After getting some good pictures of Sparkle and Sarah at the hill we packed the car and hit the raod...destination Ashland Oregon. Again I was amazed at how the scenery changed almost as soon as we crossed the border into Oregon. The defining feature was the mountain landscape now painted with evergreens. Again...spectacular. We arrived in Ashland just after 3PM and quickly found T&JH's place. Definitely a step up from Death Valley. JB (TH's sister) had said we would love Ashland and she was right. Its a great town with tons of great restaurants, cool shops and an up and coming wine region. Thanks JH for the great vino Wednesday night. Tonight we plan to check out one of the local restaurants with TH while JH stays in with NH and Milo. A well deserved break for TH.

Tomorrow we make the final push onto Vancouver. JH says he can do it in 9 1/2 so I'm aiming for 8... ok just kidding, we are hoping to make it in under 11 hours. We need the pee breaks!

Just a quick update: it took us 13 hours but we did stop for lunch, hit two outlet malls quickly and hit lots of construction and traffic all the while driving through pouring rain

I'm starting to lose track on what day it is. We arrived in Ashland Oregon yesterday afternoon. but I think I have a few days to catch up on before I get to that.

When we set off from Park City we crossed through Salt Lake City and crossed into Nevada. Its incredible how the landscape changes so much from one state to another and even within states. We spent a good few hours crossing the Salt Flats and driving through desert. We crossed into Northern California in the early evening and decided to make a push for Mt Shasta. After what seemed to be a never ending drive through thick forest in rain and dense fog we finally made it to Mt Shasta around 7:30 PM. We quickly found a motel and pulled in. Mt. Shasta had a lot to live up to after the long drive and it didn't disappoint. We had dinner at a great Mexican restuarant where our margaritas where the size of our heads and the food terrific.
In the morning we had delicious bagels and tea at Seven Suns Cafe and Coffee.

We discovered that there was a ski hill near by and quickly made the decision to spend the morning boarding before heading off to Tanya's just across the border in Oregon. I am I ever glad we did. I can easily say I have never seen any place so beautiful. As we rode the chair lift up for the first time we just gaped in awe at the sight of the mountains peeking through the clouds. It was spectacular.



Great place to board, three chair lifts, nice runs and not too crowded, I almost felt like I was ripping them off at $25 for the day.







I want to thank Keith and the guys at Mt. Shasta Board and Ski Park for taking such great care of Sarah and Sparkle while we rode. As Gary would say...we'll be back!

Not much time to write this morning. We spent the day in Park City, Utah yesterday. Utah is such a beautiful state...definitely on my list of places to come back to. We boarded at Park City and it was incredible. The weather was spectacular, sunny, clear and not too cold. My knees are black and blue after a few spectacular falls but other than being tired and sore I am on a total high. Park City is awesome, but definitely for the rich and famous. The Sundance Movie festical arrives next week so there is lots of buzz going on, apparently snoop dog is coming.

Must run, we want to hit the road early today and are aiming to get past Reno so we can be in Ashland visiting Tanya early tomorrow.

We got some great shots of Sarah and Sparkle. Will try and upload them at Tan's house. Everyone on the road has been so nice to us. I guess 2 girls, 2 goldfish and a license plate from so far away make poeple want to find out what you are up to.

Have a great day!

What a day of driving. Its 9:27 PM Mountain Time right now but feels well past midnight. Our day started off well enough with a nice drive across rolling plains with lots of farm land and cattle ranches. Desperate for tea midmorning we pulled off at an exit and were most excited to see a drive through Starbucks. Now we are in the middle of the central plains here...Starbucks was the last place we expected to find. Unfortunately it was still being built so there would be no tea for us. Luckily we found an awesome little place across the street. Had fun trying to order "hot" tea but finally we pulled out tea in hand and hit the road again. We were making great time until we left Rawling around 4PM. It started to snow as we hit the mountains and we battled through 1.5 hours of white out conditions and very high winds. As a result we stopped about 150 miles earlier than originally planned as driving was slow and a more than a little stressful.

Sarah and Sparkle are doing great. They had an awesome time in York were we got some great pictures of them in an old western town. Not sure if was meant to be a ghost town or if that was because of the time of year.

Surprisingly we aren't going stir crazy yet. This afternoon we started listening to the Life of Pi (thanks Arshia). The wide selection of music and audio books/lectures is definitely helping pass the time.

Tomorrow we are heading to Park City to do some snowboarding. Our plan is to be on the slopes by 11AM, board for a 3-4 hours then get back on the road for 3-4 hours more. Apparently there are is also some good outlet shopping to be had there too.

Its the morning of Day 3. We are in Omaha NB. Weather is clear and crisp. Our destination today is Salt Lake City. From that point on we should be able to start the snowboarding portion of our trip.

But lets go back to Day 2.
We got off to a bit of a late start as we decided to stay and have breakfast with my sister and her family. After some yummy waffles we loaded up the Santa Fe and hit the road. Less than 30 minutes into our journey we hit a road closure. The 94 was shut down due to poor weather conditions. We had seen at least 10 cars off the road, several of them on their roofs. It took close to an hour to just get off the hwy but as luck would have it, right when I hit the intersection at the off ramp we saw them opening up the road again and I manager to swing around and get right back on. It looks like they salted the road heavily so it was good driving from that point on.

We hit Chicago around 3:30 EST..now 2:30 CT. After about 11 hours in the car we started to experience problems with the volume on the stereo. After much discussion and trying everything to get the volume to increase I finally realized that I was using the tuner knob...not the volume knob. Perhaps it was nearly time to call it a day. We hit Omaha just before 11PM and called it a night.

Sarah and Sparkle appear to be enjoying the road trip so far.