The last 5 nights at Forrest’s Uncle Curtis and Aunt Beth’s have been great. Curtis’ sister and mom have made amazing dinners every night. Last night they were busy, so we had KFC, which was off the hook. They also took us to see “The Blind Side”, which has to be one of the best movies ever made. We also went to Red Robin. Forrest had chicken parmasian and I had a BBQ burger. We got a paper thing that can win money online or something if I take a survey on their service. I took the survey this morning and did not win.

The same night as the movie, they took us bowling. Beth used to be a bowling instructor, so she was basically pro-status with a 153. Forrest is good at bowling too and got good scores 151. I was going for a 300 because I hear that’s a pretty good score these days, but got a 112. We were the only 3 bowlers.

We also got to sit in the hot tub with Curtis and Beth. Curtis told me that when I’m here, I’m family. I really appreciate that and have been treated like nothing less. Beth took us to the printing shop she owns, Hillview Printing here in Morgan Hill, and showed us how they make business cards and shrinkwrap things. While there, Forrest and I decided it would be way cool to live in a warehouse and just decorate and design it however we want. We spent at least fifteen minutes making a list of things to put in our warehouse.

The other day we looked up new species of animals on the internet. It was nuts how many cool animals there are now that we never learned about when we were little. We also got to drive Curtis’ go cart, which was way fun. He also has a legit racecar in his shop. He let the engine run for us and it was the loudest noise we’ve ever heard. Pretty rad.

They had us do some yard work to do every day. We got to trim the rose bushes and pull weeds. We learned rose bush thorns have toxins in them, which makes them officially the most badass plant other than a venus fly trap. Curtis’ sister Luanne helped us out with the yard work too. We really appreciate the work opportunities they've given us.

We drove over to a local skate park. I brought apple sauce to eat while Forrest skated. Unfortunately it was a helmet and elbow pads mandatory skate park regardless of Forrest being an adult. Not only did it have too many regulations, but it also was going to cost 4 dollars. So we left.

Curtis’ sister Luanne has a broken leg right now and is not supposed to be driving. I got to drive her around today, which was cool because I haven’t driven a car in almost a month. Forrest has a TV in the room in which he’s been sleepin, so he’s watched like 35 movies on the DVR. I have my computer in “my room” and I have some books and stuff. Last night we watched the movie “Surf’s Up”, which is an awesome movie about penguins surfing. It also had a great soundtrack. One song is “You Get What You Give”, which we both downloaded and have been listening to all day. Forrest is incapable of listening to it without dancing. He started dancing at me and accidentally kicked the door frame, which we both thought broke his toe. It was some good stuff. His toe is better now, and he learned to not dance too hard.

Beth did us both a huge favor and mailed a box of clothes I won’t be using home, so now we have more room in the car. I feel like a girl for over packing clothes, but now it’s all good. We’re both way pumped for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. We are going to get our dinner on and then roll out around 9 or 10 pm and head for Thousand Oaks, CA, which is my old stomping grounds.

Aunt Janet and I had a long discussion this morning about teaching because she was a teacher and a school administrator for many years and I am going to be a teacher. I learned a lot from the talk with her. When Forrest got up, she took us out to lunch at a downtown Palo Alto diner. I couldn’t decide between the tuna melt and the BBQ pork sandwich. So I sent out a mass text to some of my friends to help me decide. Forrest, Jess, Jenn, Griffen, Colin, Nichole, Kyle, Nikkolas, Claire, Jesse, Jr, Kenny, Blake, and Jake all voted BBQ pork. Adam, Mason, and Randy voted tuna melt. Thank you to everyone for voting. The BBQ pork was off the hook. Forrest got a turkey club. And Aunt Janet shared her onion rings and chocolate shake.

On the way back to her house we saw the Facebook headquarters, which is on Hamilton (I think) in Palo Alto. We took some pictures with her when we got back, and headed on to San Jose to see the Winchester House of Mystery. I’m pretty sure my mom would never talk to me again if we didn’t go. On the way we named our GPS voice Lafawnduh. We also noticed that the freeway onramps in this area all have a stop light that lets one car on at a time. It sounds stupid, but it was actually pretty useful in diluting the traffic.

The mystery house was a very bizarre place. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, which makes it difficult to run a website based on blog photos. According to our knowledgeable guide Alex, the walk through the house is over a mile. The house has stairs that turn and have 141 steps to go up a total of 5 feet I think it was. There were doors that open into a brick wall. Windows revealing a blank wall. Stair cases that rise into a ceiling. 47 fireplaces. A séance room. And Sarah Winchester was fixated on the number 13, so there are 13 coat hangers or dots on the wall or panels in every room. I'm sure you can find the stats on their website. Very interesting house.

