Day 12 - Reno to HOME!

Day 12

June 2^nd, 2012

Reno, NV to Ventura, CA

The Home Stretch

Last day.

Kyle sheds a few tears as we get into the car for the last time.

Our earliest take off – we were out of Reno by 8:15am. A big thanks to the Arnows for hosting us.

Drive highlights:

-       Kyle notices a mini-van with a Missouri license plate. NO WAY!!!! It’s the same dude. Steer clear. He’s certainly not the best driver. Didn’t see any egregious errors this time.

-       We passed over the California border. 

    Excited to see the beach for the first time since beach week in South Carolina. Speaking of which, oddly, we saw both a North Carolina and South Carolina license plate as we were leaving Reno. They had almost as many bugs on their cars too! That’s probably the first license plate from either of those states that we’ve seen since Tennessee.


    You know you're in California when you see super green and crunchy things, there's more highway cops, and you get passed on two separate occasions by Mercedes' going over 100 mph.

Everything from organic food at a gas station to wind mills!

    Time to make fun of our own state. Have any of you ever seen the SNL skit “Californians”? Well it cleverly makes fun of the way Californians talk, especially inserting “the” before the name of any highway/freeway and how all we do is explain how we got places in our cars and how there was traffic.” For example, “Ohhh my gawwwd. I took THE 101 to THE 405 but it was like totally crowded so I took a shortcut and cut across THE 10 to Santa Monica and then I bought some tangelos from this man that was selling them on the street corner. They’re organic. Nbd.” 
    Here’s a link to a video clip of the skit to truly understand better (Sarnow Credit): 


    http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-californians/1396627

-       

    We went to Subway as a sort of ceremonial last lunch before the last leg of the drive. We both guessed how many total subs the two of us had consumed over the trip. Definitely upwards of 12. That extra bacon Kyle cooked and brought from Idaho?  Yeah, that was a free add-on.

Subway thanks for all the good times.

-         Since we had woken up at 7am, Ali was pretty tired and opted for a Starbucks ice coffee. Well… that stuff is STRONG. Ali was switchin’ lanes on the wood grain, changing songs every 45 seconds, fidgeting in her seat, singing to Spanish songs. She definitely wasn’t tired anymore. Kyle doesn’t know if he is thankful for the cup of iced coffee or not. But he is glad no one nodded off.


    Pop quiz time!
    Where is this? We took this photo during one of our drives. Can anyone name where it is? Answer below. 

    No idea. We took this pic to just reflect the sad fact that even after seeing so many incredible corners of the United States, the majority of the US is beginning to all look the same. McDonalds, Motel 6, Arco, Chervon, Carl's Jr. (aka Hardee's) and a big highway full of cars. The things we enjoyed most and will likely remember most are the moments where we were somewhere we're we saw something we never had before. 

-       After about 350 riveting miles on THE 5 we turned on to THE 126. Home sweet home nearing and nearing.
    We started to get pretty excited to be home despite such a great adventure of a trip. We began to think about what we were most excited about.
    To stretch our legs? 

    To not eat Subway for months? 
    To not think of bathrooms in terms of “how many miles...?”
    To not be able to put life on cruise control? 
    To see the beach everyday? 
    All the above.

-       Got off at the familiar Seaward exit.

 Of course the last car we are behind is a minivan. 

Couldn't be more appropriate. 

    Pulled into my driveway at 4:20pm. Home. Safe and sound.

-        We made sure to note all the final driving stats. Lots of them. Pretty good numbers if we do say so ourselves. We have provided the dashboard shots just in case anyone thinks we're fabricating these stats :) 

Driving stats: 

We passed the 4000 mile marker in the middle of the drive. 

Average MPG for the trip = 43.2

We purchased 94.6 gallons of gas throughout the drive. 

Costing a total of = $372.65.  

Average price per gallon of = $4.015

Luckily we didn't have to fill up in CA because 

CA gas prices were by far the highest we'd seen.

Average speed = 60mph 

(Kudos to Poppa Farr for averaging 78 on his cross country adventure. 

