Zhanga: August 2009
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Monday, August 24, 2009 (2 comments)
Roadtrip from Atlanta to Seattle with Will was pretty awesome. Nobody died, didn't hit anything, nothing broke down... AND NO TICKETS! (What?!) I left on the morning of August 9, and made it here on the 14th.
The first part of the trip was fairly boring. We drove to Kansas City (which, apparently, is not in Kansas) on the first day and to Mount Rushmore on the second day (about 1530 mi). We collected a ton of awesome bugs on the front of the car, many of which were unfortunately washed away by a thunderstorm on the plains of western Missouri. It was pretty awesome though, because on the plains you can see ridiculously far in every direction, and at night we saw some of the coolest lightning displays ever. I wanted to pull over and take some pictures but didn't really want to get chopped to bits by a hitchhiker and/or get my camera soaked.
Speaking of hitchhikers, somehow we only saw one the entire trip, and he was near an interstate onramp in this tiny town out in the middle of nowhere.
We spent a morning at Mount Rushmore. Here's an obligatory picture:
Then we spent the rest of the day getting to Cody, WY, which is near the east entrance of Yellowstone. We drove though Yellowstone to the west entrance the next day and spent the day in the park, and spent most of a second day in the park before exiting through the north. The trip from Yellowstone to Seattle took two days.
Tux (my front plate) collected tons of bugs, but I thought the ones on my radiator were cooler looking.
Here's Yellowstone. First pic is boring at first... then you see the swarm of flies. Yum.
Clouds make a terrible backdrop for Old Faithful, but maybe I should have realized that before choosing that place to shoot from:
I think this one is called Grand Geyser. It's less frequent and less predictable than Old Faithful, so we got lucky (after waiting 2 hours), but when it erupts it's a lot taller. I think it's supposed to spew around 200 feet vertically.
There were a bunch of these springs all around. They look pretty cool and many have boiling water. The colors are apparently caused by different bacteria who live in different temperatures. They all have a strong sulfur smell.
I saw this overfed chipmunk-thing during my wait for the big geyser to go off:
Random dragonfly.
Bears!
The mom and one cub kept leaving the other one behind. Here's the little one catching up to the mom.
I've tried to keep the number of pictures here limited because I'm lazy... hope you enjoyed.
Oh, and fun fact: we passed a sign for a town (forgot its name) that said "POP 10" at the bottom. It was basically a couple of houses and a post office.
2:06AM
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 (1 comment)
Today, I tried to get up early to go to the DMV. Failed. Then I left work early to go. Once I got there, I found out that to get my Washington license (which I'm required to do within 30 days of moving here), I have to provide some other ID plus one or two documents from a specific list to prove that I live here. Problem is, most of those documents are stuff like tax returns and utility bills, none of which I will have in the near future (apartment pays for utilities here). So I wasted an hour doing that.
Then I went home and picked up Handi to go to the Seattle Humane Society to check out some dogs. It took until 6:01 to get there due to traffic, and as we pulled into the parking spot somebody locked the door to the building. Great.
Then I drove a couple of miles north to show her my office. We went up to the front door to the building, which was locked, and I wondered why my card key didn't work. We entered after a person exiting held the door open, and before we'd taken two steps inside the building we hear: "THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. wE WILL BE TESTING THE FIRE ALARM FOR THE NEXT FIVE HOURS..."
Bad day.
Once I get working Internet (this wireless, which I'm not stealing (seriously, it comes with the apartment), drops me once a minute sometimes), I'll post some pictures from my road trip. It was pretty awesome.
9:03PM
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