We put Forrest’s dad’s address from his old house into the GPS. It was a short drive from the mystery house. We found the street and the house numbers it should be near, but didn’t see a residential house at all. Then we saw a man outside who asked if we needed help. Forrest asked where his dad’s house number would be. The man said that his building was it. Forrest told him his dad used to live here. The man said “oh are you a Walker”? We were pretty pumped when he knew who we were talking about. The man’s name was Ray, and he bought the house from the Walkers about thirty years ago. He let us go inside and check it out. The house was a daycare now, so there was about thirty little kids running around, but Forrest was still excited to be in his dad’s old house from back in the day.

We headed to Morgan Hill to stay with Forrest’s Uncle Curtis and his family. We all had a great chicken and carrot soup and some bread for dinner. Forrest and I had more servings. His Uncle Curtis and Aunt Beth took us to the mall. They got us some pretzels from the pretzel maker. Then we went to the grocery store to pick out some groceries. They got us plenty of sammich makins, cereal, and fruit. We were pretty excited. While at the grocery store, Forrest, Uncle Curtis, and I all learned what mincemeat is. It has nothing to do with meat at all, but actually is a mix of fruit and syrup. The street and parking lot lights in this area are a very dim yellow color, which looks cool. Curtis and Beth explained that it is because white lights are more difficult for planes that try to land.

When we got back to the house, we watched the end of the Panthers/Dolphins game and Forrest set up a Facebook profile. The two of us watched Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and then The Office on www.hulu.com, which is the free site to watch any tv show ever made. We also went to town on the Cap’n Crunch.

We have been really lucky to spend most of the trip so far with some great hosts. We haven't exactly been roughing it. We still have people to stay with through the end of December. We are having a great time meeting people and having somewhere to sleep that isn't a Nissan. But we're also excited to be out on our own again at some point in about a month. Things are going to change.

Aunt Janet made us an amazing egg, toast, bacon, and potato breakfast. Then she took us on a tour of downtown Palo Alto and dropped us off at the Stanford campus with some lunch money. The entrance to the campus is a long street lined with massive palm trees. We’d both heard it was a great campus but had no idea the whole thing was going to be so intricate. All of the perfectly designed buildings matched and were surrounded by perfectly landscaped exotic plants. We saw a black squirrel too, which we decided was probably a good luck sign because we didn’t know they existed.

Our first stop on campus was the art library. We couldn’t go into the actual library part because we don’t have student ID cards so we went to the bookstore. I read travel books about the Amalfi Coast, Dominican Republic, and the French Riviera. The Amalfi Coast in Italy is somewhere I’d like to live for a while at one point in my life. I showed Forrest pictures of it, and he said he’d live there with me. So that would be really cool. Probably won’t be for a few years though. I found Forrest in the anatomy section reading a book on the human brain, which is a subject that fascinates him. I’ve always had an interest in it too, so I picked up a copy of the same book, and we read it for a long time and learned a lot.

When we left the library we saw a guy in a gorilla suit with a sign, so we had to go talk to him. His name was Andrew, and he was a cool guy. He was promoting a sign up for a blood and bone marrow donation list. So we signed up. We did the mouth swab things, which you can see in the Photograph section. So if they find someone who needs blood or bone marrow and matches us, then they will contact us to see if we would like to be a donor. So we didn’t have to commit to anything. We are merely giving them permission to contact us if we want to donate if/when they find out we are a match for someone who needs it.

We went to the food court to try to get our lunch on. It was too expensive, so I asked some guys if they knew where a KFC was. They could probably tell we didn’t go to school there and thought they were cool because they go to Stanford and were asses about it. We talked to a few other people on campus and got the same vibe that they thought they were cooler than us. They’re not. So the arrogance of the students is the second reason why I’ll never go to Stanford. The other is that I wouldn’t get accepted.

On our way out of the campus, we saw a group of people huddled around a street bike. It turned out to be an electric street bike called Mission 1. It was pretty awesome. I found a deck of cards on the ground. It was a full set, so Forrest showed me a card trick, which was pretty cool. Then he tried to make up his own card trick, which was significantly less cool.

We wandered into a bus stop and noticed it said “free bus” on the side. We’ll take a free bus over walking any day, so we hopped on. We took probably thirty pictures of us on the bus. Got some looks from other bus-ers, but we couldn’t care less. We’re just havin a good time. The bus driver was really cool and told us how to get back to my Aunt Janet’s. So we got off the bus and began searching for food. We didn’t see any fast food, so we looked around a plaza for the best deal on food. We didn’t find any good deals, so we took the least worst deal, which was Howie’s Artisan Pizza. While we were waiting for our pizza, we saw the waitress take a tray of some beautiful leftover pizza away from a table. We decided that pizza would be more useful in our stomachs than in the trash, so we asked if we could eat it. Free food is not something we pass up. We also got our pepperoni pizza, which was awesome. Forrest introduced me to a cool trick where you don't eat the crust til the end, so we each had five crusts that we transformed into breadsticks. It was good with marinara sauce.

