anywhereyougothereyouare
Anywhere you go, there you are
85 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
digitalhubk
Digitalhubk
usuallydeepesttale-blog
Untitled
bradiewebbquotes-blog
Bradie Webb Quotes :)
coffeetelattee
Imahh
ziacos
bittersweet boy
Text
20180907 - I do believe in ferries
0600 - wake up
0700 - have breakfast of cold hamburger, then pack wrap for lunch
0730 - pack the van and trailer with everything
0754 - leave camp ground and head to the ferry across to Seattle
It's the last day of the tour and my first day in Seattle. From here I'm back on my own, with no one to fill the days but myself.
If yoive picked up on the subtext from the previous entries, you'll have noticed I'm not having a super great time with my group. It's no one's fault really. People you meet in like each have their own wavelength, their sense of humor and mannerisms and interests. Sometimes you match exactly, sometimes you can change a bit about what you talk about so you can match and have a good time. Sometimes you can't. That's OK, you don't need to be able to make friends with everyone, just not be a dick to them.
What can I say, I just haven't vibed well with this group. Half of them are continuing back south to LA inland with Michelle. As I write this entry, seated in the San Francisco airport departure lounge, they're probably still on their way to a Wild night out in Las Vegas. I hope they have an amazing time there, becuase I know I wouldn't (not quite my scene).
Michelle continued to be a top bloke and she offered to drop me off directly at my airbnb, a short distance away. We chatted about the cool parts of the trip, and our mutual regret in not being able to see Fort Dick. Hugged and said our goodbyes.
And then I was greeted with open arms to Bed Baked and Beyond! Run by a wonderfully friendly couple and an assistant, they all had so much to tell me about the city. Tables full of guide books, ears full of suggestions and my notebook full to bursting with scribbles, I set out in the late afternoon after getting settled.
This evening I conquered the space needle, a vintage screening of the original TRON movie, and ate dinner in an overpriced but charming Italian resteraunt.
0 notes
Text
20180906 - Eggs and Kayaks
Olympic national park has a big ass lake in it. We went kayaking in it and it was pretty rad. Then we went to a hot springs and it stank like eggs and was kinda gross, not worth it.
For dinner I was on the cooking team. Burgers on a coal grill BBQ and I did a fantastic job! Probably only lost a few hairs from the flames :)
That was it, not much to write paragraphs about this time. Tomorrow is the last day.
0 notes
Text
20180905 - "Beautiful Day" by U2
Apparently it's supposed to be raining in Olympic, the town we did our last grocery trip in today. Since it's not, Michelle has decided to drive up to the north west, along the coast and beach, on the way to our camp ground just north west of Olympic national park.
On the way we will pass through Took, the setting for the Twilight novels and films. Afterwards, burgers cooked by my team for dinner, and another early bed for me.
Beach was freezing, but it was shallow and had a very long tide. It also connected with a nearby river I trekked up a little. Took some snaps. Was alright.
Next stop was Fawks. I enjoyed reading the first twilight book, and I think anyone who makes fun of someone for what they like when I'd doesn't hurt anyone should burn in hell. I like a lot of strange and obscure things, and if I got teased for them... Oh wait I did. Anyway, just remember that the next time you make fun of something, think what you would do if your best friend loved that.
That being said, Fandom can very quickly become cringy very fast. And the Twilight films weren't known for being criticaly excelent. So a good time was had by all. Especially when we saw the depressing looking "Twilight Tours" Van parked outside the high-school.
0 notes
Text
20180904 - Mountain Hike
Driving to Mt Ranier and hiking up a chunk of that hill. There wasn't much to say about the drive out of Portland, with one exception! We drove past an airfield and I had to double take. There, parked in a row of Cessna, was a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. An old American navy attack jet, it stood out like a sore thumb. Some research later and I found out, while it is very outdated by modern standards and replaced almost thirty years ago, it's notable for being a simple and reliable jet. Obviously a number have found their way into civilian ownership.
But yeah, the mountain. It was a big long hike. I'm not wanting to push myself so that I can heal my cold, as well as the cumulative minor sunburn I'm inevitably acquiring despite precautions. And while I found my place in the slow hike team, instead of only doing a third and heading back, we hiked the full 3.5 hour circuit! Jodie shouted us icecream as motivation. Much apreaciated.
0 notes
Text
20180903 - Free day in Portland!
Tour guide Michelle lead us all, early in the morning, down to a weird place called Voodoo donuts. It's an eclectic and hip joint famous for selling weird and wonderful donuts.
They were too fancy for my taste. Give me a sticky finger from brumbies any day of the week. But the group apreaciated them more.
An arts and crafts market on the way home let me loose the tour group pand go off on my own to explore, for us to meet up again later.
