Double Rainbows, High Five!

After Yellowstone came Idaho. We were very surprised at how beautiful the state was, especially given that we thought it just had a bunch of potatoes. And it was, I think. But pretty potatoes! And mountains! With respectable trees! It also could have had something to do with the fact that Yellowstone had a few nice landscapes, but for the most part, consisted of crappy dead scrub pines and some hot,stinky water that people took a lot of pictures of. I could have gone home, drawn up a bath, taken a picture and called it a day. 

See!! I know, right?!

I digress. Idaho was also awesome because we saw a DOUBLE RAINBOW, BITCHES.

Second rainbow by invite only.

It also took a long time to get through. I drove until about midnight, and then Angie took over. I was supposed to nap to pick up the next shift, but the sky kept me awake. I haven't mentioned it until now, but the sky is crystal clear through states like South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, etc. You can see the milky way, and thousands upon thousands more stars than you ever can on the east coast. It's incredible. Every 10 minutes or so, you see a shooting star, so I just leaned back in the seat and watched them. Eventually I remembered that Google has a sky map app, so I whipped that out and saw that Neptune or something was viewable. Angie jokingly suggested I take out the binoculars to see it, so I did, and OH MY GOD PULL OVER RIGHT NOW THIS IS ACTUALLY WORKING AND NOW I HAVE A HEADACHE.

We pulled into a trucker-filled gas station and stood there like idiots with my phone up in the air showing constellations (which were wrong. It wasn't calibrated right, or there are like 7 Neptunes that I don't know about) and flailing around with binoculars. A trucker drove in and sat there with his headlights pointed at us, so at that point we decided we look ridiculous, giggled back to the car, and kept on driving.

Ang drove until 3:30 or so, and we had decided we didn't want to miss the drive through Oregon, plus we were (impossibly) ahead of schedule so we could both sleep for a while. We crashed at a rest area until 6:30 with me in the passenger seat and Ang squished into the back with all of our crap. She can probably sleep anywhere as long as she has a blanket on her head. We woke up bleary and staggered to the bathroom where we washed up. Then we heard it. A bird. No! A SEAGULL! SEAGULLS MEAN THE SEA! Seagull-five!

Eventually, we started to enter into Portland as we got stuck into bumper-to-bumper traffic, we were confused as to why the hell there were so many people up. I mean, Shitcago was empty at 8:30 AM, so what the hell was everyone doing up so early on a ...ohhh, Wednesday morning. Right. Rush hour. Greaaat. Now, I had never truly done city driving so I was thoroughly unhappy about this whole thing. But I did it! We randomly googled a street to check out, and found a parking spot after driving the wrong way a few times and curbing the car three times. Problem was, we parked in a 1-hour zone and right across the street from us was 2-hour parking so I made Angie move the car, where she performed (apparently) the most perfect parallel park job in the history of ever. I wasn't watching, but I assume it was amazing. 

We got food at this crepe place called Vivace, and it was oh. my. god. so. good. She got a whipped cream cheese with raspberry jam crepe and a spiced mexican mocha that the barista had drawn a fern into the foam. 

and I got a mushroom, bacon, and swiss crepe.

My first crepe ever and probably my last because I doubt any will ever be up to par.

After that, we began the biggest spending spree of the trip so far, jumping from store to store to store and as we did so, we slowly realized....woah, they were so nice! And so were they! And that dude! Whee! I am going to frolick down the street now! Seriously, Portland put us in such a good mood. Every single person we spoke to asked how we were, found out about our trip and asked questions, made suggestions, and chatted with us with no sense of I'm-doing-my-job-and-have-to-be-nice-are-you-leaving-yet about them. In one store, we found a pad of notes that said HIGH FIVE and had checkboxes such as "you were great last night" and "survived." We bought the shit out of them.

I made a fwwend.

We also found Beyonce, the Giant Metal Chicken and her little friend chilling on the side of the street. 

We were filled with glee and smiling and (probably sightly hysterically again from lack of sleep) laughing as we drove away to make it for our reservation at Heceta Head. At least we were, until I almost stabbed Angie in the eye with a pencil as she drove while I was reaching back to grab the basket of cameras to take a picture, which flopped down, smashing all the cameras into the center console, popping the car into neutral while on the highway, and nearly killing us as we screamed. Enter: our first HIGH FIVE NOTE.

[UPDATE PENDING!!!]

We were kinda quiet after that. But Yeah! Portland! Awesome!