The Last Post

We'd like to once again thank everyone who hosted us, met up with us, and/or followed our blog. You all are great and the trip wouldn't have gone as well without you! 

Check out our last posts including our favorite things, our index, and our blog statistics. And the blog will stay up so that you can read about our trip or use the blog as a resource for your travels.

(These Are A Few Of) Our Favorite Things

One way to recap the trip is to note what our favorite things were, at least from the perspective of having just finished. It was quite difficult narrowing down our favorite things into each category but going through this list really drove home how much we experienced in the past two months. It'll really be great to look back on this list and see if and how time changes some of these answers. 

Note: Orion's favorites are in green, Rafael's favorites are in orange, and Elizabeth's favorites are in blue. If there's a link then clicking that will send you to the related post.

Most Beautiful National Park (Traditional Beauty Category): Crater Lake National Park in Oregon; Banff/Lake Louise for the giant mountains and beautiful lakes that look like Switzerland; Banff in Canada

Most Beautiful National Park (Other Category): Joshua Tree for the unique flora and fauna; Badlands for the "only place on earth" feeling I got; Zion for the beautiful scenery and largest sandstone walls in the world

Favorite Hike: Angel's Landing in Zion; Lake Agnes Teahouse hike; Angel's Landing in Zion

Favorite View: view from Angel's Landing in Zion; pretty much all the views along the Oregon coast; Lake Louise in Banff

Favorite Experience: sandboarding the dunes in Florence, Oregon; impromptu sledding down multiple mountains at Crater Lake; sea kayaking off the coast of Anacortes, WA

Favorite Beach: Ruby Beach for the climbing and the huge rock formations; Cannon Beach and the nice town; Oswald State Park in Oregon for the cliffs framing the beach, surfers, and the right amount of people

Favorite Wildlife Sighting: the grey wolf in Yellowstone NP; seeing a seal and a few bald eagles while sea kayaking the San Juan Islands; the bear and her cub running along a ridge in Glacier National Park

Favorite City (to visit): Whistler; Vancouver; San Francisco

Favorite City (to possibly live in the future): San Diego; San Francisco area or San Diego; Seattle

Most Disappointing City: Phoenix because I had pretty high expectations; Missoula, MT since after seeing Bozeman, MT I had high expectations for the other big city in MT; Calgary, Alberta because it looked like a bad suburb in the U.S.

Favorite "Section" of Driving: the drive from Devil's Tower to Yellowstone National Park; the drive from Banff to Whistler; the drive from Jackson, WY to Bozeman, MT

Favorite Campground: Lake Jennings near San Diego because of the view; Revelstoke's campground for the waterfall, river, and amenities; Lake Macdonald in Glacier for the view of the lake

Favorite Brewery: Full Sail because I liked the view and it was the first beer tasting; Deschutes in Portland, OR for the sampler, good location in the Pearl District, and since soccer was on TV; Full Sail Brewing in Hood River, OR for the combination of good beers and the view of the Hood River

Favorite Coffeehouse: the coffeehouse in Bozeman, MT for the comfy couches and the amazing caramel mocha; the coffeehouse in Granville Island (Vancouver) because it had an artsy, nice vibe and good espresso; Kiva Koffeehouse in Escalante, UT for the view of the canyons and free refills on iced coffee!

We hope this list gives a better insight into what we currently see as the best aspects of our roughly two month trek across the U.S. and Canada. After coming up with this list, we want to note that we feel this trip was truly epic and it goes down as our favorite road trip ever.

Thanks again for reading!

ORE Trip Index

In the spirit of that venerable publication Harper's, we've decided to do an ORE trip index of our own. For the uninitiated, Harper's does an index with interesting statistics and numbers at the beginning of each issue. Here's our version:

Days traveled: 52 (from May 27 to July 17)

Miles traveled: 11,226.8

Total amount spent on gas: $1,198.97

Average price per gallon: $4.28

Number of oil changes: 3

Number of breakdowns: 0, thank goodness

Number of (emotional) breakdowns: 0, thank goodness

Total visits to McDonald's or Subway: oops, did I write 0 for emotional breakdowns?

