Back from 2 weeks on the road!

We’re back!  2 weeks away is a long time, and it’s weird to be back, so I’m slowly catching up and getting back into work routines… for now, this is just a popping-in-to-say-hi post, with some highlight photos…

I spent something like 8 hours yesterday editing photos and am not even halfway done yet, but I’ll be posting them all to flickr eventually.  I won’t be clogging up the blog with too much trip stuff – just this, then the usual photo-of-the-day posts (probably with links to lots more photos) and then a wedding post once I get photos from that.  There should hopefully be a new knitting pattern next week and some other fun content to get the blog up and running again!

So… that top shot is at the Grand Canyon, which was cool, but not nearly as cool as Bryce Canyon (in Utah), where these shots were taken.

I shot lots of film!  Well, a few shots each on many different cameras, so now I need to take some photo excursions around Portland to use up all the unfinished rolls so I can get them processed!

I also shot some video!  Fun!  I was doing a video-postcard thing with talking to the camera a lot, so it might be super silly, and I also played around with stop-motion-y interval recording stuff on the road (not stop motion, but shooting 1 second at a time, 30 seconds apart)… someday when I have time I’ll go through it all and put bits up on vimeo.  Notice my super hi-tech dashboard tripod system?  (Yes, that’s my foot holding everything in place.)

We saw animals!  I believe these are mule deer, spotted along highway 12 in Utah.  We also saw elk (near the Grand Canyon), a wolf (just a glimpse!), an adorable chipmunk hanging out super close to us at Bryce Canyon, some weird and cute unknown squirrel-like guys, more different kinds of deer, lots and lots of cows and horses and sheep, and lots of cool and interesting looking birds…

We ate some amazing food once in awhile!  Road tripping can be tough for food, but we only had to resort to Denny’s twice (and Taco Bell zero times!).  The best Chinese food we’d ever eaten was discovered in Pocatello, Idaho, and the most delicious breakfast ever was at Chow in Bend, Oregon:

Cities we stayed in: Flagstaff (just a night), Page (near the Arizona border – passing through on the way to Utah), Salt Lake City (for a full day), Boise (for a full day), and Bend (Oregon, for the last night).  (and LA for a couple nights before the wedding, and Anaheim for a few days after)  Didn’t end up making it to Wyoming or Montana or New Mexico (all of which I’d hoped at some point we could get to), it just would have been too crazy, and it ended up being a perfect amount of driving in the end.  These shots were taken at the Gilgal Sculpture Garden in SLC (so weird!!) and in our room at the McMenamins hotel in Bend – such as awesome place!

We tried to hit lots of good thrift stores and yarn/craft shops in each town – this (below) was probably my favorite one, called Puffy Mondaes in Nampa, Idaho, super close to Boise.  Got some great local fiber to get me spinning again!  Oh wait, it’s probably tied for favorite with HeartFelt Designs Gallery in Red Bluff, California, where we stopped on the way down to LA – tons of locally farmed+spun yarn (I got three skeins of local handspun wool with the names of the sheep on the labels, for way too cheap!) and an amazingly picturesque upstairs studio space with giant stacks of free old magazines!

The one low point of the trip – on the wedding day (I assume), I was bit or stung a few times by something evil and had some kind of allergic reaction (maybe?) that started making an appearance the next day at Disneyland… Probably because of all the walking, the spot near my ankle got pretty brutal (infected, so gross) by the next day, and we ended up having to spend the first day of our roadtrip sitting in waiting rooms and seeing doctors, bummer.  (By the way, awesome health care story… went to a low-income urgent care since I don’t have insurance, waited a couple hours, doctor had no idea what it was, prescribed some antibiotics, and told me I needed to see a dermatologist right away… Made same-day appointment with local derm, paid to have him look at it, also have no idea what it was – just, probably yes, a bite or sting of some kind – tell me, yes I should indeed take the antibiotics that the previous doctor had prescribed, and that’s all.  Luckily, he only charged about $75 for that, much less than I was expecting, and, weirdly, less than the urgent care charged me.)

Anyway… thrifting!  Didn’t thrift as much as we’d sort of planned, but scored a few fabulous finds!  Above is a shot of most of the non-clothes items I got (that sweater doesn’t count as clothes, since I’ll be unraveling it to recycle the bulky wool!) – I tagged everything in flickr so you can read more there.  Below, you can see the best present ever that Pete found for me at a Savers in Boise – 100% wool Pendleton robe!  (Like this, except vintage and colors I love! …and around $195 cheaper!)  And, hanging to dry are 2 awesome wool sweater finds from Salt Lake!  I’ll take some modeled shots of them and other rad clothing finds later, perhaps…

Speaking of thrifted sweaters, sort of… The weather throughout the whole trip was pretty darn summery, but finally, on the last night, Bend got chilly enough for Pete to try out his new (thrifted) shawl collar cardigan!  Loving the new style!

And lastly, the wedding itself!  Just a few shots for now… my table decorations ended up looking great!  The framed lyrics really took over, with the fabric flowers being just an extra bit of color, so I’m really glad I ended up doing the last-minute frame project!  I let people know they could take one home as a wedding favor, but we still ended up bringing over half back with us – so I have 32 framed lyrics to hang on the blank walls of our home! Yay!

I got all the flowers (around 300ish, I think) made in time (with help from Pete and my mom, thanks!) but I made my bouquet in the back seat of my dad’s car on the drive to the wedding!  Gathered up a collection of favorite flowers, twisted them together with fabric-covered wire, and covered the bottom with a couple of vintage doilies.  Took about 10 minutes and worked out perfectly!

By the way, I still don’t have any photos of my dress, but our wedding photographer (my old buddy Kim!) got plenty, so you’ll be seeing it in a couple weeks for sure!

That blue line is our whole trip route (not including all the driving around LA and Orange County the days up to the wedding, doing wedding business stuff and meeting up with family and friends) – a close-up with tons of tags all along the route is on flickr here!

Ok so that’s a bit of a glimpse into my last 2 weeks.  Upcoming photo-of-the-day posts will show and tell some more, but I’ll be back to you will non-trip content soon, for reals!