USA Road Trip Day 20

Departure: Redwood National Forest
Arrival: Caldwell, ID
Hours: 13
Miles: 659.5
Gallons: 14.5

We left the Redwoods this morning and are on our way to Yellowstone! It will take us two days to get there, but we are finally on our way back to the east coast! We stopped for gas in Oregon and while Nick was pumping our gas, some lady came over and told Nick that Oregon prohibits pumping your own gas...Nick got in trouble! Not too much...just a reprimand! It reminds me of Bolivia, except the gas pumpers here have been guys instead of Bolivian girls in short skirts and high heels! It is unbelievable how many homeless people and hitch-hikers are around. If I was homeless I think I would go down south towards warmer states...it is way too cold up here to be living outside! Also, there have been hundreds of people riding their bikes, loaded down with camping gear. Apparently they are doing some type of cross country tour like us, but they are getting a lot more exercise! I think that I will stick to seeing the country by car. We made an unplanned stop to Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the US. It was beautiful and all of the edges looked steep, with warnings signs of falling. We then passed a volcano! We didn't even know that we would pass one. All of the air was brown and foggy and it smelled like sweet dirt. Other than that, the entire state seems to be empty...at least where we drove. There were barely any towns or any cars on the highway and the towns that we did pass were like ghost towns. We only saw two rest areas the entire day! Do you remember that game called the Oregon Trail? You could never win the game because all your people would die of thirst, starvation, disease, snake bite, etc. Now we know why no one survived...this is like a desert wasteland! Actually, near the coast was more thick forest, but that didn't last long and the closer we got to Idaho, the more scarce things got. The most "exciting" thing that happened today was our car started to overheat!!! Yikes! But, after much prayer and coolant refill stops we are still going strong! Please pray that we don't have any car trouble on the Today was the freakiest drive yet. Oregon was so deserted, we barely passed one car per thirty minutes. We were driving way out in the boonies with no lights anywhere, no homes, no cars, no people...it freaked me out and I am glad that we made it to Idaho and once again see civilization! I think that I repeated myself a lot in this blog post, but at least you get the picture...it was freaky, like X-Files freaky, like the rapture freaky...it left an impression...I have never driven on roads out in the middle of no where like today. There is no photo of us with the Idaho sign because it was too dark to take one.