Welcome to

Background Info: Here's the deal. In late-Spring of '96, the two of us finalized our plans to move from San Diego to Phoenix. We sold our house in San Diego, got all the other details (jobs, school, etc.) in order and then spent half of the summer of '96 touring the Western US and Canada. While on our adventure, we saw the sights, did the obligatory tourist things and documented it all both in writing and with our Casio QV-30 digital camera. Every Sunday, we uploaded the past week's photos and commentary to the web site so our friends could travel along with us. Geeky? You betcha!

The Map: Click here to see the gory details of our 9000 mile trek. These are photos of our actual map.

Photo Journal: Here it is, the highlight of the web site. The "stops" are listed in the order in which they occurred. Clicking on a stop take you to the "main page" for that stop. From the main page, you can then access each or our written impressions as well a few photo album pages for each stop. We tried to capture the essence of each stop from our personal perspective. So click and enjoy!

Our starting point: San Diego, CA (pix of us, our dog and our former house)
• Our going-away party at Karl Strauss brewpub
Stop #1: Death Valley, CA
Stop #2: Sequoia National Park, CA
Stop #3: Yosemite National Park, CA
Stop #4: Fremont, CA
Stop #5: Mendocino, CA
Stop #6: Redwood National Park, CA
Stop #7: Ashland, OR (plus Crater Lake, Mt. Shasta, Lassen Volcanic Park)
Stop #8: Yachats, OR (along the Oregon Coast)
Stop #9: Portland, OR (one of our few urban stops)
Stop #10: Olympic National Park, WA
Stop #11: Victoria, British Columbia
Stop #12: Revelstoke, BC (also Mt. Revelstoke and Glacier Canadian National Parks)
Stop #13: Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Stop #14: Glacier National Park, Montana
Stop #15: Moscow, Idaho
Stop #16: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Stop #17: Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota
Stop #18: Boulder, CO
Stop #19: Moab, UT (Arches and Canyonlands National Parks)
Stop #20: Telluride, CO
Stop #21: Santa Fe, NM (also Mesa Verde National Monument)
Our final destination: Phoenix, AZ

Fun facts about the adventure

Here's a random collection of facts about the Excellent Adventure...

• Miles driven on adventure: 8750 miles (This is our one way mileage from San Diego to Phoenix...the scenic route. If you include our brief round-trip to San Diego to pick up the dog and finalize things, the total is 9550 miles)
• Number of times crossing the Continental Divide: 16 (4 of which were done in one day while traveling across Yellowstone).
• Number of catastrophic deaths to recently occur in places we've been: 2 (1 in Yosemite due to rockslide, 1 in Glacier due to boulder falling on a Buick on the "Going to the Sun" road)
• Number of Stops Made: 21
• Number of States/Provinces Visited: 13
• Number of Countries Visited: 2
• Number of Full Vehicle Searches by Customs Officials: 1 upon arriving in Canada
• Lowest Gas Price Paid: $1.28/gal in Butte, Montana
• Highest Gas Price Paid: $2.08/gal in Death Valley, California
• Pathfinder's Average Gas Mileage: Approx. 18 mpg
• Total Gas Cost for the Trip: Approx. $730 (not bad if you compare it to standard airfares).
• Best Road Conditions: Canada, the whole country (very nice wide roads with plenty of shoulder, even through mountain passes).
• Worst Road Conditions: Tie between Northwestern Montana (crappy roads and no speed limit...a bad combination) and Yellowstone National Park, North Entrance (hard to believe this is one of the top National Parks in the country)
• Tackiest Tourist Trap: Trees of Mystery in Redwood National Park, CA (home of the Giant Paul Bunyan statue)
• Best Attraction Which Seemed Like It Might Be a Tourist Trap: The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, SD (it was actually really cool).
• Longest Distance Between Stops: 550 miles from Moscow, Idaho to Yellowstone Lake
• Shortest Distance Between Stops: 120 miles from Moab, Utah to Telluride, Colorado
• Hottest Weather (not including Phoenix): 106 degrees in Moab, Utah
• Coldest Weather: 30 degrees in Kootenay National Park, Canada (near Banff)
• Nicest Weather: 80 degrees and sunny on the Oregon Coast (we were really lucky with the weather in Oregon...your mileage may vary)
• Crappiest Weather: Hmmm, that's a tough one...I guess it would be a tie between Olympic National Park (Washington), Banff (Alberta, Canada) and Moscow (Idaho). It was cold and rainy at all those places.
• Smelliest Attractions: The sulphur stench of Yellowstone National Park
• Best Beer Selections: Oregon (the whole state)
• Worst Beer Selections: South Dakota (the whole state)
• Best Beach: Yachats, Oregon (beautiful, clean and deserted...a good combination)
• Best Sunsets: Once again, Oregon
• Best Hiking: Yosemite National Park (possibly the best hiking on earth)
• Worst Hiking: Custer State Park, South Dakota (people never seem to leave their cars)
• Hottest Hiking: Delicate Arch Trail, Arches National Park, Utah (over 100 degrees)
• Coldest Hiking: Marble Canyon Trail, Kootenay National Park, Canada (snow on the ground...we even made a snowman)
• Least Crowds: Lassen Volcanic Park, California (barely even open in early June)
• Most Crowds: Mount Rushmore National Monument (worse than Disneyland)

Extreme Stuff List

If you followed the trip, you know that, as model tourists, we intentionally seeked out the largest, smallest, shortest, tallest, biggest, oldest, lowest, highest, hottest (etc.) attractions. Here's a list of what we saw (perhaps incomplete):

• World's Tallest Thermometer (tourist attraction in Baker, CA)
• World's Hottest Climate (Death Valley, CA)
• Lowest Point in the US (Badwater, Death Valley, CA)
• World's Largest Living Thing (General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park, CA)
• World's Widest Tree (General Grant Tree, Sequoia National Park, CA)
• World's Tallest Tree ("The Tall Tree", Redwood National Park, CA)
• Most Photographed Lighthouse in the US (Heceta Head Lighthouse, Oregon Coast)
• World's Largest Truck (a big ass earth mover, somewhere in Southeastern British Columbia, Canada)
• World's Largest Red Wagon (art object in Downtown Spokane, WA)
• Oldest Microbrewery in the US (Rockies Brewing Co, Boulder, CO)
• Highest Commercial Airport in the US (9500 ft, Telluride, CO)
• Oldest House in the US (early 1600's, Santa Fe, NM)
• Oldest Church in the US (early 1600's, Santa Fe, NM)
• Oldest Bell in the US (late 1300's, inside the oldest church, Santa Fe, NM)
• Oldest Indian Trading Post in the US (some lame shop's claim, Santa Fe, NM)
• World's Largest Municipal Park (South Mountain Park, Phoenix)

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Send Brenda Mail (brendamc@cris.com)
 
 
 

That's it. Thanks for stopping by!