June 10, 2004: Hourly Pictures

We woke up around 8:30am at our motel in Willows, CA, had a quick "continental breakfast" (the best aspect of which was that it was free), and then drove north on I-5 to Olympia, Washington [ed. note 6/27/04: little did we know at the time that this was to be the best free hotel breakfast we'd get on the entire trip]. Today we experienced something rare for Californians: we drove through an entire state from south to north in one day. Odd.

Probably the most frustrating part of the day was that apparently Evergreen, some college here in Olympia, was having their graduation this weekend and thus almost every hotel room in the city was booked. However, we eventually found a relatively cheap one, so we were happy.

What follows are our hourly pictures from the day.


06-10-04: 0900 



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06-10-04: 1400 (now in Oregon) 


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06-10-04: 2200 

Picture uploading

I'm going to be posting more pictures from our trip in the next few hours, and while I'm doing this individual pictures may appear for brief periods of time before being removed. I apologize for any confusion.

[Update 3:00pm: I'm finished uploading pictures for the day, and am off to explore the wilds of Portland.]

In Portland, OR

I'm now in Portland, Oregon where I'm visiting a friend from college for a few days. My friend's at work today, so my SO and I are spending the afternoon at the Tualatin library, where they have free wireless access (among other things).

We've had some great experiences in the last few days, many of which will get their own posts when I have time to write more. In brief, however, we've visited the Hoh rain forest, the Makah Museum in Neah Bay, and Cape Flattery (the most northwestern point in the continental US). Afterwards we drove down the western coast of Washington on highway 101, which was beautifully forested for much of the drive. In fact, we've now driven on every mile of highway 101 in the state of Washington.

Forks, WA

I'm writing from the public library in Forks, Washington, the first net access I've had since Monday. We had a grand time in Vancouver: we went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, walked to Chinatown, drove around Stanley Park, shopped at the Granville Island Marketplace, visited VanDusen Botanical Gardens, had some great meals out (Italian and then Malaysian food), and even did our laundry. We then drove south to Bellingham, Washington where we stayed one night before heading here to Forks.

Forks, Washington is on the Olympic Peninsula, west of Port Angeles. We're staying here primarily so we can visit the Hoh rain forest, which is supposed to be quite lush as it gets around 160 inches of precipitation a year. Tomorrow we're hoping to head to the Makah Museum in Neah Bay before heading south to meet up with a friend in Oregon.

Unfortunately my laptop won't connect to the library's network, so I can't upload any pictures today. Sorry.

June 9, 2004: Hourly Pictures

Today we left home and drove north. We weren't even sure we'd leave home today, but we did and planned to only drive a few hours. Turns out we ended up stopping at 10:30pm in Willows, CA, about an hour's drive north of Sacramento.

Part of the way up we decided to start taking pictures every hour to show where we were. We snapped a picture on the hour every hour; most of these were taken at ~75mph, with some of them at night, so you'll hopefully excuse the poor quality.

We started taking pictures at 6pm, just after we'd passed Kettleman City, CA.


June 9, 2004: 1800 


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June 9, 2004: 2300 


June 9, 2004: 2300