On the West Coast again

Hello friends,
Soooo, I've been incommunicado for quite some time now due to the fact that I have been traversing across the country in my '97 Volvo with Andrew Liang. We hit up Obed's house (complete with adorable kitty from the Ginko Gallery!) in the Chi, then Andrew's friend Eric's place in Minneapolis, spent a night in some random town in North Dakota and just got in to Seattle last night from a couple of GORGEOUS and AMAZING days at Glacier National Park in Northern Montana. We've seen some beautiful landscape and some boring shit too, such is life on highway 2.

With that introduction, I just want to say that I hope this blog allows people to skim though a bit of what I briefly write about my time post Oberlin. Keeping in touch is quite hardly my "thing", if you will, and I hope a blog is useful in maintaining some sense of contact with people. That being said, I will keep going with a couple of tidbits from our trek.

Given my inability to function with technology, I will see how I can upload some pictures, but as of right now I can only use my words to describe some of what I've seen. Sooo, we went through the great plains (much better than the view that the I-80 gave me and Cheska on our 2.5 day speedy trip from CA to Oberlin). Saw some antelope, a whole bunch of oil wells, a billion small towns that make Oberlin look like a big city, 2 Indian Reservations, and some breathtaking mountains, rivers and lakes.

In Glacier we stayed at a lovely hostel in the East side of the Park. We were practically the only people there, not just in the hostel but in the entire park. We arrived the day the that the main Lodge opened, which was pretty exciting because it meant we'd be hiking on almost empty trails. After growing up with trail filled people in Yosemite, walking around in the serene forests and mountains of Glacier would actually be calming and not filled with tons of tourists. This did mean, however, that some of the trails were closed and Logan Pass (the faster connection between East and West Glacier), which is supposed to be quite beautiful once the summer hits was not available to us.

We did a couple of great hikes though, nothing too hard, on the East side on Saturday and the West side on Sunday. We saw a small Glacier, and it made us really wonder how much longer it would actually be there. Recalling my trip to Alaska a few years back, thinking about the size of the glacier we saw out there, I got quite nervous at the thought of how small it might be now. Thanks global warming :( Aside from that sad moment, the views were so amazing. We didn't see too much wildlife, but a deer came surprising close to us on the trail and a chipmunk followed us around for a bit of a trail as well, he was quite the model, and came up right to my shoe. But yes, needless to say, the pictures should speak for themselves once I figure out how to make that happen.

Well, that's about all I have for now, Andrew and I are going to go figure out lunch plans for my first day in Seattle. More updates to come!