San Francisco
6/18/2002 (Cem) Preparations for the trip have finally started to gear up. My last day at work is on June 28th. The plan is to move out of our apartment by July 4th, spend the independence day celebrations with friends and get on the road by July 5th. The tentative plan is as follows:
- Two+ months in the U.S. (July – Beginning of September)
- Two+ months in Turkey (September – mid November) Includes a one month stint in the Turkish military - One Month in New Zealand - One Month in Australia (November – December) - Several months in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia etc - Potential last stop at Mongolia
There is obviously still an immense amount of work that will need to get done before we leave.
6/22/2002 (Cem) The day started at 4:30am to watch Turkey-Senegal compete for a place in the semifinals. (1-0 at overtime) Go Turkey! The first time since 1954 Turkey is in the World Cup and they advanced to the semi-finals. Not a whole lot of preperations were completed this weekend. Saturday was Marina's dinner party for us. Great time although by the end of the night the twenty or so cocktails I had were troublesome. Chris and Anne followed up on Sunday night with the famous 4 hour, $100+ Lasagna.
7/02/2002 (Cem) After three gruesome days, we fully moved out of our apartment and put everything in storage. I think my friend Paul put it the best: "This was the worst move I have ever been involved in." Tam and I parted ways today ... at least for a week or so that is. I am staying on in San Francisco while she took off for Mt. Shasta and the rest of the north west coast with her brother Tom. We are scheduled to regroup in Seattle.
7/8/2002 (Cem) This is my last day in San Francisco. I am leaving tommorow to meet up with Tam and Tom (Tam's brother) in Seattle. As a Turkish citizen, unfortunately I need to pick up a Canadian visa to be able to go to Vancouver the next day. Conveniently , the consulate is only open from 8am - 10am. I got in touch with an old buddy from UVA, Christian. Hoping to hang out with him tommorow night and after Saturday when we return to Seattle. Its been a great time hanging out for a several more days in San Francisco. Thank you all of my friends for making my last days here so much fun.
Seattle / Vancouver
7/12/02 Arrived in Seattle on the evening of 7/9. This was just a stepping stone for us to go to Vancouver the next day. The next day, after about three hours at the Canadian embassy to get my visa, we were set to go. We spent about fours hours in Seattle and left the rest later for when we would return for the weekend.
First impressions of Seattle: Like San Francisco, a very scenic city. We parked our car by the farmers market and proceeded to walk around. One thing that stood out immediately was that there was a high police presence in the city. And as I was soon to see, for good reason. In the short time we were there, we witnessed three drug deals, a mugging and a three cops approaching a car with their guns drawn with about another fifty cop cars (not an exaggeration) providing cover. The funny thing is despite all this, the city didn't actually feel unsafe. After dinner, we did some of the more touristy things like go to the top of the Space Needle (a copy of the one in Ankara). Definitely a beautiful skyline. Anyway, we return to Seattle on Saturday to hang out with Christian so I will probably have more to say about it than.
Impressions of Vancouver "Beautiful British Columbia": Despite what everyone has told me about Canada and Canadians, I really enjoyed Vancouver. We've spent about three days here walking throughout the entire city. Unlike Seattle, hardly saw any police or any crime (excluding of course the marijuana that was being sold openly in certain areas of the city). We walked around everywhere, averaging about 5-7 hours of walking around everyday! Toronto has very clean streets with lots of beautiful people walking around. It's also a very international city with people from all over Asia. My guess is most of them are there to learn English. The Canadian dollar really makes everything seem cheaper. We made reservations through Priceline and got rooms in the Hyatt for $50 a night. This seemed like a great deal since the location was great and it was pretty luxurious. Unfortunately, they charged us an extra $35 Canadian for Tom and $18 for parking, so it actually didn't end up being such a good deal.
In Vancouver, the mountains really come up right up to the city, so there is good scenery everywhere. In our last day here, we went up to the top of Grouse Mountain via an eight minute Gondola ride. Grouse Mountain is a 1000+ meter peak mountain with amazing views of the entire city. I will include pictures when they are developed.
So all in all, I left Vancouver feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about the place. And to think we never would have come by here if it weren't for Tom insisting. His motives for wanting to go to Vancouver were questionable, but was ended up being a great excuse to discover a new city I otherwise would have looked over.
