Vancouver

We left Seattle and headed up to Vancouver. We had some trouble figuring out how to get a reservation at a campground because it would have been 50 cents/minute to call there on our cell phones, and 70 cents/minute to call in Canada. We finally wised up and used Skype, which is really cool, and only costs 2 cents/minute to call non-Skype numbers in Canada and the US. We got to our campground nice and early, so we were able to spend most of the day in Vancouver. The only affordable campsites were well outside the city, so it was about an hour and 15 minutes by bus and train to get there, but we had a great time.

We went to Queen Elizabeth Park, which is a huge public park/garden that is beautifully and meticulously maintained. Here are a few pictures of the many many tulips.



Located at the park is Bloedel Conservatory, which is basically a greenhouse/biodome that houses many kinds of plants as well as some exotic birds. We happened to get in for free since we were asking (just out of curiousity, we wouldn't actually go there) about weddings in the park. The front desk woman said if we were thinking about getting married at the park or conservatory, we could just have a look around. So we saved $5 each! I got some shots of some of the birds, but I'm not completely sure what they were. First one is obviously a parrot of some kind. The second is, I think, a green canary, and the third is a yellow pheasant. I'm least sure of the canary... It could be something else entirely.




I have no idea what this plant was, but the picture came out really cool.



We went to Chinatown for dinner, but we actually had a really hard time finding any open restaurants! We walked around for about 20 minutes, getting hungrier, and decided on a place that had some really appetizing bbq pork in the window. The meal was decent, but nothing too exciting. We stopped at a Chinese bakery and got a bunch of little pastries for just four bucks, and they were way better than the dinner.

The next day was super rainy, and even though we wanted to go to a big park with Bebe and bike around, we figured we'd just have a lazy day and go the next day. The weather was forecast to be rainy for the next couple of days, and everything we wanted to do involved being outside, so we reluctantly decided to just leave Vancouver and get on with our trip. We had an interesting experience crossing the border back to the US. They had to search our camper because we had food, and they had to dump out all of our plants! We got to keep some of our herbs and arugula, but we had to completely forfeit the roots. They also took some potatoes and pears, but that wasn't a big deal. After about 15 minutes and losing some agricultural products, we got on the road and finally started our trip back to the east coast! Our next stop would be Yellowstone, which we will write about asap.

-Lily

Seattle

After our week-long stay in Portland, we drove up north a few hours and spent the next week with our friends Keith and Sara. We hadn't seen them in a couple of years, and we're really glad we got to spend some time with them. They have a pretty sweet apartment on Capitol Hill, which is very close to downtown. They also have a guest room, so we were able to escape from the confines of our camper for a week! To cap it off, Keith and Sara have a nice big TV, an XBox 360, and plenty of games, which we fully took advantage of when we were there.

The one thing we were uncertain of before landing at Keith and Sara's pad was how well our little dog Bebe would get along with their big cat Spike. Our fears were all for naught, as the two got along great pretty much right off the bat! They played with each other all week, with only minor hissing and barking, no clawing, and no blood drawn. We were pretty wiped our first day there, and we wanted Bebe to adjust to her surroundings before leaving her alone, so we just watched TV and played video games all day.

Our second day in Seattle, Lily and I biked down to the Space Needle area and went to the Experience Music Project (EMP) and Science Fiction museum, which are both inside a crazy Frank Gehry-designed building. Keith lent us his Prime card, which got us in to both museums for $5/each (normally $15/each). EMP was fun - especially the Seattle area music history exhibit, and the interactive rock band instruments area. I enjoyed the Science Fiction museum even more. It aroused the inner nerd inside me with all its cool Star Trek, Star Wars, and other geeky memorobilia, and it sparked both of our lost interests in reading sci fi books.

The next day, Lily and I walked around the neighborhood and went to a couple of used bookstores in Capitol Hill. We bought a few cheap sci fi books that should keep us occupied for the rest of the trip. We have way too many books in our camper at this point! At night, Keith and Sara took us out to dinner at Dahlia Lounge, which is one of Tom Douglas's restaurants. It was a lot of fun to go out with them, but I was not impressed with dinner - it was good, but not great (more in the food blog when I get around to actually writing about food one of these days).

Pike's Place Market was our destination on Thursday, and we took a nice walk down Capitol Hill and through downtown to waterfront where it is located. The walk wasn't nearly as nice on our way back from the market, up the hill, with big shopping bags full of our bounty from the market. Really - every city should have a market like Pike's Place in Seattle. It's main draw is tourists, who come to see people at one stall throw a fish back and fourth over the counter (how stupid is that?). We came for the spring produce and some fish. We also grabbed a lunch of fried shrimp and fries and a cheap day-old loaf of apple cinnamon bread from a great little bakery. After the haul back to Keith and Sara's place, I took advantage of the nice day and their balcony and cooked a nice dinner of grilled trout, grilled asparagus, grilled spring onions, and couscous (not grilled, obviously).

