03/27/04

Diary:

I've been keeping a log of our travels and will place it here (hopefully updated once in awhile).  I'm an engineer, not a writer, so it may not be the most exciting read.  I fell behind a little (about 10 days) on this and am just catching up now.  There may be a couple days in here that aren't the most exciting to read 

03/25/04: Thursday

Not much going on today.  Jenni had to go to school, so Dave and I went into Austin.  We stopped at a dive shop, but after talking to the owner, we weren’t really interested in diving the lake around Austin.  We eventually made our way back to Jenni’s, where she made us supper.  After supper, we went to a movie.  The theatre had one of the greatest ideas ever, the served food, as well as beer.  After a couple beers, desert, and watching Dawn of the Dead, we went back to Jenni’s for the night.

03/24/04: Wednesday

We woke up kind of early (it’s hard to sleep in he car, especially when the sun rises and it gets to be 80 in the car).  After driving the couple miles left, we got to Carlsbad Caverns.  The walkway through the caverns started out on the surface, beginning at the natural entrance to the caves.  We walked down through the entrance and past the bat cave, were thousands of bats exit every night.  The first trail looped down through the caves for about a mile, eventually ending up about 750 feet below the surface.  We then took a second trail, about another mile long, and checked out some more of the caverns.  There were tons of formations and lots of open areas.  The digital camera didn’t take the greatest pictures in the dark, so I’ll have to wait and see if any pictures from my camera turned out.  The caverns were great and there were also other tours you could go on, some involving crawling through caves, up slippery slopes, with no lighting other than the flashlights you carried.  When we finally made it back up to the surface, we drove some more (Texas gets boring fast) and made it to Austin, were we stayed with Jenni.

03/23/04: Tuesday

Lots of driving planned for today.  The next couple of days we’ll be making our way across to Texas.  We started out in San Diego with some fish and shrimp tacos (which are good, just kind of a different idea).  After leaving San Diego, we headed for Carlsbad Caverns, in New Mexico.  We drove the whole day, starting from about 1 hour east of San Diego to were we stopped for the night, there isn’t much scenery.  We made it to the Carlsbad area around 3 in the morning, then tried to find a place to camp for the night.  The park we stopped at was packed, so we ended up sleeping in the car at a picnic area a couple miles from Carlsbad caverns.

03/22/04: Monday

Since Nate had to work today, we hung out with Kate for most of the morning.  We drove down to Coronado’s and walked along the beachfront area and checked out some of the shops along there.  After gyro’s for lunch (not as good as Santana’s gyros), we drove around the island some more, then back to the apartment.  That night, we decided to grill out on the beach and picked up some steak and fish.  We made supper on the beach, then Kate and I went swimming (Dave and Nate wimped out).  After swimming, someone came up with the great idea of burying me in sand, so we did that for awhile.  When we finally got tired, we went back to the apartment.  The beach was great- I don’t think I would ever get sick of hanging out there.  That night, I slept out on their porch, in the hammock.  San Diego is great– no bugs, beaches all over, good temperatures year round (except for all the clouds when we were there), the only problem with it is all the traffic. 

03/21/04: Sunday

Our plan for today was to take a dive boat out to the Coronado’s islands, somewhere in Mexican waters.  There are lot’s of seals in this area and they like to swim up to divers.  When we got to the boat landing, we found out that the charter had been canceled for the day, due to high wind and big waves.  We decided to do a dive at La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya) beach instead.  There’s a canyon there, that starts around 40 feet and drops down to over 900 feet (our max depth was only around 80 feet).  We made our way out to the start of it and swam around the walls of it.  There were some big crabs (around 3 feet wide, with their legs), some fish, some eggs (maybe squid), as well as a couple octopus (the first time I’ve seen any).  The octopus were shy and crept back into holes in the wall whenever they noticed us.  After the dive, Dave and I headed to San Diego to stay with Nate and Kate and Tadd went back to Vegas.  Nate and Katie had an apartment a little outside of San Diego, we stopped by there for awhile, then went out for some good mexican food (even though Dave’s picky and doesn’t like it).  After supper, we went back to their apartment and hung out and played darts for awhile, then went to bed. 

