Hit the Road, Zach

Portland! How cool is it that I have now been in two Portlands on opposite sides of the US?
“WAY COOL!” shout the teenagers en masse.
Wow, right on, guys.
I ended up staying in Portland almost a week, mostly due to an awesome friend of mine, one Ramón Chaparro, a good friend from college with whom [...]

Seattle! A city deserving of our respect because it has a bajillion names: “Emerald City,” “Jet City,” “Queen City,” “Gateway to Alaska,” and of course “Rain City.” Its actual name comes from a local tribal chief named Sealth. Way to go, Sealth. It is my dream to also have a city [...]

Washington, unlike Montana, was full of happening peeps. In fact, it was pretty amazing just how many happening peeps happened to be happening in Washington. The first of such peeps was a fellow in Spokane named Steve, who plays a mean guitar.
“How mean?” asks a nearby international student. “Does it trip the [...]

Montana! I’m pretty sure that if it had an ‘ñ’ instead of just an ‘n’, it would be Spanish for mountain. Which is appropriate, considering that Montana had a bunch of those.
I was driving in the vaguely hilly, sparsely vegetated land of Wyoming for a while, then went up towards Billings, and then things [...]

I finally arrived at my host’s place in Sheridan, WY at about 10:30pm.
Who is this host? Why, none other than my cousin Marla Hinrichs!

I haven’t seen her in several years, what with me being in Korea and her being in Wyoming, so it was good to reconnect with her. She is a teacher, but [...]

The next day I was headed out of Mission on to Wyoming.

Teresa had recommended that I make a small detour through the Badlands to experience some highly scenic scenes. I didn’t really need to, since I saw some nice views just on the highway out of Mission:

But despite these other nice views,

though they were [...]