Spring Break 2014 .

As of March 18th, my winter term was finished. That day I had my last exam in the morning, and also my last little presentation that afternoon. But alas, there was no time for delay, as I jumped straight into my plans for Spring Break. I went home and showered and then was headed to Portland to meet my girlfriend, who was flying into PDX. On that day, it had been 70 days since we had seen each other... but we were both ecstatic that we were going to have a week to spend together.

Over the week that she was here, we did some big things, like spending time in Portland, Seattle (actually had a job interview up there), and driving out to the Oregon coast, in addition to some smaller things, like grabbing frozen yogurt at Yogurt Xtreme or hiking Spencer's Butte or going to Voodoo Donuts.

The fact of the matter is that it is so great to be able to actually spend time with someone that means so very much to you. And given that it's really not often we get to do that, it was pretty flipping great. Some people would like to argue that long distance is not for everybody. But I'd like to think that if someone means enough to you, you'd always be willing to give the world for them. Every relationship takes work, and if you don't accept that, I think you're naive. Ours might just need a little more work sometime since we can't always be together. The best part, though? Remembering that one day, the distance will close. And that's something worth fighting for.

I've always been a firm believer that seeing life is better than just hearing about it, so here are some photos from the week we spent together:

view of Seattle from the conference room of the office

the Space Needle

downtown Seattle from the Space Needle observation deck...

...and me 

looks cool from the bottom too!

view from Highway 101, the Pacific Coast Highway

the babes

me running down to touch the water; the dunes were slippery!

i was a happy camper

it doesn't even look real

always the adventurer... i wasn't supposed to be out there

but i wanted some pictures, so.. *shrug*

and there were sea lions!

the bridge by the beach we watched the sunset at. doesn't look like much but...

...it certainly was

found this place on the walk up to the lighthouse

and it was like something out of a movie

decided to walk back down to the beach to watch the end of the sunset

but not before snapping a few pics

my idea for reflections in the water; it looks wet but it was just a thin film of water!

the HUGE Garbage Collector burger at Beachcomber (it was amazing, by the way)

hiking up Spencer's Butte

the Oregon "jungle"

with a worthwhile view

this sort of view all the way round

This break was probably the best one I've had yet. It was jam packed with a lot of stuff to do but also plenty of down time. We return to school on Monday, and though I am far from ready, I know that the next term will go quickly and soon it will be summer. Even more amazing still, I'll be halfway done with grad school at that point, in addition to moving to Portland for the second year. So many changes on the horizon!

If you ever have the chance to make it out to Oregon, or even just the west coast, do it. It's so worth it. And if you're a mountain person, you'll absolutely love it, just like I do. My motto for Oregon goes a little something like this: It may rain a lot here, but on the days it doesn't, it's absolutely perfect. It blows my mind that it was sunny in all places typically rainy (Portland, Seattle, Eugene etc.) while Mary Kate was here. But I think that maybe we had a little help from upstairs, watching over us and smiling.

Before I part, little shameless plug here, I write a quarterly newsletter about my adventures and what I've been up to. If you'd like to be added to the mailing list, please email me your address and I would be more than happy to include you! I promise I don't mail junk and I usually include a handwritten note as well. International is totally cool as well, for any of you non-USA readers. Cheers to you all, and thanks for being a part of this blog!

Oregon, Land of Fog .

I don't get to write as often as I would like anymore. Time is something that becomes precious and you have many internal quarrels as you try to prioritize things and yet at the same time give them all equal attention. Thankfully I have been able to read others' posts often and keep up with what's going on here in the blogosphere.

The winter season in Oregon is long, cold, and wet. It rains a lot. It mists a lot. And a lot of times there is so much moisture in the air that you just feel wet all the time even if it's not actually raining. Picture walking through a cloud that actually is the density of about 10 clouds.

The weird thing is, you can get up and see the world before the fog rolls in. Around 530am, which is the time I normally roll out of bed, if you look out the window the world is still. The traffic ceases to exist. Sometimes the rain patters against the window and the street, and the world is distorted through the streaks that form on the glass.

Several times a week I go to the gym with a friend and when we wake up, it's totally still outside. You can almost always see your breath, and our voices pierce stagnant air, disturbing it from its peace. By the time we get out of the gym, despite it still being dark, you can't see. The fog is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It's truly unlike anything I have ever seen. I'd take a picture, but it probably wouldn't even look like anything.

