Old Friends in New Places

Our adventure continued down the coast and we hit the massive city of San Fran. It was really overwhelming merging onto the freeway with cars ripping past us seemly twice as fast as kumu could go. Before we truly went into the city we took up the tourista route and biked across the Golden Gate Bridge! It was packed with tourists, but for good reason! Amazing views of the bay on an incredible fall day.

Cool shadows falling across the bridge

Our trusty steeds. Perfect for cruisin' anywhere and everywhere

We went over to Haight street to take in the history on hippydom. It was a bit overwhelming as all the steroetypes of hippys were thrust in your face, but there was some incredible artwork muraled over many of the streets in San Fran.

 More sweet artwork!

 After San Fran we headed to Palo Alto to see my old ski friend Jessica McNally. She toured us around the Stanford Campus which she graduated from in June as well as thier cool research grounds, Jaspar Ridge. 

Huge pommellos growing in Jess's yard! Along with figs, oranges and limes. 

Stanford Campus

 Cool cactus in the cactus garden at Stanford. I think I got smarter by osmosis

 After Palo Alto we started to head to Truckee to meet up with my old teammate Anna Goodman and her boyfriend Marco Sullivan and on the way we made a small detour to Napa Valley to try some wine and check out the vineyards!  It was a very beautiful valley and every winery called our name, but we only stopped at the Turnbull winery for some tasting and this winery that had a massive castle! 

 Our last stop was the cool Petrified Tree Forest. These massive redwoods were covered in ash after the eruption of Mt St Helena (different than st helens) and were preserved until they were found in the early 1900's. These trees are believed to be three MILLION years old. Hard to wrap your head around, but cool to try!

California Dreamin'

We continued down the coast and headed into Oregon. One of our favorite places. It was actually on a road trip to Oregon two and a half years ago that Andrew and I had our first romantic moment. We retraced a few of our steps from the last trip and discovered a few new places. It was also a place I spent a couple of summers of my childhood with my parents. We had a lot of 'wow' moments which seem to happen almost daily on a trip of this kind!

Lunch spot on the Ocean.

 Cannon Beach. Home to the Goonies and our first official police encounter when they kicked us out of the parking lot for camping. They were kind enough to let us sleep till 6am so it wasn't all bad.

 Oswalt State Park. Or Smugglers Cove. We used to frequent this quaint little surfing spot as kids, and it is always a pleasure to come back to it even if they did close down the walk in campground.

 Close to the largest sea lion caves in the world, the ocean was packed with these huge barking mammals!

 We made it! The 'Promise Land'

 Morning Dew

 Being Zen in the Redwood Forest

 Does this make us official hippies? Either way... we drove through a freakin tree!!

 The biggest tree around. Literally. A circumference of 64 feet! You would need a few more people to give this tree the hug it deserved

 And...LUNGE

 The hugeness of these trees was truly overwhelming. 

 Those are some big friggen roots

 BANANA slug... or to anyone on the ski team for the last year NANNNERRRR slug

Well the views keep astounding us everyday. And everyday brings something new. It is incredible to see what our world has to offer and we are not even a quarter of the way done our year long trek. Our time in the Redwood Forests gave both of us hope for the future and the resilience of our planet. If you are curious of our location check out the frequently updated map of our travels on the "Route" page

Feeling Very Olympic

It was a little hard to leave Canada and all our friends behind, however the pull of adventure and the open road was calling our names and it was time to move on. We headed south into the states and straight to the Olympic National Park just west of Washington. It has been a nice was to ease ourselves into the land of consumerism, and nice to remember that even our neighbors to the south have an appreciation of the wilderness. We spent a few great nights in the western rainforest and explored a few beaches which was just a taste of what is to come. The nights are still a little chilly and we are looking forward to getting south to the warmth!

Andrew gazing out to sea.

Exploring some of the huge deadwood scattered on the shores.

Yes, we did go to Forks and to LaPush... Jess and Alli, this picture for you and who ever else unfortunately got caught up in the frenzy that is "Twilight". It had taken over the town of Forks, thats for sure!

 The Washington Coast is scattered with amazing sea stacks and Tide pools

 Olympic National Park lays claim to some record breaking trees. This is a massive Cedar.

 Before hitting up the corrections center.

 Luckily they were able to cure me of my "olympicness"

Some of the beautiful forests in Olympic National Park. A pretty magical place

Our new headlights! Compliments of Russ and Andrew and a hard days work! Thanks a lot!!!

