oregon and washington are beautiful. the weather was perfect–highs in the low 80’s, negligable humidity, clear blue skies. we just don’t have trees like those in the south. maybe 100 years ago the southern pines looked like that but those are all gone now. everything up there is green. we drove up to seattle from portland by way of the mt. st. helens national park. the scenery is simply gorgeous. trees everywhere, lakes with crystal clear water, big snow covered mountains. we didn’t get to see the crater on mt. st. helens because we had already spent a long time in the park and we didn’t want to stick around and try to find the best viewpoint and hope for the clouds to clear. even so, it was pretty impressive. we visited lava canyon and you can still see where the lava ran down the mountain over 20 years ago. some in the group (who will remain nameless) did break the rules and stole some rocks, though. actually, maybe “some rocks” is an understatement. we split them up when we packed our bags to go home and some of us had a hard time lifting our luggage with all the pumice that was in them. they even have signs in the park about “Don’t be a pumice picker.” i took a picture.

other than the beauty of the landscape (and the horrendousness of our football team) the only two other interesting things about this trip were:

1. you can’t pump your own gas in oregon. daniel got out of the van, picked up the nozzle (the pump was on) and started to pump the gas when the lady at the gas staTION ran out of the store yelling at him. she was horrified that he would even try to pump the gas. they told us that it was state law that you couldn’t pump your own gas. said it was for environmental reasons but i don’t know if that’s really it. we found out later that its a $500 fine for pumping your gas. i just found it weird that we had 2 chemical engineers, 1 computer engineer, and an architect on our trip so we could design, build and run an oil refinery to make the gas but we can’t pump it into a minivan.

2. we suck at maps. saturday after the game we decided to drive to the coast and see the sunset over the pacific and eat in a nice restaurant at a little tourist town called newport. on the map it looked like it would take an hour to get to the coast and then maybe another hour to newport. wrong. it was dark when we got to the coast so we think we saw the pacific ocean and it was so late when we got to newport everything was closed and we ate at burger king. the next day we were going to drive up to seattle via mt. st. helens and mt. ranier and make it to a 1:00 mariners game. wrong again. the 3 hour drive to seattle took 7.5, we didn’t even make it to mt. ranier and we showed up in the bottom of the 8th to the baseball game. then they wanted to make us pay to get into the stadium for 1 inning of baseball. needless to say we didn’t get to see the inside of safeco field.

overall, it was a great road trip to see a sorry football game. thanks daniel, john, leigh anne, marilyn, koby, jason, and aaron for a great trip. we turned out to be a winning combinaTION even if our bulldogs didn’t. i look forward to another trip will yall with great anticipaTION. maybe after the michelin man gets off suspenSION we’ll play a little better.

i got in from jackson monday night at about 12:15am. by the time i got to bed it was 1:00 and i only got 4 hours sleep before getting up and going to work. i had very little motivaTION to work and was pretty tired by the time i got home yesterday afternoon. i laid down to take a nap at around 5:00 and woke up at 2:30am. at that point i got into bed. i feel kinda funny today. i don’t know if its the 12 hours sleep last night or the changing time zones twice over the weekend. i hope i get back to normal soon.

btw, i looked it up and nouns that end in -TION are known as NominalizaTIONs (i believe that is a new one).