserably, and we all go to the bar and have a wonderful night involving PBR, Phil Collins karaoke, and riding in the trunk of someone’s car. In the morning, we indulge in pizza and Lord of the Rings before rousing ourselves to head to a little lake for some lazy fun in the sun. Now we’re headed South to check out Omaha, Nebraska before spending some time in Iowa. 

Wondering & Wandering: One Month on the Road

One month has passed and here we are, mosquito bitten in our tin can beneath the expansive South Dakota sky, all those stars glimmering nakedly for miles; here we are still so full of awe and so full of questions, constantly wondering if we are doing this right and if we are seeing the right things and if we have learned anything at all.

On good days we feel so alive, we feel American, all fat and grassy and bitter, all humming and hot and dry, all red, all white, all blue, all of the strangeness of her coursing through our veins. On bad days we are tiny, cringing, awkward foreigners, carrying our own fears along long stretches of highway, isolated and incapable of understanding anything more than the scope of our introversion, the impossibility of what we've set out to do, what we've proclaimed our mission.

But there is something amazing about every weird day. Even as I fall behind, scrambling helplessly beneath of weight of all the anecdotes that seem so pivotal, of all the characters pouring in and out of my memory like so many cars along the Interstate, crisscrossing imaginary divides, I am listening to coyotes howl in the Badlands of South Dakota, and tomorrow I will wake up beside a prairie dog town and get bitten by flies while I drink coffee with one of the best people I've ever met. We have to keep reminding ourselves to ask questions, but also that answers aren't really the point.

Eastward through the Wild West.

Spokane is the first place thus far where we find a host via Couchsurfing — a young married couple that invites us into their home and shares a tasty BBQ dinner with us. We play bocce ball with them and chat over strawberry rhubarb cobbler. It’s interesting to talk to Joe and Sarah about home because the two of them are actually from the same town in Wyoming and have some differing experiences with their hometown and with making Spokane a home, plus they’re about to sell their house and embark on an adventure together teaching English in France for a year. The next day after a delicious breakfast and coffee routine with our wonderful hosts, we each explore Spokane in our own ways and find it to be quite a friendly place.

Next, we head to the Idaho Panhandle, to go see Kelsey’s stepmom’s aunt Donna (whew, what a title!) Donna lives down a rural gravel driveway with one of her daughters, who has her grandchildren, two adorable little girls about 5 and 10 years of age, visiting. By dinnertime, there’s a full house, 9 of us sitting down to eat together. It’s definitely a different lifestyle, but everyone is incredibly kind and hospitable. After dinner, we watch a sheep get sheared and show the girls our van. They speculate on various ways to stowaway and travel with us.

The next day we head to Coeur D’Alene and spend some time sitting in a grassy park, working on a little crafts projects together before visiting a farmers market and getting some tasty snap peas for the road.

It’s getting dark as we cross the Montana border and cruise through more and more rural stretches of highway, glimpsing snatches of water and mountainous shapes in the darkness. The next day is gloomy and rainy. We drive to Whitefish, a cute little town near Glacier National Park. We have a bit of the rainy day blues, so we spend some time sitting in a cute café, sipping mochas and working on plans, before driving to the park.

Due to what we’ll call an “accidental scenic detour,” we arrive at Glacier a bit later than intended, so we get a camping site and spend some time cleaning and organizing the van before having a cozy dinner and conking out. In the morning, the gloom is beginning to burn off a bit, so we take a hike along McDonald Creek, which is awfully big and fast moving for a creek. The scenery is beautiful, the water is this icy blue green, rushing past and dark craggy mountains loom up ahead, shrouded in theatrical mist. We get drizzled on a bit, but don’t mind much in our raincoats. We even come across this gorgeous and nonchalant buck, zigzagging his way lazily across the trail and nibbling at the lush moss. He paws at it with one hoof and looks at us warily for a moment before bending to his knees to resume his vigorous snacking.

After this hike we still feel like we’ve got a little energy left, so we decide to hit one more little mile loop nearby, but after walking a half a mile or so, it begins POURING, and I mean POURING. Our legs are soaked through and we’re worried about the contents of our backpacks, so we decide to turn back and promptly get lost-ish and end up wandering around in the rain for longer than we’d like.

Our next stop is Missoula, a town that’s come highly recommended to us and where Weyaka, a family friend and basically Tressa's fairy Godmother, lives. The weather is still weird and gloomy, so we’re glad to have a cozy place where we feel incredibly at home to hang out and pet three quirky kitties.  In Missoula we visit a farmers market, spend some time shopping with Weyaka, her man, and his daughter at an adorable boutique, do our usual wandering, coffee shop and jogging routine, check out the space where Weyaka is setting up her own fabulous bohemian boutique and chat with her about what’s it’s like to be a Californian creative living in Montana for love. We feel like our batteries have been recharged when we leave Missoula on Monday, headed for Billings.

Billings is the biggest “city” in Montana, but it’s hazy, small and kind of meth-y We see a band called Geographer play at a cool little venue that has some alternative looking people in it and really enjoy the music. It’s fun to go out and try and pretend we’re real youths and not just old ladies in disguise. In the morning, we have breakfast at McCormick’s Café, “where locals eat” and walk around a bit. It’s kind of a weird place, and we wonder if there’s a better part of town we should be in. We make the mistake of trying to get Mexican food in Montana, the first place where someone responds to Tressa's request for a vegetarian burrito by saying, “What?” They concede to give her a burrito with everything but the meat and somehow she ends up eating "an $8 bean and cheese burrito that tastes like bitter, bitter disappointment."