The coolest part is when you are driving through and it's like you come into bubbles of clear air. It's like swimming out of the ocean for a moment and then diving right back in. But when the sun does finally come up and clear out the fog, damn the days are gorgeous. Makes you remember how beautiful the weather really can be.

Oregon Bound: pt.12

This will be the final chapter of this little series that I started of so long ago. There's simply a lot of stories to fit into a drive across the country! But I'll reminisce more towards the end. First on the agenda today, we finally reached OREGON. Naturally, even just crossing the border into the state had its own little bit of drama.

classic.

 Upon crossing the border from Idaho to Oregon, we wanted to pull over and take a picture with the sign. But the minute we crossed the bridge into Oregon, we passed by a group of state trooper police cars sitting on the median. No sooner had we passed and pulled into the visitor center for Oregon, then a state trooper pulled up as we were walking to this very sign. He inquired as to where we were going and what we were doing, and though my dad was very put off by all of this (as he later told me, "It's profiling!") the cop eventually dropped his guard and we had a nice little chat about Oregon. I found the whole situation to be quite comical, actually. I mean honestly, some kid and his dad driving a packed and loaded car with two bikes on the back. What could we possibly have been doing? I suppose we were a suspicious party simply because we had New Jersey license plates.

As the cop told us during our little chat, eastern Oregon pretty much looks like a desert. Though once you cross through the mountains (not sure which ones those are) you will soon have, as he put it, "more trees than you know what to do with." Upon passing out of civilization a bit, it was very clear that this desert foreshadowing was exactly on par. We even hit some seriously nasty rain storms (pics to follow) and it kinda felt like we were in Oklahoma or something. However needless to say rain is, as we soon realized, one of the staples of Oregon. (After a whole term of living there, it doesn't really bother me anymore!)

Oregon.... desert?

here comes the rain!

 As we headed toward Bend, though, the skies parted after going through one of the mountain ranges, and the sun came out for the evening! Though driving through rain is never really that fun, I think that it makes you appreciate the sunshine that much more -- and there is simply nothing more beautiful than the sun showing its face after a nice rain storm.

After reaching Bend, Oregon (one of the earthiest places I've ever been to) and a slightly rushed dinner at Shari's (Oregon's equivalent of diners, though it is a chain), we headed to Klamath Falls, to a little motel that would hold us hostage for the night and unleash us the next day upon the cliff roads of Crater Lake. Crater Lake was one of those things that was definitely out of the way as far as getting Eugene, but both my dad and I wanted to see it. My dad had heard stories about it growing up and said that it really was something that had always been on his bucket list. And so we went. Crater Lake is one of the most beautiful, tranquil, and incredible places I have ever been in my life. Not only that, but we had an absolutely perfect day for it too! There's a little path that sort of winds its way up to viewing points in places, but other spots are literally just drive-your-car-up-and-look spots. I couldn't get over how blue the water was, nor how quiet everything was! The view was, put simply, spectacular.

This little rock formation is known as the (hold on, let me go check my facts...) Phantom Ship of Crater Lake. It's basically a bunch of pillars, and when it's super foggy, it actually does look like a ship coming through the mist. Obviously we didn't exactly have fog around to test that theory, but I'll take their word for it, and it does look kinda like a ship. I ended up taking some really cool shots of this place, but that often happens when you're at a place with views like this. But let's both pretend I'm good at photography for a moment, and I'll tell you with pride that I actually took a panorama I took on my phone, blew it up to 12x36 and framed it and gave it to my parents as a Christmas gift! It was a hit.

obsessed with the water droplets

My dad and I even found a few short paths to check out that involved some truly barren soil (above), gnarly trees, and even a sweet little action shot of dad (it was a little slippery). The paths like that are cool, and not just at Crater Lake but in general in the outdoors because they sort of segregate you from the cars we depend on oh so much in our every day lives, and allow for an unobstructed view of nature's beauty.

action shot 

That fun little mountain bit in the middle is actually a part of a volcano that (I think) is still active and that's how it was created in the lake. In fact, the lake itself used to be a humongous volcano, but the gaps inside were too large and the whole top collapsed, hence the crater! Fun stuff, eh?

a beautiful day... just makes you wanna spread your arms in the air

One of the coolest things about the lake was how calm the water was. It yielded a pretty damn near perfect reflection of what was happening outside the water, and with a sky that blue, the water looked pristine.

