Seattle

Upon arriving in Seattle, Corey had an appointment with an amazing tattoo artist, Munday, who was doing a guest spot although he's originally located only a few hours from our town! It was neat to see someone from the east coast. While he was getting tattooed, I walked a couple doors down to a thrift store, and found this amazing vintage umbrella for only $3! It came in handy, after all we were in the rainy city. 

We ate dinner and called it a night. The next morning, we got to visit Fremont Market, labeled one of the best flea markets in the country! I was super excited and it definitely met my expectations. It's weird, because a flea market here means broken tables outside full of junk, and occasionally you'll find something kinda cool. Flea markets in cities are quite the opposite, with all of the rare gems you'd find in my town piled onto tables and appropriately priced a lot higher than I'm used to.

Corey wasn't enthused...

After eating lunch, we drove down to the Pike Place Market, which was equally awesome in a different way. There is so much character in all of the cities we visited and I really miss that now that I'm back home and living day to day in such a familiar small town.

We passed a place that had freshly juiced veggies, and of course I had to get some! It had a lot of beet which I'm not really fond of, but I slurped it down anyway since I paid $5 for it...

I really, really wish we'd gotten to spend more time in that lovely city, but it was Corey's favorite place that we visited, so I'm sure we'll be back someday! 

Portland, Oregon

My favorite place on our trip was Portland. We stayed at Northwest Portland Hostel, which was exciting since I have always wanted to stay at a hostel. The lobby had a list for anything you could want to do in the town, and we took a lot of recommendations from there.

We walked around Alberta Street, where Corey got (organic! handmade!) ice cream at Salt and Straw and I got some Stumptown Coffee. As we were walking back to the bus stop, we passed a craft store named Collage that was a combination of all of my favorite sections at the craft store. I could have easily spend a thousand dollars there, but I stopped myself after 30. :)

Oregon is such a beautiful state and full of friendly people. Although it was rainy, it makes the land so green and refreshing. My favorite thing about Portland was that everyone was very involved in keeping it local. Eating organic is easy to do, even the soap in our hostel bathroom was organic! What! I love love love it.

Of course, we went to Voodoo Doughnut.

The next day, we did some laundry and the dryer didn't really work. Our room ended up looking like this until we left.

I wish I had more pictures to show of my favorite city, but I was just so happy to be spending time there and experiencing it all. I will definitely be back some day. :)

San Francisco

When we arrived in San Francisco, the first thing we did was go over the bridge... And this is what it looked like the whole time we were there!

Our first night, we were both feeling pretty homesick but decided to go out for dinner. We got on a bus (our first public transit bus ever) that made us get off, then ended up taking a cab to Haight Street for almost twenty dollars. After eating the most delicious salad ever at Squat & Gobble, we walked to a bar for a comedy night, but it had just ended and the music was extremely loud. We left to walk around, and figured that Haight is full of homeless kids that don't necessarily need to be homeless. Hard to explain, I guess.

The next day, we opted for more touristy spots, and spent a good part of the day at the Fisherman's Wharf. Although it was very crowded, it was a nicer and cleaner place to spend our time.

There were a lot of street performers, including the guy who does the space art stuff. My personal favorite was this guy, who swallowed an entire balloon, then popped it and wrapped the remains around his face! He saw me taking pictures and brought me to the front to pose for me.

Since Corey is military, we got to go onto a WWII ship for free. The ship was built by women during the war in only fifty-six days! It was really interesting to see the conditions in which the soldiers lived and worked.

Outside of the ship, there was a little museum/arcade with hundreds of vintage game machines. I was on cloud nine wandering around and looking at them. We also took got pictures inside of a restored photobooth from the 1940's!

Pacific Coast Highway

You've probably heard about the crazy storm around Denver, which was our last destination before heading home. By Sunday night, we knew that it wasn't an option for us and we would have to change our entire route home. It has been a huge disappointment, especially because one of my best friends moved to Denver recently and I was really hoping to spend some time with her. In the words of Andre 3000, "You could plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather."

I'm a little behind on keeping up with our trip so far, so now that we've gotten stuck in South Dakota you can expect to see more updates. We've been laying around in the hotel room all day after getting stuck in the snow (more on that later) and now we're eating hotel cereal for dinner. Good times!

;)

Anyway, this post is an update on part of our last few days spent in California. We left Santa Barbara and started to make our way to the Pacific Coast Highway. Before we even got onto Highway 1, we followed some winding back roads through the beautiful hills and countrysides. 

I wish that I had taken more pictures of the scenic views along the highway, but I really just couldn't stop watching. My train of thought was something like... I need to take more pictures-but I wanna live in the moment and appreciate it fully-and they really just don't capture how beautiful it is-damn this is unbelievable!  

It was literally jaw-dropping, breathtaking, and so inspiring. It sounds a little cheesy but I honestly think that drive changed my perspective on life. There is so much beauty in the world, in this country, and it's so amazing to experience something different. I never thought the west coast was any better than the east, and my opinion has 100 percent changed. Now I understand what the pacific northwest hype is all about. It's hard to put it into words.

Santa Barbara

After leaving Vegas, we started our drive to Santa Barbara. It was definitely an experience driving through the desert in the middle of nowhere, but once we saw trees and sweet, sweet grass again I was definitely more at home. I cannot imagine living in the places we drove through on the way to California. I've gotta have some green in my life!

Santa Barbara was really pretty. We arrived around dinnertime, so the first thing we did was eat some food. Then we walked down to Santa Barbara Brewing Company, where they had about 7 or 8 beers they brewed. We played some pool and I actually beat Corey in two games!

Of course I had to take some jumping pictures on the beach, and I made Corey do it, too. I think his definitely beat mine... Someone was feeling a little bit silly.