03/20/04: Saturday

Our destination for today was Laguna beach, where I was going to make my 100^th dive.  We stopped at the dive shop for fills and directions, then got ready for the dive.  For our first dive, we were planning on heading out to a reef wall and swimming around that.  This was our first dive in any type of surf.  We took a compass heading, dropped down and were planning on swimming underwater to the reef, but with the surf pushing us all around, we got a little lost.  We saw a lot of sandy bottom, with sand dollars everywhere, as well as a few flounders and some rays of some type.  We eventually got bored and surfaced, then noticed how far off course we were.  We made our way (on the surface, to avoid getting lost again), over to the reef and dropped down there.  We didn’t have a lot of air left, but we saw a lot more life.  While we were waiting for the tanks to be filled (I was a busy dive site and a busy dive shop), I walked around and looked at all the life in the tide pool area.  There were sea anemones all over, tons of barnacles, the occasional crab (well camouflaged), some smaller fish in the pools, some hermit crabs, and birds.  After the tanks were filled, we started our second dive of the day.  This time, we swam right out to the reef and dropped down on top of it.  We followed the wall out a ways, which was covered with anemones, sea urchins, starfish, and other fish swimming around.  We swam through a couple valley like areas, with rocks going up on either side and about a 20 foot wide passage to swim through.  After the dive, we drove down to Del Mar for the night.

03/19/04: Friday

We woke up a little earlier and got a dive in before the ferry left.  It was mostly the same stuff as the previous dive, some lobsters, kelp, a lot of big rocks, but we also saw a big crab that was hiding under some rocks.  We got out and made it back to the ferry in time, then eventually made it back to LA.  Our plan for the night was to meet up with Will again, then go to a taping of the Jimmy Kimmel show.  We eventually made it down to Hollywood and waited in line for the show.  After waiting in line for almost 2 hours, we eventually got in the theatre.  Our seats weren’t the greatest, there were camera’s in front of us for most of the show, so I don’t think we were even on TV.  It was still a good time, although I don’t know if I would ever wait that long to do it again.  After the show was over, we headed back to Will’s place, where we met up with Tadd, who was diving with us for the next couple days.

03/18/04: Thursday

We woke up a little hung over today, ready (kind of) to do some diving.  Luckily, whenever we dive and decide to go out early, it never ends up being early, so we have plenty of time to recover.  We walked back to the dive shop, dragging our tanks another ¼ mile or so to get them filled.  After talking to the owners, we decided to dive the Valiant, a 144 foot, 444 ton, boat that went down in the 1930’s, in around 80 feet of water, with $75,000 worth of jewelry that still hasn’t been recovered (all numbers are approximate).  W filled our tanks, had lunch, got a permit from the harbor master (it was outside the preserve and they have to make sure no ones driving over you when you’re diving), and made our way to the site.  After making a long surface swim (I hate surface swims), we dropped down to the site and landed right on top of the boat (we were given directions, but not exact).  It wasn’t quite what I was expecting- the boat had been down there a while and wasn’t preserved perfectly (at least not as good as Superior, the only other large shipwreck we had dove).  We started off next to the bow of the boat and swam around the structure.  Most of it was scattered along the bottom, with a lot of life growing and swimming around it.  We then made our way along some more of it, where there were a lot of holes and structures to explore.  When we started to get low on air, we made our way back to shore and got ready for a second dive.  Our second dive of the day was at the same park as the previous day, but we decided to check out some different areas.  We headed out to a buoy and dropped down to about 70 feet, where we found wreckage from a sailboat, as well as a glass bottom boat (both probably in the 25-50 foot length range).  Once again, there was a lot of life, including a big sheepshead fish, probably at least 50 pounds, who followed us around for a good part of the dive.  After swimming through some more kelp and some cliffs, we headed back.  We went out for supper, but other than that, there was nothing going on in the city.  If anyone ever goes out to Catalina, either go their for a day, or go there with you’re significant other. 