Anyway, instead of heading to North Dakota, we’ve decided to dip down into Wyoming first before heading further East. Wish us luck seeing some dope wildlife.

Tressa & Kelsey

From Portland to Puget Sound

In Portland, we stay with Emily, Derek, and their three kids; this charming, laughing family that surprises us with their goofiness in their adorable house, where we wedge our van so far up the narrow driveway we dread trying to back it out. Portland is drizzly and wet and colorful, we fall in love with the houses, we drink endless coffee, explore Powell's bookstore and snack at the food carts. Our time in Portland, like much of our journey thus far, is meandering and slow. We walk up and down the streets, linger over our coffees and chat with the Clayton family about street art and the ways Portland has changed over the years.


We spend our last night on Alberta Street with a high school friend who takes us to a number of bars, including one filled with cat themed art — the night culminates in a few drunken interviews that we're pretty excited about. All in all, we enjoy Portland, the coffee and the cutesy food trucks and handmade zines, but something about the bustling adorableness is also slightly exhausting, so we're excited to take off for the Olympic National Forest.

The drive to Washington is short and beautiful, lush green hillsides dotted with wildflowers, snowy mountains looming in the distance. We stop in Olympia to get groceries, now that we've picked up our cooler from the REI in Portland, and spend some time organizing the van. Olympia is refreshingly small and drivable, and although we don't see much of it, we get good vibes. We camp out in a Walmart parking lot and visit the farmer's market in the morning to snag some veggies to take camping. The market is bustling with musicians and portraits artists, greens, fruit and honey, homemade soaps and lotions, succulents and knitted goods. We feel at home sniffing at the soaps, sipping coffee, petting a few dogs and finally purchasing some chard and broccoli.

We pass some elk on our way up the peninsula and pull into tiny Forks as the sun is sinking lower in the sky. What we aren't aware of is the fact that the Twilight series is set in Forks, so there is a crazy amount of vampire-fiction related tourist stuff. We spend the night in a rest stop/van pool parking lot and in the morning try and talk to the woman in the visitor center about hot springs but all she wants to talk about is Twilight.

We spend Monday attempting to hike to a viewpoint of Mt. Olympus but underestimate the 6mi uphill hike. We hike for something like three hours, stopping to photograph indignant laser chipmunks, delicate flowers, and waterfalls before stopping for snacks and heading back down to our campsite — the first place we've actually paid to sleep in so far.



The next day we walk to another waterfall on our way out, then take a long winding drive that's not entirely paved to get up to the Hurricane Ridge viewpoint of Mt. Olympus we didn't quite make it to on the previous day. It's a breathtaking panoramic view of snow caps, complete with fluffy munching deer. Afterwards, we drive to Port Angeles and overstay our welcome at an adorable cafe, finally making some progress on planning the next steps of our journey, contacting some folks in East Washington, Idaho, and Montana. We sleep in another Walmart parking lot and in the morning make our way to the Bainbridge Ferry to cross the Puget Sound to Seattle, where we are currently and somewhat belatedly writing this update!

Caffeine, Craters & Connections

In Ashland we stop at a coffee shop that feels like the Barlow — all bright wood, clean lines, burnished metal and latte foam leaves. In Medford we find a Trader Joe's, a mecca of familiar and affordable snacks; we climb onto the van rooftop in the parking lot, eating our eggplant wraps and salad and smiling at a few passersby.

A man named Ken pumps our gas and grins at us through the window. "Now you've met your first Oregon weirdo," he says.

On a whim, we drive East to Crater Lake, winding into the trees until patches of snow appear. It's getting late, so we pull off at a campground, following the gravel road until it curves past a landslide and we turn around awkwardly and park in a little wooded turn out that looks camped-in We brush mosquitoes off our arms and try to drink frothy champagne that's warm and car-shaken. Instead we spill it on the floor and give up on pretending it tastes celebratory.




Crater Lake stretches wide and blue, the bluest blue. Older couples chat about their luxury campers, children hurl snowballs at their parents, and I pet every dog in sight. Kelsey and I pick wildflowers and huff up hill to stare at the expansive green-blue view. I sprinkle a handful of my grandpa's ashes into the wind, thinking of him as we pass a cluster of big bikes in the parking lot.

In Eugene we meet Arnita, a friend of a friend who remembers me from long ago. We meet her two dogs, her cockatiel, her enormous tortoises, brothers who have started fighting after 16 years of peace. We talk to her about her travels, about the 22 National Parks she's visit with her daughter, an acrobat and violinist that's spent time living in Norway and Germany and joined a circus in England for a while. We eat CSA vegetables and talk to her about photography, about her incredible book collection, about Sonoma County over beers and ice cream.

After saying our goodbyes, Kelsey and I explore Eugene on foot — thrifting forgotten kitchenware, thumbing through old postcards, tasting local beer and chatting with delightfully strange people. We acquire free stickers, free coasters, and a few stories, and head North to Portland.