7-14-2002 (Cem) Arrived back in Seattle yesterday. We woke up at 7am in Vancouver since we had to drive back to Seattle to drop off Tom at the airport. After about an hour waiting in line at the border, I went through the regular INS hassle. Tom was likewise hassled since he only had a California drivers license on him. As everyone reminded us at the border, a California drivers license only means that he can drive in California, nothing more. Anyway, everything went fine in the end. Tam and I went to Capital Hill in Seattle, which I recall Paul and Cozy appropriately referred to it the Haight Asbury and Castro rolled into one in Seattle. A fun place overall all though with interesting stores and some bizarre people walking on the streets.
We met up with Christian later that afternoon. Christian basically didn't seem like he had changed a bit since UVA. Except for the shorter hair. Christian and his girlfriend, Liz, gave us a nice tour of the old city, including the Underground city. I can't say I fully understood/listened to all of the history, but apparently at some point in Seattle, they decided to fill in a portion of the streets (the first floor of the buildings) in Seattle and rebuild on top of it. It sounds pretty interesting, and now that I think about it, I can't believe that I didn't pay better attention to it.
Today was probably the most relaxing day so far in the trip. Christian had recently received his Captain's license. As a member of the Seattle Sailing Club, he and his girlfriend, Liz, took us out on a 8 hour sailing trip in the Puget Sound, the bay in Seattle. The winds were slow, the skies were cloudy, but nonetheless the experience was terrific. It convinced me that when I return from my trip I absolutely need to take some sailing lessons. Thank you Christian and Liz.
Unfortunately, our trip in Seattle ends tomorrow and we hit the road to Libby, Montana. We will probably be there for about two days or so. Larry James, a close family/friend of Tam's spends his summers there as a park ranger. So I expect that this will be the beginning of the outdoors portion of the U.S. At least for me, that is. After Mr. James, Tam and I are alone on our trip until we reach Miami to stay with Erdal sometime in August. I figure if we don't kill each other during this time, we can probably go through with this entire trip.
Montana
Random Fact 1: Montana is the fourth largest state in the country but has only one million residents.
Random Fact 2: Unlike what you may have heard, Montana roads do have speed limits.
Libby
7-15-2002 (Cem and Tam) After a little over 430 miles (approximately 8 hours of driving) we arrived in Libby, Montana. We realized soon after we left Seattle that calling Washington the Evergreen State may be somewhat of an exaggeration. Starting from about an hour east of Seattle, the scenery began getting dryer and dryer and by the end outright became a desert. However, I did see the best road sign so far on this trip: "Litter and it will hurt." At some point, we drove through Idaho. We finally reached Montana after 7 hours. Wow. The state is really as beautiful as it looks in the movies. Libby, located at the west of Montana was actually where River Wild (Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon) and Always (Spielberg) was filmed. Quite a feat for city with a population of less than 5,000.
Larry (Tam's family friend), gave us a quick tour of Libby tonight. We drove around most of the city and its "suburbs" in about half an hour. Libby has only one single-screened movie theater with two showings per day and a new movie "premiers' once every week. Larry told us that lots of teenagers hanging around in their pickups or driving up and down the four block main street - "clogging up the gut" as they call it around these parts.
Tomorrow Larry will be taking us with him on a 9 mile hike. Larry works for the US Forest Service and hikes/monitors the trails around Libby during the summers. In the winters, he is high school teacher and a volleyball coach in Orange County, CA. He grew up in Montana and stays with his pleasant mother and brother in Libby during the summers. Anyway, the reason I am bringing this up was because it reminded me again how different from mine, yet seemingly much more fulfilling some lives are.
7/16/2002 (Cem and Tam) Thanks to Larry, we got a very personable and enjoyable introduction to Libby. We hiked 9 miles and climbed over 1000 feet today, passing two lakes, Upper Geiger and Lower Geiger, before reaching the summit, Lost Buck Pass. The local mosquitoes are quite aggressive and feasted us. They seemed to be able to differentiate our flesh from that of Larry's since we were each nabbed about 20-25 times whereas Larry seem to have gotten off scotch free. We had applied Repel (29%DET) but to no avail. They even came through Cem's shirt and bit him around his shoulders. Maybe the reason why they bit us instead of Larry was because we were sweating like pigs; we were very much out of shape compared to Larry. In his early 60's, Larry made the ascent to the top look easy, but was nice enough to pretend to need frequent stops so that the two of us could rest and catch our breath.
In the evening, Larry took his Mom and us over to Charlie's cabin. Charlie, a co-worker and friend of Larry's from high school, is a retired high school science teacher, works with Larry as a forest service ranger, and has spent nearly his entire life in Libby, Montana. ("There's no place like home. " is there Charlie?) We can understand why. Charlie lives with his girlfriend, Ann, in a beautiful log cabin, surrounded by 20 acres of complete privacy in Kootenai National Forest, with great views of the mountains and Libby Creek (1/2 mile from where they filmed Always).