03/17/04: Wednesday

We took off for the Catalina Island ferry and drove to where we thought it should be.  I’d been there before and kind of knew the way, but when we got there, we found that the ferry had moved, so after a slight detour, we made it (right on time) and eventually arrived in Catalina.  The ferry to the island was only a passenger ferry, Avalon, the main (I think only) town (if you can call it that) was really small and no one brought over cars.  The locals there drove golf carts and there was an occasional car, but we found out later that it’s around a 10 year waiting list in order to get a car on the island.  The last time I was out there, I had all my gear in a rolling suitcase, which broke almost immediately after getting off the boat.  Scuba gear is heavy, plus we brought our tanks and weights this time, so we had somewhere around 100 pounds of gear.  To avoid having to drag it around with a broken wheel, Dave and I both bought some nice, expensive dive bags, with wheels.  Dave’s wheel broke about half way to the motel (about a ¼ mile walk).  It wasn’t broke completely, so he put it back together and we finally made it there, exhausted from dragging everything around.  After checking into the motel and resting a little, we made our way to the dive site.  Most of the diving on Catalina is either done off of charter boats, or at the underwater preserve, called Casino Point.  We dove Casino Point the whole time we were out there.  At around 5:00, we finally made our way into the water.  It was starting to get a little dark (it was cloudy the whole time we were out there, I think the clouds are following us wherever we go), so this dive ended up being almost a night dive.  We jumped in and swam through the giant kelp forests, with the kelp being anywhere from 5 to 50 feet tall.  There was ton’s of fish, since the area was a preserve and nothing could be taken.  We swam around and through the kelp, saw some huge rock and cliff formations, a couple lobsters, a lot of bright orange Girabaltar (probably the wrong spelling) fish, then eventually made our way back to shore.  Since tonight was St. Patrick’s day, we decided to go out to the bars (not that we needed an excuse).  We figured that since it was spring break and Catalina Island is a big tourist spot, there would be a lot going on.  We were wrong.  There was almost nothing going on, but we went to a couple bars anyways and had a bunch of beer (although no one had any green beer). 

03/16/04: Tuesday

Our plan for the next couple days was to take a ferry out to Catalina Island, camp for a couple nights, and do a bunch of diving.  Since we didn’t get going until fairly late, and hadn’t planned anything at all, our plans changed slightly, for the better.  We booked a ferry for the next day and decided to stay in motels instead.  We drove to LA and met up and stayed with Will York.  When we made it to LA, we went out to Hollywood and did some sightseeing.  Will knew someone who owned a rental studio, Line 200 and Line 204 Studios.  We took a tour of those and saw their soundstage and rental setup, had supper, then called it a night.

03/15/04: Monday

Finally, some more diving.  Dave and I took a charter boat on Lake Mead to do some diving.  We met at the dive shop in the morning, then drove out to Lake Mead.  After loading up our gear, we headed to the dive site.  Our first location was a valley, about ¼ mile from the Hoover Dam.  We geared up, then got in.  There wasn’t a lot to see on the bottom – mostly just rocks and some fish, it looked a lot like the Crosby iron mines.  After hitting 103 feet deep, we made out was back up.  Our next dive was a 55 foot houseboat the was sunk in around 70 feet of water.  We dropped down on it and checked it out.  There wasn’t a lot to it – the cabin was still together, although we didn’t penetrate it, plus we could see the engines.  After about half an hour, we were getting a little cold and a little bored and were ready to surface.  We made our way back to shore and took some pictures of the thousands of carp that were surrounding the docks of the marina.  We spent the night at Annie and Tadd’s house and got everything ready for the trip to Catalina Island the next day.

03/14/04: Sunday

Not much exciting today.  A buffet, some good mexican food, and visiting with relatives. 