We couldn't compete with that!)

Total mileage = 4193

Total running time in the car = 69 hr. and 59 mins. 

And we made it without killing each other! 

Almost 3 straight days in the car. Thanks Helga for treating us so well. 

At certain points, Kyle looked on the dash for a passenger eject button...Helga however didn't provide that satisfaction (see earlier "Ali had coffee").

The trip was incredible and it was such a great chance to see parts of the U.S. that we'd never seen before. Luckily we had no accidents and no tickets throughout the 4200 miles. We're very thankful for that! 

The only sad note we do have is for the families of the 348,762 bugs that we killed. Here is a picture of VolksWagen graveyard. 

Once Ali gets back to Charlotte in August she is planning on registering Helga in North Carolina and hoping to get the license plate "RUN-FARR" 
But Helga's homeland will always be California! 

MAP OF THE ENTIRE TRIP 

Thank you all for following the blog. It was really fun for us to write and keep track of all the trip highlights. It will be a fun thing to look back on and it is also nice to know that our friends and family are interested!(and the random readers in other countries haha)


Anyone out there thinking of doing a cross-country trip, it's definitely worth it!  Exceeded expectations.  Need any advice?  We can help with more than a few recommendations.


Over and out. 


Love, 
         Ali, Kyle, and Helga. 
              Oh and Bruno too :)

Day 11 Ketchum to Reno

Day 11

June 1st, 2012

Ketchum, ID to Reno, NV

RENO or Bust!

Morning started out with a lovely bike ride to town. Ali rode into town to send a few more postcards and check out downtown Ketchum one last time. Turns out nothing in that town opens before 9am...so my journey at 8:16am was rather desolate.

As Ali approached the condo to put the bikes back she could smell bacon from at least a ½ mile away. Kyle was up and at ‘em cooking up the rest of the bacon. mmmm....bacon.

We cleaned up the house, loaded the car with all the leftover food we had made and said goodbye to the Village at Greyhawk. Again- THANKS to the Beyer family for letting us stay there! 

Drive highlights:

Can't really call this picture a highlight.  It's on the not-top-ten pics of the trip, but yes this is what Northern Nevada looks like.

-       Within the first hour of the drive Ali awarded the trip’s Worst Driver Award to none other than a guy driving a mini van from Missouri. We were on the 93 South which is a one lane road for the majority. This minivan and Helga were stuck behind a big truck going about 60. There is a sign that says “passing lane in ½ mile.” So Ali doesn’t get to bummed about the low speed and just waits for the passing lane. The lane approaches and she sees the minivan pull over to the left; not on to the passing lane, but all the way over to the oncoming traffic lane over the double yellow line. Completely unnecessary since a passing lane was just provided. He’s lucky he did not get taken out by a Mack truck. We quickly passed the minivan so we didn’t have to deal with anymore of his malarkey.

Nevada! Two for two on not-top-ten pics! Woooo

Someone needs to talk to the state government of Nevada and tell them they need to work on their "Welcome to Nevada" sign. Just because we were not entering the conventional way (route through Las Vegas) does not mean we don't deserve a warm and colorful welcome! Couldn't even spare us a penny slot casino?

Ali broke the speed high clocking in at 93mph. As soon as we switched, Kyle quickly stole the record back by going 94mph. Boys will be boys. This dangerous competition was then ended for the sake of abiding by the law. Kyle won.  First California plate spotted in Yellowstone, now the Speed Record.  *noted*

 Speaking of 94 – that was the temperature during the majority of our drive through Nevada. We actually hit 98 degrees for a few minutes so we had to obey the rule we had created... play a 98 degrees song. NOOOOOO!!!!

    Since neither of us had any on our iPods (shocking) we had to YouTube a song of theirs. The first hit was the song “Heat it Up.” Seemed appropriate. Turned it on and… Kyle recognized the beginning.  It's one of the hits from NOW 3.  After a few choruses, Kyle started dancin' and singing along to make the best of it.  Luckily, the rule only stated we had to listen to one song....and the only audience was Ali and the Nevada desert.

