Summer of Love Day 15 Log
- 11:24 am: Awesome bakery stop this morning followed by an improptu haircut at a cool barbershop.
- 12:12 pm: Childrens Museum in Portland, OR. Very well done. Much Mazie happiness.
- 2:57 pm: Amazing falafel at Karams in Portland. Wow!
- 3:34 pm: Filling up Honda at $4.16/gallon.
- 3:34 pm: Leaving Portland for an impromptu 1-night stay in Eugene, OR.
- 7:08 pm: At Mezza Luna Puzzaria in Eugene, OR for dinner.
See full Summer of Love Collection.
Summer of Love Index
Number of days on the road so far: 14
Mileage on the 2006 Honda Odyssey at the beginning of the trip: 48,139
Mileage on the minivan at the end of the day, June 2nd: 50,738
Total miles driven during Summer of Love: 2,599
The average number of miles driven per day: 185.64
Fewest miles driven in one day: 0
Approximate CO2 footprint for driving portions of the trip, thus far: 963 lbs
Cost of fuel for the trip thus far: $481.13
Cost to offset the carbon emissions of the driving portions of the trip, thus far: $2.41
Cost for fuel per mile driven: $0.1851
Number of hotels stayed in: 6
Total number of photographs taken during the trip so far: 944
Average number of photographs taken per day so far: 67.43
Fewest number of pictures taken in a day thus far: 8
Find Friends on Flickr
I find myself really liking Flickr more and more. I’m really pleased with the features and how usable, and very importantly, how extendable it is.
However, one area where Flickr falls really short is finding your friends. Sure, if you have a GMail or Yahoo! Mail account you can find people via that, but what about everyone else? Enter Flickr Friends!
Flickr Friends is a great little site that will take an address book export (including a vCard dump from Leopard’s Address Book) and find anyone in your address book that has a Flickr account. It’s great stuff and I was able to connect with a bunch of friends right away.
Trying to find a way to buy carbon offsets for the Summer of Love. Confusing, and way too hard.
Seattle Recap
I’ve been trying to post updates from the Summer of Love trip pretty regularly but we seem to have arrived and left Seattle without even a mention of the stop. So, rather than backdating some posts (which I always feel gross doing) I’ll just do a big recap post. If you get bored easily, suffice it to say that Seattle was really cool.
Put on Your Walking Shoes
We did a lot of walking in Seattle. After being in the car for three long days of driving interspersed with a decent amount of driving at Glacier National Park we decided to park the Honda and set out on foot. We stayed on the fringe of downtown, about 5 blocks from Seattle Center, and about a 10 block walk from downtown Seattle. We probably walked around 4 miles or more total each day. It was nice to stretch the legs and see the city up close. However, the downside of this was that we didn’t get much further out of downtown than our feet allowed.
Great Places
We found a number of great places to check out. The first full day we were in town we found the Elliot Bay Trail and had a nice morning walk while checking out Puget Sound. Then we had a nice coincidence of being in town during the Northwest Folklife Festival. We didn’t plan it but we really enjoyed checking it out, listening to some music and hanging out in Seattle Center.
We decided, and Mazie let us know, that it was high time she got to swing. She was looking for the swings when we got to Glacier National Park. It was high time she needed to do some swinging. We walked over to Cascade Park and Mazie was able to get a solid hour of swinging in before we went over to the Flagship REI store. I feel a little odd gushing about a store, but this REI in Seattle is amazing. Just entering it you go on a little mini hiking path and can’t help but want to buy some hiking boots by the time you get into the store. Plus, they had the perfect layout with the play area for the kids, sitting area for dad with free WiFi and the massive array of womens clothing for mom. Genius.
We checked out the Experience Music Project. The architecture of the EMP is pretty amazing, so even just visiting the building was a lot of fun. They had a great exhibit on Jimi Hendrix as well as an overview of music of the northwest, with a big spread on grunge music and related bands. It was a cool place, but not the best place for little kids. In contrast though, it would be a great place for older kids, and there were a lot of them there having a great time.
Great Eats
We had some good meals in Seattle but two places were really great. We had some amazing pizza at Tutta Bella followed with some great gelato. And we had a wonderful dinner at the Five Spot with a relative of mine that lives in Seattle. We liked it so much we made a return visit for breakfast before we left and had the most amazing cinnamon french toast I’ve ever had.
819 photos taken so far on the Summer of Love. At this rate, I expect to end this trip with ~3,000 photos.
New Blog Theme?
I’m experimenting with a new blog theme. Before I go through trouble getting it all wired up, I’m curious what the folks visiting this site may think.
So, what do you think?
Checking out Powell’s Books in Portland. This place is huge.
Mount St. Helens
Today we hooked up with the Tangen family on the Summer of Love. Kent is here going to RailsConf as well, and Marilee and kids came out to join Tammy and Mazie while he and I go to the conference. Today though, Tammy and Marilee decided to hit the town all day and Kent and I loaded the kids in the van and headed to Mount St. Helens. It was a great day.
The drive to Mount St. Helens from Portland wasn’t too bad; about 50 minutes on the interstate and 30 or so on the highway. We got started somewhat late and stopped for lunch at the last place for food before heading the final 20 miles to the Volcanic Monument. Driving through the valley presents you with evidence of the massive destruction of this eruption even 28 years later. The valley that you drive through is 100 feet higher than it was before. Before it was a gorge and now it’s a pancake flat valley settled between the mountains. All the result of the eruption.
The view of the volcano, and the very young trees everywhere, just exclaim the power of something as mighty as a volcano. Looking at the mountain inspires awe and respect. It takes a wild imagination to envision the cubic mile of dirt that was blown out during the eruption.
If your in the area, take the time to see it. Even the kids thought it was pretty cool. I’d love to come in the summer and hike around the area – although access is very limited even now. I took a bunch of pictures – good stuff.
Rhythm of Travel
Doing extensive travel with Mazie has a certain rhythm to it. I’m sure this is very familiar to all parents. I find that this rhythm provides some structure to the day, as well as some forced downtime that is good pacing. Given that the Summer of Love is six weeks long, a more relaxed “marathon” style trip is appropriate.
Each day starts between 6:30a and 7:00a. So far on the Summer of Love we’ve started the day right around 8:30a with a little variance on breakfast. Everyday at 12:30p is the search for a kid friendly food spot, and then a return to the hotel for Mazie’s nap at 2:00p. She sleeps for approximately 2 hours and then the second part of the day is picked up. Bedtime is at 8:00pm so the 2nd part of the day is always pretty short so the agenda is lighter.
For Tammy and I the result is an early start to the day, a forced two hour break in mid-day and evenings are spent usually tucked in the hotel while Mazie sleeps in the other part of the room.
So, when you see me on email, posting on the website or twittering – it’s probably timed with this rhythm.