Kelly / Jackson Hole

We went to the Grand Tetons hiking planning on staying at most one night in Jackson Hole. This was before our camping trip in Yellowstone. When we were hiking in the Tetons we were debating driving up north towards Yellowstone and sleeping in our car for the night. After our amazing hike to Amphitheater Lake we were getting back to our car and there was a couple who needed a ride back into Jackson. They had be climbing up in the mountains and wanted to get a hotel for the night. We got to town and there wasn't a single room available for them. I talked to our couch surfing host, David, and he didn't have any more room at his place, but they were able to pitch their tent in his yard. It ended up working great for everyone. We were actually David's first surfers out in Jackson Hole. Mark & Ali, the climbers, are from Flagstaff, AZ so we have a place to stay when we get there!

The other coincidental thing that happened while we were climbing that day was talking to Terry Hunter. (He had been golfing with Jake that day) He told us his son and daughter in law had a cafe in Kelly, a small town with the most amazing view of the Tetons just a few miles outside of Jackson Hole. We went there and had lunch with Al & Heather and immediately we realized that we would get along great with them and that they were a ton of fun. We were planning on going to Missoula to watch Keller Williams, but they convinced us to come back down after a few days in Yellowstone to watch the show with them and their friends in Jackson.

We got back that Friday afternoon in time for happy hour at the cafe. It was a beautiful night and we got to meet half the town and hang out watching the sun set behind the Tetons. The town has about 2 streets and a yurt park! The whole town in full of amazing people too. There are artists, and pro skiers, world class rock climbers, professional bikers, published authors, mountaineers, etc. There was just so much to do and so many amazing people to meet. Saturday before the show we went white watew rafting down the Snake river with Pete Popinchalk, who was a rafting guide and amazing rock climber. That evening we went to the Keller Williams concert with a whole gang. The Kelly crew probably made up 10% of the people there! It was a super intimate venue. The next day the Steelers played and we had to have a party for that!

 Al's friend, TJ, was able to hook me up with a new mountain bike later that week. It's a Scott that was used as a rental all summer so I got a great deal on it. I'm officially part of the “Kells Angels” Gang. (Everyone in Kelly rides around on bikes and they refer to themselves as Kells Angels) We were “hood rating” all week with everyone. We went on some great hikes in the mountains and bike rides. Another friend, Rico, took us rafting again too. It was peak fall colors and they were quite impressive as we floated down I Rico actually lives inside the National Park because his grandpa with his twin brother were some of the first to explore the Tetons. They did all this work for National Geographic. Annie & I felt at home there. Annie would bake cinnamon rolls and zucchini bread and cook up delicious meals. We'd have cook outs at night and we helped Adam out in the woods cutting down firewood. We ended up staying all week then we couldn't leave before the Steelers Sunday Night game, so we didn't. This area was definitely on the top of our favorite places list and it wouldn't be surprising if we go back out to look for jobs and stay awhile.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Sunset at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

We are camping out in the backcountry and are both awake in the middle of the night when we hear the deadliest animal in Yellowstone grunting and walking around our tent.  Before we got to this point, we had driven up to Yellowstone and called Josh, mom gave us his phone number. Apparently our grandpa was his grandpa's best man back in PA. He's been working in Yellowstone the last 2 summers with his girlfriend, Angie. They were awesome and let us stay a night in their dorm and the next night we went backpacking with another one of their friends, Jared.

Josh & Angie overlooking Grand Prismatic

We hiked in about 4 miles to a Fairy Falls. On the way we got to see all these awesome geysers. We walked through Midway Geyser Basin and saw Grand Prismatic Spring, which is so colorful and unlike anything in this world I've ever seen. The whole park of Yellowstone is really out of this world. The grand canyon of Yellowstone and it's impressive waterfalls. Geysers shooting water up out of the earth, steam flowing up into the sky all over the place. It was like the movie Land Before Time. We hiked to one crystal blue geyser that had a constant burst of water that would get up to 20 ft. at times. Then there were these mud bubbles around and they make this noise that sounds like demons talking from the depths of the earth and sulfur smell was horrendous.