On Friday, Keith took us on a great driving tour of Seattle. The first stop was a tiny little park on Queen Anne Hill, which had this view of Seattle with Mt. Saint Helens in the background:



From there, he drove us over to Gasworks Park, which is an old oil refinery right on the bay that was converted into a beautiful park. We had a nice picnic lunch there of pastrami, cheese, crackers, and mangos that we bought at the market the day before.

Next, Keith schauffered us to the Fremont Troll, a very cool public art project/cement sculpture of a giant troll under a bridge in the neighborhood.



Lily got a nice one of me trying to pick a winner.



Lastly, we had the pleasure of visiting Theo chocolate factory where we weren't able to take a tour, but we were still allowed to eat as much high quality chocolate as we wanted for free (our favorite was coconut curry - we were skeptical, but it is actually quite awesome).

-Ben

Visiting Oregon: Eugene and Portland

We finally left California on the 15th of April, after spending a total of four and a half months in the state. We headed up towards Portland, and decided to spend a night in Eugene. It's a cool place, but almost completely a college town. We arrived in the afternoon on the 16th and Ben walked around with Bebe for about an hour while I napped. The two of us walked around some more to a few used record stores and hobby shops. We still didn't want to pay for any lodging, so we found a Walmart fairly well outside the center of town and parked for the night.

Ben had seen a bar on the way to the Walmart that he was sure was just a half mile down the road. It had pool and karaoke, and while neither of us ever gets drunk enough to sing in public, we do enjoy Ben beating my sorry butt at pool. Plus, there were $1.50 PBR pints! And the rum and ginger ale (a fake Dark and Stormy) was only $2.50! Of course, before we could enjoy ourselves, we had to get there, and walking was pretty much our best option (we didn't really know where the busses went). It turned out to be a 25-30 minute walk, which wasn't too bad, but we kept wondering if maybe it was 2 or 3 miles down the road... We decided to take a bus back, after the bartender let us borrow a bus map and schedule booklet.

The next day we knew there was a farmer's market happening, so we drove downtown and walked around with Bebe. Dogs are generally not allowed at open food markets, so we had to put Bebe in my backpack. She wasn't crazy about it, but put up with it for a good 25 minutes, before I finally took her out and carried her; and let me tell you 10 pounds gets pretty heavy after a pretty short amount of time in your arms. Kudos to all the moms who have carried or do carry around their babies regularly! We picked up some nice produce at the market, and then found this sublime El Salvadorian tamale that had a huge list of ingredients: prunes, chicken, peppers, tomatoes, raisins, and more that we can't remember, topped with sour cream and really spicy salsa. It was expensive ($8!) but it fed both of us for a small lunch and was so delicious.

We left that afternoon (17th) to get on our way to Portland. We didn't get the whole way, because we got a late start, but we arrived the next day to stay with Ben's brother Aaron's friend from college, Aimee, and her boyfriend, Kyle. And their dog, Poopay (I know I spelled that wrong, but that's at least the phonetic spelling...). Bebe was pretty freaked out of Poopay at first, but after a day they were running around the yard playing a ton.

We stayed a whole week in Portland, and we absolutely LOVED IT! There's a great food scene there, with a lot of restaurants and a great appreciation for them. It's a somewhat spread out city with a bunch of different neighborhoods, all with their own vibe. The public transportation is awesome (probably our first experience with very user-friendly transit on the whole trip), and they even have a "fareless square" which is a several block radius in which all transit trips are free! As reputed, Portland was a bike-friendly city, and we took full advantage of it. Aimee and Kyle were about a mile or so from downtown, so we biked back and forth a few times. Of course we went to Powell's Bookstore, but we were disappointed in the organization of the store in general, and the selection of used food literature books in particular. All the books are thrown together, used, new and discount, so it can be difficult if you only want to buy cheap books (like us). I found two books I wanted that were about $5 each, but Ben ended up buying a new book. We have too many books with us. There is a really nice waterfront park on the Willamette River that was great for people-watching. We spent part of a day there and enjoyed a couple of donuts from Voodoo Donuts (an awesomely delicious and creative donut shop that has a line all day long) before playing catch.

Ben staged at Le Pigeon for three days, and we got a completely comped meal, including wine pairings! It was quite good, and awesomely free, but none of it really blew us away until the dessert. I got a creme brulee which was just a regular creme brulee, but it also came with a bonus pot de creme (yes, the dessert menu actually said "bonus pot de creme") that was incredible. It was nice to end the meal like that. Our final culinary experience in Portland was at Pokpok, a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant that had a short menu of exotic sounding entrees and salads. Ben will write more about it, but I will say we really loved it, and again the dessert was incredible.

On the 26th we got up early, took Bebe to the vet (she somehow got pretty sick) and after a shot and some antibiotics, we hit the road to head to Seattle, to visit with our friends Keith and Sara. We were pretty sad to leave Portland, and it's definitely second (or tied for first) on our short list of cities we'd like to live in. We will write about Seattle and our Vancouver adventure as soon as we get the chance. Current trip stats: almost 9000 miles and almost 1000 gallons of gas!

-Lily