Cowboy Poetry

Got up early to leave another fantastic wal-mart parking lot and drove across the salt flats of western Utah. Utah totally got screwed because the second you arrive in Nevada you are off the salt flats and into mountains. Nevada = boring to drive across, but at least a little better than Utah. There was a bastion of hope.... Elko, NV.


Elko, Nevada home of the Western Folklife Center and most importantly every January home to the National COWBOY POETRY competition. If you don't know what cowboy poetry is you can learn a little more with this video: Heaven's Cowboys

This is the bar the competition is in.



After that it was more Nevada and onto Oregon where we encountered this behemoth of a hill.


Very interesting drive down, 6 miles of 25mph and no trust in our brakes, but we made it down alright. We found a campsite (for FREE!) in a national forest outside of Paisley, OR and got there in time to make a campfire (yay!).

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City is home of the Mormons, but also a modern city full of tasty looking restaurants we didn't have time to visit. We did a tour of the Mormon temple square, which was pretty interesting and explained a few quirky things I vaguely knew about the Mormons.

Here's where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir lives, the acoustics are amazing, you wouldn't want to be whispering in church.



We learned that they believe families are eternal and therefore perform rituals for dead family members, which explains their well-known, huge geneological research library. We attempted to find our family trees and realised we need to talk to our grandmas more because they know everything.


Sad news: It looks like in the promised land you still have to be a slave to the wage.



We spent the night at Walmart again, this time with 6 RVs and about 15 semi-trucks who idled their engines all night, the white noise made for a great night's sleep.

Denver to Salt Lake City

From Denver we had originally planned to head South through New Mexico and then up the East Coast but decided last minute to head West instead, to avoid taking the Astro through the mountains later in the year when snow could make for some scary driving. We crossed the continental divide through the Eisenhower tunnel and popped out into a rainy 8% grade descent but were heartened by the sight of large trucks making the descent. Astro handled it admirably so we celebrated being alive by taking a stroll through Vail:



Spent the night at a nice rest stop we passed just in time:



Next morning was an exciting visit to Dinosaur National Park, where there are so many bones they left some in the rocks to be enjoyed.

I found a femur!


and a spine!


and a whole dinosaur!


In Utah alcohol can only be bought from State-run agencies, it's interesting to see a liquor store without all the advertising signage.

Garden of the Gods

Before we left Denver James drove us down to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. It's a rock garden right in the town and it looks like something out of the Australian Outback. We did a short hike around the park and then hit up the ENORMOUS souvenir shop... I came very close to buying a large silver belt buckle with an eagle and a flag on it, but in the end America just wasn't worth the $16.



Kate and Balanced Rock
Brothers!
We ate lunch at Souper Salad, a soup and salad buffet (along with taco, potatoes, and nachos of course). Kate was very excited.

Kate is still excited
Our server, Matt, was very upbeat and extroverted.... lets venture a guess, amphetamines.... managed to (in a socially awkward and psychotic manner) jokingly accuse Kate of sneaking food into the bathroom, make jokes about dr pepper being called "dr... dr.... nurse.... pepper... nurse.... dr nurse pepper! ah hahahah!" and telling james his girlfriend came in the door to which we turned around and noticed a very large woman walking through the door. Needless to say we gave him a large tip.

Monolith Festival

Went to Monolith Festival at Red Rocks, which if you don't know is an amazing outdoor amphitheater just outside of Denver. Very cool place to check out and very cool place to see lots of great bands.

Saw lots of great bands, we got some photos, but not too many turned out because it was inside or dark. The bands we saw

Woodhands (best show of the day)
Starfucker (amazing)
Hollywood Holt (2nd best show of the day, hip-hop from chi town)
Roadside Graves (folk rock from jersey)
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros (energetic folk+acid rock+hippie commune)
The Antlers (couldn't see much too crowded)
Girl Talk (good people watching)
Speakeasy Tiger (dance rock from denver)
Thunderhiest (rap-dance rock)
Boulder Acoustic Society (folk-punk from boulder)
Of Montreal (great stage stuff)
Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs (Karen O brought it)

Woodhands
Hollywood Holt (can you spot Woodhands rocking it in the photo?]
Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Red Rocks

New Belgium Brewery

After backpacking we decided we needed some refreshments,, luckily ft. collins has a bar with a TREE-HOUSE (!!!!!) in it.


The next day we toured the both the Ft. Collins & New Belgium Brewerys.




New Belgium was pretty awesome, lots of free samples, a great tour guide (she also gave extra free samples later) and a SLIDE (!!!) in the brewery. Here is a video of me sliding down it.

Backpacking + Haircut

Made it back from Costa Rica and they let Kate back into the country! yay! This may seem uneventful but it was a bit of a mystery if she would make it back in on the new visa, but apparently it wasn't an issue.

Then it was up to Ft. Collins for a bit of backpacking with Justin & Jayne. They took us to the Roosevelt National Forest about 2 hours outside of Ft. Collins. But first I decided that i needed to shave my head for no apparent reason.


Here are some shots from the hike in:


Here is the lake we camped on:


Kiley looking for chipmunks.....

most amazing invention thanks to Justin Mohar the "S'more-tilla"

note the two-handed technique he uses.... now the rest of us copy.

Jayne with the finished product:


The next day we did a day hike and found some snow



Kiley got tired:


We managed to get a photo of all of us using a stump and the camera timer. I'm still surprised that it actually worked AND that Kiley managed to get into the background of the photo.

Costa Rica Part 3: San Jose

Jusin got healthy just in time for the 4-hour bus ride back to San Jose and in fact felt so good that we decided not to get a hotel but just hang out in town until our flight at 6am. Costa Rica played a soccer game vs Mexico that night so we soaked up the atmosphere at an outdoor screen, along with Superman.



It started to look like a resounding defeat for Costa Rica so rather than hang around and watch the misery we headed to the airport, hoping to find a comfortable patch of carpet to spend the next 5 hours. It turns out at least 10 other backpackers had decided to do the same, which is pretty tragic considering how cheap transport and accommodation is around here.

Kate saving about $20: