We're back home! We finished our road trip two days early so that Joh could attend her sister's bridal shower last night.
We'll be living at my parents house for the few weeks that we're here, and then we'll be leaving again on September 20th for part two of our journey. We'll be spending these few weeks catching up with our family and friends. We're really looking forward to that. Joh of course, will be busy helping out with the preparations for Ashley and Tyler's wedding as well. Next week, we'll be going camping with my family up north, so we're really looking forward to that too.
Anyways, we are cellphoneless at the moment, so if you want to reach us, please email one of us or call the home phone at my parent's house. We got a busy few weeks but we'd love to hear from you and meet up.
I'll write more about week three of our road trip in the next couple days. Teaser: Kansas City ribs were involved ;)
Join us on our adventure as we travel the world!
August 24, 2011
August 17, 2011
USA Road Trip - Week 2
The second week of our road trip across the US was all about canyons. We left Grand Teton National Park and headed south into Utah. The first stop in Utah was Bryce Canyon National Park. If you’ve never heard of this place or seen pictures, you’re missing out. This place was amazing. It is a huge valley full of red rock formations shaped like giant pillars. There are hundreds of these pillars and they look really sharp in the early morning or late evening sun. We drove the length of the canyon and stopped at all the viewpoints, and then the following morning we went on a hike down into the canyon. This hike was incredible. Walking amidst the pillars and trees with dark red sand and stone all around you was really cool.
After Bryce Canyon we travelled south-west towards Zion National Park. This park also has large canyons with red rocks, but it looked completely different. There were huge towering cliffs and a very picturesque river running through. We hiked part of this park as well, and really enjoyed it.
After Zion we headed further south towards the Grand Canyon. We really were looking forward to seeing it. It did not disappoint. The canyon is so large that it is impossible to take it all in. We spent two days in Grand Canyon National Park and one morning we got up at 4:30am to hike down into the canyon. It is pretty much impossible to hike during the middle of the day here as it is way too hot. We went down a good portion of the way and we had a lot of spectacular early morning sunrise vistas. The sunshine on the canyon walls turns everything bright shades of red, yellow, and orange and it made it one of the most scenic hikes we’d ever been on. We turned around just in time to make it back up before the mid-day sun attempted to scorch us.
After the Grand Canyon we started working our way back north. On our drive we passed through Monument Valley which was an incredible experience. It is a giant valley with flat ground all around except for a bunch of massive rock monuments poking up out of the ground. It was absolutely amazing to see.
After driving through Monument Valley we drove the rest of the way towards Arches National Park and stayed the night just outside the park. The following morning we got up and did a really scenic drive through the park. Arches has some of the funkiest shaped rock formations. They had giant arches carved out of rock and also all kinds of other weird shapes as well. It was a really cool drive. It would be awesome to come back some day to do some extensive hiking through the park.
That pretty much gets us up to date. We’re currently in Grand Junction, Colorado getting some minor repairs done to our Jeep. There’s something wrong with the electronic throttle control, so we’re waiting for the repairs to be done. They’ve assured us that everything will be fixed ASAP and we’ll be back on the road this evening. Other than this problem, we’ve really enjoyed the vehicle. It’s got great gas mileage, comfortable seats, and it’s got lots of room for all our camping gear. Perfect for a road trip.
We plan on spending the next few days in the state of Colorado, exploring and hiking in the Rockies. After that, it’s pretty much straight home. The plan is to be back home by next Thursday (August 25th). We’ll likely post about the final week of our road trip once we get back home.
Here's the photos from the last week. Enjoy!
After Bryce Canyon we travelled south-west towards Zion National Park. This park also has large canyons with red rocks, but it looked completely different. There were huge towering cliffs and a very picturesque river running through. We hiked part of this park as well, and really enjoyed it.