Charlie and Ann also invited Bill, one of the very few local doctors, and his mother. Everyone was so warm, friendly, genuine, and engaging. As soon as we arrived, Charlie offered us ice-cold gin tonics, which felt so refreshing since it was incredibly hot (about 95 degrees in the shade around 6 pm that day). Although an eclectic mix, it seemed that everybody, including us, thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Charlie, Bill and Ann, local aspiring musicians, played an assortment of music for us during the sun set. Charlie and Ann, together for the last 5+ years or so, had done a lot of travelling in the U.S. themselves recently and had some great suggestions of places to go. Everybody else also contributed their "two cents".
Bill is a very interesting individual. His father worked for the National Park Service, which meant that he grew up in National Parks around the country. When he graduated from high school, he moved to rural Alaska and worked for about ten years as a health services professional. In his thirties, he decided to go to Med School and become a doctor. I am not sure why he decided to move to Libby to practice. But I have to believe that he was having some second thoughts about it. As one of very few doctors in town, he seemed very busy and was on call every other night. However, the beautiful scenery and warm townspeople may very well be the reason why he has stayed.
Well after about four gin tonics, it was hard not to be tipsy (only Cem. I only had 2, and one was watered down). We left around mid night to go back to our motel.
One random thought about Libby, Montana. No body in this city really seemed to show their age. Everyone turned out to be about ten years older than what we would have thought. Living in Montana must be good for your health.
We are doing another small hike with Larry tomorrow to Leigh Lake and than hitting the road again to go to Glacier National Park. We expect to be there until July 20th.
Waterton Glacier National Park
Interesting Fact: Glacier is the size of Delaware and is also home to about 300 Grizzlie bears. Unfortunately, we didn't see any of them.
7/17/2002 - 7/20/2002 (Cem) I have decided to not write too much about Glacier National Park and let the pictures speak for themselves. Going-to-the-Sun Highway, which goes through the park and is still considered an engineering feat, is possibly one of the most scenic 40 - 50 miles either one of us have driven through. Logan Pass, at its highest point, offers a great 3-mile hike to Hidden Lake overlook. Even though the temperature was in the 90's; due to the altitude, about 75% of the hike was through snow. Wild mountain goats along the way kept us company. We also spotted a long-horned sheep. But alas, no bears. (I'm sure Cem's mom is happy.) We also did a wonderful 7-mile hike around Sun Point, stopping by 3 waterfalls, which was great since it cooled us off. Tam had a lot of fun at one of the falls, climbing over rocks trying to get across the river; all to get a better shot. (Hope it was worth it.) See pictures (to come).
During our stay here, we also went to Browning, the headquarters of the Plain Indians reservation. We stopped for a visit and saw that Indian reservations are truly poor. Tam and I had also been hoping to buy an Indian mask of the kind we had been seeing in Seattle and Vancouver. Only there they had been retailing for hundreds or dollars (at least $500). We had thought surely these masks would be cheaper at a reservation. What we hadn't thought about was that not all Indian arts and crafts are the same. No sign of masks for the Plain Indians in Montana, only bead and leather works. The Indian Museum in Browning was interesting, but also a sad refresher of the history of the Plain Indians during the 19th century.
National Bison Refuge, Butte, & Bozeman Montana
7/20/02 - (Cem) We left this morning to drive to Bozeman, about a six hour drive and a stepping stone to Yellowstone the next morning. While driving, I saw a sign for a National Bison Refuge. This was a dream come true … I had been hoping to see buffalo in Montana since we had entered the state. We did about a 17 mile drive through the refuge and saw many a buffalo and some other cool animals as well.
Interesting fact: Bison, or buffalo, are dangerous animals, can grow up to 2500 pounds, and are able to run as fast as a horse (well only for short distance).
Again a sad history for the buffalo. In the beginning of the 19th century, scientists estimate that over 30 million buffalo roamed across the Great Plains. Towards the end of the century, only less than a hundred remained before the U.S. government made it illegal to kill and took measures to protect them. The park headquarter explains that one of the reasons why the government took such a long time to act was that the settlers shooting the buffalo would inevitably cut off the food supply of the Plains Indians and thereby force them to lose their independence and integrate into the United States.