03/13/04: Saturday

Annie and Tadd were getting married today, so we all got ready and left for the hotel it was at, in the mountains about half an hour north of Vegas.  After the wedding and the supper, we headed back to the casino’s.  Dave, my uncle Ralph, my cousin Janine, her husband Tony, my sister Renae, and me went out walking on the strip.  We were getting sick of gambling, so we walked around a lot.  We found the best place to get free casino beers: the TV areas in the sports betting lounge.  They just assumed we were sitting there watching and betting on sports, so they kept bringing us free drinks the whole time we were hanging out there.

03/12/04: Friday

Didn’t wake up quite as early today.  After getting up, my dad headed down to the casino and won $800 on the slots, then we headed over to see some my grandma and aunt at the Frontier casino in Henderson, a little outside of Vegas.  We hung out there for awhile, then headed over to Annie and Tadd’s house for a pre-wedding party.  We ate a lot of food and met a bunch of people.  After that was over, we headed back to Circus Circus for some more drinking and gambling.  After my dad and uncle fell asleep early, Dave and I headed out to the strip again.  We walked around and lost money for awhile, then I stuck $20 in a video poker machine, somehow messed up the betting, and after thinking I was going to lose it all, ended up winning $120 (the first time I’ve ever won anything close to that much).  We had some more free beers, then headed back to the motel.  Dave headed to bed, but I decided to stay down and lose some more money.  Instead of losing money, I won another $120 and had some more free casino beers.  It was a good night of gambling (sorry if it seems like I’m bragging about winning, but I never win) that once again ended around 4:00.

03/11/04: Thursday

We woke up early, since we had to be in Las Vegas before it got too late.  After packing everything back into the car, we started on the 8 hour drive to Las Vegas.  Nothing very exciting happened on the drive- just some nice scenery, a lot of speeding through the desert roads, and getting ripped of paying $2.50 per gallon for gas in the desert outside of Vegas.  After making it to Vegas, we stopped by Annie and Tadd’s house and dropped off some gear, since we planned on staying in Vegas for a couple days.  After my parents, brother, sister, and uncle arrived, we went and checked into the Circus Circus Casino on the Vegas strip.  Circus Circus wasn’t on the main area of the strip, but wasn’t too far from everything.  After losing some money to the slot machines, Dave and I headed out and walked around the strip.  When we were done losing money, drinking beer, and walking around, we finally made it back around 4 in the morning.

03/10/04: Wednesday

Woke up this morning with cold feet again, but other than that I slept fine in the somewhat damp tent.  We broke camp, then continued south.  Once again, we got to race up and down 25 miles of winding roads.  After making it to interstate, we had an easy drive to San Francisco.  We stopped right before the Golden Gate Bridge and walked around awhile.  Battery Point was set up overlooking the bridge- an old defense barracks and gunnery area from the early/mid 1900’s.  After some pictures and hiking, we continued on the scenic road.  Eventually, winding our way back around, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.  After making our way through the outskirts of San Francisco, we arrived at a beach.  We were thinking of diving, but the water here didn’t seem much warmer than Seattle, plus we had to meet Tom and Naiwon later for supper.  We took another scenic road (partly due to Dave’s slightly misguided directions), then worked our way to Vacaville (?).  After driving by the prison where Naiwon works and the air force base were Tom works, we stopped for some Korean food.  After a big supper, we headed back to Tom and Naiwon’s for the night.

