Salt Lake City and Portland!

It's been over a week since we reached Portland, but we've been too busy/lazy to finish the blog.

Last Wednesday (July 13th), we left Vail, Colorado and set off towards Salt Lake City, Utah. We visited Sylvan Lake State park in the morning in Eagle, CO but ran into a a bit of car trouble. After a two hour delay, we got back on the road towards SLC.

The drive through Colorado and Utah was the most scenic of the trip so far:

Finally we got to Salt Lake City and made our way over to James's apartment. The three of us went to eat at a place called Squatters, a local brewery/restaurant. It was delicious and we enjoyed some nice local beers before calling it a night because we had driven the whole day and had a 12 hour drive ahead of us the next day. It was fun seeing James, but just like in Cincinnati, we forgot to take pictures in SLC.

In the morning, we woke up and took off on our final leg of the trip! We had about 12 hours worth of driving to do, so we got started early. The rest of Utah and Idaho was uneventful, but we stopped in Boise to go see the Boise State football field. I wanted to try to get on that blue field, but surprisingly, it was completely locked up and we could not get in. If Florida and other SEC teams don't lock up their stadiums, why would a team like Boise State do so? Since we couldn't get inside, I had to settle for a gator chomping picture in front of the stadium.

At last, we made it to Oregon, our new home state! The first half of the drive was alright, but when we reached the Columbia River, which runs along the Oregon/Washington border, the rest of the way was breathtaking. The pictures we took don't do it justice, but this was the most beautiful part of the country in my opinion. Cara liked Colorado more, but this whole drive was right along the river with mountains on both sides and it made the drive pretty fun.

 

Finally, at about 8:30pm on Thursday, July 14th, we got to Portland! Our first stop was Voo Doo Doughnut! It was everything we had heard about and more! We got way too many doughnuts and brought them over to Jose and Steve, who are graciously hosting us in their guest bedroom until we move into our apartment.

Thanks for following us on our trip across America, we hope you enjoyed the pictures and stories and we will miss you all a lot. Pretty soon we will have an apartment and we would love to have visitors so let us know if you want to come visit the Pacific Northwest.

Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado

Sunday night, we stayed at Mike Canada's apartment on the north side of Chicago. On Monday morning, we woke up early, had a delicious breakfast at Stella's Diner and dropped Nikki off at the bus station.

It was time to say goodbye to Chicago and we started the long journey west. The rest of Illinois was uneventful and so was Iowa until we stopped at a great place called Wilton Candy Kitchen, which is an old fashioned ice cream parlor that has been open since 1860! In fact, it is the oldest ongoing Ice Cream Parlor in the world. I found it in the travel book I bought for the trip, Off The Beaten Path, and it was certainly worth stopping for. I had the maple pecan ice cream and Cara had a caramel malt, both which were served to us by the owners, an older couple named George and Thelma. They were both excited to hear that we had come all the way from Florida and were stopping there.

Then it was back to driving through cornfields for a while, until we stopped at Smashburger (a recommendation from Seth) for lunch in Des Moines. We had never been to one before and I was pleasantly surprised even with the good reviews I'd heard. I would say it is comparable to Five Guys but with a few more options and the burger I got was amazing.

Then we got back in the car and I found and booked a hotel in Omaha while Cara drove. When we got there, we brought our stuff in and relaxed a bit until we got picked up to go to dinner by Cara's friend Stephanie and her fiance Chris. We ate a sports bar called Old Chicago and had a great time hanging out with them.

The next morning we drove all the way through Nebraska. We drove past a truck carrying a few PODS... possibly ours on it's way to Portland!

We stopped for lunch at a Mexican place in North Platte called La Hacienda.

After lunch we continued driving with the goal of reaching Denver. However, when we got to Denver, neither of us were tired or hungry so we decided to push through and stay in Vail for the night. Vail is a little ski town about 2 hours west of Denver and it was a nice place to stop. We were right in the mountains and the elevation was just over 8,000 ft... a little different than Florida. We may have gotten a little carried away with taking pictures of the mountains, here are a few:

The next morning it was off to Salt Lake City, Utah and I will write about that in the next post.

Dave Matthews Band Caravan

When I accepted the job in Portland, we knew that we would have to drive across the country. We figured we would do it as quickly as possible and just drive as much as we could each day until we got there. However, when we found out about the Dave Matthews Band Caravan show in Chicago, we decided to make a trip out of it and that's how this whole long roadtrip got started.

Caravan Day 1

Friday morning (July 8th), we woke up at 6am to drive from De Pere, Wisconsin to Chicago. We picked up Nikki in the city and checked into our hotel, which was actually right over the state border in Indiana, but very close to the venue.

The show was everything and more I could have hoped for. It was set on a huge empty lot with three stages. There was a ferris wheel, a giant merch tent and many food and beer stands all over the lot. There were also Brita water stations (which actually created huge lines) for people to fill up their water bottles with clean drinking water.

The first band we saw was Blind Pilot, one of Nikki's favorites. They put on a great set and both Cara and I loved it. Afterwards, they were signing autographs and chatting with fans so we talked to them a bit about Portland (they are from there). Cara and Nikki got a picture with the bassist.

For the rest of the afternoon, we explored the fairgrounds and also saw Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Ray Lamontagne and O.A.R. before heading over to the main stage for our first Dave Matthews Band set of the weekend. Over the course of the weekend, Dave played 3 full sets of about 3 hours plus an acoustic set with Tim Reynolds. It's hard looking back to say which set was the best, because we got to experience 10 hours of amazing music (without any repeated songs by the way).

We tried to meet up with Landyn, James and Jake after they showed up around the time O.A.R. came on, but with the huge crowds and some drunken confusion, it didn't happen. We just met them back at the hotel and decided to stick together the next day.

Caravan Day 2

On Saturday (July 9th), we all got to the concert at around 2pm. Our friend Ben who lives in Chicago came for this day to hang out with us so we met up with him right away. Saturday was the day with the best lineup (in my opinion). We got to see Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, a Dave & Tim acoustic set, G. Love & Special Sauce, Ben Folds, Kid Cudi and another amazing set by DMB.

Caravan Day 3

The final day of the show was the most mellow for us. James and Landyn left to go home in the morning. We checked out of our hotel and went to the north side of Chicago (with Nikki and Jake) to have breakfast with Mike Canada and leave our stuff at his place because we were staying there for the night. We had breakfast at a great Jewish deli called The Bagel. Then we casually made it over to the show to see David Gray, The Flaming Lips and finally DMB for the last set of the weekend.

The Flaming Lips were performing Dark Side of the Moon with some Wizard of Oz mixed in and it was a ridiculous and awesome set.

The DMB set on Sunday night was probably the best of the whole weekend. A few highlights were when they played Gravedigger, Ants Marching and covers of Sweet Emotion and All Along the Watchtower.

All in all, I think it was the best concert I have ever been to and I have been to a lot of concerts. It was really a great cap to a great summer. The rest of the roadtrip is now mostly long days of driving, but we'll be sure to keep everyone posted with the places we see along the way.