        We passed an intense high security prison. There was a sign on the freeway that said “Within 10 miles of a maximum security prison – hitchhiking prohibited." That’s fine. We weren’t planning on giving any convicts a ride. Only cause there’s no room in the back seat.

-       We missed Shawn Devilla and his amazing roadtrip DJ skills. Satelite radio is great and all but…. Kyle’s NPR tolerance is much lower than Ali’s and we both swear that everyone 5 times we changed the channel the same 3 Adele songs were on the goddamn radio. ADELE is following us everywhere. This was confirmed when Ali was reading TIME magazine’s “100 most Influential People” article and they featured Adele saying, “Turn on any radio station in the world and you’ll probably hear Adele. Go to Mars right now and I’m pretty sure if there is life on that planet, they’re playing Adele.” Anyways, shoutout to DJ Deezy. We miss you.

-       The drive through northern Nevada was so uneventful that Kyle took his first nap. 

    Since Ali knows NPR would have put Kyle to sleep anyways, she snagged this precious hour to listen to some nerdy Satellite stations. After about 45 mins, she was sick of hearing that the Facebook IPO has disappointed everyone. I get it... I get it, invest in Myspace.

RENO

Pop quiz: 

Guess who this is?

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SARNOW!

 Could recognize that hair flip from miles away.

Wazzzzzup Sarnow. We pulled into Sarnow driveway and were greeted by him and his lovely parents Mrs. Arnow and Jarnow. There house is up in the hills only about 30 mins from the California border.

 

We got to catch up with Sarnow, throw the frizzzzz for a bit, and then were treated to an absolutely delicious dinner – grill and chill style.

Jarnow grillin' 

Jarnow chillin'

 

During dinner we got to see a pretty impressive sunset from the Arnow’s back balcony. Check it out – Nevada provided some serious competition with the Cali sunsets.

Oh and Shawn showed up for a bit. 

Nice button-down Mr. Banker.  
Put some Rogaine on that chest and get back to me.

Then to top off what was already a great night – all three of us went on a night hike about 1.5 miles up to the top of a hill behind Sarnow’s house. We could see out over all of Reno from there.

After chatting about the good old days at Cate we looked down at the city center and realized there were fireworks going off outside the casinos. Pretty sweet timing.

Driving stats: 
Miles: 542 miles
Horrible drivers sighted: 1
Total mileage: 3674
MPG for Ketchum to Reno: 44.8

=

Day 9 & 10 - Ketchum, ID

Day 9 & 10

May, 30^th and 31^st, 2012

Ketchum, ID to Ketchum ID

No driving today. But we did get some solid mileage in. Hmmmmm how does that work?!? You'll find out.

Over the past two days, we have been hanging at the Greyhawk condo checking out the scenery around us via bikes, running, and walking. Let the triathlon training begin!

Bob has a few sweet mountain bikes at his house so we called Wanda, a local Ketchumian, and she got us all set up with the bikes. Accessing the bikes meant we also got a tour of Bob’s entire house. Wow. Speechless. That place is so well designed and every corner of the house is perfectly decorated. It is the ideal ski lodge/summer hangout.

Here is a picture of the basement. Just to tease you all.

Ok fine… one more pic – this is Kyle hanging out in the backyard.

But the rest of the house you’ll just have to use your imagination.
Ok fine… we’ll show you a pic of the freezer.

Wanda showed us this and I could not help but take a picture this because Graeters (a brand of ice cream made in Ohio introduced to us by the lovely Caitlin Allen) is easily the best ice cream I’ve ever had. It has chocolate chucks swirled throughout all the flavors. Since Ali’s biggest weakness is ice cream, this drawer was a tempting trip to sweet tooth heaven. For all the Graeters fans out there (Caitlin, Hayley, Katie and Luke – I’m talking to you) check out all the different flavors!!!!!! Worth zooming in.

We enjoyed a quick toss of the frizbee at the cleared out ski lodge next to the Village at Greyhawk.  Nice grass in the front there. Nice day too.  The toss?  A lil short.

