The American Museum of Natural History

The Museum of Natural History is my very favourite place in New York. Interesting factoids, a beautiful building, Victoriana, and taxidermy dioramas as far as the eye can see? Yes please! Here is an instagram tour of the best bits we saw.

Creatures

Plants, sponges, algae, lichens

Minerals

Sunday Night Ramblings

I touched down at JFK on Sunday evening to find New York deliciously humid, busy and stinky. Nice to know some things never change! First stop, to find my travelling companion and mother somewhere in the crowds of Penn Station, and drag our luggage back to the hotel. With that accomplished, we were ready to head out for some restorative dinner and fresh air.

Noodle soup at Jebon in St Marks 

 Wandering back uptown

And briefly stealing someone's reserved table for a nightcap in the hotel bar

New York, New York

The view from our hotel room, W 29th St

Safe(co) in Seattle

After kissing the ground on our front door step and changing over our luggage, we got back on the highway and drove up to Seattle for the baseball. Fortunately, the I-5 is straight, wide, and blessedly free of inclement weather!

 Obligatory pre-game Pike Place nachos...

 ... and delicious cheesy garlic bread.

Once we got to the ball park, my nachos had settled and I was ready for dessert. Bring on the caramel corn! 

Sweet, sweet cron

King Felix on the mound

They were playing the Yankees, so the crowd was quite big

Peanuts

At one point during the game a guy leapt out of the crowd and ran onto the field, only to be tackled by security and led away to great applause. Having grown up on cricket, I didn't think that was too weird but apparently it's quite unusual in baseball. There must've been something in the water on Saturday night, because shortly afterwards another guy ran out...

... and then a naked guy ran out:

... and then a fourth guy - he wasn't naked, but he did lose his shoe in the furore.

Because we're completely crazy (I like to think of it more as efficient), after the game we had another drive ahead of us, this time to Portland airport so I could ready for my 7am flight to New York. We had to leave a little early, but we were pleased to hear on the radio in the car that the Mariners beat the Yankees in extra innings. Yay! What better way to celebrate than a midnight slice of pie from Sharis?

Coconut cream pie for Paul and lemon meringue for me.

More Bright Eyes and some crazy weather

Before I say anything further, I should tell you that I'm writing this blog post from the sky! I'm currently on a plane to New York, and they have internet up here! Isn't technology (and the things airlines will cook up to charge you for) amazing? Before I found myself cruising at altitude on facebook though, we did some epic driving, saw some bands and some baseball, experienced some extremely diverse weather conditions, crossed a couple of state lines, and ate some pie. Pretty much a standard weekend here!

First up, a trip to Bend, OR, to see Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, and Jenny & Johhny. Bend is east of Corvallis, on the other side of the Cascades, but really, who thinks twice about crossing a mountain range in May? It's practically high summer!

Fortunately for our musical plans, it wasn't the daytime eastward crossing that was the problem and we made it to Bend with time enough for these for pre-show dinner:

 

Definitely up there with the best burgers of the trip, from the Pilot Butte drive in restaurant. 

Raccoon investigates

After sustenance, on to the show! First up, the very lovely Jenny & Johnny:

So great to hear the very lovely Jenny Lewis in the flesh again, and after seeing it played live I'm excited to spend some quality time listening to their album.

Next up, Bright Eyes. I was going to try to keep my baser instincts at bay here, but what the hell - here are a bunch of photos of Conor, making some weird hand gestures and being a hot genius:

Finally, Death Cab for Cutie as the sun went down:

Chris Walla has gone and got himself a very adult haircut

The world's best bass player, too rockin' to be in focus

Now, cast your mind back a few paragraphs and recall how I said it wasn't the daytime crossing of the Cascades that was the problem. What was the problem? The problem was that we got into our car at 10 pm, expecting that we'd be able to make the three hour drive home, back through the pass and the forest, with little more than a bit of added caution for wandering elk that might stray onto the highway. Mother nature, forgive us our presumptions! About half an hour into the trip, as the road started to climb, it started snowing, which sounds all very romantic except that it turns out that a light smattering of picturesque snow quite quickly turns into zero visibility and icy, icy roads. Who'd've thought, right? Thoughts of imminent mortal injury preoccupied me so I didn't take any pictures, but I wish I had. If we hadn't been sliding along in a little metal death box, it would have been easy to say that it was insanely, sublimely beautiful.

Because we really did want to live to see the Mariners play the Yankees the following day (I'm flashing forward here, but WORTH IT!), we made a slippery u-turn and fled back to lower ground. Let me tell you, all the motels within 30 miles of the bottom of the pass were making a killing on Friday night, and we were lucky to score the very last room at a Super 8 in Redmond, wherever that is. A few hours of restless sleep later, we were apprehensive but eager to get back on the road - originally, we had planned to be up early in Corvallis so we could drive to Seattle for lunch time, and here we were, stranded 3 hours away from home, with 8 hours of driving and possibly unpassable roads between us and our final destination. Still, better than falling off the side of a mountain, so we decided to suck it up and get some breakfast while waiting for news of the highway. No need to go hungry, after all!

 Coffee - no one's going anywhere without it

 Will we have to live in this diner in the town of Sisters forever?

If we do, it is not altogether a bad thing.

Things tend to look more positive after hash browns, and the online traffic cameras seemed to suggest that the road had been plowed already, so we decided to brave the drive. This time, I remembered to take pictures.

Look at this wintery madness!

Raccoon cam

I must tip my cap to the Oregon Department of Transportation, or whoever takes care of such things, as by 8:30 am, the highway had already been cleared and gritted and was looking quite different to the night before! Speaking of the night before - we were very relieved to discover that we turned around when we did,  because we were just about to hit quite a big slope that I really don't think we could've safely navigated during the storm. Look at it though - a bit hair-raising, but so beautiful:



Happy to report that we made it back safe and sound!

 Back on dryer, greener ground

The first town on the west side of the mountains is called Sweet Home - I think I now understand why!