Clif bars eaten during the trip: 71

Amount of days with over 100 degree weather: 5

Amount of days with below 50 degree weather: 9

Nights all of us slept in a tent together so we wouldn't freeze to death: 1

Times all three of us were forced to sleep in the car: 3 (1 afternoon in Newport, 1 night at Devil's Tower to avoid the severe storm with hail, 1 night in San Clemente near L.A. since we couldn't find a campground over the July 4th weekend)

Longest streak of days without showers: 3 or 4, though we promise we were really looking each day for a shower

Amount of deodorant used (Rafael): 2.25 sticks

Amount of deodorant used (Orion): .25 sticks

Amount I'm kidding about the deodorant: 0%

Amount of times Orion was sitting at a group table when the bouncer singled him out and asked for ID: 1, in Bozeman, MT

Times we were carded for a rated R movie: 6. Once each for buying the ticket in Albuquerque, once more for each of us when inside the theatre

Amount of absurd haircuts: 2 (1 mohawk for Orion, 1 mullet for Rafael)

Seconds Elizabeth stayed on the mechanical bull in Palo Alto: 15, though it did look quite difficult and neither of the boys tried the bull

Seconds Jeremy stayed on the mechanical bull in Palo Alto: way too long to not make us suspicious that he led a previous life working at a rodeo

Times Orion tried to eat a gallon of ice cream in a sitting: 1

Times Orion successfully ate a gallon of ice cream in a sitting: 0

Times we had to stop for Orion to go to the bathroom after the ice cream fiasco: 2

Number of entire boxes of cookies eaten by Rafael in a sitting: 2 (goodbye Milano, goodbye delicious French Lu cookies)

Number of different state license plates seen: 48 (missing CT and RI)

Blog Statistics

Thanks to Google Analytics, we've been tracking our website data. We can't see who visited our site, but the analytics report still yielded some interesting figures. Here are some of the best stats for the trip period from May 27 to July 16, 2008 (51 days):

Pageviews*: 4, 529

Biggest Day for Pageviews: May 30, 2008 with 196 pageviews

Absolute Unique Visitors: 819

Biggest Day for Absolute Unique Visitors: July 10, 2008 with 97 AUV

Average Time on Site: 2 minutes, 19 seconds

Traffic Sources: 30.9% Direct Traffic, 54.9% Referring Sites, 14.2% Search Engine

Top Traffic Sources: 1) Directly entering our web address, 2) Blogger.com, 3) Facebook.com, 4) Yahoo, 5) Google

Top Countries: 1) USA, 2) Canada, 3) Brazil, 4) Spain, 5) Portugal, 6) United Kingdom, 7)France, 8) Argentina, 9) Mexico, 10) Malaysia

Visitors from Different Countries: 60 different countries represented

Visitor Loyalty: 42% of our readers visited only 1 time. On the other end of the spectrum, 30% of our visitors visited over 50 times

Technical Profile: 42% from Internet Explorer, 35% from Safari, 21.5% from Firefox, .5% from Opera

It's particularly fascinating to see that 60 different countries were represented among our visitors. I figure most of those visitors simply stumbled upon this blog. Even then, I hope they found it to be a good resource for visiting and exploring the United States.

As our trip concludes, we'd like to thank all of our readers for following along. It's been a great ride, thanks for reading!

Rafael

*Orion and I changed our blog settings mid-trip, which skews the pageview data downwards. What we did was change our main blog setting from the most recent 5 posts to the most recent 5 days. By doing this, we hoped to make the blog easier to read. In doing so, we also skewed our pageview data because it was easier to "catch up" on our travels with the new blog settings. This meant less clicking to previous pages, which lowered our pageview data significantly (the drop from the analytics report is impressive). We didn't notice a drop in absolute unique visitors, which meant our loyal readers were still keeping up with us, but we did want to make a note of what we felt was a misleadingly low pageview number.

Los Angeles: Farewell

We just tearfully dropped Elizabeth off for her flight at LAX, and we are on our way to San Diego. Two more days and we will be flying out of LAX destined for Hawaii. It's been a great trip, and thanks to everyone who has checked out the blog. Keep an eye out today for a few wrap up posts later today.

Orion

Malibu: Coffee, Beach, Etc.

After delicious cookies and ice cream, we headed over to the Malibu Creek State Park. That's where we set up our tent before heading over to another coffee shop to pass the hottest part of the day in air conditioning with wifi. Turns out Elizabeth needs to pack for her flight tomorrow and we need to all spend a bit of time figuring out who owes whom for what. On that note, we'll have a few interesting posts tomorrow and maybe the day after, even though the trip officially ends tomorrow once Elizabeth gets on her plane home. 

Once it gets a bit cooler today (4, 5pm?) we'll head back to Zuma or another Malibu beach. Then the likely plan is to head back to the campsite and play poker, if we don't end up playing poker on the beach!