After Zion we headed further south towards the Grand Canyon. We really were looking forward to seeing it. It did not disappoint. The canyon is so large that it is impossible to take it all in. We spent two days in Grand Canyon National Park and one morning we got up at 4:30am to hike down into the canyon. It is pretty much impossible to hike during the middle of the day here as it is way too hot. We went down a good portion of the way and we had a lot of spectacular early morning sunrise vistas. The sunshine on the canyon walls turns everything bright shades of red, yellow, and orange and it made it one of the most scenic hikes we’d ever been on. We turned around just in time to make it back up before the mid-day sun attempted to scorch us.
After the Grand Canyon we started working our way back north. On our drive we passed through Monument Valley which was an incredible experience. It is a giant valley with flat ground all around except for a bunch of massive rock monuments poking up out of the ground. It was absolutely amazing to see.
After driving through Monument Valley we drove the rest of the way towards Arches National Park and stayed the night just outside the park. The following morning we got up and did a really scenic drive through the park. Arches has some of the funkiest shaped rock formations. They had giant arches carved out of rock and also all kinds of other weird shapes as well. It was a really cool drive. It would be awesome to come back some day to do some extensive hiking through the park.
That pretty much gets us up to date. We’re currently in Grand Junction, Colorado getting some minor repairs done to our Jeep. There’s something wrong with the electronic throttle control, so we’re waiting for the repairs to be done. They’ve assured us that everything will be fixed ASAP and we’ll be back on the road this evening. Other than this problem, we’ve really enjoyed the vehicle. It’s got great gas mileage, comfortable seats, and it’s got lots of room for all our camping gear. Perfect for a road trip.
We plan on spending the next few days in the state of Colorado, exploring and hiking in the Rockies. After that, it’s pretty much straight home. The plan is to be back home by next Thursday (August 25th). We’ll likely post about the final week of our road trip once we get back home.
Here's the photos from the last week. Enjoy!
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| BLOG ROADTRIP DAY 9-16 |
August 10, 2011
USA Road Trip - Week 1
We were really excited to get started on our road trip. We left early Tuesday morning with hopes to reach the Oregon coast by dinner time. So we spent the day driving through the state of Washington. All I can say about Washington is that there is forest everywhere. It was a pretty scenic drive. We also drove quickly through the city of Seattle, and it looked like a really cool city. By mid-afternoon we were back to the Pacific coast and we had a very scenic few hours of driving. We went through Astoria, and drove over the really long bridge there and drove around the town a little bit. We reached our first day’s destination at around dinner time and after visiting a few full campgrounds we found one that had room for us.
The place we had arrived at was Cannon Beach. It had been recommended to us by our friends Derek and Karen who had just come from there a few days earlier. Cannon Beach was beautiful. The beach there was absolutely massive and it had huge rocks sticking out of the beach and small islands dotting the coastline. It was really beautiful and that evening there was a light layer of fog covering the beach so it enabled us to get some really cool photos. We walked around for quite a while and then the next morning we went again. The rocks are partially covered during high tide, but when it goes down the bottoms of the rocks are revealed and they are covered with starfish, barnacles, clams, and all other sorts of sea creatures.
On the second day of our road trip we continued down the beautiful Oregon coast and eventually turned back east towards the city of Portland.
The third day we drove into Portland and stopped off at its famous Voodoo Donut shop. This place is famous for its outrageous donuts. They have donuts with every possible topping. We ordered 4 donuts: an “Old Dirty Bastard” donut (topped with oreos, chocolate, and peanut butter), a Maple-Bacon (mmm… bacon), a giant apple fritter, and a habanero donut. Needless to say we didn’t need to stop for lunch that day. Apparently every other traveller was stopping there too. There was a half hour lineup there. The place had received quite a bit of notoriety lately after appearing on both “No Reservations” and “Man vs Food” – two food-themed travel shows.
After eating our donuts we went to an outlet mall nearby to do some shopping. Joh needed a nice outfit for when we go to church on Sundays, and I was way past due on getting new flip flops. My old ones were worn so badly that there was a giant hole in the heel. I guess that’s what happens when you wear them every day for seven months and walk around on all types of terrain for hours.
