Road Trip Part 3, The Finale

The Pacific Northwest was beautiful. It had plenty of huge, lush, green trees and ferns and foggy snow capped mountains. From Yellowstone we drove another twelve hours to Seattle and stayed with a friend. In Seattle, we did a lot of eating and walking around. One of the highlights of our time there was going to an 80s and 90s rock sing along in a movie theater. They handed everyone a blow up plastic guitar and lighter when you walked in the door and the words to the songs were written at the bottom of the screen. Everyone was singing along and having a great time. There was even a “professional” air guitar group that performed live. So many of the songs I thought I knew, only to find that I mainly just knew the chorus. It was fun seeing all of the old music videos as well, I had only ever seen a few of them prior. The videos were hilarious, and I was surprised to find (based on the explicit videos and hidden lyrics illuminated by the karaoke style) that the vast majority of the songs were about sex. Some songs I knew that ahead of time, but some were a complete surprise to me. 

In Seattle we walked around some of the various neighborhoods. We went to the Farmer's Market, took the ferry across to the island, saw the wall of gum, went to the original Starbucks, and visited Microsoft's visitor center (we mainly just played games there). From Seattle we did some brief hiking around Mount Rainer, but, like Yellowstone, many of the roads were closed due to the season.

I thought that the rock sing along in Seattle was one of the most random things that I had done in a movie theater, until the following evening when we were in Portland. We stayed with friends that brought us to an old claymation movie from the '70s presenting a double feature of The Little Prince (based on the popular children's book) and the tale of Rip Van Winkle. But, here's the twist, all of the original voice actors were there to perform the movie live, along with a live orchestra. It was totally cool. First of all, the movie on its own was a complete work of art, but second of all, the actors did such a good job that I would find myself forgetting that they were performing live. Plus, having the live orchestra gave the whole theater a great ambiance and feel to it. It was such a unique experience.

We had a great time in Portland, just took things slow and did a lot of hanging out. We watched our friend play some soccer, ate at some delicious food carts, walked around a bit, and played some pinball. I think that my friends must have rigged the machine to let me win, because I was not excited about the prospect of playing pinball. But, after the first few winning rounds, I was hooked. I was hesitant to play at first because I thought I would be horrible at it, and I don't always lose gracefully. Call it beginner's luck, but I ended up doing a lot better than I thought I would, and had a great time. I also learned that there was more skill involved than I initially thought. Before, I thought pinball was more a game of chance, but there is skill required.

From Portland we ventured down to San Francisco and stayed with a friend. We did a lot of walking there, which was much needed exercise for me. In fact, I was feeling so lethargic and stiff from all of our time in the car, that I did some pilates moves while we were hanging out in one of the parks. All of the eating out and junk food we were consuming was taking its toll on me. We really only had one day in San Francisco, but the weather was warm and perfect that day. Prior to that, it had been freezing everywhere else we had gone, and snowing or raining in many of the areas. We walked and took the trains and buses, and walked across the golden gate bridge. The golden gate bridge park was pretty, but had a lot of seedy characters and homeless people, much like a lot of places in San Francisco I guess. Eating was another way that we explored San Francisco as well. I always enjoy finding cute cafes and restaurants when we travel, and San Francisco offers such a variety.

Arizona was the next stop on our trip. We spent a day and night there with my mom and sister and then needed to head back to the east coast. The next leg of our journey was the most grueling. It was about a 36 hour drive back to Atlanta and Matt and I drove straight through, switching off back and forth. After all of the driving that we had already done, and the sleep deprivation from our travels, it was exhausting.


Literally, as we pulled in to our apartment complex, another check engine light came on.  We decided to deal with it the next morning.  There must have been a slow leak, because when we got to the car the next morning, one of the front tires was flat.  Matt threw a donut on the car and took it to the repair shop close to our house and they were able to repair the tire relatively inexpensively.  Honestly speaking, if there was going to be a "good" time for problems to occur, that was extremely well timed.  We were able to repair the tire and be on the road again that afternoon.

Our next and final stop was to a wedding in North Carolina, about six hours away. Relatively speaking, the drive was a piece of cake. It was fun hanging out with friends in North Carolina. We went to the natural history museum in Raleigh, a Christmas parade (even though it was a week before Thanksgiving, maybe they knew we wouldn't be in the states for Christmas, so they wanted to do it early :) and the wedding was held at the kid's discovery center. At the wedding, many of the exhibits were available for us to play in, including: a play submarine, wooden pirate ship, giant legos, sock hockey ring, soccer area, mini surf boards, and a giant chess game. Needless to say, I had a great time running around and playing all of the games. There was plenty of dancing, libations, and I thought the karaoke near the end was a nice touch. The father of the bride rendered an adorable A Capella song that sounded mainly like gibberish to me, but may have been Celtic? One of our friends is prone to take his shirt off when a certain Fergie song comes on, so of course that song needed to be requested, and our group erupted in a chant that elicits such behavior from him. The evening ended with the happy couple being taken away on their awaiting chariot (or bike rickshaw as it is more commonly viewed), and some of our more rowdy friends following their lead and piled in to another bike rickshaw. It was three grown men in tuxes trying to fit into a two person rickshaw, with a female pedal biker at the helm, poor woman, didn't know what she was getting herself in to. One of the passengers ended up getting out and pushing the, ah, vehicle from behind. It was quite a sight.

All in all, we had a fantastic time on our road trip. If I were able to do it again, I would have allotted more time for the trip. It was short and sweet, though, and I'm so glad we were able to see the people we were able to see. The sincerest thank you to all of our wonderful friends that hosted us and showed us such a great time in their respective cities. You are both silver and gold, you are like a conglomerate of all of the most beautiful, expensive, indestructible alloys the universe has ever seen and will ever see, including, but not limited to: platinum, diamonds, bears, gold teeth, uranium and kryptonite. But, seriously, we love you guys!