Massive 5 week Western North American Road Trip (Start of Winter)

Well I am not going to do a massive write-up here. I have spent too much time just dealing with all the pictures. This time I have put captions with the photos that deserve to have something be said about them or are not self explanatory. You can get to these pictures via the map at the bottom of this post. I have also put a few pictures on this blog in a random order for a little taste of the pictures in my albums. So overtime if you are interested just flick through all the pictures in the 18 different albums linked off the map or form this link. I have broken them up in geographic units and you can pick on what you are interested in. There are lots of pictures but that’s because I now use the online albums as backup. Still I only pick decent ones to backup.

So in summary. Bridget and I spent 5 weeks road tripping around the Western US and South Western Canada. We saw heaps and heaps and there are many places we missed or want to see better such as Yellowstone Nat Park, Glacier Nat Park and Oregon. Also we want to go back and see them at different times of the year. All up we drove 6200 miles or about 10,000km. We had all sorts of weather. Heavy rains, blizzards, heavy snowfalls, heaps of snowy and icy roads and some very cold temps. Down too as low as -19C. For about 8 days straight the windshield washer liquid never thawed out. We met all sorts of people and saw many different ways of life from high class San Francisco suburbs, mates from years gone by, ranch/farming people, small-town folk who never leave town and real cowboys. For the most part 75% of people had no idea where NZ was but most had heard of it and most say they would love to go there even if they think it’s next to Belgium! Also it appears that the Flight of the Conchords have done as much for NZ as Lord of the Rings have. Overall the friendliness of people was high. We never felt unsafe even when we thought we would and overall few people left us with a foul taste in our mouth. It was wonderful. We saw some crazy driving, never an accident apart from the aftermath of a few in the icy, snowy regions which is pretty good considering the amount of time we spent on the road. Also I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Toyotas. It now has 187,000 miles on the clock.

Some of the highlights (there are many, just look at the amazing countryside in the pictures) include:

• San Francisco.
• Sonoma Valley.
• Mendocino Coast (Northern CA)
• Eureka Township. Cool we spot for lunch.
• The Redwoods National Park and the off the beaten path coastal road there.
• The Blizzard on the way too Crater Lake which we didn’t see cause of it.
• Bend, Oregon.

• Drive to Portland from Bend. The Columbia River, Salmon Farm and Multnomah Falls.
• Portland.
• Bridgets Birthday Dinner in Seattle.
• Halloween in Downtown Vancouver with mates from home.
• Whistler and the awesome drive to Kelowna.
• Seeing an Ice Hockey game in Kelowna with Neil and Fran.
• Lake Louise with falling snow about and it almost being frozen solid.
• Banff Itself. Great town in a wicked location.
• The Banff Mountain Film Festival.
• The Drive up the Icefield Parkway from Banff to Jasper. We had the chains on for 120 miles straight. Nutty.
  

• Seeing our first Bison (this became almost normal) at Elk Island National Park near Edmonton
• Chillin in Calgary. Pretty cool city.
• Early morning drive from Calgary though Alberta Ranchlands under the Canadian Rockies.
• Montana in general. Esp. Glacier Nat Park and the drive along Highway 2. Awesome.
• Spending the night in Butte. Very, Very cold and authentic old school Chinese for dinner.
• Hanging in Bozeman, 2ft snow about and the Museum of the Rockies.
• A little look at Yellowstone Nat Park before we got sick.
• Thermopolis, Wyoming.
• The Grand Teton National Park.
• 3 Bull Moose outside Jackson, WY.
• Las Vegas – In particular the Cirque Show ‘O’ at the Bellagio.

 Map of our route. Click on the ‘Cameras for a link to the photo albums of that area’

View BBT in a larger map

Till the next post after my wee adventure over Xmas somewhere very different than all these places – CIAO.

 

Merry Xmas and a

Happy New Years