After shopping, we drove down the historic Columbia River highway. This highway was amazing. It went way up to the tops of the cliffs alongside the Columbia River. We had some absolutely crazy views of the valley below. After the highway was over we drove for the rest of the day along the interstate and clocked off a lot of miles.
Eventually as we drove through north-east Oregon and south-east Washington the landscape changed into a prairie-like landscape. Seemingly unending wheat fields were all around us. I had no idea that there was this type of environment to the west of the mountains.
The next day we put in a lot more miles and stopped at a campground an hour or two away from Yellowstone National Park. This was near the city of Belgrade, where on the following morning we found a URC church in which we could attend worship services.
After church on Sunday we drove into Yellowstone Park and explored the North-West end of the park and searched for a campground to spend the night. Unfortunately in Yellowstone, the sites are all first-come-first-serve, so everything was full. We found a nice site right outside the western entrance to the park and then the following day we re-entered the park and explored a lot more. Yellowstone is so big that you can drive around all day and still not see everything. The highlight of our exploration was definitely the canyon and the views of the Lower Falls. We hiked down into the canyon and got some amazing views. There was one lookout named Artist’s Point that was absolutely unreal.
After exploring, we went to our campsite that we had booked earlier. It was a really disappointing site. It was just a field with a bunch of marked sites. The site outside the park that we had the night before was much nicer. Regardless we made the best of it and ended up having a really nice evening. At around dusk we were approached by a guy on a bike. He was biking around the campground looking for a spot for his tent. Since the campground was full, he put on his Flames hockey jersey and looked for Canadian license plates. His strategy worked on us, and we let him onto our site. He was doing a trip on his bike across the country and he was planning on eventually continuing his trip into Europe and into the Middle-East. Naturally he had some really good stories and we hounded him with question after question about his trip.
The following morning we parted ways and we headed to go see Old Faithful. In case you’re unaware, Old Faithful is a geyser that erupts every hour or so and spouts hot water 60 feet up into the air. We got there and discovered that Old Faithful isn’t quite so faithful anymore. He was about 20 minutes late. In the past he was pretty much like clock-work – spouting off pretty much every hour on the hour. It was neat to see but extremely touristy. We stood there with 100s of other tourists on a special platform made for viewing the geyser.
After Old Faithful we drove out of the park via the South Exit and into Grand Teton National Park. We had never heard of this park until two or three weeks ago when we started researching the top national parks in the US. The recommendations we saw online proved to be correct. The park was beautiful. There is a big lake with a huge mountain range next to it and the view of the mountains with the lake was one of the most incredible scenes we’ve seen on this trip. We spent last night in a nice campground in the south end of the park and now we’re continuing our way south.
We are really enjoying this road trip. It is really a completely different style of travelling than what we’re used to. We are taking things really slow and taking frequent breaks. We really enjoy stopping at a nice scenic overlook for a picnic lunch or cooking dinners on our hibachi on a campsite and having campfires. The nights and mornings are a lot colder than we expected, so our sleeps haven’t been too great but we are still really enjoying it.
Over the next week we’re heading towards the Grand Canyon via the state of Utah. Utah has some amazing national parks as well so we’re really looking forward to this week. Hopefully we’ll be able to post again soon. It’s a lot more difficult to find an Internet connection when we’re camping but we’ll do our best.
The place we had arrived at was Cannon Beach. It had been recommended to us by our friends Derek and Karen who had just come from there a few days earlier. Cannon Beach was beautiful. The beach there was absolutely massive and it had huge rocks sticking out of the beach and small islands dotting the coastline. It was really beautiful and that evening there was a light layer of fog covering the beach so it enabled us to get some really cool photos. We walked around for quite a while and then the next morning we went again. The rocks are partially covered during high tide, but when it goes down the bottoms of the rocks are revealed and they are covered with starfish, barnacles, clams, and all other sorts of sea creatures.
On the second day of our road trip we continued down the beautiful Oregon coast and eventually turned back east towards the city of Portland.