We decided to head back by 7 to have dinner back at Janet’s. We definitely got lost. But we asked some lady outside a school how to get back to Churchill. We got back right in time for an amazing chicken and brown rice dinner. Aunt Janet told me some of our family history that I was unaware of and showed me a large notebook full of the history of that side of my family. She is going to mail it back home to me and said it was in my hands now. I’m really glad to hear that and look forward to learning it.

After dinner, we decided to go up into the attic-style upstairs bedroom. Aunt Janet’s hundred year old house is very crisp and relaxing, but there is part of the second level that is really frightening at night. We turned off the light, sat down on the floor with the lap top, and started watching the video from the movie “The Ring”. We were already pretty freaked out anyway, and then suddenly the video shut off and literally 2 seconds later, the house phone rang. This scared the bejesus out of us because in “The Ring”, people watch the video, then the phone rings and tells them they have 7 days to live. So we ran down the stairs like 6 year old girls. The phone call ended up being Aunt Janet’s neighbor calling to tell her that her internet went off, which explained everything perfectly.

We both had to get up pretty early because their cleaning lady had come to clean the house. We both tried to stay out of the way and had Gorilla Munch cereal for breakfast, which tasted a lot like Kix. We saw a box of this cereal in Portland, but didn’t buy it because it costs money. So we were pretty excited to see it at Kelliane’s. After breakfast we started playing Hungry Hungry Hippo. Her son stayed home sick from school and came out came out to play with us. After Hungry Hungry Hippo we got out the legos and the 3 of us each built our own space ship. It was pretty rad. It was the first time Forrest and I had built something with legos in years. Kelliane’s son does it all the time because he is 9. He ended up watching tv in the other room, and Forrest and I worked on our spaceships for probably thirty more minutes. It was nice to get the imagination back for a while.  

We joined her son in the living room, and the three of us watched Tom & Jerry, Johnny Bravo, Spongebob Squarepants, and eventually Terminator 2. We wouldn’t let him watch a show called “Johnny Test” because every scene is fast paced and yelling. It’s stressful to watch. Kelliane let us take some camping equipment that we found in her storage unit yesterday. We haven’t been camping yet, but it is a good possibility when we get into Arizona and New Mexico. 

Later on, I looked up the different types of trees in California. We kept seeing cool plants and not knowing what they were. Kelliane got home with her daughter, and we all ate steak and pasta and veggies. After dinner, we played Wii. We made sure to take some pictures before we left. We really appreciated Kelliane letting us stay with her for a week. We had a great time with her and her kids. So thanks a bunch Kelliane. On our way to the freeway, we found a pillar with a giraffe painted on the side, so I definitely took a picture from inside the car. We’re both very glad to have the digital camera now.

We got on the freeway around 8:15, so we were shocked to come across bumper to bumper traffic. It took us about thirty minutes to move maybe half a mile. But since we weren’t in a hurry, we didn’t care. We just listened to music and talked. The traffic was due to an accident and 4 lanes converging into 1 to pass the scene. After the pileup, we passed the Oakland Raiders’ stadium, which was cool. We also saw an In-N-Out Burger from the freeway, which we are definitely looking forward to eating while in the south.  

We got to my great aunt Janet’s house a little before 10:00, and she thought Forrest was me because that side of my family is predominantly blonde so she was expecting that. But when I introduced myself as Kelly, she knew what was up. She was a very nice lady and talked with us for a while before she went to sleep. She actually reminds me a lot of my grandma, who is her younger sister. We started watching “The Grudge”, but the internet connection stopped working, so we settled on a South Park DVD.

We had breakfast and split up again. I went to the book store on Piedmont Ave to get my reading on. Forrest stayed at the apartment and did work. I found some books on Los Angeles and vicinity, and texted Forrest some cool stuff we can do there. We decided we’d like to head down there sooner than we had anticipated.

We headed into a different part of Oakland to Kelliane’s storage unit. We pulled all the boxes out and organized them. She paid us handsomely. We posed for pictures with a cardboard cut out of their mascot, Storman (pronounced store-man). We were shocked to see that a local storage facility would have their own super hero mascot. We decided to walk back so Kelliane wouldn’t have to come pick us up. It was also pretty decent walking weather. On the way we stopped in a 99 cents store and found some cool items- party hats, sunglasses, elephant bowls, duct tape, bags of chips. We didn’t buy any of it though.

