The Great American Road Trip is finally underway, starting off with a whirlwind trip from Vancouver down to Indio, California, via Seattle, Portland, Mosier, Ashland and Sacramento, among others.

There'll be a map to explain, fear not.

There's also pictures and crap, click read more to see them.



The Great American Road Trip began in earnest with a quick drive from Vancouver to the border, where I was greeted by the ever-friendly (can you taste the sarcasm?) US Customs Officials. After being called an illegal immigrant, shouted at, scared into submission and other related fun activities for 2.5 hrs I somehow managed to scrape through the border, getting my first taste of US air in a good five months.
I also got to enjoy the delightfully cheap petrol (gas) rates in the U.S, something that almost - but not quite - made the border journey worthwhile.



I eventually found a hostel to stay at in Seattle that night after arguing with the maze of one-way streets and the sheer impossibility of parking there on a Saturday night (think trying to score a park on Chapel St on Saturday night). The next day I had to hit the road to Portland, but swung by the seemingly world-renowned Pike Place Market before I left Seattle, expecting to be awed and wowed by North America's 'greatest' market.



Man that sounded sarcastic. It wasn't an awesome market. I think the most popular and famous thing is the fish stall - anyone who has worked at Myer, DJs, Subway or any retail/hosp. industry job will know the training video where the guys throw the fish to the customers and are generally loud and entertaining.



Oh and Pike Place is home to the world's first Starbucks (I didn't care either), which importantly has the world's worst busker (and I'm aware that there's a lot a candidates for that title), who happens to rock a very cool hat.



From Seattle it was down to Portland, Oregon, where the camera remained shut in the car the entire time - which was barely 24 hours - I was there. But Portland was awesome, I couchsurfed with the very cool Sara, we pubbed, failed dismally at board games and came up with the list of Great American Cliches to tick off during the trip, some of which I have already nailed:
* see obese woman yell at McDonalds server
* see cowboy wearing cowboy hat (scored a bonus point cos he was riding a quad)
* French toast for breakfast
* Be confused with a Canadian, then be told all Commonwealth people are the same

After Portland I hauled butt East to visit Jesse and his cousin Arlene in Mosier, which is about 100k east of Portland on the Columbia River. It was an amazing drive, through rainforests with waterfalls and stuff going on everywhere. Have some pictures:

AHH IT'S HIDEOUS:






The view from the lookout down the Columbia River:


Latourell Falls (there's two parts, one takes a bit of hiking to get to):




It was about a 20min walk to get to the second falls, and there was plenty of stuff to waste camera battery on along the way. Namely, tree:



Stream #1:


aaand Stream #2:


Finally, Arlene's place. It was awesome, she had her property split in two by the road, so her house was on the high part of the hill and she had a yurt on the lower half, a block which has a creek running through it and looks out towards the amazingly awesome Columbia River.

Also got to catch up with Jesse which was sweet, reminiscing about the good ol' days at Barry Rd Massive (a name which he coined, I might add).

Yurt:


Boys inside yurt:


Tree outside yurt:


Yurt.