The third day we drove into Portland and stopped off at its famous Voodoo Donut shop. This place is famous for its outrageous donuts. They have donuts with every possible topping. We ordered 4 donuts: an “Old Dirty Bastard” donut (topped with oreos, chocolate, and peanut butter), a Maple-Bacon (mmm… bacon), a giant apple fritter, and a habanero donut. Needless to say we didn’t need to stop for lunch that day. Apparently every other traveller was stopping there too. There was a half hour lineup there. The place had received quite a bit of notoriety lately after appearing on both “No Reservations” and “Man vs Food” – two food-themed travel shows.
After eating our donuts we went to an outlet mall nearby to do some shopping. Joh needed a nice outfit for when we go to church on Sundays, and I was way past due on getting new flip flops. My old ones were worn so badly that there was a giant hole in the heel. I guess that’s what happens when you wear them every day for seven months and walk around on all types of terrain for hours.
After shopping, we drove down the historic Columbia River highway. This highway was amazing. It went way up to the tops of the cliffs alongside the Columbia River. We had some absolutely crazy views of the valley below. After the highway was over we drove for the rest of the day along the interstate and clocked off a lot of miles.
Eventually as we drove through north-east Oregon and south-east Washington the landscape changed into a prairie-like landscape. Seemingly unending wheat fields were all around us. I had no idea that there was this type of environment to the west of the mountains.
The next day we put in a lot more miles and stopped at a campground an hour or two away from Yellowstone National Park. This was near the city of Belgrade, where on the following morning we found a URC church in which we could attend worship services.
After church on Sunday we drove into Yellowstone Park and explored the North-West end of the park and searched for a campground to spend the night. Unfortunately in Yellowstone, the sites are all first-come-first-serve, so everything was full. We found a nice site right outside the western entrance to the park and then the following day we re-entered the park and explored a lot more. Yellowstone is so big that you can drive around all day and still not see everything. The highlight of our exploration was definitely the canyon and the views of the Lower Falls. We hiked down into the canyon and got some amazing views. There was one lookout named Artist’s Point that was absolutely unreal.
After exploring, we went to our campsite that we had booked earlier. It was a really disappointing site. It was just a field with a bunch of marked sites. The site outside the park that we had the night before was much nicer. Regardless we made the best of it and ended up having a really nice evening. At around dusk we were approached by a guy on a bike. He was biking around the campground looking for a spot for his tent. Since the campground was full, he put on his Flames hockey jersey and looked for Canadian license plates. His strategy worked on us, and we let him onto our site. He was doing a trip on his bike across the country and he was planning on eventually continuing his trip into Europe and into the Middle-East. Naturally he had some really good stories and we hounded him with question after question about his trip.
The following morning we parted ways and we headed to go see Old Faithful. In case you’re unaware, Old Faithful is a geyser that erupts every hour or so and spouts hot water 60 feet up into the air. We got there and discovered that Old Faithful isn’t quite so faithful anymore. He was about 20 minutes late. In the past he was pretty much like clock-work – spouting off pretty much every hour on the hour. It was neat to see but extremely touristy. We stood there with 100s of other tourists on a special platform made for viewing the geyser.
After Old Faithful we drove out of the park via the South Exit and into Grand Teton National Park. We had never heard of this park until two or three weeks ago when we started researching the top national parks in the US. The recommendations we saw online proved to be correct. The park was beautiful. There is a big lake with a huge mountain range next to it and the view of the mountains with the lake was one of the most incredible scenes we’ve seen on this trip. We spent last night in a nice campground in the south end of the park and now we’re continuing our way south.
We are really enjoying this road trip. It is really a completely different style of travelling than what we’re used to. We are taking things really slow and taking frequent breaks. We really enjoy stopping at a nice scenic overlook for a picnic lunch or cooking dinners on our hibachi on a campsite and having campfires. The nights and mornings are a lot colder than we expected, so our sleeps haven’t been too great but we are still really enjoying it.