A geyser near our campsite

On our trail to our camp site we came across the deadliest animal in the park. He was standing right in our path. The great american bison stood there looking right at us. Then another one appeared. We had heard all the stories of the people being gorged and killed by buffalo. More people die from that than bears or wolves or anything else in the park. We were able to walk our way around them, but they were never far from the campsite. While we were sitting around the fire one walked within 15 yards of us. He was one of ½ dozen that had encircled us. Fortunately we didn't seem to bother them. 

deadliest animal in Yellowstone

 Late that evening we could hear the elf bugling.  September is their mating season. We saw the big bull on the edge of the tree line and sure enough shortly after first hearing him we saw a cow running through the field. Then right behind her there was another bull! We thought there may be a possibility of witnessing a fight. When the big bull on the hill finally made his way down the guy trailing the cow disappeared and the big bull was left with his entourage of 4 cows! It got dark before we saw any more action than that. The stars came up and we were truly in big sky country. There were more stars than I've ever seen. It was like we were in an old western movie. Sitting around the campfire, telling stories, and drinking whiskey out of the bottle. We could still hear the elk and the waterfall in the distance. An almost full moon came up over the mountains and lit ups the entire valley. We were able to see the mountains in the distance and could see a few of the geysers steaming. It was a pretty magical camping trip. Sleeping wasn't so great though. Our tent isn't exactly waterproof and I have a cheap sleeping bag that works great in PA in the summer, but not so great for a freezing night at 8000ft. That's why we were awake when the buffalo came walking around our tent and scared us to death!

Our campsite with Fairy Falls and a buffalo in the background

midwest

MIDWEST

Wisconsin

We drove through Green Bay and saw Lambeau Field just days before the opening game of the season on our way to Spread Eagle Lake to stay with Shirl St. Germain, aunt Ruthi's sister. She has a beautiful place right on the lake and had to go out of town for a few days so we dog sat for her while she was gone. It was a much needed relaxing week on the lake. The first couple days were a bit chilly, but we enjoyed ourselves; a lot of reading & steaming! When the weather got nicer we took the kayaks on the lake and did some runs in the woods with Audrey, a neighbor that Annie was friends with from a few years back when she worked there for the summer. Shirl came back and we did a nice hike and went to pick apples at a local orchard and cooked some good fish and chips dinner.

Michigan

We borrowed some bikes and went up to Marquette MI on Lake Superior to visit some of Grammy & Pop's friends from Marco Island. We stopped in at Tim & Sue's house. Sue had plans for the day, but Tim showed us around town. We got to try the local delicacy, Pasties. They are delicious pastry full of beef and potatoes. Then we hiked up a hill that gave us a beautiful view of the lake and rode our bikes in the afternoon.

Minneapolis

One of my good friends, Sarah, from my study abroad in Costa Rica lives in Minneapolis. We got to spend the weekend catching up with her. We had beautiful weather and luckily got tickets to the Summit Brewing Company 25^th Anniversary party. We read that they were sold out, but figured we would try anyways. Right before we were going to turn around to leave one of the volunteers said he had an extra and gave it to us, and Sarah randomly asked this couple if they were selling their tickets and they had 2 for sale! Funny thing is we met the guys inside that had given the volunteer the extra ticket. They had really great beer and an even better show of local bands playing all day. That night we just went back and had an easy early night at her house. The next day we walked around a beautiful lake, watched the awful Steelers opening game, and had a tasty walleye dinner with Sarah's parents.

South Dakota

We had a long day of driving through South Dakota. We did a few hours Sunday night from Minneapolis to a couch surfer's place in Sioux Falls. South Dakota has tons of interesting places to stop along the drive. The Corn Palace is a building all decorated & maybe even made out of corn. It's a little bizarre, but impressive. I guess you make use out of what you have. Then a few hundred miles later we finally made it to Wall Drugs. If you've even driven through SD you know what this is. It's this town that the Drug Store started putting billboards up along the highway years ago to get people to stop before they visited the Badlands. It's this huge tourist thing now and they advertise by giving away “free water.” The Badlands were really cool. We hung out there for awhile with the dozens of big horn sheep. Then got on our way to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. After that we decided to drive a few more hours until we were tired and just sleep in the car. We were fine with driving because we were listening to Harry Potter on CD. It's a little addicting. Well, once we got on Rt. 16 in Wyoming we didn't go too long at night due to the hundreds of deer along the side of the road. I was driving about 20mph when the biggest dear I've ever seen walked right out in front of the road. This huge bull elk majestically was standing there. It was surreal. There was a full moon and he just glided across this windy mountain road. It wasn't long after that we pulled off the road to sleep for a few hours until the sun came up and we could get the rest of the way to western Wyoming.   

CHICAGO 2

CHICAGO - Round 2


Cody Badger, my friend who I studied with in Argentina, came to pick us up after we flew back into Chicago. He and his girlfriend, Elizabeth, were watching our car while we were gone for the month.  It was a culture shock seeing all the concrete and flat landscape.  We were literally coming down from an amazing high in Alaska and not wanting to leave.  That feeling didn't last too long though after we got some sleep and spent some time with Cody & Elizabeth, who are both a ton of fun.  Then we met up with Katie & Ben again and Cara.  Annie and I went on a 20 mile bike ride along the lake and to the aquarium.  We weren't planning on spending much more time in Chicago after we landed, but the Pirates were coming to town for the weekend.   We were able to find some cheap tickets for Friday & Saturday's game.  That whole gang I just mentioned all were able to come on Saturday so we figured we'd stick around for that game too.