And this, my friends, is pretty much where the journey ends. After visiting Crater Lake in the morning, we got back on US 97 and headed North, where we picked up OR-58, which took us more or less right in Eugene, Oregon. Over 4000 miles of pavement, and what had to have been 70+ hours of driving (including all of the "fun" driving like stuff around parks and things like that) and we had made it. Lo and behold we arrived on a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in sight, with a toasty 70 degree temperature. It is a trip I will never forget and a time I will always treasure. It is not very often someone gets to experience the entire breadth of the country in such a hands on (or perhaps wheels-on) way.

And now, with one term of six before I finish school already under my belt, I can't believe that this trip took place 3 months ago. Shit, I can't believe that my Barcelona study abroad program was years ago now (I came home around 2 years ago)! I hope that you all have had a wonderful time over the holidays with your families and loved ones, and that the New Year will bring fortune to all. In the coming months I hope to continue with blog posts, and while they may not be daily, I invite you to pull up a chair, warm your hands and sip some cocoa, invite your friends, and listen to a good story every once in awhile. That's what this is kinda all about, right? More to come my friends. And until then, I bid you adieu.

Oregon Bound: pt.11

Our days in Yellowstone were finally done, though the wonderful views contained by this country's national parks was not quite finished yet, for connected to Yellowstone is another of Wyoming's treasures: Grand Teton National Park. To be perfectly honest, there is a lot less to see here than in Yellowstone, and unless you plan on parking the car and going on a long hike, you won't really get too up close and personal with the mountains. However, I've been told that these are the very mountains that "purple mountains majesty" was named after! A vast plain separates the road and the mountain range, but it seemed that in the spring, when all the snow melts and water flows abundantly down the slopes, this vast plain actually became a lake. Just like Yellowstone, Grand Teton National Park offers a slew of pull offs to be able to see the mountains, and though you know you're always looking at the same collection of them, you end up taking a kajillion pictures because each view seems more picturesque than the last! The pictures pretty much speak for themselves here, so peruse away!

the parking lot of the visitor center

one of my favorite pictures i took -- would be worth printing out!

Funny story about the next picture, I actually wasn't in a car to take it. As we were driving along the road, I thought that this would be such a cool shot, given that the road looked like it was about to crash straight into the mountains. There wasn't much traffic along the road, but I decided that I was going to pull off and try to take a shot from the absolute middle of the road. Sure enough I found my break in the traffic, but there wasn't much time! I must have looked crazy running into the middle of the road to take a photo, but I love the result!

Upon leaving Grand Teton National Park we came upon Jackson, Wyoming, home of the famed ski slope Jackson Hole. I suppose it's named as such because the town seems to literally sit in a hole in the mountains. Despite its small size, I even knew of Jackson Hole because of the slopes open for skiing and they even have their own airport! I would imagine that there are a great many people that go directly from the airport to the slopes and the ski resorts and never actually visit the town itself. However, our stomachs were grumbling and we made a stop at the Shades Cafe in Jackson. Shades Cafe was actually a Foursquare find, as I had been using it to find out cool local places to eat with good ratings. The place was really nice, with a little veranda out on the side you could sit on, with notes of jazz seeping into your ears.

Leaving Jackson Hole was not quite as easy as rolling in. The US highway that takes you out climbs through a mountain pass, and it is a 10% grade. For those of you who don't know, 6% grade is usually enough to get a sign posted warning truckers of steep grades and the need to use low gears. The hill was so steep (and perhaps my engine so weak) that I literally had to drive 10 or 15 below the limit in third gear in order to make it up with a full car load. Once we got to the top, we pulled off to have a look. Sure enough, there was Jackson, nestled into the valley, the one flat spot amongst the mountains. It was quite a sight, and as per the usual, pictures simply do not do it justice.

you can barely make out the buildings, but they are down there if you look close!

 The next stop was Idaho and as we finally got back onto an interstate highway, we racked up the miles quickly and made good time. We even escaped a massive storm on the way! Boise was not a place where we really had planned to do much of anything, but rather just a stop along the way that was convenient and easy to find a hotel at. As the land flattened out again as we made our way out of the mountains, all I could think about was whether or not I was finally going to see some real Idaho potatoes... my dad and I made a game out of trying to guess which farm fields were potatoes.

massive storm clouds