03/09/04: Tuesday

For the second day in a row, this day was better than the last.  We woke up at the hostel, with some fresh coffee waiting for us.  We talked to the burnt out hippy couple running the place for awhile, as well as to a judge (probably at least in his 40’s) who had just quite his job as a judge and lawyer and who was just traveling.  After showering and packing up, we headed south.  We decided to check out a bunch of giant redwoods along the way.  The lady at the hostel recommended a couple routes, which we followed.  We started off with the “Big Tree”, which, as the name implies, was a big tree, a redwood one.  We took some pictures and walked around, checking out the many other massive redwoods in the area.  After our fill of pictures, we continued south.  The hostel lady told us of a cool road to take, with a nice view, but that required a stream crossing in the car.  Since my car had handled numerous Crosby trips and was still in one piece, we decided to give it a try (I got to drive).  We drove along a narrow, winding, gravel road, with tons of redwoods all around.  After about 5 miles, we reached the stream crossing, which, although fun, was much easier than I had expected (the bumpy, pit-hole filled roads were much more of a challenge).  We continued onward, through a second stream crossing, then reached a parking lot.  There was a hiking path to try, but nothing looked very exciting and we both were lazy, so we tuned around.  On our way back, we shot some pictures of some elk, as well as some pictures of my “fording” the river, Oregon Trail style.  Eventually, we made it back to the main road (199?) and continued south.  Our next detour was a road called the “Avenue of the Giants”, which was filled with giant redwoods.  It was a fun road to drive, with a lot of curves and recommended slow speed signs, which we ignored as much as possible.  We stopped at a few of the larger, tourist trap trees, then got off the main road at a state park.   There were supposed to be a couple larger trees here, and after about a 10 mile drive (it seemed to last forever), we arrived at the parking lot.  The trees were across a river/stream, with a “seasonal bridge” shown on the map.  Since we were visiting before tourist season started (which seem to be a continuing theme on this trip) there was no bridge.  We decided to cross the river anyways and hope for the best.  I made it across okay, except for the freezing feet and legs from the spring water, but Dave wasn’t as tall and didn’t have his jeans rolled up as well, so he got a free jeans washing.  After making it across, we took some pictures, then crossed back and took off.  After finishing off the Avenue of the Giants, we got back onto the main road.  Our next plan was to make it to Fort Bragg and hopefully do some diving.  We took highway 1, which was an extremely fun, winding, and slow road.  We started up some mountains, curving back and forth and testing the handling of my car the entire time.  After taking a bunch of video of the roads and my crazy diving, we continued down the mountain.  As we excited the mountain, we came upon the ocean, with a 50 foot drop off to the ocean on one side and a shear cliff face extending up about another 50 feet on the other side.  Once again, proving that my car didn’t suck as much as I thought, we sped around the curves and turns as fast as (for the most part, safely) possible.  We got to Fort Bragg eventually, but it was too late to dive, even with my crazy driving.  After driving around a little and picking up food, we set up camp for the night.  After supper, a couple beers, a hike on the beach, a small fire, and finishing up this, I was ready for bed.

03/08/04: Monday

We loaded up our gear and headed towards a hot springs area that we were told about the previous night.  We arrived at the spot (the roads were great to drive on, I felt like I should be in a sports car commercial if I only had a better car) and hiked about a half mile to the site.  I’m extremely out of shape.  At the hot springs, there were 4 tubs naturally formed in the rocks, with temperatures ranging from around 100-107 degrees.  After sitting and sweating in the tubs, we hiked back to the car.  On the way back to the main road, we stopped off to see a waterfall, with a 40 foot drop initially, followed by an 80 foot drop afterwards.  We hiked about another half mile, up around 90 steps and down about 120 (once again proving how out of shape I am) and arrived at the viewing platform for the waterfall.  After a couple pictures, we hiked back to the car and continued towards the lake.  As our altitude increased, the amount of snow also increased.  There were a couple other waterfalls we wanted to see, but the roads to them were all covered with about 5 feet of snow.  We eventually arrived to the lake and turned into the north entrance for Crater Lake.  We made it a little towards the lake (about 300 feet), before being stopped by the 8 feet of snow covering the road.  After turning around, we headed back to interstate, stopping along the way at the south entrance, which was open.  After a nice drive, with a lot more winding, fun roads, we arrived at Crater Lake.  There was a little more snow than average this year, with all the buildings covered and the roads carved out of snow banks, varying in depth from about 5 to over 10 feet tall.  We made it to the 7200 foot lookout point, took some pictures, then made our way back to interstate.  After a couple hours of Oregon, we made it to California, were we drove on some of the best roads so far.  Highway 199 and 101 were a lot of fun, winding and curving all around and see how fast my car can go around them.  Great roads for a motorcycle, if only I had one that would make it this far from Minnesota.  We drove through the beginning of the Redwood forests and saw some huge trees, with more big ones to come tomorrow.  Along the ocean, on 101, we saw a hostel and decided to stop for the night.  After getting checked in, we headed right across the road to the beach.  We collected some firewood, then sat around the fire and had some beer.  A great, clear, starry night, with a bon fire, beer, and ocean beach.  Probably the best day of the trip so far.  If we didn’t have to be in Vegas in a couple days, it would be tempting to stay here for awhile, enjoying the beach, bonfires, and beer.