And I found a jewel! An arcade called Ground Kontrol. And like, a proper video game arcade joint! All done up with neon strips, a full TRON style bar that served alcohol after 1700, more cabinets than you could shake a stick at, and a massive six projector screens designed to look identical like the monitors from the film "Wargames". I'm definetly coming back here again. Even bought a shirt!
Then a massive book store called something or other. Two or three stories tall and it had any section you could dream of! Bought "We are OK" by Nina LaCour, and a present for a friend that they won't apreaciate ;)
I was planning on collecting tea towels to give back to family as souvenirs, but they're just not a thing here. They're also called wash cloths. I could have bought a few tote bags, but they're not super cheap. Might snag a few on the way home tho.
Dinner at a very American style pizza joint and some much needed clothes washing followed. I got to chatting to an American called Justin who is on a similar quest of exploration. Driving, flying, training, bussing and even hitchhiking up the west coast looking for a new home to lay down roots in. We met because I 'stole' his spot in the queue for laundry.
0 notes
Text
20180902 - The Drive for Portland
This is the second Van Appreaciation Day, where we are driving some 300 miles from Fort Dick (wasn't able to get a photo of the town sign) to Portland, hipster capital of the west coast and a big foodie town.
We've also just crossed the boarder from California into Oregon, leaving behind a Stat ethat spans half the west coast. The forests are definetly now I nthe style of what I came to see. Cool and cold, mossy, shady, ancient, mysterious. Gravity Falls, Twin Peaks, Life is Strange, all this sort of country.
Notable things spotted on the way include a green truck painted to look like the decepticon Long Haul (I'll check it out properly on the way home).
Portland is notable from a tourism perspective of not being notable. There aren't really any specific attractions or landmarks, it's just a general chill nice food town with good shops and relaxed people. It's apparently one of the safest cities in the USA.
Our hostel is cool. A keykard door leads into two walkways, shrouded by curtains, which themselves lead to two rooms with bunk beds. Boys took one and girls took the other. Dinner was an adventure to a chicken wings resteraunt (hottly anticipated by Jodie on the trip), with drinks planned afterwards somwhere.
I still don't like chicken wings. Don't like getting my fingers that gross and messy, and Americans can't do good batter. Everyone else enjoyed it tho. And the Uber ride back home had a suited gentleman giving us all manner of dad jokes, knock knock jokes and pirate jokes.
Instead of going out drinking with a tour group I don't exactly vibe with, to a place that either won't serve drinks I like or will do at a price so expensive I won't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting drunk, all while I'm nursing an exhausting cold, I elected to have an early night in.
0 notes
Text
20180901 - Build me a home among the redwoods
A day in the Redwood national park. Enormous trees. Three hour hike along the Irvine trail, and a one hour hike around Ladybug Grove. The latter included a guide book written in the most floral style imaginable, so my dramatic reading of it was much apreaciated.
Dinner was Spag Bog. I handled the carnivore sauce while the vegetarian German girl handled the vegan one. It wound up pretty good, but not my best. And we had tonnes left over, we made waaaay too much.
Eh, not that much of not happened today to be honest.
0 notes
Text
20180831 - Van Appreaciation Day
I had breakfast in the Olympic flame Cafe, two buttermilk pancakes , and as the waitress game me my hot chocolate she said "here you go sweat pea" in a light southern accent. What a good start to the day!
Leaving San Francisco across the bridge and heading north, we are doing what is affectionately known in TrekAmerica tours as "Van Appreaciation Day", which means we will be driving for a while. Our destination is the Redwood Forrest to the north where we'll be staying for two nights before we push into Portland.
At lunch I remembered the draft plans I had for the shelved Operation Cascadia. This was the first draft of Americana, where I would have rented a van with 1-3 friends and driven a very similar route to what I'm going on today. And I noticed that directly ahead, on highway 101, was Confusion Hill.
Since it was a very short detour and literally on the way, we all went to visit. It's a highway tourist trap, a place for parents to stretch their legs, get a drink, go to the loo, and the kids to explore the trashy, crude and kitschy amusement park. It's a gift shop with a backyard full of optimal illusions and Bigfoot paraphernalia, and signs everywhere!
This was a cute bonus, but what I really wanted to go here was because this is the final resting place of the Bill Cypher statue from the Gravity Falls cartoon show. If you don't know what that is, then Google it and have a read of the rat race this statue was involved in.
Camp was setup as usual after a long time on the road, and we officially entered Bigfoot territory!
0 notes
Text
20180830 - Unconventional Exportation
Free day in San Francisco? Don't mind if I do!
The plan was for Michelle to drop us off at the docks where she would get us tickets for the ferry to Alkatraz Island. The after the ferry home, we had the day to ourselves.
