A quick recap of the portland trip.
Erin got to bloomington super late, to my sadness. we ended up leaving town around 7 pm and hit our first big city that night, st. louis. an obvious trip to the arch was on the agenda because it's so close to the highway:







next up was the first time for sleep: we pulled into a hotel about 50 miles outside of kansas city and slept for 4 hours or so. and then! at 6 am central time it was time to get moving again! we hit kansas city and then to avoid kansas's extremely boring landscape, we decided to head north to i-70 to go through nebraska instead. we're about 60 miles up towards nebraska when the best text EVER was received from erin's dad. it said: "DO NOT go into Nebraska!!! There are 46 inches of snow over the state!!" too bad we were already on our waaaay! stop in missouri at squaw creek national wildlife refuge, which was lovely.



then erin had control of the ipod while i drove nebraska and played one. single. song. over and over throughout all of nebraska. david bowie and queen's "under pressure". positively ridiculous. nebraska had the best pit stop yet though, the pony express station and the fake buffalo:





we hit denver around 6 that night (that's 11 hours on the road in case you're unawares) and rachel had given us steve's number and we gave him a call and hung out in downtown denver and went ahead and imposed upon his 13th floor apartment. he took us out on the town, and apart from a debit card debacle where a bar gave me someone else's debit card, it was a phenomonal night, ending with burritos at illegal pete's burrito joint (beats the heck outta qdoba and chipotle):







through the rockies and out the other side on i-80 to utah, down by moab. don't go to grand junction, colorado because it's horrible. but utah was amazing, we all know i'm obsessed with it. utah welcome viewpoint:





made salt lake city that night, always good. then tried for boise but it was a no go. tiredness won us over and we stopped at a motel 6 in twin falls for like 3 hours (took the first showers of the trip, hurrah!) and then were off again. got into oregon around 1 and i was blown away by all the scenery. i was BORN to live there.
got into portland around 7, much to rachel's excitement! dinner at delta, then bedliness in anticipation for exploring portland the next day.
we made it to the coast monday and it was GORGEOUS. exploring in downtown portland the rest of the day and in the morning on tuesday. and then i had to go :(. i'll post more pics when my computer isn't about to die :)