At one point we also realized we might be in an unfriendly section of Oakland. Luckily it was only like 4:30, but still, we definitely saw some sketchy people. Once we got back to Piedmont, we made some hot dogs, which were off the hook. I’m at Starbucks right now because of the free wi-fi deal. Going to go back to the apartment and have some pot roast that Kelliane’s been preparing all day. Forrest and I have been really excited since last night for this. We’ll probably watch Monday Night Football and work out. Tonight I will also contact my great-aunt Janet, who is letting us stay with her next in Palo Alto

We woke up and cleaned up the place. I used the broom and Forrest used the Swiffer wet jet. After cleaning up the apartment, we split up for pretty much the first time on the trip. Forrest went to the skate park and I went to Piedmont Ave. I went into a bookstore for a while to look at books. Then I went into Park Avenue Bar & Grill to just watch the Cowboys game, where I became even more determined to never become an alcoholic. The Cowboys lost because a certain quarterback and a certain wide receiver on the team can’t perform under pressure. So I left early. On the way out, I was approached by a Vietnam veteran named Pat and had a conversation about overcoming racism in America.

Forrest met some cool people at the skate park too apparently and got lost on the way. He got directions from a hobo family who approached him to tell him his mullet-style haircut looks cool. He double checked the directions with some really nice guy who offered him a ride to the park.

We discussed the next month of our trip and tried to figure out the order in which we’ll hit all the cities we’d like to see. We’ve got some dilemmas coming up and eventually decided we’d just worry about it some other time.

We made soup and ice cream for dinner and watched “The Office”. We also watched the Patriots/Colts game, which was extremely intense. We were both pretty pumped when the Colts won it with 13 seconds left. We watched “Napoleon Dynamite” for the fourth time on the trip. It is a great movie and reminds us of our Idaho pride. We both want to know what the word ‘bodagit’ means now because Napoleon calls Uncle Rico a ‘bodagit’ in the movie. We will look it up soon.

Kelliane came home with a bunch of food and a New York Times magazine, which I wanted to check out some time because reading current events is cool. We might work out later. Probably not though. We’re just chillin and watching “South Park” now. So far we’ve had a great time in the Bay Area.

Left house at 2:12. Were going to take route 12 to the BART (transit) station. Missed the bus, but the nice crossing guard lady told us how to get there on foot. Decided to save some money by riding skate board and scooter to the BART station.

We stopped to ask a police officer where the BART station was, and he told us we were headed into West Oakland and we don’t wanna be there. Nice guy. Another cop told us we could cross the street before our walker signal turned green. At one point I hit a rut in the sidewalk on the scooter and almost fell off. When we got across the street, another cop teased me about it as a joke, just being a nice guy. Not only were the cops extremely polite and friendly, but they were also really buff and actually looked threatening. We’re not used to either of those characteristics back home in Post Falls.

We got to the BART station, and found out it’d be 7 dollars for us to get to San Francisco and back. Since we only had about 3 hrs, we decided to just go tomorrow and check out Oakland today. So Forrest and I just hit the streets on the board and the razor, respectively. We went to the Veterans Memorial building, which seems appropriate with yesterday being Veterans’ day and all. There was pretty much nothing going on except for a senior citizens ball room dance going on. We legitimately considered going in to hang out and dance with them, but decided they probably would not want us in there.

So we went down Grand Ave and found a park with this place called FairyLand, which was an amusement park for kids and young adults such as Forrest and myself who are into fun things like that. Unfortunately it was closed, but we took some bangin pics outside. There was also a pack of geese around the park. I started walking toward them to try and touch one, but they kept walking away from me. Not running, but walking just barely fast enough to stay out of my reach. And I wasn’t going to run at them because that would make them all fly away. There were also like 15 squirrels running around attacking the nuts that fell from the trees or whatever. I tried to touch one of them too.

Forrest was doing some neat tricks on his board in front of the FairyLand place, and I was taking some action shots. A lady poked her head out the door and politely asked us to leave. She said we probably don’t understand because we’re young, but it just isn’t the place for it. We told her we totally understand and just didn’t think about it and apologized. She was really nice about it.

We decided to get back to the apartment before it got too dark. On the way we stopped at this large pool of water with pillars around it. It was pretty awesome. Looked like the pool at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, Italy. We skated and scooted on back to our temporary residence. There was a dog that seriously looked like a polar bear just chillin on the side walk.

We got back and Kelliane presented us with a chocolate cake that was left over from a meeting. It was some powerful chocolate. Neither one of us could finish a piece. It was good stuff. Forrest and I also started a pretty sweet rap and listened to music as we cooked up some steaks.

We walked around downtown Piedmont today. We were in an antique store for about an hour looking at art. We stopped in a Tutti Fruity ice cream shop to sample some ice cream. Good stuff.

There was a store called Himalayan Wonders that had all kinds of cool stuff. We spent like 30 minutes there looking at sculptures, pictures, necklaces, and reading about the different Hindu gods and stuff of that nature. Very interesting place.

Other than that, we just went back to the apartment and had a great Chinese food meal that Kelliane and her mom got for us. The kids showed us their Pokemon card collection and had us try sea weed. We personally weren’t fans, but the kids ate it like candy. Then we all made characters on the Wii.