Home Away From Home

We managed to survive the ferry ride from Haines to Prince Rupert even with the stormy seas and discovering that when we arrived in PR, all the BC ferries had been docked because the storm was too gnarly! Apparently Alaska Ferries had a different view as we heaved over the rough waves.
In Prince Rupert we had organized to get our rear CV joint fixed at Franks Auto. They had us in and out of the shop in just over an hour with amazingly friendly service, so a huge props goes out to Frank and his guys in Prince Rupert.
As we left PR  we hadn't driven 100km before we started to feel our front bearings go. Some times it's just one thing after another, but we have driven Kumu pretty hard and over some very unfriendly roads not to mention we have clocked over 10 000 kms since we left on August 16th, so I suppose she was due for some TLC. We managed to get the bearings done in Prince George and started heading south, next destination, Whistler, B.C. our home away from home. Being the people that we are, there was no way we could just simply drive down the highway (not to mention our van is no match for the speeders of the highways). So we headed west from Williams Lake determined to get some great driving and great scenery on the forestry roads. For those of you who haven't been to BC... they have more logging roads than they know what to do with, but we were confident we could navigate them with ease and the use of a vague CAA map. Apparently we were wrong

Our Camp site on the Fraser River just south of Riske Creek was a pretty amazing spot!

Kumu peeking through the grass

An old run down shack near where we camped.

We ran into a couple of guys from Ontario and Victoria and proceeded to have a great campfire on the beach. The next day they decided to follow us on an adventure through the logging roads. Perhaps not the smartest decision they have ever made. When we finally figured out where we were they made a quick exit for Highway 97 and didn't look back.

 

The next day we started driving with our new friends following behind in their 1984 BMW. We were confident where we were headed and excited to explore. Our confidence slowly dwindled as the logging roads because smaller and smaller and rougher and rougher. A couple of times we conceeded defeat and admitted we had made a wrong turn somewhere a ways back. So we would turn around, with the BMW in tow and try another road. This lasted a couple of hours till we finally saw another vehicle and flagged it down to ask where we were. Turns out we were about 40km west of where we needed to be in an area that was completely devoid of roads according to our map. Oops! We finally managed to get on the right track but what was supposed to be a nice 4-5 hour drive to Whistler turned out to be a 9 hour drive and we only made it to Lillooet! However it was filled with incredible views and a feeling of adventure, so we weren't too stressed about it all. 

 Big Bar ferry over the Fraser River followed by a seven kilometer uphill of 23 degree slope... a little rough for ol' Kumu, but she made it up and made us proud. This is about 100km north of Lillooet, BC. 

 One of the many incredible views over looking the Fraser Valley

We finally made it the next day to Whistler. A place that is pretty special to both Andrew and I. That being said, it was pretty strange to have travelled for two months non-stop only to end up in a place thats only 9 hrs from home! However, this made it easy for my parents to pop over from Canmore and come for a visit. It was great to see them and my dad and I even managed to get a few wicked Downhill bike runs in on the last day of the Whistler Bike Park! A big thanks to Craig and Juniper for letting us crash at their house! It has been great fun catching up with friends and being in a place that is so welcoming and comforting. It will be a little bit hard to pull ourselves away from the fun of this little mountain town, but the south is calling our name and there are two surfboards somewhere in California or Mexico that are just itching to be bought by us so we can begin the next great chapter of our journey! 

My dad Clive and I after shredding some gnar at the Whistler Bike Park!

Chilly Nights 2

We finally made it out of the snowy, cold Alaska interior, but we saw some great sights along the way.

Morning after a fresh snowfall left us chilly and thinking of home.

Our trusty steeds (bikes) were unridable and colder than us! It took a couple days for that think ice to melt away

We had some great fishing on Kathleen River just south of Destruction Bay. We each caught a few rainbow trout as well as some Arctic Grayling. It almost made me realize why people fish so much!... almost...

Very proud of my HUGE catch (warning, objects in the picture are WAY bigger than they appear... wait except for me... I'm slim as ever)

Mosquito Lake. an amazing spot we found north of Haines. The eagles were flying and the swans stopped for a bit on their way south

Our little campground amidst the beautiful fall colors

In Haines during the summer there is an eagle population of about 300. In the winter this soars to 3000. I have never seen so many eagles. Everywhere you looked, it was incredible.

We had already falling very much in like with Haines. And that was BEFORE we fished with the grizzlies. Andrew picked up some more tips on grabbing the salmon with his bear (teehee) hands. Apparently this was a safe distance. At about 30 meters people finally started to move back up towards the road. The salmon were running and the bears were feeding. There were two sets that we saw. One momma and two cubs and one momma with three cubs. They didnt seem too concerned with all the fisherman, apparently they realized there was enough fish to go round. Definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far.

Cleaning a huge salmon with the bears in the background. No big deal. I'm jut happy he wasnt menstruating.

This baby here was a collective effort. Andrew cast, and I reeled her in. It was long awaited, even if she was a bit small. We ended up releasing her and wishing her a safe journey past the bears.

Momma bear playing in the water. I just wanted to give her a big hug!

The sign as we were waiting for the ferry... should we be worried?? I didn't think we were in Mexico yet.

As for now, we are enjoying a bluebird day in Ketchikan. The 4th largest city in Alaska and Salmon capital of the world! I can't even imagine what the salmon fishing is like here after we have seen Haines and Valdez... We have a few more hours before we have to jump back on the ferry to head to Prince Rupert. It seems strange to have been travelling so long, and put so many miles on the van, to just be arriving back in Canada. Ah well, its not the destination, its the journey right?