Silver Falls State Park

Portland Apartment

The front door.



View from the front door.



Wall cubby and mountain bikes.



Close-up of the cubby. I'm in love with this thing.



Paper lamps.



Homemade curtains.



Home office.



Kitchen.



Kitchen bench.



Spices and elephants.



Prayer flags.



Bedroom.

So long bike trip, hello Portland!

Well, we're not on the road anymore. Actually, we stopped about two weeks ago. When we were in LA, we took a hard look at our finances and realized we would have to end the trip early if we wanted to arrive in Portland with any money leftover. We decided we'd take two more weeks, bike up to San Francisco, and rent a car to go up the rest of the way.

But, about 50 miles south of Santa Barbara, I realized that I was done. I think it was the Californian desert that did me in. Well, and also I realized that I was thinking more about all the things I'd need to do to get resettled in Portland than I was thinking about the bike trip. At any rate, I wasn't enjoying myself any more. Thankfully, Dave was very understanding and agreed to stop whenever I wanted.

That's when something amazing happened. When we were in LA, we started sending emails to people about housing in Portland. I told Dave that I wanted to quit over lunch a couple days after leaving LA. We decided to stop at a library on the way to the next town to look up car rental info. When we checked our email, we had a reply from one of the people we'd written to about an apartment. It was my old college roommate, who happened to be living in Portland and looking for people to rent the basement apartment in the house she's living in. Out of all the listings that we'd read, hers was one of the few we actually responded to. So that's where we're living now. It turned out to be a huge space with lots of windows and pretty views. It was so nice to have a place to come to when we drove into town. So now we're looking for jobs. I've applied to six laboratory jobs, as well as countless retail and food service positions. Portland is beautiful. I'm so excited about living here. It's very bike friendly. Anyway, I'm going to do one more post of pictures, then I guess it's goodbye Milkweed.

Thank you to everyone who helped us out along the way. Whether inviting us into your home for a night or for nine long months (Nate and Erika, I'm looking at you), we couldn't have done it without you. This was an amazing adventure. I'm so grateful that I was able to do it. Thanks for reading the blog and giving us support and encouragement. I enjoyed reading everyone's comments. Maybe we'll get this thing up and running again in the future when we head out for Bike Trip Round Two: Return to the West Coast.

Happy Halloween!

The past few days happened really quickly. So there we were in the Californian desert. We had about four more days and a 4,000 ft climb between us and San Diego. We had planned on visiting David's cousin Chris and his wife Darnell when we got to San Diego. But, luckily we checked our email before starting those last four days. Chris, who is in the military, was leaving in two days. So, we rented a car and drove to San Diego. Although I felt a bit of remorse about not biking the whole way, I didn't mind skipping those mountains. They looked scorching hot. They had no trees, just rocks.

So, we stayed with Chris and Darnell for three nights. Then we started making our way up the coast. Hooray for the ocean! It's so nice to see it again. And to be in a reasonably cool place with lots of breezes.





Now we're in LA. Isn't that crazy? Chris and Darnell actually lived about 30 miles north of San Diego, so it only took us 2 days to get to LA from there. We're staying with Dave's friend Erin while we're here. Erin is a resident adviser at a music school downtown, so we're staying right in the heart of the city. It's amazing. We're trying to figure out what we want to do today.



Here's a picture of the Imperial Sand Dunes. It was very strange. We were riding through desert all day, then suddenly we were in the Sahara. Then after a mile or two, *poof*, back to the desert.


This is a purple prickly pear cactus. I put a different picture of it in my last post, but you can't really tell that it's purple. I'm hoping this one will turn out better.

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you're all dressed up in amazing costumes. Dave and I are going to be fitness unicorns.

Almost to San Diego

We made it to California! It's funny, now that we're only four days away from San Diego and the coast, it feels like time is slowing down and it's taking forever to get anywhere. Well, maybe it also feels that way because it's so freaking hot. The high for today is 103, so we decided to take a rest day.

oh, shoot, they're closing the library ...

Arizona

Yesterday we made it into Arizona. We camped that night under tall pine trees. The next day, after only a mile of biking, we were out of the forest and into the desert again. We started the day with 14 miles of almost uninterrupted downhill. Glorious. We had a good climb after that, but then another big downhill. Tonight we're staying at a casino campground. We're going through an Apache reservation. Then, we'll hopefully make it into Phoenix by Friday.

We're in New Mexico now. I'm very pleased to be out of Texas. New Mexico is magical .... and very steep. We made it over the highest point on the trip, Emory Pass. It was an intense day. We climbed about 4000 ft over 34 miles. It started out as a gradual uphill. That turned into bigger, rolling hills. Then, we gained 2000 ft over the last 8 miles. It was steep and neverending and cold by the time we reached the top. The next day was amazing, though. That night we camped at a primitive site a couple miles from the pass, so the next morning we started out with a beautiful downhill going through pine forests. I loved being surrounded by trees. The past couple of days we've been going through different parts of the Gila Wilderness Area. It's gorgeous. I'd like to come back and do some backpacking around there. I loved it because it reminded me alot of forests in the Smokies, but then I'd see a cactus right beside a pine tree. It's really fascinating. We also went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and hotsprings. I'll tell you, if I had a hotspring at the end of every day of biking ..... well, it'd be nice.

This is part of the road we took up to Emory Pass. We weren't even at the top when I took this picture.

We crossed the continental divide twice in the past three days. The elevation there is 6599 ft.

I'd been seeing these plants all over the place, but this is the first one I saw in bloom.

Looking up at the cliff dwellings.

View from inside the cliff dwellings.