It's about time...

some of you may be thinking (although most could probably care less). ;) Five months have elapsed since we traipsed across this great country (turning a 2,980-mile trip into a 5,000-mile trip) and blogger finally got its act together regarding its photo upload feature. Now, instead of requiring me to downsize each of my 5MB a piece photos it's incorporated a feature that automatically downsizes the resolution of the photos. Thank goodness. Also, a big thank you is extended to Lisascenic for notifying me that blogger had finally updated its photo capabilities. Otherwise, I'd still be procrastinating this trip update (for years and years and years at my current pace). ;)

LEAVING THE NORTHWEST

:(

14 Jul 06

Departing the beautiful Pacific Northwest was extremely difficult. It's truly hard to leave a place where you totally felt at home (rare for somebody who's lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle for several decades!). Our desire was to head from Seattle due East to Spokane and follow the northern route through the US on our way to the Mid-Atlantic Coast but at the last minute things changed drastically and we were rerouted south through Oregon and beyond. Of course, our plan was to letterbox as much along the route as physically possible with a goal of trying to find at least a single letterbox and geocache within every state we visited along the trip. That worked for all of 6 days (but we'll get to that later).

We initially headed to Oregon Wine Country--aka Willamette Valley and spent a few days relaxing (and rearranging our caravan load between 2 vehicles, 4 people, 4 cats and enough equipment to camp/hike all along the way) before the big drive. We snuck in a day of serious hiking & letterboxing around Silver Falls State Park--10 waterfalls over 9 rugged miles and a great opportunity to test out our new camera. Not quite sure where those photos are but eventually they'll make it here. Silver Falls was an awesome experience! Definitely worth a trip in itself to stand in awe of the beauty there 'smack dab in the middle of nowhere.'

16 Jul 06

From Wine Country we headed east to the quaint town of Sisters where we camped at Pioneer Ford Campground. We stumbled on a primitive & PEACEFUL campsite immediately adjacent the banks of the beautiful Metolius River with gorgeous views of the river and the mountains on either side. While camping there we kept thinking about how the campground earned its name--and marvelled at how pioneers could ford the rushing waters with their conestoga wagons loaded down with gear. To this day, the feat of that monumental task still amazes me! We loved this location not only for its immense beauty but also for the myriad letterboxing adventures it led us on. Definitely seek out this location and have fun looking for Funhog & Birder letterboxes scattered about.

Mt Washington off in the distance. Not terribly far from Sisters, OR.


Mt Washington a bit closer up.

Gorgeous rushing blue waters of the Metolius River around the Camp Sherman area. The colors were so vivid! The photo barely does it justice.

So, slowly but surely I'll start updating the blog with our experiences from our trek--hoping to capture much of it before I start forgetting some of the more memorable and hilarious mis-adventures along the way.

Happy letterboxing everybody!