July 21 // Coralville, Iowa

One last stop on our whirlwind tour, so Natalie can spend the evening and tomorrow morning with her best friend here in Iowa. We’ll be headed out in the morning and back by early afternoon.

I’ll be extremely glad to be home. I’ve got a persistent ear ache I’ve had for three days, and on-and-off-again headache (to go with it), and am in dire need to not be in the car and to have some extended me time after I get back to work this week.

Two weeks was just too much. These added few days that we’re still on the road, difficult.

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July 19 & 20 // Salt Lake City, Utah & Estes Park, Colorado

We rolled into Salt Lake City last night around 6:30pm, both of us pretty well worn out, tired and just a tad cranky — or at least, I was the cranky one. I’m really tired of traveling and am ready to resume some normalcy to my life.

This evening we got into Estes Park by about 3:00 pm and had dinner at some Italian joint and are just taking it easy for tonight. In addition, we’re cutting our trip a day short and staying here just one night and forgoing the sight-seeing in the Rockies, since we’ve already seen them anyway and a dozen other mountains that look just like them along the way. About the only prominent mountain we didn’t see along our route was Mount Hood, which was covered by overcast skies.

Seven days for this road trip would have been perfect, ten days okay. But two weeks was just too much I think.

I’ll have the rest of the photos up when I get home. But tonight, I need to try and recover from this ear ache I’ve got and a persistent headache that’s followed me since Portland.

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July 18 // Portland, Oregon

Not a whole lot to report on today, as it was pretty much a lay-low and take it easy day before our 12-hour drive tomorrow to Salt Lake City. We had lunch at a great bakery called Pearl Bakery complete with the artisan bread, and tasty ingredients like roasted eggplant and sun-dried tomatoes. Positively delicious.

Following the advice of a parking enforcement attendant, we checked out a HUGE new and used bookstore in the Pearl district of Portland called Powell’s Bookstore. It had several floors of books, each floor pretty large in size and a vast selection of new and used books. I’m not a huge bookstore person, but this place was massive and worth checking out.

There was a world beer festival going on nearby, but I didn’t think Natalie would want me going off and spending my evening at some beer festival while she sat in the hotel watching TV.

We stopped back at our hotel for awhile and then had dinner at some greek restaurant nearby. It was alright, but not worth blogging about. Oh wait, I just did. Eh, it wasn’t worth mentioning the name.

Anyway, it was a low-key day. On to Salt Lake City tomorrow.

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July 17 // Cannon Beach and Seaside, Oregon

After a leisurely start to our morning with continental breakfast at the Red Lion Inn in Astoria, Natalie and I went into the city center where I sat and caught up on e-mail over a mocha and scone and Natalie perused the locally-owned bookstores.

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July 16 // Victoria, BC and the road trip to Astoria, Oregon

Our morning got off to an early start — checking out at 8 am and looking for a place to eat before our morning whale watching session with Five Star Whales and then the four to five hour drive to Astoria.

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June 15 // Victoria, British Columbia [view photos]

Sorry, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of any “eh” or “hoser” jokes. You’ll have to look elsewhere on the interwebz. Instead I’ll pass on a little information about Victoria and our experience here so far.

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July 14 // Mount Rainier, Washington [view photos]

The sum of our day was driving around and exploring the towering Mount Rainier, which can be seen for many miles and into northern Seattle on a clear day. I’ve been there once before, was very impressed, and was ready for a return visit to take Natalie to Paradise (the visitor’s area that leads to the summit) and then further west towards Comet Falls.

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July 13 // Seattle, Washington [view photos]

It’s our first full day in Seattle, and with a healthy night’s rest behind us we were ready to fill the day up with roaming around downtown Seattle, feasting our eyes on the merchandise throughout Pikes Place, and eating at a few of the establishments.

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July 12 // Somewhere west of Paradise, Montana [view photos]

I never thought I’d say this, but it’s kind of nice to be back on the road again. After a 40-degree night in the heavenly arctic reaches of Glacier National Park, we’re ready for a bit warmer weather and a warm bed to sleep in at night. Don’t get us wrong, we loved our camping experience for the most part, but I think we’ll add “bring a few extra layers of clothing” to our “will do differently” list next time we go camping anywhere above 3,000 feet elevation in early July.

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July 11 // Glacier National Park, Montana [view photos]

It’s day six already, and it’s really hard to believe that we’ve only been gone for so few days and yet seen so much. With Wyoming behind our back and Montana as our playground today, we had Glacier National Park on tap for exploration.

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