Butte, Montana was a city unlike any other either one of us have seen. The city was once a bustling copper mining town. So rich did the city become, that they even had an opera house. When the copper markets collapsed, the city became a shell of its former self. The interesting thing about this city is that the old historic downtown, as well as the big copper pit, had completely been left in tact. One of the rather interesting sites we visited was the old Brothel, which apparently had been in business until 1982! Local officials had turned the other way to this establishment, until the last Madam was convicted of tax evasion.
We finally arrived in Bozeman about five in the evening. It took us about an hour to find a cheap but clean motel. Than we both took showers, our first in 3 days. I only note this because we hadn't been able to take any showers since we left Libby. Believe it or not, must of the campsites at Glacier do not have pay showers. Bozeman is a fun little college town, home to Montana State University. I wish we could have had more time to enjoy it. The money we saved at our motel, we quickly spent at John Bozman's Bistro, the restaurant Charlie and Ann had recommended to us. But the price was worth it.
After cleaning up and doing all our food shopping we left the next morning to go camping at Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
Wyomming
Yellowstone National Park
7/21/02 -7/24/02 (Cem) Yellowstone was a first for me, a second for Tam. I went to Yellowstone without any idea of what to expect. I had not heard before that the park was based on top of an active volcano. The volcano is deep underground, so there are no surface eruptions of lava. However, the intense heat below the surface is enough to heat up the underground water and gases. With increasing pressure they move to the surface and either erupt in the form of geysers, or slowly emerge into boiling pools (springs). Either one is quite a phenomena to see. Infact, over half of the things we saw at Yellowstone were either geysers or springs. (A side note: the geysers/springs also have a very strong aroma from the hydrogen sulphide in the ground which reminded Tam of rotten eggs and me of a cold remedy my Mom used to boil for me when I was young.) The rest of the park was just as impressive with countless beautiful waterfalls, cascades, lakes, prairies, wildlife etc. Its easy to see why Yellowstone is one of the most popular national parks.
One thing that really struck me about Yellowstone was that in a lot of ways, the park somewhat felt like an amusement park. There were several reasons for this. One, by far, this was the busiest and most crowded park we had been too. Unlike many other parks, couples and young adults were in the severe minority. Most of the visitors were either retired, or families with children. This may have explained why the ratio of RVs to tents in our campground must have been about 9:1. (the campground at Yellowstone was the worst we've stayed in so far. No privacy, no showers, not enough bathrooms etc.) Two, the park service successfully calculates many of the geysers eruptions patterns. So as you approached some of the more famous ones, such as Old Faithful, there would be 1,000+ people sitting in the stands waiting. Even in the smaller ones, it wasn't surprising to find groups of people waiting. Three, in the afternoons the sides of the roads would be full of people parking in the shoulder and sitting out with their binoculars and telescopes observing the distant wildlife that would be emerging (bears, dear, bison etc.) We came to the conclusion that one of the main reasons the park felt this way was that it was incredibly accessible by car. Many of the attractions were but a few steps away from the parking lot.
Another thing that struck both of us was that Yellowstone truly has been decimated by many forest fires. There seemed to be parts everywhere throughout the park that were completely filled black, burnt trees. The rangers explained this as a natural phenomena, part of a healthy forest. But we both agreed that among all of the parks Yellowstone, by far has been hit the hardest.
Anyway, we still really enjoyed our stay at the park and took what seemed to be hundreds of pictures which should attest for themselves the amazingness of this park.
Grand Tetons
7/24/02 - 7/25/02 (Tam) Grand Tetons (French for breasts - boy those early travellers sure were missing some feminine companionship) was a wonderful place to get some much needed R&R. (It's hard work to travel…) For some reason, on our last morning at Yellowstone, Cem couldn't sleep and woke me up at some forsaken hour, 5:45 AM. Yup, 5:45 AM. His excuse was that he was up since 5 o'clock and couldn't go back to sleep. Apparently he felt that that gave him the right to wake me up too. Anyway it turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get a campsite at a much-desired Grand Teton campground, Jenny Lake, which usually fills up before 8 AM. Since we've been sightseeing and hiking for the past several days, Cem and I decided to spend our day on the beach at Jackson Lake. Great views of the Tetons. Imagine clear blue sky, glaciered-mountains rising from a deep blue lake, hot baking sun, and hardly anybody there but us. Ah, heavenly. Oh yeah, and there was a nude couple a little down from us at the beach.
