Saturday, December 5, 2009

Last Day On the Road - Boise, ID to Silverton,OR




The Columbia River Gorge

Northeastern Oregon

After 2,700 miles we've arrived

Downtown Boise

After having a great night in Boise we left the capitol of Idaho for our final destination, Silverton, OR, aka Matt Keenan's shelter for the homeless.


Friday, December 4, 2009

Day 6 - Moab, UT to Boise, ID

As soon as we watched the sunrise in Moab and had an amazing breakfast at the Love Muffin we were back on the road.

Northern Utah had big mountains, but was still pretty dry and our throats were feeling it.



Salt Lake City's skyline wasn't very impressive, but boy was this city spread out!
Dan loves the high speed limits in the west. It really helps cover some serious ground.
We were VERY excited to get to Idaho. Southern Idaho is your typical cowboy country, wide valleys, big mountains, lots of grassland and cows.
As the sun set over the Snake River we were almost to Boise where we spent the night.

Day 5 - Arches National Park, Moab,UT
















A picture is worth a thousand words...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Day 4- Rocky Mountain High, Denver, CO to Moab, UT



We headed into the Rockies first thing in the morning spying on a buffalo herd and enjoying the snowcapped views.

We fell in love with the mountains so much that we pulled off at Frisco, CO and spent some time. After that we traveled to Breckenridge, CO and had lunch and sightseeing fun.

After all of our fun, we felt we really must continue to Utah.

We spent the night in Moab, UT and plan to take an extra day here to go to Arches National Park before continuing on. We expect to finally land in Oregon on Friday evening.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Day 3 - Columbia,MO to Golden, CO


After stopping at a Columbia store for sandwich supplies we were off to Kansas City, the last city we'd see for a while.















Kansas was actually quite nice. Eastern Kansas was a lot of rolling grassland, it got flatter as we made our way west. There were lots of cows and wind mills everywhere.














Just when you thought that Clearfield, PA's I-80 exit was clearly marked with the 'big coffee pot in the sky', it turns out that there are quite a few of these in Kansas.


















As the sun set, we were STILL in Kansas.














At long last we saw the Denver lights. A burger and a beer was very necessary upon arrival in the western suburbs.














Our sunrise view from the hotel gave us our first glimpse of mountains after all of the flat we'd experienced since leaving Pennsylvania.


Day 2- Cheswick, PA to Columbia, MO



Our second morning of our journey had Dan saying farewell to his dear friend Ron. Ron and Marcia were great hosts. Ron was kind enough to take us for one last Primanti Bros. sandwich and introduced us to the super-fun sing-star.














After leaving Pittsburgh we hit the road and busted out a few states: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. After-Thanksgiving traffic in Missouri really slowed us down, but upon arriving at Wendy & Keith's house in Columbia we were greeted with food, drink, and good company. In the morning, Kennedy and Sara had a good time playing with animals before we had to depart west.