03/07/04: Sunday

Since both Dave and I froze on the two dives we did in Seattle, we decided to skip our original plan and leave Seattle a couple days earlier for the (hopefully) warmer waters of California.  We drove south towards California, entering Oregon first.  Along the way, we decided to go check out Crater Lake.  We found the right turn off, then stopped in town to ask around for hints.  We drove towards the lake and found a campground that was open and stopped for the night.  After some nasty hot dogs and a couple beers, we watched a movie on my laptop.  As we were getting towards the end of it, with the laptop battery dying, my AC car adaptor decided to melt a little and blow a fuse, cutting the movie a little short.  The campground was in a great location, right next to a roaring river with lots of areas for whitewater rafting.  It was a full moon and a great night and we woke up the next morning with a damp tent and sleeping bags from all the humidity coming off the river.

03/06/04: Saturday

Today, we decided to dive Alki Cove number 2.  After taking the ferry over to Seattle, we drove to the site.  We stopped and had lunch at the marina/restaurant right next to the dive site, then get geared up.  After the freezing dive we had the previous day, we weren’t too excited to get back into our wet, cold wetsuits.  Eventually, we did and got into the water.  I forgot to tuck in my hood and didn’t notice until I was in the water, with all my gear on and ready to go.  I skipped it, but did wear my mittens to hopefully help my hands.  We got in and swam out to about 50-60 feet, then followed a line and headed south.  We didn’t see a lot here, although that was probably due to us not following the right path.  We found some tires that were dropped to create an artificial reef.  Sponge Bob Square Pants was following the same line that we were.  After about 15 minutes, my hands were starting to get cold, so I assumed (rightly) that Dave’s hands were beginning to freeze, since he only had gloves.  We turned around and headed back, then did a safety stop for the longest 2 minutes ever.  I was freezing and almost starting to shiver and was very happy when I finally got out of the water.  We packed up everything, then drove to Janine and Tony’s house in Maple Grove (?), where we had the best meal so far- steak and shrimp.  We sat round and talked for awhile, watched some TV, then went to bed (a little earlier than 4 like the previous couple nights. 