BIKING

We started with just a short 2.5 mile ride back to the condo so we could do some Google satellite map investigating to check out the best bike routes.

Between Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley (three neighboring towns) there is a great bike path network. So we hopped on that for a solid 16.7 mile bike ride. Don’t worry Momma Farr and Momma McCarty – we wore helmets the whole time! And only rudely dinged our bells at one or two slowpokes.  But hey, that's what the bells are there for!

Then the rest of the night was split between cooking and watching back to back Harry Potters. Ali’s getting her necessary dose of Harry Potter. Hopefully we’ll be able to finish all 8 by the time this road trip ends.

RUNNING… and walking too

Day 2 of tri training. Workout of choice – running.

Kyle suggested a light 10 mile run. WHAT!??!?! Kyle’s idea. Yes. That’s how it went down. Not only was it Kyle’s idea but he kicked Ali’s butt. She had to tap out at mile 8 to take a break. We then walked it out for the last mile. The true test will be who is the most sore tomorrow...

 
Kyle trying to hitchhike his way back to the house.
His calves aren't working properly at this point. Post 10 miles.

A few pics we snagged while on our running tour of Ketchum.

Japanese cherry blossoms like in DC.  Only this time they are white.

 A view.

 Cool lookin house.  Could it be featured in Dwell?
Ask Poppa Farr. I'm sure he could tell you - Yes. The April, 2002 edition, pg. 29.

Pretty close to the ski slopes. Kyle thought about climbing all the way up there to have a snowball fight. But his calves were too tired. Bummer dude.

UFO spotted! 

It vanished as quick as the wind....if only we could've gotten closer...

I guess these things are pretty regular out in Idaho...

After an epic lunch and shower we then went on a casual (aka turn off training mode ALI!) bike ride into town. Our goals included 3:

1. Find a new oven mitt to replace the one Ali… toasted. Sorry! We promise we’ll replace it. 
2. Find a post office to send out a few postcards to our biggest blog followers (whats up parents). Y’all can look forward to some high quality South Dakota cards.  
3. Find mustard. A lot of mustard. Kyle’s a big mustard fan. Ali didn’t eat mustard until about 48 hours ago.

Bob left us this amazing sweet and spicy mustard that is made locally in Sun Valley. It recently won second place in the worldwide mustard taste testing contest. No joke. Google it.

Ye Olde Sun Valley Mustard.
 Appropriate antique finish.  Instagram is totally hipster.

 This stuff is the real deal. So we bought quite a bit of it….

Kyle’s considering sharing with his family. If they’re lucky.

Bike ride back

Kyle represents the Warner Formal he went to.....oh wait....he doesn't go to Davidson, but thanks for the shirt Rachel!

BIG MOOSE raises his leg and lets out a relieving.....!! Watch out Kyle.

We passed PK's store - the main ski and sports shop in Ketchum!

At least we think so; PK what's goin on?! We thought you were from Ghana...

TOMORROW – On the road again!

We are off to Revo, NV to visit the famous Sam Arnow. We were planning on visiting Sarnow in San Francisco (where he is doing a summer internship), but since he does not get there until the night of the 2^nd, Sar-dood invited us to come hang in Reno.

Can’t wait to see that fool. Ali can’t wait to rekindle memories of her first and only previous trip to Reno – club volleyball nationals in 7^th grade. Imagine 1000+ middle school girls running around a town in spandex. It was madness!!!! 

We made enough left overs for car snacks on snacks on snacks. So sorry Subway we probably won’t be seeing you tomorrow.

Also – we are definitely gonna break 4000 for our total mileage. That’s a lotta miles. 

Mileage stats:

Biking: 24.2 miles

Running: 13

Total Mileage: 37.2

All on a half gallon of Orange Juice and a half gallon of Limeade. (Thanks Bob!)

Average MPG: 37.2. Not too bad for a cleaning burning juice engine.