We needed to be up and atom by 0730, but this whole group has been outstanding for being up early, organized and packed in record time (I think Michelle is super impressed that she has such a good tour group).
I've taken custody of the Kiwi's cold, and it's inevitably spreading throughout the group. Today was the day I'd be sputtering and changing my voice to James Earl Jones levels of bass. And despite the queezyness, I had no trouble finding my seal legs on the ferry! It wasn't nearly as fast or rocky as the rottnest ferries, and it was nice to stand outside as the waves whipped past.
Alkatraz itself was not what I expected. I thought it would be a pristine preserved and restored penitentiary, but more than half the island is derelict, abandoned, half colapsed and closed off. They're working on restoring other bits of it, but most of it is actually now a reserve for birds and other wildlife. It's beautiful in its ruin!
The whole place is run by a free audio tour. A narrator, former prison guards and former prisoners tell you the history, as the narrator tells where to go, where to look, and when to walk along to the next point. Very good at keeping the crowd flowing.
After the island was abandoned, it was also home to a 16 month occupation by native American protestors trying to raise awareness for their cultural destruction and lack of true land treaties. They scrawled slogans on the water tower and other monuments. Some eventually left or were forced out, but the movement was a successful watershed moment for the treaties that would follow. When the island came under its current carers, the state national park service, they contacted survivors and relatives to come and repaint the signs. I bought a book about the whole affair.
Taking the boat back, everyone had different plans. No one wanted to go to the San Francisco Dungeon with me (the Amsterdam one impressed me so much I want to do another one) so I had to miss out on it (no way am I going alone!).
I helped the group, using my map proficiency and local knowledge, to get to the cable car to China town, then sorted myself out.
Now I'll be frank, this age of the internet has changed the world. There are many dangers online, but to the wary and experienced there is so much opportunity for goodness to be navigated. I'm going on this tour not only to see the west coast, scout out the sights and see the basic tourist stuff. I'm here to learn how these people live, and to meet people. All of these operations collected here:
Chogokin Maple
Creamy England
Americana
The point of these is to fight loneliness and meet new friends.
So I chatted to a stranger on the internet last night, agreed to meet at Pier 39 for luch and told friends where I was going for safety. I had a wonderful time and now I have a lovely new friend.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
20180829 nightmare of the manual car
Another long driving day, punctuated by my masterfully arranged musical selection, we have left Yosemite behind and in the literal dust. We passed through cowboy country as we raced towards the coast. Those with a map (or the lyrics to "we built this city") can guess our destination: San Francisco.
This time I got to see the city across all of its bridges. Taking the bay Bridge in I got a good look at the cbd I missed out on last time. Michelle loves driving in the city because the hills are like a roller coaster. I think she's mad but whatever. After lunch near the presidio at the DOG PARK she dropped us off at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, giving us an hour to walk the length of it back to meet her on the southern side. As everyone rushed ahead I walked with the kiwi and we shared facts and stories above the roar of traffic.
We setup shop in a hostel where we were to spend the next two nights. After freshening up, we all ubered away to Pier 39. Michelle our tour guide would have joined us, but another guide was stressing out and having trouble with their own group, so she dashed off to help her plan. Trekamerica isn't for everyone, but I do apreaciate it's honesty when it comes to adventure tourism. If something isn't working, they fix it but they don't shy away that it broke. Apparently the last tour group to take our route had most of their plans derailed by bushfire, leading to their guide to scramble for activities.
Dinner report: Americans don't know how to batter fish for fish and chips. I've confirmed this at two resteraunt. For shame.
The resteraunt was attached to a video game arcade, and Sian helped me by pooling our tickets so I could afford a DINO TRUX TOY!
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
20180828 - Yosemite pizza
Michelle tells me that, when National parks were being selected for preservation by Lincoln, there were too many for him to see in person. So teams of explorers and artists were sent out to hike to the most beautiful place, paint and capture it, and return. If it was sufficiently beautiful, Lincoln declared it a national park. Now I want a comedy film following these teams. An explorer and artist who have completely different anesthetic tastes in landscape, bicker all the time, and who get saddled with the shittiest piece of land they could think of. Having to compete with other teams of richer, better equipped artists, they face an uphill comedy of errors to preserve their park. Someone make this please.
Anyway today is I hiking day. The morning was really cold. More to follow...
Update: hiking is exhausting but pretty enjoyable. Also Yosemite is f*c king huge! And steep!
Hiking boots work tho. I got blisters on my bunions, or whatever that area is just on the inside edge of where the big toe begins. And I have no idea why my knees didn't give out over all the stairs.
Michelle the tour guide bought us all some delicious pizzas at the end of the hike. Dinner of champions.
End, too tired...