03/05/04: Friday

Waking up this morning, I was glad that Night Train and Thunderbird weren’t sold in Minnesota.  Luckily, our dive site was a decent distance from Hank’s house.  We started off by heading the wrong way, going north instead of south.  This turned out okay, since we needed to pick up some groceries and an oil change for my car.  After about half an hour and $35 (Jiffy Lube is a rip off), we were ready to go.  We found a dive shop in Bremerton and stopped in for some advice.  Our original plan had been to dive Gig Harbor, about a half hour south of Bremerton.  After talking to the dive shop guy, we learned that there was about a half hour window between tides were it would be ideal and/or safe to dive.  Since we didn’t want to worry about the tides, we decided to choose a different location.  The dive shop guy recommended Hood Sport, which was north of Bremerton, on the west side of the bay.  It was about an hour drive, which was very scenic and was the funnest road so far to drive along.  We arrived at the Hood Sport dive shop to get some more advice.  The guy there recommended octopus hole, which was a couple mile north of the shop.  Since I never really listen to directions and always just kind of drive until I find the place (it usually works) we got a little lost this time.  After about half an hour and directions from about three different people, we finally found the site.  We geared up and headed in.  We started from shore and swam south (underwater, surface swims suck), in around 35-55 feet of water.  We eventually got to the wall that the dive guy told us about.  We were supposed to see octopus and wolf eel, but all we saw were some fish, a ton of sea anemones and some starfish.  About 20 minutes into the dive we turned and started to head back.  The water was a constant 45 degrees and by that time I was starting to get cold.  As we continued back, I also continued to get colder, until I could barely move my fingers anymore.  We swam a little faster on the way back, then got out of the water as fast as possible, then started my car and sat in our wetsuits with the heater cranked all the way up.  After about half an hour and after we had gotten our courage up to brave the cold (not Minnesota cold, but cold enough when you’ve been in a wetsuit, in 45 degree water, for half an hour), we finally packed up everything and headed back to Bremerton.  After a slight detour, we made it to Hank’s house.  Since we were still cold from diving, we didn’t feel like doing a whole lot.  We sat around and played video games for awhile, then Hank got back and we went to Jack in the Box.  After eating, we headed back to Hank’s place for another night of video games, chess, and drinking (no Thunderbird tough).  Around 4 in the morning, we headed to bed.

03/04/04: Thursday

Once again, more driving for today.  We took off from Travis’ around 9, then stopped at Wal-mart to pick up some stuff.  On the way out, we saw a dog (kind of a big one) sleeping in the dash of some guys pickup.  Our drive was much more scenic than the last couple days, although the weather was a little worse.  We drove through the rest of MT, then entered Idaho.  There was only about 70 miles of Idaho, so it went pretty fast.  About halfway through, there was a huge lake, with mountains all around.  The roads weren’t plowed the greatest, but we made it to Washington.  The eastern part of Washington was fairly boring, lot’s of rolling, relatively flat hills.  Towards the western part, we began to enter mountains and saw much more interesting scenery.  We drove up some large mountains, then back down them and entered Seattle.  Once in Seattle, we searched around and eventually found Alki road, where we were planning on diving.  We stopped by a dive shop on the way and talked to the guy there for awhile.  He recommended Alki Cove number 2, where Justin and I had done our first dive once entering Seattle a couple years ago.  We drove over to the cove and took a look at it, but decided to wait and dive the next day, since it was beginning to get dark out.  Since we were staying in Bremerton that night, we drove around and found the ferry, then got in line to get on.  It was the first time either of us had been on a ferry, so it was kind of exciting to us, although to everyone around us, it was obviously nothing.  We drove our car on, then walked up to the seating areas and enjoyed the 40 minute trip.  We arrived in Bremerton a little early, so drove around until Hank finished work and met us in a parking lot.  We then headed over to Hank’s place.  Hank lived right next to Olympic college.  We stayed up until around four in the morning, playing video games, chess, and drinking.  After a failed attempt to finish a bottle of Thunderbird (the same quality as Night Train), I was out for the night.

03/03/04: Wednesday

More driving.  We got up a little early (if by early you mean 9-9:30), then drove all day to Missoula, MT.  The drive through ND and the eastern part of MT kind of sucked- there was a lot of flat, rolling hills.  Towards the central part of MT, the scenery picked up a little and we began driving through some more mountainous areas.  We arrived at Travis’ place around 7 or so, then had supper, drank beer, and played video games.

03/02/04: Tuesday

We started out in the cities (late as usual) and then headed to St. Cloud after loading up Dave’s gear.  We then drove to St. Cloud for Ben’s birthday.  After lunch and cake, we drove to Buella, ND to stay with Jeremy.  He had one of the nicest and cheapest places, but that was offset by the fact that he lived in the middle of nowhere.  We got there late and watched a little TV, then went to bed.

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This site was last updated 03/27/04