The End of Something

We have come to the end of our trip. We came full circle, if you will. We're sad to be back, but glad to be home. We had experiences that will be with us forever, and we had other experiences we will soon forget. We drove through the desert, the plains, the mountains, and by the coast. We put miles under our belt. We put kilometres under our belt. We spent Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Dinaras, Kunas, Crowns, and Forints. We got rained on. We got sunned on. We met incredible people. We met total douchebags.

We did things we wanted to do, and missed out on things we wanted to do. We traveled by car, plane, train, ferry, taxi, and bus. We tried to communicate in Greek, Serbian, Hungarian, Czech, German, and Dutch, and failed at all of them. We were regularly shocked by our bank account balance. We got great deals. We got ripped off.

We went places that we'll surely return, and other places we'll actively avoid. We heard the wind through the trees, the crash of the surf, the sound of laughter, the sounds of traffic, and the sounds of crickets. We had great times in the van. We read books. We listened to books on tape. We made fun of Tom. We squeezed every ounce of fun out of every situation.

This will be the last post. We are glad you checked in on us.

We will do this again...

Mayonaise, Rednecks, and Booze; AKA North Idaho

Taylor used to live in a small town called Sandpoint, Idaho, so we stopped by on the way home to see her old crew. We stayed with these sucka fools:



Aaron, the shorter one, works at a bar in town, and we hung out there and drank some booze, even though it was closed. Just us listening to music, playing pool, and talking shit. The other fellow, who some call Josh, is a musician and all around good dude.

Aaron drives/lives in this vehicle. He has a thing for Mayo. He told us that he gave his van a paint job, and when we asked what color (before we saw it), Josh interjected with "I don't know...is embarrassing a color?" haha...witty, that one is.



We went on a cruise of Lake Pend Orielle with Aaron's dad Harv at the helm. Harv is one of Taylor's all time favorite people, just behind Rick Astley, Jeff Goldblum, and me. He's a cool dude with a bunch of cool stories, and totally lives the chill-out life. Think retirement, fishing, sailing, watching baseball, and skiing in the winter. Livin' the North Idaho dream.



Here's a good little chunk of Idaho. This "tervan" has had a misspelled sign for dozens of years. It fell into local folklore, and they decided to just keep it.

Tim and Taylor become one with nature

So Taylor and I, being the city slickers that we are, decided to make a short jaunt to Glacier National Park is Western Montana to see if we could see some cool shit. We totally did. Here is photographic evidence of our finds:

A totally radical deer hanging out right behind our camp spot!



A piss-taking mountain goat!



A big horn sheep, who, for the record, had huge balls!



Taylor "what's with this goat" St. Clair!



We also took a 6-mile hike to get to this glacial lake.




Taylor dared me to jump in, and if I did, she would follow. So I stripped down to my skivvies, and jumped into to a barely above freezing lake. I've never experienced anything so cold in my life. It was only about 75 degrees out, too. Like Lucy pulling the football from beneath Charlie Brown's outstretched leg, Taylor totally punked me. She pussed out and didn't get in. I had to sit there and drip dry. If I catch pneumonia, I'm blaming her. Here's me being really cold. Those white spots in the background are small glaciers that drip ice cold water into the lake. Awesome.

Paul Bunyan wore giant underwear

Every now and then on this trip I get one of those "time of my life" moments. I got a few of those today while driving through the middle of nowhere. It occurred once while Taylor and I were singing terrible songs from the radio at the tops of our lungs while America slowly rolled by, and once while when we pulled off the main road to eat lunch in the dead center of nothing at all.

The latter looked liked this:



Another feeling I get, perhaps more regularly, is one of extreme stuntery. How's about this one? A wicked stunt done at the exact geographical center of North America! It's definitely never been done before. I have proof.



Here's some more roadside junk. Rte. 2 is full of it. This here is Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox, which is located in Bemidji, Minnesota. Apparently the legend originated there, and they take it pretty seriously, what, with their Paul Bunyan Ave. and their Babe the Ox book store. There was also a visitor's center with some Bunyan crap, like his undershorts, a giant rifle, and a wallet the size of a movie poster. Bemidji...keepin' it semi-real since 1836.



Even though I knew we'd be driving straight west for days, I didn't take into account having to stare directly into the sun while it was setting. It was so bad in Montana that I had to stick my head out the window to avoid glare, Ace Ventura style



We couldn't find any campgrounds, but we found a public park in the middle of this little town that allowed camping for free. Score! It was super weird, though, because we were the only people there and it was in the middle of a neighborhood. The place had more flying insects then I'd ever seen, so we had to cinch up pretty tight, as witnessed here:



Totally fun day in the middle of the plain states.

Geez...sure are glad ya stayed wid us in Minnesoda

Taylor and I decided to take US Rte. 2 all the way from its origin in St. Ignace, MI to its terminus in Sandpoint, ID. That's about 2,000 miles of uninterrupted, mostly 2 lane, completely desolate blacktop. It's an incredible way to see and experience real salt-of-the-earth Americana. It's a road filled with "blink and you'll miss 'em" towns, ma and pa restaurants, and hundred-mile stretches of nothing at all.

Here's the only thing we saw all day...Lake Superior. It was lurking to our right for hours, like a sleeping giant of the abyss.




It was too rainy to camp that night, so we stayed at at Super 8 motel, watched a CSI marathon, ate KFC right from the bucket, and drank some Millers. If that's not a midwest night, I don't know what is.