Rafael

Los Angeles: Diddy Riese

After falling asleep to Jack Johnson and a live Mariachi band at the campground last night, we made our way to Hollywood. We saw Grauman's Chinese Theater, the Sunset Strip, Beverly Drive, and Rodeo Drive. After a quick lunch at Chipotle, we found the place shown in this picture, Diddy Riese.

For $1.50 you can get a scoop of your choice of ice cream between two fresh cookies. With so many types cookies and ice creams, there are tons of combinations.

Our guide book strikes again with another good suggestion.

Orion

San Bernardino: Coffee Nutzz

That's the two of us at Coffee Nutzz. We've decided to stop off here instead of fighting the notorious L.A. traffic. Thanks to free wireless, and delicious drinks, our spirits are still high as we press on towards our trip's conclusion. I can't believe the trip is almost over!

We also found a campground, so we'll likely head out of here in an hour or two to go set up the tent. Then it's a night of poker before touring the sights in L.A. tomorrow.

Cheers from California!

Rafael

From Las Vegas to Los Angeles

A recap of our night:

After touring a few more hotels (Wynn, Bellagio, New York New York, The Venetian, Caesar's Palace) we came back to the room and started playing poker. Elizabeth and I gave serious consideration to entering the tournament at 11pm, but the idea of getting killed by better players put us off. Instead, we battled each other.

We slept in this morning until 9:30 and then showered, goofed off, and headed to an early lunch at Chipotle/McDonald's.

So here we are on the road back to Los Angeles. The drive will be pretty boring and take four hours, so we'll likely post once we arrive in L.A.

Rafael

Las Vegas: The Wynn

This picture is from the casino floor of the newest, and perhaps the classiest, hotel on the Strip, the Wynn. Just passing through this time,

Orion

Las Vegas: Le Village Buffet

Oof. That's today's motto.

But to give you the Vegas recap first: we walked through Paris, Planet Hollywood, MGM, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Excalibur. It was hot! (95+)

We made it to Le Village at 12:15 and waited half an hour in line. We paid our $17.99 and were seated. Well worth it, as we all had plates of beef, chicken, duck, fish, vegetables, etc. etc. And then... we made it to dessert!

Crepes, pastries, ice cream, the works! Needless to say, dinner tonight will be light and we're glad we ate at Le Village. I recommend it to all our readers but make sure you budget an hour so that you can take it all in at a reasonable pace.

Now we're heading to the hotel, taking showers, and napping before doing anything else.

Rafael

Nevada: Almost at Las Vegas

We woke up early and got on the road to Las Vegas. I did a quick search for hotel rooms and found a room for $35 at The Sahara, so tonight we sleep in luxury!

We'll be touring the hotels then getting the lunch buffet at Le Village in Paris. From there, it's swimming, relaxing, and gambling!

Rafael

Zion National Park: Day of Hiking

For Elizabeth and I today was a full day of making use of our feet. After driving in the awe inspiring East Entrance to Zion National Park, we set up camp and jumped on a bus.

In the spring of 2000, Zion decided that it would be a lot more efficient to restrict private vehicles from driving in the canyon and to replace them with propane buses instead. These buses are a cinch to use, they cut out the congestion, and they are more environmentally friendly.

First stop on our tour was the Riverside Walk at the top of the canyon. After about a mile of scenic walkway, one must wade through the wall-to-wall waters of the Virgin River to continue. The canyon continues to narrow to the size of a slot canyon for about 16 miles in a section fittingly known as the Narrows. Unfortunately, there was no time for this waist high adventure in this trip, but we did get to go far enough up to get a taste.

From there we checked out an area called Big Bend, and moved on to start an amazing hike up to the Angel's Landing.

This 2.5 mile trail gains a whopping 1800 ft up to a panoramic view of Zion's breathtaking canyon. Adding to its epicness, half of a mile of this trail crosses a narrow ridge with a 1200 ft shear drop on one side, and an equally sharp 800ft drop on the other. Not for those scared of heights, the ridge has a number of places that are only a few feet wide with little to nothing keeping one from a long drop and a short stop. Now that I have gotten all of our parents' attention, I will add that we made it safely, had a great time, and took plenty of pictures. Unfortunately, none of those pictures were taken with my phone, so you will have to wait until we find free wifi to get one up on here.

Speaking of pictures, this one is from the Lower Emerald Pool hike, which was about 1.5 miles round trip and our fourth and final hike of the day. Just before this, we also hiked to see the Weeping Rock, a place where water seeps from pourus sandstone as it reaches a less permiable layer of rock.

After a full day of hiking, we went to Zion Pizza for dinner with Raf, and retreated back to the camp site. In my opinion, there was no better way to cap off our tour of National Parks than with Zion.

Orion