Celebration!

Preface: I really did try to keep this short but still interesting. Sorry. Long-worded is my nature.

Well, I suppose it is about time for me to share with ya'll about our trip home to Oregon. After the family reunion, Brandon and I both finishing classes, finals, working, my graduation, packing, cleaning, moving, and Brandon's brother's wedding in Salt Lake City, we left for a trip to celebrate my graduating, Brandon's 25th birthday and our one year anniversary! We had a grand ole' time driving about 2,000 miles, throughout 6 states, over the course of 7 days.
On Saturday, 14 August, we headed up to Yellowstone and saw several of the more than 10,000 geothermal pools (geysers, ponds and puddles of hot water). We also saw many waterfalls and much wildlife. We even saw a real bear in the "wild".

Old Faithful

A geothermal pool area. This was Brandon's favorite part.

Despite the fact that we saved $25 on an entrance fee by rushing to arrive on a no-fee day, we were too cheap to spend $15 on a campsite. Instead, we drove around the town of West Yellowstone, just outside the park, until we found an awesome spot...a grassy patch directly behind the LDS church building! We got some weird looks from early morning meeting attenders.

This is at the crest of a humongous waterfall. This was my favorite part of Yellowstone, located within the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone and the only place we saw yellow stone.

Sunday afternoon was spent in the park and Sunday night was spent in the car. We intended to drive through the night but didn't make it. We napped in a gas station parking lot and woke up next to a street sign: Roses Lane!

Monday: We then drove to Crater Lake which was absolutely gorgeous! Though there isn't a whole lot to do unless you are geared up for really intense hiking, it is definitely worth seeing.

Turns out it's hard to take a good photo in a dark cave.

After, we drove to Cave Junction area and camped at a site at the foothills of the Oregon Caves. The following day (Tuesday), we toured Oregon Caves and Redwood National Forest. The Oregon Caves are just incredible! I'd been there before and I would gladly go many more times. They were just awesome. I suggest everyone go there.
Redwoods were awesome and we had some real good times taking pictures and walking around exploring.
On our way back, we stopped at an RV campsite and showered. 8 minutes of hot water for $0.25! Sweet!

We slept in the same campsite that night, then packed up and headed off the following morning. (Wednesday) First we stopped at the Oregon Vortex. It's this crazy cool place that they place naturally warps weight, height and other such things. You should look it up for a better explanation. It was actually really really cool. Just a teaser: they push a glass bottle downhill and when it loses momentum it rolls back up the hill. Backwards.

White Fallow Deer (I think they originate in Asia)

Our trek continued up the I-5 corridor to Winston, Oregon where we stopped at Wildlife Safari. Totally rad. You get to drive around this large area filled with animals from all over the world! Sparing the bears, lions, tigers and cheetahs, all are roaming free on a large plot of land and can potentially walk right up to your car. Antelope, lions, ostrich, rhinos, zebras, giraffes, bears, elephants, emu, alpaca, white deer, cheetahs, tigers, turkeys and a ton more that we'd never heard of! They also had a petting zoo and small-cage animals so you could see them up-close.

Dude, this emu was scary looking. I thought he would peck right through the window!

You can't actually tell from this but the giraffe got about 18" from our car. I thought for sure he was going to walk right on top of it and crush our little chevy!

Taking HWY 42, we journeyed to the Coast and camped at a side just outside Florence. That night, Brandon cooked us some way delicious chicken alfredo. Camping is great. Thursday was spent slowly. Upon my request, we did basically nothing. I was tired of the go-go-go approach, so we just chilled. We ate at Mo's (and claimed it was in commemoration of our honeymoon, since we did it then, as well).

This is actually the last picture we took with this camera. It broke right after.

Friday morning, we ate, packed up and drove to Mulino and a few hours later were at Brandon's brother's second reception/most red-neck night his brother's in-law's had ever seen. It was held at the bottom of an intense gravel road, next to the Molalla River were the night included swimming, shooting guns, horse shoes, badminton, riding around in a Gator, bonfire, bbq pulled-pork, baked beans, watermelon, tiki torches, OFF!, and personalized Jones Soda.

Our trip ended with a night spent at the padres, but only to begin another adventure in the book of our lives.