The beginning of many pictures with the Cherry Herring.... 

Friday morning we drove out to see John with Apex Flooring.  He buys a lot of flooring from dad and has a nice showroom we checked out.  When we got there one of his partners got us hooked up with some all you can eat / drink rooftop tickets.  It was great game.  Pirates won 3-1 that day and the next day they won 7-5, but had a long rain delay, and we didn't stay to see the grand slam at the end of the game.  We were watching the game back at Ben's though while we were playing cards.

Elizabeth, Cody, Jess, Greg, Annie, Cara, Katie & Ben @ Wrigley Field.  Sept. 3, 2011

From President to A**hole.  Ben & Katie

That night we ended up staying longer due to the long game and we went to a house warming party of Katie & Ben's friends.  Annie ended up winning $100 playing ping pong.

Alaska Part 2

We weren't completely sure how we were going to make it for the last 10 days by ourselves without a car and a solid plan.  All we knew was that we wanted to hang around the Kenai Peninsula and hopefully get the whole way to Homer.  We had heard a lot of good things about that town. We were pretty excited to figure out how we were going to manage the days of the trip, but we could tell that dad was kind of nervous and/or thought we were crazy for trying to get around Alaska without our own car to drive.  They don't really have a great public transportation system other than the expensive railroad.  Hitch hiking was our best option we had going into it, and dad was not thrilled at all about that plan.   Fortunately, we had met Jeff through Brucker and we were able to stay a few nights with him and his awesome dog, Trout.  He lives in the beautiful peaceful town Moose Pass which is in the heart of the Chugach Mountains.  It was nice having a couple relaxing days there doing a lot of reading after we got done hiking.  It pretty much rained the whole time we were there.  We did take Jeff out for a birthday drink and then the next day we met up with our couch surfer host  to do a hike half way between Moose Pass and our next stop, Soldotna.  The trail was called skyline, and it went straight up to the ridge of the mountain.  We saw a black bear a few hundred yards away and Trout took off in a mad dash for it.  Fortunately he turned around before we saw him get in a serious fight with the bear.

We checked out the local fair with our next couch host and watched the pigs race and a rodeo.  The sun finally started to peak out for a few hours.  We didn't spend too much time in Soldotna we found a ride through Ride Share on Craigs List and we pitched in some gas money for a guy that was driving from Anchorage to the bed and breakfast him and his wife owned in Homer.   We had made contact with someone from couch surfing who lived in Homer earlier that week, but we couldn't get ahold of him before we arrived, so our ride gave us a good deal on a spare room for the night in exchange for some help doing chores around the house (we never actually had to help because the weather was bad the morning we were going to and he never called us to come back).    That night they dropped us off at the local bar, Down East, while they had some stuff to take care of and that is where our adventure in Homer started.  :) 

We met Adam and Forest, they work on a halibut charter boat,  and they were talking to us about going fishing and telling us about a birthday party that their friend Olympia was having the next night at the Down East.  Olympia had just been up to Homer visiting for a few days on vacation and she loved it so much she flew back home to Atlanta, quit her job, and moved up to Homer.   Another one of their friends, Stephanie, was one of the couch surfers that Annie had messaged.  She showed up later that evening at the bar and said that she had just got our message and would be more than happy to host us.  She had our own room attached to the garage and her place was on the hill overlooking the ocean and the mountains across the bay.  It was the most beautiful place to wake up at every morning.  We were only planning on spending 3-4 days there but we ended up staying 7!

We had a great time at Olympia's luau pig roast and the next day we went halibut fishing with Adam, Forest, and Captain Art. The first day we went out the weather wasn't very nice, but we did see some humpback whales and each caught 2 halibut.  We were only catching ones that weighed 15 - 20 pounds.  They can grow up to a couple hundred pounds which would have been no fun to bring up.  Our arms were sore after pulling up what we did! We ended up going out fishing with them 4 different times, and we even learned to fillet them.  The last couple trips the weather was beautiful and we could see the 10,000 ft volcanoes in the Aleutian Island chain.

  In the evenings, after a trip to the Salty Dawg, a famous bar on the spit, we'd go to Captain Art's house with the gang and cook the fresh fish and have a few drinks then typically go out to the bar.  Another day Adam, Annie, and another friend, Garrett, went across the bay whale watching and hiking in the mountains. The whole week was a blast of non stop laughing and good times.
 Oh yeah, and we saw the northern lights our last night there.  :-)
 It was a perfect way to end our Alaska adventure.