After everyone else went to sleep, Forrest and I did another workout to try to stay in shape. We watched The Office and the new episode of South Park. After out workout, I officially withdrew from No-Shave November (sorry Travis), and shaved all but my mustache, so now I look like a moron. Forrest then transformed his normal hair into a mullet, which is definitely awesome.

We woke up early today in the parking lot. We went inside to brush our teeth. By now we are starting to get strange looks from the Safeway employees after spending the last few days in there. Before we left we played football in the parking lot. Forrest punted me the ball and I did a Michael Vick-style throw on the run and accidentally tossed it right into the bed of a parked truck from about forty yards away. A girl our age was pulling into the parking lot and laughed at me. She knows she was impressed. Before we left we also saw a crow that was the size of a cocker spaniel. We watched it dominate a bunch of worms in the grass by the parking lot.

We got on the road and headed south through the Redwood National Park. The trees were insanely big. Inside the park was an elk habitat behind a fence. There was a sign that said don’t approach them on foot, so we followed directions because an elk can kick our ass. We walked up the trail on the opposite side of the road. It was a 2.4 mile hike to what was called “Big Tree”. We made it at least almost a fourth of the way before we went back to the car.

After the redwood forest, there was a second redwood forest called Avenue of the Giants that Forrest’s Uncle Tony and Aunt Mary told us about. We stopped for more pictures. Further along in the trip was a wood carving type of place that was called something about Bigfoot. It had dozens of wood carvings of bears, tv/movie characters, and other animals. We posed for many pictures, which can be found in the Photographs section soon.

We stopped in a place called Cooks Valley at a gas station called Patriot to microwave our burritos. We decided that would be a good place to stop because we’re exploring America. When Forrest brought the cooler in, we saw the cheaper brand of zip-lock bags failed and leaked ice all over the inside of the cooler. So our burritos were completely soaked. Next time we will get the good brand. Forrest wanted to last time, but I insisted on quantity over quality. My bad. The guy at the counter, Daniel, was way cool and gave us two pepperoni pizza pockets on the house. We ended up staying and talking to him for quite a while.

We arrived in the Bay Area around 8:30. I called my mom’s friend Kelliane, who is letting us stay with her in Piedmont, which is part of Oakland. We got to her house and met her, her mother, and her kids. Kelliane is one of my mom’s best friends, and I haven’t seen her since I was a youngun. She had a list of Bay Area attractions for us to check out.

It is also going to be nice to spend the night inside. We’ve been living at Safeway for the last few days, so it will be nice to not sleep sitting in a car. Forrest and I had some cereal and watched South Park and The Office.

After unintentionally sleeping in late after a long night in the Safeway parking lot, we looked for the nearest hotel to borrow some wi-fi. We found a great hotel near the shore, but the wi-fi attempt didn’t work out because we didn’t have the access code, but we did see a great beach behind the hotel, so we explored that for a while. We charged our phones and listened to music in the lobby.

We went to the Crescent City Starbucks to get some internet access. Starbucks has a deal where you pay 5 (yes five) dollars for unlimited wi-fi nationwide. I got a Starbucks gift card from my parents’ friends David and Kathy, so we used that with no problem. We will most likely be spending a lot of time in Starbucks for the remainder of our trip. Today we got there around 3:00 and stayed until about 8:15.

While at Starbucks, Forrest and I were having a debate about an aspect of our site and how it runs. A man at the table next to us interjected with the exact answer we were trying to figure out. We ended up talking to him for about thirty minutes until he had to leave. He was a professional when it comes to web sites and showed us a bunch of programs to help us run this site. His name was Nickolas. Very nice guy.

The Starbucks people were also generous enough to microwave our burritos for us and even delivered it to our table like it was a 3-star restaurant. Another cool thing was they gave a free drink to a homeless guy who was in there. The Starbucks in Crescent City was overall a pretty cool place.

After Starbucks we headed over to Walmart to get an electricity inverter for the car. We found beanie hats for a dollar, so we each got one because the weather has been cold and lately. We wanted to set all the watches alarms for the same time, but then realized that would be a pain for the Walmart employees. We had to leave Walmart at 10:00 because they were closing.

The only place we know in town that is open 24 hours is back home at Safeway, so we headed back there. We saw a racoon. I snuck up and got an action shot of him eating something in the grass. We watched “School For Scoundrels” on Forrest‘s ipod, and went to sleep.

We woke up to plenty of rain, which was a downer, and had Great Value brand Cheerios without milk and Cheetos. Not exactly breakfast of champions. We began the drive down the 101, which is apparently the most scenic drive around.

