7/29 Pinedale-Oakland (16 hrs)

This was the big one. The one that I kept getting a little anxious about every now and then throughout the earlier parts of the trip.

We left Jacy's house at around 6 AM, shortly after he and his housemates headed out to the field, and arrived in Oakland at about 11 PM.

In between we saw miles of Wyoming's silver grey rolling hills, miles of Utah and Nevada's reddish rolling hills, desert, salt flats, mirages, and tree covered mountains. Really an epic day that seems like three separate ones. It was amazing crossing so many landscapes, some very similar in certain ways and drastically different in others, some completely otherworldly. The dry reddish rolling hills of parts of Nevada, Utah and California look like Wyoming's silver-green hills painted over in a different color. Utah's salt flats on the other hand, completely unbelievable. Spongy and hot, and well, salty.

red mountains in Utah

According to it's menu, "Utah's oldest and most famous restaurant"

The Great Salt Lake

random sculpture in the middle of the great salt desert

Nevada's crazy rock formations

We tried to find dinner downtown, but, shockingly, there are only casinos.

California!!!

7/28 Pinedale

Today we hung out around Jacy's house and in Pinedale.

Jacy's daily bowl of oatmeal

In the morning we went in to the library to try and get some wireless so we could post this blog, but weren't able to connect. The library is beautiful and brand new, courtesy of the fracking companies. We spent the rest of the morning checking out some tourist spots, including the Cowboy Store, and exploring Jacy's favorite gear stores.

The local restaurant and drive through liquor store.

Got food for lunch and headed back to the house to cook. Spent the rest of the afternoon lazing around and then went back into town for dinner at the Wind River Brew Pub. Going to bed early tonight (9?), tomorrow morning we are getting up with the house at 4:45. They're off for their normal early morning head start in the field, we'll be hitting the road to try and get a head start on our fifteen hour drive to cali, our final stop.

Jacy's "back yard"

7/27 Pinedale/Grand Teton/Jackson

This probably wont be posted for another couple days. No internet here, and barely any cell reception. We are definitely in cowboy territory now. Scrubby silver green hills dotted with cows that look like beetles from far away. And mountains. Mountains everywhere you look, purple grey in the distance, snow capped closer in.

We got to Jacy's place around ten last night. Drove into Pinedale, and then about 25 minutes back out, looking for an unmarked dirt turn off. As we drove over a cow crossing and I tried to call Jacy to make sure we were in the right spot I was about fifty-fifty that we were either at the beginning of a horror movie or in his driveway. Fortunately we had turned down the right unmarked dirt road and got to Jacy's about a mile later.

Today we drove to Grand Teton National Park, about an hour and half from Pinedale. Faced some minor construction along the way, about six cow underpasses being constructed along the route. Grand Teton was amazing. Very different from crossing the rockies, very beautiful in a different way. The driving route we took around it stayed at the bottom of the mountains, which meant beautiful views up and all around. We got to do a little hiking, and did a lot of stopping to take pictures and search for wildlife. We saw some bison and elk from far away, but no bear or moose. Apparently moose have already started heading up north into Yellowstone this time of year.

We went down into Jackson for dinner. Found a really nice restaurant, Cafe Lotus, with an almost entirely vegan and gluten free menu, that was also entirely delicious.

All together a great day. This place is really amazing. The desolate beauty of so much wide open space has a gravitational, breathtaking pull on me. Impossible to imagine what life would be like out here, but incredibly tempting to try.

Apologies for the backposts

So, we've been writing lots of blog posts but (surprise!) no internets in a lot of this country. Feel free to read our backposts that I'll be posting in a bit.

M&S

Wading in Lake Jenny at Teton National Park

More photos from today coming, but here is (a low quality) to hold you over.
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Maurice Weeks
Philadelphia, PA

Grand Teton National Park

Just a quick update from the bb:

Jacy (shandra's bro) took us through Grand Teton National Park today. Grand Teton is right next to Yellowstone but iis less touristy. Awesome picutres to come. We'll be here in internet-free Pinedale, WY for a couple more days then on to San Fran!

M and S
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Maurice Weeks
Philadelphia, PA

7/26 - Scenic drive to Wyoming

Hey Folks,

We're leaving Denver in a bit to take a scenic drive up towards Pinedale, Wyoming where we will be staying with Shandra's little brother Jacy for a few days. Unsure about the internet situation up there, but it is bound to not be good. Your best bet to keep up with us in the next couple of days will probably be to follow the twitter hash here: http://goo.gl/gqsnr

We'll try and update as much as possible!

7/26 Denver - Why people move here (and why we might)

EVERYwhere you look, EVERYthing you look at has mountains in the background. No matter what the thing image is in your field of vision, it has mountains in the background. Awesome.

when's the last time a parking garage looked this awesome. Throw some mountains behing it and voila.

7/25 Des Moines - Denver (10 hrs)

The driving today made up for yesterday. No rain, no flats, no wrong directions. Just great driving across hundreds of miles of corn fields. The weather was beautiful, and Nebraska and Colorado's speed limits are 75!

One of many gigantic wind farms in Iowa

We were making such good time that we decided we had time to stop at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. Its a tourist/historical spot that tells the story of the Great Platte River Road, which it turns out, is I-80. It was interesting to actually take a half hour and think about the history of the road we have now driven over a thousand miles on. Its obvious if you think about it, that the road is just a paved over trail that thousands of people have used, but we hadn't actually thought about it, so it was a little mind blowing. It was nice to do something a little touristy and cheesy instead of just driving straight through.