Over the next week we’re heading towards the Grand Canyon via the state of Utah. Utah has some amazing national parks as well so we’re really looking forward to this week. Hopefully we’ll be able to post again soon. It’s a lot more difficult to find an Internet connection when we’re camping but we’ll do our best.
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| USA ROADTRIP DAY 1-8 |
August 4, 2011
British Columbia
Last Thursday we arrived back in our home country on a late night flight from Mexico to Vancouver. My brother Chris was waiting for us at the airport and after a nice little reunion we went drove back to his condo in Langley. We could tell right away that we were back in Canada. Everything we drove by was so spacious, clean, and modern. Everything was in English and at first it was a little weird to be able to easily understand everyone around you and recognize all the signs.
Our first order of business was to shop for a car for our road trip. The next morning we got up and started our search. After a Tim Horton’s coffee (it was really nice to have one of those after 7 months) we spent an hour or so calling and emailing private sellers and unfortunately we had no luck. We couldn’t find anything that would work for us. We ended up just leaving and driving around Langley and Surrey visiting used car dealerships. We ran into our fair share of shady sales people and found very few cars that would be acceptable. After hours of looking we finally found one that would work for us. The vehicle we selected was a Jeep Patriot. It’s a really nice vehicle but it had above average mileage so we were able to get it for a bargain. It’s a nice enough vehicle that we could consider keeping in the future or maybe sell it for a good price when we arrive back home in Ontario.
The next day we figured we’d test out the Jeep by driving up to Whistler via the Sea-to-Sky highway. I had been to Whistler a few times before, but Joh hadn’t, so it was a definite must-do. Chris, Joh, and I had a great ride up to Whistler and we spent a few hours walking around the village there and grabbed a nice lunch at the Longhorn restaurant at the base of the mountain. We also visited the Olympic park and facilities while we were there.
On the way back we stopped at a few stops including a waterfall and the look-out on the top of Cyprus Mountain where you can see a great panoramic view of the city of Vancouver and a good portion of the Fraser Valley. From there we saw Stanley Park and we decided to go down the mountain and go check that out too. While driving around Stanley Park we noticed a huge crowd of people waiting around, so after a bit of investigation we discovered that there was to be a big fireworks display later that evening. Rather than waiting around with the crowds of people for four hours, we decided to go out for dinner. I spotted an Asian restaurant and we managed to convince my brother (he’s a very unadventurous eater) to come along with. It was a nice little reminder of what’s coming up in a couple months. We enjoyed it quite a bit and Chris was able to find something on the menu that didn’t scare him. The fireworks turned out to be really impressive too.
The following day was our first Sunday in a church in over seven months and it felt really good to be back. We also met a few cousins and aunts and uncles there as well. It just so happened that one of my cousins was having their baby baptized on this day too so it was nice to be there for that. We were able to go visit my aunt and uncle for lunch and talk to them and their kids about our trip. One of their kids (Leonard) was a geography expert and knew all of the places we had been. Apparently he studies atlases in his spare time. It was really impressive to hear how much he knew about the places we’d been. After church in the afternoon we went to visit another aunt and uncle and more cousins (yeah I have a ton of family in BC) and we had a nice afternoon out on the patio catching up. Afterwards we went to visit our friends Derek and Karen for dinner and the evening. It was good to see them again, and they had just come back from holidays in Oregon so they gave us some tips about where to go.
The next day we visited my Oma in the morning. We had a good time with her talking about everything. She doesn’t have Internet access, so my Mom had been sending her print-outs of our blog for the last seven months. So it was neat to show her our pictures and talk about our trip.
After shopping for all our camping gear in the afternoon, we spent a nice evening with Chris and then hit the sack for a good night’s sleep. The next morning we left to start out on our road trip. We’re now a few days into our trip and we’ve been having a great time so far. We’ll write all about it in the next blog entry.