The next day, we woke up to ominous dark cloudy skies. So we decided to not go on this mega-long hike up into Cascade canyon and loop back down Paintbrush canyon, wanting to be close to shelter in case it rained. So we hiked around Jenny Lake and up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point (9+ miles). Hidden Falls was just like I remembered it to be. So pretty. I've seen a lot of amazing waterfalls so far, but this one is still my favorite. Luckily, it didn't rain. However, after we had gotten back to our campsite, the wind started to blow furiously over the mountains. The pine and fir treetops started swaying, sometimes as much as 30 degrees. We both looked at each other and decided to leave for Salt Lake City earlier than we had planned. Our campsite was only $12. Why sit around in that weather? Anyway, we felt a lot better about leaving our site when just as we were leaving, an Austrian cyclist doing a tour of the U.S. came around looking for a place to set up his tent. We figured it would be only good karma for him to take our paid site. As we were leaving, we came across a really charming town, Jackson. Although a touristy town, the townspeople had foresight to regulate the "feel" of the town. Every building was made of wood and every store hung an "old-fashioned" wooden sign. Much like what we would expect of a thriving "Western" town.
Utah
Salt Lake City
7/25/02 - 7/27/02 (Tam) For us, Salt Lake City was a pit stop. We are sorry we didn't spend more time exploring the city, but we had so many practicalities to take care of. We had to take advantage of being back in "civilization" and update our website and check our emails and voicemails. Since Cem took my backpack, I spent over 2 hours at REI buying a backpack and adjusting its fittings. Really happy about my new pack, Lowe Alpine Sirroco I. For some reason, Gregory, a pack manufacture, slightly change my old pack's dimensions and fittings so that the new model didn't quite fit right. Cem was so exasperated with me, but if you're going to carry 35+ pounds on your back, you'd better darn make sure it fits properly.
Thanks to John and Lydia, Cem's friends in Charlottesville, for introducing us to the concept of buying our hotel rooms from Priceline.com. So far we've been able to stay in some really nice hotels in the heart of the city (downtown) for $40-50 a night, when the regular rates are $150-$200. Reminds us both of days long past when we were working and staying in nice places on the company's tab. However, then the company also picked up our phone bills. We balked at our bill the next morning when we noticed a $8 local phone call. Local. It was $8 because AT&T charges 10 cents a minute for every minute over an hour.
While we were in Salt Lake City, we went to the Red Rock brewery (our second brewery so far on this trip - we went to the oldest microbrewery in Vancouver - Granville Island). Absolutely fantastic food. And terrific prices. We've always thought that restaurants were reasonably priced in San Francisco (compared to New York, they're real bargains), but it seems that good food in many of the places we've been have been cheaper when compared to comparable restaurants in San Francisco. (Cem - Hester if you're reading this, I didn't know that the Red Rock shirt that you gave me was from the brewery in Salt Lake City.)
Bryce Canyon
7/27/02 - 7/28/02 (Cem) For its size, Bryce Canyon was so unique and interesting that it quickly became one of our favorite stops so far on this trip. It's difficult to explain the geography in this park with words so I encourage you to look at some of our pictures. We did the driving tour in the beginning, which was interesting, but average (Tam: I certainly didn't think it was "average") until we got to Bryce Amphitheater. The Amphitheater is clearly the grand finale stop in the driving tour with some of the best views of Bryce Canyon. Now that we were done with the drive, we decided to go on a long hike inside the Canyon. Our hike, 9+ miles was strenuous with many ups and downs. However, walking inside Bryce Canyon was unlike any hike that either one of us had done. We both highly recommend Bryce Canyon to anyone doing a trip to the Grand Canyon area as a "must see park."
At the risk of sounding corny - One of the other great things about this park is that it is truly out in the middle of the desert. So in the evening, the stars really come out in full force. I hadn't seen so many stars, the Milky Way, satellites, shooting stars since I lived in southern Maryland. It reminded me how I wanted to become an Astronomer when I was a kid. (Funny enough, apparently Tam wanted to become an Astronaut when she was young. Yeah right!)
Grand Canyon (North Rim), Zion Canyon
7/28/02 - 7/29/02 (Cem) The Grand Canyon was, well, Grand. That is definitely the best description of it. It's not enchanting, beautiful, spiritual etc. It is just Grand. After some of the other parks we have been to, it was almost disappointing. However, you can't ignore the vastness of it all. Unfortunately, visibility seemed to be pretty low compared to some of the pictures they had up on display because of air pollution and the ongoing forest fires. Regardless, it was definitely a site to see.
We left to go to Zion Canyon in the afternoon and spent the night there. The best way I can describe Zion is take El Capitan in Yosemite and put about forty of them side by side and across from each other. Unfortunately, the heat is really starting to kick in now. It was almost as hot today as it was when we were in Libby.