We were compelled to stop in a small town called Waldport by the brightly colored shops and cool statues of sea animals. We checked out a store called Knives and More. The owner, Chris, let us pose with some sweet weapons for a picture. He was a cool guy. If you are ever in Waldport, Oregon on the coast, check out his shop. There’s all kinds of cool stuff in there.

After Waldport, we stopped at Ona Beach State Park. It was an amazing view of the ocean. We saw some jellyfish, but they were just sleeping in the sand. They wouldn’t move at all. Jellyfish aren’t as exciting as they look on tv. There was a runoff that was basically like a river flowing from inland out to the ocean. It was cool because where the runoff hit the ocean, there was a swirling vortex of water going in every direction. The seagulls kept trying to swim in it and just getting swept out to sea. Seagulls are smart!

After taking pictures with the sea life, which you can see in the Photographs section, we got back on the road toward Florence, Oregon. We were planning on checking out the sea lion caves. The lady told us it was a deal for ten dollars today because the sea lions weren’t there due to the tide. So we decided paying 20 dollars total to NOT see any sea lions was a waste of money.

We headed south.

We stopped briefly at another casino along the coast, and by briefly I mean like probably 7 minutes. This casino was quiet and unfriendly, so we left and headed down Californee way (that is for you, Adam).

The California border had what looked like a big toll booth thing, so we pulled over to try to find money. When we pulled up, the guy said “Welcome to California” and asked us if we had any fruits. We told them we didn’t. So we were in. Agricultural inspection is a lot better than toll booths.

Crescent City seemed like a good place to stop. We pulled into Wal-Mart, got out our grill, and cooked up some hot dogs. We deemed it our “California Feast”, and in spite of the surprisingly cold weather, had ourselves a good time. Since this Wal-Mart closes at 10:00, we couldn’t stay the night there. At about 2:00, we headed down the street to Safeway, which is open all hours of the night. We charged our phones in the raisins section and slept in the parking lot.

Cool fact about Safeway: the produce section has a timer which makes thunder and lightning sounds as it waters the fruits and veggies. It was startling the first couple times, but then I realized what the hell was going on, and it was cool.

Now that we're in California, here's a quick analysis of Oregon: the coast was amazing. We kept hearing how beautiful it was, so we knew it would be a pretty view, but we both thought of it more as a delay before we get to California. We ended up enjoying it way more than we expected. It was difficult to pick whether to look out into the ocean to our right or into the thick forest to the left. It was so thick that even though it was 3:00 p.m., it was night time in the forest. You couldn't see more than 5 feet in. Another thing we learned is that in Oregon, the freeways are for racing. Oregon drivers do not like to go the speed limit. We also got tailgated a lot. It was nothing like driving back home in Coeur d'Alene/Post Falls, Idaho, where drivers abide by the 3-second rule.

We woke up and took some pictures with Uncle Scott, Aunt Kim, Boh, and Charlie. We were going to head to the coast, but didn’t want to drive in the intense monsoon-style rain going on. So we killed some time in the Tualatin Safeway. We got some burritos and walked across the street to use Chevron’s microwave. After the rain had subsided, we hit the road.

We made a stop in McMinnville to see the biggest plane in the world, the Spruce Goose. I had seen it on the Travel Channel, and we decided to go check it out solely for the purpose of being able to say we’d seen the biggest plane in the world. The museum was closed when we arrived, but we did get a great view through the front window, which makes up the entire front of the building. The plane was even more impressive in person, which really gives a better perspective of the magnitude of the plane. It really looks bigger in person. It was amazing.

We left McMinnville with the coastal town of Lincoln City punched into our GPS. With about 25 miles to go, we stopped at the Spirit Mountain Casino to get out and stretch our legs a bit. We scored some free apples and bananas in the poker room and played some hide and seek, which was intense in the casino atmosphere. 

We got to Lincoln City around 9:00. We parked the car at the beach access and heard the roaring waves as soon as we exited the car. I had forgotten the sound of the beach since my last time out on the coast. It was very exciting. We walked down the beach and were in awe of the powerful waves crashing onto the serene shore. The only light was from the million dollar homes that lined the beach. It was a pretty awesome setting. It was enthralling to think that everyone in the country was on one side of us, and in the other direction was nothing but water for thousands of miles. It might have been one of those “you had to be there moments”, but the hour at the beach in Lincoln City, Oregon was borderline one of the best hours of my life, and I’m sure Forrest felt the same way. 

We went into town to a convenient store. I asked some younger looking people if they knew of anything fun going on in town. They said there were no clubs or anything, but invited us to come hang out with them for a while. The guys were Travis and Chris, and the girl was Liss. They were really friendly, so we followed them to their hotel. We hung out with them for a while and told them all about our trip. They were really cool and gave us a bunch of chips before we left.

Eventually we stopped at a Safeway in Newport, Oregon to brush our teeth and get ready for sleeping. We watched “Finding Nemo” and got sone sleep in the parking lot.