1 note
·
View note
Text
20180827 - Cannery Row
I haven't read any Steinbeck. I haven't read a lot of authors, and that's because i don't read as much as I'd like. I'm more audio visual, but ebooks are helping. If they'd helped sooner, I might have been more impressed by our visit to Cannery Row in Montenery today. Tom on our trip certainly did. He was over the moon! It's a little fishing down on the California coast famous because Steibech wrote a novel describing the working life of its inhabitants during the great depression. In tribute to him, the town has several statues of him built in his honor. Who says Big Man history is dead?
Today was a biiiiig driving day as we headed towards yosemite, which we will explore tomorrow. So much of it was just sitting in the van, singing spice Girls, and thinking to myself. Also writing up blog entries.
Along the way we found a street vendor along the highway selling ten avocado's for a dollar. With this kind of a wholeseller we could theoretically fix Australia's housing crisis (according to some scum chugging politicians).
We arrived in our Yosemite camp grounds without incident, set up camp and had a swim in the local stream. Much colder than Santa Monica!
Quick game of uno before bed with cards I'd bought, and we decided on an early bed, wake up and leave the grounds by 0700 tomorrow so we can hike for as much of the day as possible.
1 note
·
View note
Text
20180826 - Revenge of the Madman of Montreal
My turn as dj today, so I activated "Good times" by Goldie Griffiths on Spotify (look it up for a good time) and splashed it with my collection of indie acoustic Californian melodies such as Santa Monica by the front bottoms, Santa Monica Dreams by Angus and Julia Stone, and Santa Monica by Ever clear.
At a waterfall on our bvoyage, history repeated itself. Those who read of my travels during Operation Chogokin Maple will remember the discovery of evidence of the Absolute Madman of Montreal. Well dear readers, they or a copycat have struck again.
At the Julia Phifer park, at the waterfall that flows directly onto the beach into the pacific ocean, I saw them again. Not their flesh or face, but their soul. That soul of passion, of fever and of an urge and a list unquenchable without action. This time the canvas was different but the message was the same. Instead of logs it was stones and sand on a beach, and once again it has been preserved here for immortal memory.
Besides that we went to Sand dollar beach nearby which was beautiful! We spent a few hours walking up and down, cooling our feet, fighting with seaweed, hollering at doggos, and watching the dancer and the cartoon dunk themselves in the icy water. While the day was hot the water wasn't as warm as Santa Monica.
Dinner was rice and chicken stir fry and it was delicious and filling! Some of the best food I've had has been camp food, I swear.
I share a tent with Peter the Dane, and together we have declared our tent "1st Joint Australian-Danish Mobile Embassy, West Coast Squadron, United States Division".
1 note
·
View note
Text
20180825 - An adventure, again
I wrote this once before, but both Evernote AND tumblr appear to have eaten it.
Today was when I began my second trekamerica trip. For those playing at home, the next two weeks worth of entries will be spend in a van with 11 others, driving from Los Angeles to Seattle north on the west coast of North America.
Waviers signed, briefing done, after meeting in the lobby and having brief introductions we carted everything out to the van and began with a drive to the Beverly Hills sign. I'm traveling with two German girls formerly working as Au Pairs in the states, a Dane, a Kiwi, and everyone else is British (English even, I think).
An hour to flit about the Hollywood walk of fame and I helped everyone get brochures and maps of the city from the hidden tourist bureau.
Then a drive to a Santa something a bit north of us for lunch, and a bit further until we reached the most uphill camp site ever. I paired up with the Dane. Before bed we found a massive inflatable trampoline and proceeded to be absolute children about it.
1 note
·
View note
Text
20180826 is delayed due to technical difficulties
0 notes
Text
Final day in LA today, and the last one of these blogs I'll have to write until 24hrs. Tomorrow I meet the whole crew of the trek America Pacific Coast tour. Excited to meet new people, excited to head north into a cooler climate.
Today was tying up loose ends. Buying boxer shorts, donating new shoes that gave me blisters, replacing them with comfier ones, failing to find a Shaving crayon, and seeing the tar pit museum proper. I also snuck in seeing "goodbye Christopher robbin" in the cinema. A good film... Well any film always makes me feel better when abroad alone. Kills the homesickness and loneliness for a little while.
The photos tho are some stickers I found while walking along the street. My best guess are that they're to do with Pride in some way, but they were a nice little distraction while walking along the street.
I said goodbye to the airbnb, my host, and the two dogs he was dogsitting for (one of them a gorgeous and gentle doberman Labrador thing who had both eyes removed due to complications. The sweetest thing).
Now I'm in the airport hotel catching up with a jet lagged English man and finishing this blog post! Gnite!
20180823 - End of LA
2 notes
·
View notes