Portland and Seattle

1st of June

 We were glad to leave Yakima, made our way along a road inbetween 2 National Parks.
We stopped at this lake for breakfast.

We took a small hike to some waterfalls.
Suddenly Daniel started doing his magical tricks you see in the picture.

We did 2 or 3 small hikes and grabbed some geocaches on the way to our next destination.

We caught a geocacher family just signing one of the logbooks...


Finally we arrived in Longview, our hotel was much better than the one before. The city was great compared to Yakima, all in all, we were happy.

2nd of June

Even though the city is nice, Longview was just a short stop for 1 night, but we didn't want to leave without visiting the nearby park.
After strolling around there for a bit, we moved on to Portland.

We met up with some couchsurfers and did a photowalk. 20 people moving through the city with their camera, taking pictures of everything what might be nice in some angle.
Here you can see a picture of all the photographers.

This photowalk was right before the big parade in Downtown Portland. These police officers are "preparing" for it. We called this "the safest Starbucks in the world".

We moved on and took some nice pictures in the city... too many to show them all but in this one you can see Daniel at a fountain

After that photowalk we had dinner with 2 of those guys we just met and went to the parade afterwards, where we met up with our host for the next 3 nights.

 
3rd of June

We went to Downtown Portland to see the Saturday market which takes place every week. The market is huge, you can get whatever you want and it includes some rollercoasters and other fun rides. We explored the city on foot and we found 14 geocaches on this day.

4th of June

 First day in Portland was city sightseeing, this one was supposed to be a good occasion for hiking.
We drove to a place with some hiking trails and a waterfall.

Of course we asked somebody to take a picture of us

5th of June

We took a picture with our hosts like we did with every host before.
So, here is yours, thanks for hosting us Martha & Josh :)

It was time to head to our last city on this trip: Seattle.

We took the road along the ocean, because wanted to see the water.

We arrived in Olalla, where our hosts live. After preparing dinner we had to try the hot tub, just right in front of the door, that's luxury!
That guy who joined us is David, he comes from Ireland and is a couchsurfer too.

 6th of June

Seattle? - That means going to see the Space Needle and the Monorail. Of course we did.

We also visited the Fremont Troll. It is made out of concrete and the car under his left hand is actually a real car.

Back in Downtown Seattle, we took an underground tour, which takes you to the underground of Seattle (obviously...)
The tour was cool and we learned some interesting facts about Seattle's history.

We moved on to the gum wall... a wall covered all over with bubble gum.
You can simply walk by and stick your gum on it, try to make a name with some gums ;)

On the way back to our host we saw the majestic Mount Rainier.
Seattle is at an elevation of about sea level, so 0 ft... This mountain is just 50 miles away from Seattle and 14,411 ft (4,392 m) high.

7th of June

We wanted to go on a hike this day, but the weather was bad...
but as we heard just a few days ago, Groundspeak (the company which keeps Geocaching running) has its headquarter in Fremont, just next to the troll, we knew what to do: Signing the logbook in the Groundspeak: Geocaching headquarters cache.








After signing the logbook, the Seattle Aquarium was the next thing on our list for "what to do in Seattle if it rains".
Daniel wanted to be an octopus...

while I played jellyfish.










This was our last full day in the USA for this trip.
We drove back to our hosts after having dinner, American style, which means we had big burgers.


In the evening everybody was just sitting in or around the hot tub, playing guitar, talking and stargazing... the perfect last evening for our trip.









8th of June

Our last host Kevin and his wife Sara are hosting up to 12 people at a time, it is simply great. You can meet a lot of people here. Thank you for hosting us Kevin & Sara, you were a worthly last host on our trip :)






In this picture underneath you can see our route... red was the planned route and blue is our actual route.

Finally we had those 4101 miles ( 6600 km) and 124,5 gallons of gas (471,3 L) on the eastcoast.
And for the westcoast 5737 miles (9233 km) and 209,3 gallons of gas (792,3 L),
which makes a total of  9838 miles (15833 km) and 333,8 gallons of gas (1263,6 L) within our time in the US.

We are at the airport right now, so this is last post in this blog.
We would like to thank all our couchsurfing hosts:

Luiggi in New York City
Anthony in Philadelphia
Gunjan in Washington DC
Kevin and Brittany in Norfolk
Travis and his friends and roommates in Wilmington
John in Miami
Manuel in Miami
Susan and her family in Tampa
Joshua and his friends and roommates in Tampa
Brian and Diana in Las Vegas
Lance in San Diego
Viqui and David in Oakland (near San Francisco)
Susan, Mike and their family (ok, not couchsurfing hosts, but good friends of Daniel)
Stephanie and Jason in Boise
Caroline, Roy and their family in Spokane
Martha and Josh in Portland
Kevin, Sara and their family in Olalla (near Seattle)


We would also like to thank all those people we met during our trip, who made this 3 month journey so great. We will come back to the United States, sooner or later - hopefully sooner !