Vancouver, BC
We are now leaving Vancouver, the day after Canada Day. It was good timing for a visit. We arrived to Vancouver at dawn in time for a quick nap and parking ticket. That afternoon we met up with Ross, another veggie enthusiast. He greeted us with 6 cubies of oil, helping us make the next driving leg through the Rockies and over the Continental Divide. Now having a full tank we found a home at Stanley Park that overlooks the bay and snow capped mountains that make up Vancouver City's background. After meeting a few people it was quickly brought to our attention that we'd be in town for Canada Day, which we now know is Canada’s birthday. Canada Day greeted us with its parades, fireworks, live music and friendly, enthusiastic citizens. If you are headed to Canada in the summer, make sure its during the 1st of July.
Big ups to Randy and Jimmy, the uber talented graffiti artist that tagged us up!
-Elliot
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Seattle, WA
Driving into the city it looked just as I had imagined it with gray skies and a vibrant metropolis. As we got closer you get to see the beauty of rolling hills spotted with houses that surround the bays water. Seattle has a busy port with many ships passing through in addition to the seaplanes zinging through the sky. After seeing as much of the city from our bike seats, we were blessed with some sun during our stay and stumbled across a music festival in the Georgetown neighborhood. The city that bore Jimmi Hendrix gave us some good live music and a great bumpin' time.
-Elliot
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Portland, OR
The first thing you notice about Portland is that its divided by a river which makes for a beautiful city setting. Talk to its citizens and most will have a preferred side. We naturally had to check out both where we encountered some crazy doughnuts and amazing bike paths lining most of the city's streets. In the suburbs of Portland we met up with Jay. Jay was kind enough to show us his bio diesel system set up at his home and also supplied us with 100 gallons of filtered vegetable oil (aka liquid gold). Through the process of making bio diesel you inadvertently end up also making soap, so Jay also supplied us with some Veggie soap. Now thanks to Jay we have skin soft enough to make dove jealous.
-Elliot
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Redwoods & Crater Lake
The Redwoods are trees so big that you have to try to hug them. They are so tall that our gps thought we were indoors driving through their cover. The groves are vast and easy to access from the road so we were able to see tons huge trees meeting the Pacific Ocean. We then made our way to Oregon to see its Crater Lake, a lake that formed at the top of a Volcano, which is now home to some of the purest water in the world. Crater Lake is the only place I’ve seen with feet upon feet of snow on the ground in the middle of the summer. It is amazing what a few thousand feet of elevation and rain clouds can do.
-Elliot
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San Fransisco, Ca
Driving over the bridges to get to San Fransisco, we could see the city in the distance and could feel that it would be a fun time. Alcatraz, off in the distance, through the fog hints at what used to be. As we drove into the city, to scope out parking, we drove by Pier 39, and stopped for our typical tourist hour long trip we take in each city. Once the touristy area is over, we moved to a more permanent residence for Sunshine and began biking around to see the city. San Fransisco Giants pitcher, Lincecum, was pitching and Elliot would not let us miss it. Turns out that was my first MLB game, and we had a lot of fun at the game.
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Yosemite National Park
The drive to Yosemite from LA was long and very hot through the desert. Sunshine was not happy and showed her disgust by drinking up a lot of veggie oil. But, once we made the drive through the mountains in our '82 6-ton boat on wheels, we saw the beauty of the park was well worth it (Oh and the free hot showers were very worth it). After parking at night, we biked around the park for the day and did a hike down the most recomended trail to see some waterfalls. It offered, quite possibly, the best view I have seen on this trip, a rainbow coming across the bottom of the waterfall. We left for San Fransisco in the night and went through possibly the most and tightest switchbacks Sunshine has encountered to date.
-Brad
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SoCal & Los Angeles, CA
Continuing up the coast, we made our way through more beach towns of Lagua, Hunnington, Hermosa, and others. While in LA, we had a few things in mind to see in the city, one being UCLA campus, we did the usual tourist thing, to take pictures with statues and climb up walls. Shout-out to Wilson for meeting up with us in Long Beach and Cathrine for giving us a place to park Sunshine while in the area. The Staples Center and Chinese Theater were things we could not miss when driving through downtown on the way out.
-Brad
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San Diego, Ca
We drove through the night westward in hopes of reaching a huge milestone of reaching the west coast. We made it to California after a long night of elevation changes (Sunshine hates increases in elevation, but loves to cruise downhill). I took a nap and Elliot and Sergio took over in the middle of the night for the final leg. The wrong address was typed in the GPS, and we ended up at Sunset park in Coronado instead of Sunset Cliffs Park. It turned out to be a great location. No parking signs showed we weren't allowed from 10pm to 5am. Lucky for us it was 5:30. So, we slept on the beach (a recurring theme for us while in SoCal). This was it. We made it all the way west. A huge sigh of relief from myself and a jump in the brisk waters of the Pacific helped confirm that this was, in fact, reality... Sunshine made it.
We spent several days in San Diego and the surrounding area, visitng all the beach towns we could along the way (Sunset Cliffs, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach). For Elliot and I, our goal was to catch some waves to do some boogieing on our newly purchased boards. The best place we found was San Onofre (another park/beach we were able to camp at under the radar). Andrew ripped up the streets on his long board, and Sergio caught some waves and still keeps being called Jacob from Twilight.
My overall impression of San Diego is great. It is a very chill place in the beach towns and seems like a place I would love to live.
-Brad
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