Our first order of business was to shop for a car for our road trip. The next morning we got up and started our search. After a Tim Horton’s coffee (it was really nice to have one of those after 7 months) we spent an hour or so calling and emailing private sellers and unfortunately we had no luck. We couldn’t find anything that would work for us. We ended up just leaving and driving around Langley and Surrey visiting used car dealerships. We ran into our fair share of shady sales people and found very few cars that would be acceptable. After hours of looking we finally found one that would work for us. The vehicle we selected was a Jeep Patriot. It’s a really nice vehicle but it had above average mileage so we were able to get it for a bargain. It’s a nice enough vehicle that we could consider keeping in the future or maybe sell it for a good price when we arrive back home in Ontario.
The next day we figured we’d test out the Jeep by driving up to Whistler via the Sea-to-Sky highway. I had been to Whistler a few times before, but Joh hadn’t, so it was a definite must-do. Chris, Joh, and I had a great ride up to Whistler and we spent a few hours walking around the village there and grabbed a nice lunch at the Longhorn restaurant at the base of the mountain. We also visited the Olympic park and facilities while we were there.
On the way back we stopped at a few stops including a waterfall and the look-out on the top of Cyprus Mountain where you can see a great panoramic view of the city of Vancouver and a good portion of the Fraser Valley. From there we saw Stanley Park and we decided to go down the mountain and go check that out too. While driving around Stanley Park we noticed a huge crowd of people waiting around, so after a bit of investigation we discovered that there was to be a big fireworks display later that evening. Rather than waiting around with the crowds of people for four hours, we decided to go out for dinner. I spotted an Asian restaurant and we managed to convince my brother (he’s a very unadventurous eater) to come along with. It was a nice little reminder of what’s coming up in a couple months. We enjoyed it quite a bit and Chris was able to find something on the menu that didn’t scare him. The fireworks turned out to be really impressive too.
The following day was our first Sunday in a church in over seven months and it felt really good to be back. We also met a few cousins and aunts and uncles there as well. It just so happened that one of my cousins was having their baby baptized on this day too so it was nice to be there for that. We were able to go visit my aunt and uncle for lunch and talk to them and their kids about our trip. One of their kids (Leonard) was a geography expert and knew all of the places we had been. Apparently he studies atlases in his spare time. It was really impressive to hear how much he knew about the places we’d been. After church in the afternoon we went to visit another aunt and uncle and more cousins (yeah I have a ton of family in BC) and we had a nice afternoon out on the patio catching up. Afterwards we went to visit our friends Derek and Karen for dinner and the evening. It was good to see them again, and they had just come back from holidays in Oregon so they gave us some tips about where to go.
The next day we visited my Oma in the morning. We had a good time with her talking about everything. She doesn’t have Internet access, so my Mom had been sending her print-outs of our blog for the last seven months. So it was neat to show her our pictures and talk about our trip.
After shopping for all our camping gear in the afternoon, we spent a nice evening with Chris and then hit the sack for a good night’s sleep. The next morning we left to start out on our road trip. We’re now a few days into our trip and we’ve been having a great time so far. We’ll write all about it in the next blog entry.
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| BC Photo Album |
August 1, 2011
Last couple weeks in Mexico: Isla Mujeres
Hope everyone is having a nice relaxing long weekend.
Below is our last album from Mexico. We will deeply miss Mexico, it is such a fabulous and interesting country.
Tomorrow we pack up our vehicle and head out for a USA roadtrip that will bring us home to Burlington. We received lots of tips from family and friends about where to go and what to see. We can not wait to get moving.
We will post a blog entry within the next day or so about our lovely visit in BC.
Below is our last album from Mexico. We will deeply miss Mexico, it is such a fabulous and interesting country.
Tomorrow we pack up our vehicle and head out for a USA roadtrip that will bring us home to Burlington. We received lots of tips from family and friends about where to go and what to see. We can not wait to get moving.
We will post a blog entry within the next day or so about our lovely visit in BC.
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| BLOG Isla Mujeres and one day at Playa del Carmen |