When I got up, I looked at pictures of family and friends back home on the computer. After ten days, neither one of us is homesick or depressed or something. It does suck to think of not seeing our friends for a long time, but we are keeping in touch with them so far. We text them quite a bit. If you are reading this and are a friend of ours, throw us a text some time.

Aunt Kim brought home donuts for breakfast. Daisy the pug dog came into our sleeping area and started freakin’ out. I gave the last piece of my donut to Daisy the pug dog. She annihilated it pretty quick and did what looked like a dance. We’ll call it Daisy’s donut dance. Uncle Scott was nice enough to take us for a drive and lunch at McDonald’s. On the way, he told us stories and places to go along the coastal drive upon which we’re embarking tomorrow. While at McDonald’s, I realized I’ve looked like a hobo for the last week or so. I’ve worn the same pajama pants and flannel coat combo for quite some time now, but it’s all good because we’re on a road trip. 

When we got back to the house, I found the book The Sun Also Rises. We read it in sophomore English class, and I liked it so I read some of it today. I still can hear Mr. Johnson’s voice reading it to us. Mr. Johnson is a good teacher.

Aunt Kim brought home pizza for us all to enjoy. Forrest and I picked out more songs to put on cd’s for the drive. I made some arrangements with my mom’s friend Kelliane from the San Francisco area for somewhere to sleep early next week.

We are going to watch the South Park and go to sleep earlier than usual because we’ve got plenty of driving to do tomorrow. We’re going down the Oregon coast.

We watched “Napoleon Dynamite” again when we woke up and said goodbye to Nikkolas around noon. He gave us some fruit snacks for the road. It was raining pretty hard when we left. It was a short ride to Beaverton, Oregon to see our good friend Nick Buckenburger, who is in town visiting his girlfriend. We watched “I Love 2003” and “I Love 2004” on VH1.

During a commercial break I said “I miss Taco Bell”, and Forrest was like “let’s go there”. I was like “hell yeah“. Nick thought it was a good idea as well, so the three of us walked a total of 1.2 miles to Taco Bell. It was really nice to get some Taco Bell in my system. We were all having withdrawals. Nick’s girlfriend, who plays softball for Portland State Univ., met us there and gave us a ride home. That was really awesome because it was raining and nobody likes walking in the rain.

When we got to my Uncle Scott and Aunt Kim’s house, we relaxed for a while. It was nice for me to see family that I had not seen in a while. Uncle Scott gave us some tips for places to go and sights to see along the OR/CA coast. Forrest and I listened to some music and played video games on my cousin Charles’ Xbox360. Then we made up our own workout routine which consists of a stick and resistance exercises. We decided we want to stay in shape the best we can on the trip, which we thought would be hard without a gym membership.

Another cool event of today was contacting our friend Adam Lippert, who said he's going to try to meet up with us at some point on our trip for a few days. That would be intense. Adam has been a best friend to both of us for many years, and it would be great to have him join us. We miss his basement quite a bit. Adam: holla.

Woke up around noon at Nikkolas’ house. Then we drove over to the baseball field for Nikkolas’ baseball practice warm-up. Forrest and I brought a football to play catch, but we saw there was a lush forest around the field. The trees were all uprooted and surrounded by swamps and stuff. It was definitely pretty awesome. So we decided to go explore by climbing around the trees. It was intense. There are pictures in the Photographs section. It may look like Forrest stood up on the farthest tree and I merely sat down, but I actually was not only standing but also doing cool tricks and flips on the tree. There just is not a picture to prove it. But I definitely stood up.

Nikkolas drove us to the local skate park so Forrest could get his skate on. Neither Nikkolas nor I am a skater, so we played catch with the football. It felt good to toss around the ol’ pigskin. It’s been a while. It was also plenty of running, which I’ve been needing to do for a while. When we got tired of running and throwing, we just sat and talked. It was nice to get caught up and here about his new life and everything. We went over to the skate park to watch Forrest skate and took some sweet pics, which are not in the Photographs section. I’ll try to get them on soon.

We went over to Nikkolas’ friend Frank’s apartment and watched the television. Then we came back to Nikkolas’ and watched the new episode of South Park, which did not disappoint. His friends Monica and Cindy came over for a while. When they left, the three of us played music and basically just chilled together like back in the good old days. Nikkolas had class in the morning, so he went to bed. Forrest and I watched “Napoleon Dynamite” and played Fuzion Frenzy on Xbox 'til 4:30 a.m.

Took a quiz about Earth facts on the internet. Learned plenty of cool stuff. We had Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. Anthony showed me some of Alex’s music, which is really impressive because they’re very talented. Forrest and I watched “Bourne Identity”. We played with the dogs for a while too.

We got a call from our good pal Nikkolas Reinhardt from Aberdeen. He plays baseball for Grays Harbor College. We made arrangements to stay with him tonight. We made sure to get the house cleaned up before his Aunt Mary got home.