Even with the stop we made it to Denver by 8:30 local time. Which meant driving in as the sun was setting behind the Rockies, completely gorgeous. It was Mo's first time seeing real mountains which was pretty fun.

Denver seems like a cool city, we only got a chance to explore the downtown area close to our hotel, but it had a nice pedestrian street that was closed to all traffic except for free buses that took people up and down the street. It was a beautiful night and we got to grab dinner outside.

Excited for tomorrow's drive. We are taking a scenic detour to drive on the highest elevation highway in the United State, Trail Ridge Road (US-34). It runs through Rocky Mountain National Park and is supposed to have amazing views of the mountains. Hopefully we'll catch some of them for the next post!

7/26 Des Moines

We arrived in Des Moines late late last night, between the flat and me steering us 1.5 hours out of the way we didnt make it in till around 1. We crossed the Mississippi just after sundown, which was pretty exciting, but the highlight of the drive was the “largest truck stop in the world”. It was something else. Not only could you shower, wash laundry and get a hair cut, you could also buy everything from Minnetonka Moccasins to hoola hoops to glass figurines. Definitely would not recommend stopping late unless you are really focused, or not in a hurry, we spent at least a half hour wandering around in a daze.

This morning we had a delicious breakfast (we seem to be having a lot of them) and nice visit with Ruth before she headed off to work.  She also took us on a driving tour of Des Moines. Its been really fun getting these tours from friends who we are visiting for the first time in their new homes. Can't wait for the Wyoming tours when we get to Jacy. 

The Wave Cafe, our breakfast spot

Ruth in front of her apartment building

7/24 Laingsburg – Des Moines (with some unplanned adventure in between)

Last night late, we arrived at Shandra's parent's house. Tim and Aspen are always nice to see, and recently got 2 new puppies! The puppies are from an elkhound rescue site, and are part poodle, part dachsund, part german shephard, and part a-bunch-of-other-things. The pups, Deva and Raja, are still learning to interact with new people, but did a really great job, and are generally good at being cute and stuff like good puppies should be.

Our next step was in to Lansing for brunch with Shandra's friend Molly. Getting ready to go there though, we checked on the rental car and noticed a flat tire! Flat tires = no good for driving across the country. We called Budget and they sent someone to the house to place the spare on for us, which we declined because that is ridiculous. We assumed when they said they were sending someone out, that they would put a new tire on for us...too good to be true. We instead let Tim pump up the flat to a rideable level (it was a pretty slow leak) and drove to Sears to have the tire properly patched. While we waited we met up with Molly for brunch.

Molls took us to Sawyer's in Lansing which had super rich pancakes and tasty local eggs. We had a great visit and then tried to convince her to come with us, which she wisely declined. We forced her to take this picture:

A few hours after getting on the road, we passed the furthest point west that I have ever been in this world (just a little west of Chicago) which was an important milestone. From now on, I'm christopher columbus'ing all of this.

Typing this in the car as Shandra drives. We'll have some more news and an update on our good friend and host for tonight Ruth either later tonight or tomorrow. Did you know that we stopped in the birthplace of Ronald Reagan? No? Well, search this tag for fun stuff like that as it happens #moandshandradrive

How many Ronald Reagans does it take to screw in a light bulb. 2. One for the lightbulb, and the other to ruin the country's economy for the foreseeable future.

7/23: Breakfast at the IngleBean Coffee House

After a driving tour of the area this morning we are now sitting down for some coffee at the IngleBean.

The IngleBean CoffeHouse in Millheim, PA

Woke up at seven this morning so Martha could take us for a drive along some of her favorite roads. Its so beautiful out here, and so fun to see everything in daylight after feeling our way along pitch black roads last  night.

Our tour guide Martha

Hard to capture the beauty, but...

Enjoying the slightly cooler temperatures and looking forward to exploring this little town a bit more this morning before the drive to MI....

...Later in the morning Martha took us on a tour of lovely downtown Millheim. It's a very cute little town with a nice art gallery and a local food restaurant and brewery where we grabbed lunch before hitting the road. We even got to meet the local ducks!

7/22: Philadelphia - Colburn, PA (4.5 hrs)

Successfully completed the first leg of our journey tonight from Philadelphia to State College area. I love driving through this scenic area of PA. 76 can really be something beautiful.

The plan was to make it to a State college Spikes Game, although because of Philadelphia traffic and roadwork, we only made it in in time to catch the last 1 and a half innings - but we also saw fireworks!!

76 can also be something crowded...

The main reason for going to the game was that it also served as a birthday celebration for our friend Martha. Martha is a friend from Swarthmore (we were on the same hall with her our freshman year) who lives here in lovely Colburn, PA. She owns and runs the IngleBean coffee shop which we are pumped to see tomorrow! She's also promised us a drive around the scenic areas of central county PA. Should be an exciting enough day - and will warrant waking up at 7:30 to get started. By evening, we should be in Laingsburg to say hi to Aspen and Tim (Shandra's 'rents) and meet their two new puppies. Pictures of ALL to follow soon. Speaking of follow …. #moandshandradrive on the twitta.