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Hood River, OR

The mountain biking here is great! We bought a trail map for the first time of the trip yesterday and then we got lost on the trails, ran out of water, mildly panicked...then ended up right where we wanted to be an hour and a half or so later, but it was pretty sweet.
We also drove though Mt. Hood area and Gov't Camp on the way up. Makes me think of scrabble.
We're not sure if we're sticking around to ride again today or not. It's getting pretty hot out right now. We need to get a move on so not to spend and more money. We sort of got ahold of the people we know here, but I managed to get the wrong phone number from the voice mail and then deleted the voice mail and now facebook (via Adam of course) had to be resorted to. Hopefully she checks it...
Hope all is well in the UP. We miss it....a lot.

We are in Oakridge Oregon

I love mountain biking.
I guess I still need to update. We went to Yosemite National Park in California. It was sweet, but definitely a backpackers paradise, not really somewhere to have a dog.





We went up to the Lake Tahoe area and Truckee then and it became the only place we would consider moving to thus far. The water was great to swim in and the mountain biking was awesome. The rent prices were much lower than we thought they would be because all I've ever heard about that place is that its spendy, but it was really not too bad.
We found out one of our axle seals is leaking, which is kind of bad, but something we can wait to deal with until we're back in the UP.
We drove up to Redding to get two new tires from a Discount Tire place because apparently the tires on the van are car tires that should never have as much weight on them as we have right now.
Headed to the coast again and drove north to Oregon.
Oh yeah! While we were in Truckee camping, a bear walked up on us, Marley starts to chase it, but thank god Adam got ahold of his tail as tight as he did or I'm guessing we would not have a dog right now. I don't even think mountain biking could heal that wound.
We checked out Ashland, OR upon Paul Matson's request. It was a cool little college town with great mountain biking, but it was hot, and although Oregon doesn't have sales tax, they do..
We parked on a random forest road near a river last night to camp. When we got there we kept saying how bad the mud from the river smelled. This morning, Adam spotted some vultures circling and discovered two dead deer carcasses about 30 feet from the van... Then we counted 9 vultures in the trees around us.

Santa Cruz to San Fransico

Right when we got to Santa Cruz our alternator went! Gladly she dies right near a shop that gave us a jump and told us where an open parts store was after 6pm on a Friday! Adam installed the new alternator and voltage meter in the parking lot.

The next day we tried to get recommendations from a bike shop for some trails in the area. I thought we made it pretty clear about the "mountain biking" and the "full suspension", but the damn road bikers directed us to a "super sweet film worthy area" where there is pavement....The redwoods were pretty sweet though.











We didn't spend much time the San Fransico area because it is tough to be in the city with a dog, but we did cross the Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy afternoon with dirty windshield pictures.


I have more photos. We went to Yosemite National Park and spent the night there. I will post those at a different time because it takes forever!!

Crab is Good!

Last night we went out to dinner for some authentic Monterey cuisine. They give clam chowder samples outside the doors at all of the restaurants down on the wharf. I tried 5 samples. I think it was my first try of clam chowder ever. I've had this fear of clam chowder for some reason... At the restaurant we went to Cat and I shared a huge crab, which was delicious! It was also my first time wearing a crab bib.

3 Days of Yonder Mountain String Band and PICTURES

We had a fun weekend! Oregon is beautiful with big trees, cool people, and no self-serve gas stations (which is weird). We got back to Casey's last night after an extremely long 12 hour drive spent in a back seat...ugh. Marley was beyond happy to see us this morning when we picked him up. I felt so bad leaving him in that "animal hotel". It was anything but a hotel. They were very nice people, but how does a dog sleep in a room full of dogs and cats in cages? Casey has a cat named Bobby and he really makes us miss Luna Tuna!!!! She's probably forgotten us already :( (Thank you sooooo much Heaven and Tony for taking care of her!)
Yonder Mountain string band played three nights in a row at the fest. It was sweet. This festival was pretty mellow, which was nice. Camping was all throughout the woods where there was a cool disc golf course, but we left our discs in the van. They also cleaned the porta-potties everyday! There was an unbelievable amount of rad vans. Sadly, we did not have our van. We rode up in their Subaru, which was faster.
So the pictures show where we broke down near Vegas, the friend we had in our hotel room, our first time on the coast, and the fest.

Marley does not like salt water.

Sort of random, but we are heading to the String Summit Music Festival today. We arrived on the coast of the Pacific Ocean yesterday (pictures to come) in Monterey, CA. Thats right, the van made it to California. We are visiting Adam's good friend Casey and his girlfriend Kat (Cat?) and they are heading to this music fest in Oregon for the weekend so I guess we're saying why not and leaving the van here. It might bring us home sooner due to the funds being used for it, but it is all in good fun and Yonder Mountain String Band plays three nights in a row.
I'll admit I enjoy being back down near sea level. I can't wait to bike when we get back and actually be able to breathe. I'm in a rambling mode because it is before 8am here. I'm really sad though because there is no one to take care of Marley for us and we are not able to bring him to the festival so we have to bring him to a pet motel. We won't be picking him up until Monday so thats over 5 days!! I don't think he's ever been away from Adam that long, or from me as long as I've been in his life. He's my furry best friend and we're leaving him for almost a week! We left him for a little over two days in Colorado and I'm pretty sure I had tears in my eyes more than once during that time. I'm not even sure how these boarding houses work. He's totally spoiled so he won't eat unless he gets his 'special' food mixture and he's a big boy so he needs his comfy bed to lay on and I think he prefers human contact over animal contact. I guess we'll find out this morning when we bring him there. Poor Marley.
He just got back from a long walk. Apparently he met seals for the first time and had no clue what to do.
Alright, I'm done rambling. I will report on Monday.