When she got home, she started creating dinner. She made salmon, pasta, and corn. It was amazing. After dinner, we packed up the car, took some pictures, and rolled out.

It was about an hour drive to Aberdeen. We got to apartment 202 and knocked on the door. Forrest called him and found out he was at his friend Frank’s apartment, so we went there. Frank and Andy were there, and they were both cool dudes. Forrest and I are learning that there are cool people all over the place, and that It’s fun to meet new people.

We watched the movie “Phone Booth” and the other guys played Halo. When we went back to Nikkolas’ place, I had a chicken BBQ pizza. Nikkolas’ friend works at some food place, so he gets as many boxes as he wants for free. It was amazing, but I had to take the onions off because onions are gross.

Woke up at 9. Forrest woke up at 12. Forrest’s aunt, Mary, informed me the chair unfolds into a bed type of thing. I wish I knew that two nights ago. When Forrest got up, she made us blueberry muffins, which were off the hook. Then we ate some pomagranits, which are the most intricate fruit on the planet. His cousin Anthony hung out with us for a while today.

Forrest and I went down to the water again to try out fishing. The sea life was pretty dull today. Saw a total of one (1) shrimp, a lot of crabs, and zero (0) fish. So overall, our fishing trip was a failure, but it was cool to be outside and the extreme silence of the bay was the most relaxing setting of all time.

When we got back we watched the dogs wrestle, which was really cool. They looked so mad, but they are actually really good friends, so they didn’t hurt each other at all. Forrest’s aunt Mary had us go out in the front yard to pick apples for apple pie off the tree. We threw the gross worm/bruise apples down the hill and into the forest. Forrest got a mullet wig from the garage, which was really cool because mullets are awesome. We played basketball in the driveway.

We found his cousin Alex’s weight room in the garage. It was nice to lift again because we haven’t lifted in a while. Alex got home during our weight session and told me to try wall push-ups. I did, and ended up landing on my head and rolling into the weight set.

Next was dinner time. We ate the chicken and rice from last night, which was once again really awesome. Then we had cheeseburgers. I put chili on mine, which was a wise decision. Then as if dinner couldn’t get any better, we were reminded of the apple pie waiting for us for later. We had to wait for it to cool down, so Forrest, Alex, and I went into the living room. Alex did his homework like a responsible student. We all watched UFC.

We put in “Night at the Roxbury” and played a game where we all laid on our backs and threw a ball up in the air and let it fall wherever it landed. The rule was we couldn’t flinch or move and had to let the ball hit us. So basically it was really stupid, but more fun than it sounds.　

Alex has school tomorrow, so he had to go to bed. So Forrest and I watched “Napoleon Dynamite”, which is a great movie. It’s cool because it takes place in Idaho, probably one of the top thirty states.

Forrest and I had a long talk about life in general. We are realizing now that the first phase of our life is over. We’re pretty much on our own now, and by pretty much I mean absolutely. We talked about how its going to be weird to slowly slip out of dependence on our parents.

We went out to get something from the car around 1:00 and saw a deer eating the leaves from the apple tree. His aunt and uncle were telling us that the deer completely destroy that tree every time they take the fence down, which we did today while apple picking. We came out about an hour later, and we’re pretty sure we saw/heard a bear. It was a black ball rolling around off in the distance. It was really loud and sounded heavier than a deer.

Shelton 11/1/09

Woke up around 11, and for some reason was the most tired I’ve ever been in my life. Took a shower and came into the kitchen for amazing pancakes that Forrest’s aunt made. Then Forrest’s cousins, Alex and Anthony, and their friends, Clayton and Sean, lead us down to the water. It was a few minutes walk.

We were going shark fishing. I have never been fishing before, so I spent the first fifteen minutes trying to untangle my line. I also hooked a couple rocks.

We saw a dead shark, which was cool because I’ve never seen a shark in the wilderness. It also smelled really bad. We saw a bunch of crabs and shrimp, which we caught with our hands and then put back in the water eventually. Alex put one of them onto my ear like an earring. There is a picture in the Photographs section.

When we got back to the house, we watched the Packers/Vikings game. Forrest’s cousin Alex showed us some stuff on the drums. Forrest’s aunt made chicken, rice, and veggies meal, which was awesome. We looked at a slideshow picture thing of Forrest’s recent family functions, which was cool.

Forrest, Alex, and I went in their hot tub. We talked about school, our trip, careers, which animals could beat other animals in a fight, weather, internet content, and just life in general. It was a good talk. We had fudge cookies when we got inside. Alex has school tomorrow, so it’s just me and Forrest now. He’s playin the gee-tar and I’m gonna try out the drums.

We’re having a really good time staying here, and they have the two nicest, quietest dogs of all time.