Day 8 - Yellowstone - Ketchum, ID

Day 8

May, 29^th 2012

West Yellowstone to Ketchum, ID

Bye, bye little wood cabin. It’s been real. It’s been fun. It’s been real fun.

After Kyle jump started his morning with a sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle, we entered the West entrance of Yellowstone park for the last time. This time we were making our way from the West Entrance to the South Entrance toward Grand Tetons National Park. We got to wind through some of our favorite parts of the park. Saw a gang of Bison( thanks for the correct terminology Katie Lovett) bigger than we had before. Probably about 25 of them all together.

Bison!

And for those of you who are sick of hearing about bison
 here are some non-bison creatures! We think these were elk....

Driving down one of the open stretches in the road – Kyle had half his body out the sunroof in a search for bears since we had not seen one yet. "WHERE ARE THE BEARS?!?!" Looking backwards, the wind whips Kyle’s sunglasses and they fly right off! He ducks down into the car, "my sunglasses flew off! Turn around!" Since we were going at least 45mpg the glasses were a good quarter mile back on the road. Ali flipped a b’ on the road and headed back for the glasses. Of course, we had not seen any cars around until right when we get near the glasses. They are there, lying in the middle of the road, and five cars are coming straight for them. We watched the first car go over them. Wooooosh. Safe. Not run over. The second – safe. The third – safe. The fourth…safe but barely. And then came a mini van. Seems like these mini vans keep coming into our paths. The van was headed straight for the glasses and it looked like its left tire was going to crunch them. Wooooosh. The car passed and the glasses were still lying there fully intact. Must have missed them by mere inches. Kyle ran across the road and grabbed ‘em. Lucky boy. His sweet aviators walked away with only a slight scratch of a battle wound on the lens.

Almost to the entrance of Grand Tetons we had to make a little pit stop to go back a few decades to 1975 when Scott McCarty (Kyle's dad) spent his junior summer of college working in between Yellowstone and Grand Tetons at a place called Flagg Ranch pumping gas and busing tables. So just to get a little perspective Kyle pumped some gas and bused some tables at that very same ranch. Chiggity check out the evidence.

Or shall I say pumping diesel.

There weren’t too many tables to bus… but Kyle handled it.
 His previous busing experience at the Red Lobster certainly helped.

GRAND TETONS

Rachel Besnoff highly recommended the Tetons as this is her favorite national park. We honored her by listening to some Ludacris while touring the park.  Although there were no Phat Rabbits to be seen, the rivers certainly Splashed Waterfalls.  Bugs were aplenty as Kyle exclaimed "Get Off Me!" as a large one got in his ear.  A cool fact about the area we had just been through, and the entire state of Montana has only one Area Code. Ok. enough Luda references.

The mountains are fabulous. I think we were finally glad it had snowed since the mountain peaks looked so awesome covered in snow.

Kyle about to get run over by some intense cyclists.

We stopped at one of the lookout points to get a better view and we meet the worlds most British couple. I think they said Cheerio at least three times. They were very nice and offered to take our pictures.

Drive to Ketchum, ID HIGHLIGHTS:

• We were killing it on MPG for a while with a high of 52.1. Once we got on the highway it went down a bit…
• We hit the first desert since leaving North Carolina and got to climb back up from the Yellowstone low of 33 degrees to 78 degrees.
•  We stopped at a Subway that had a drive through!!!!! That’s almost as crazy as ice cream at Subway. Also… better late than never but the guy offered us a Subway frequent buyer card. WTF? Where was that offer about 15 sandwiches ago. For those frequent Subwayers out there – get the card! Once you spend a certain amount of subway dollars you get a free sub. 
• We passed Craters of the Moon monument. At first, Kyle thought it was just the left over damage of nuclear testing since there is absolutely NOTHING out there along highway 20  from Idaho Falls til we hit the 75.  It was weeeeeeeird lookin.   

 

• We passed through a town named for Kyle's dog, Rigby.  He is from there and saved the town from disaster in the late 17th century from fire.  Not really. But Rigby is such a good dawg, he deserves a town named for him.

Ketchum, ID – Beyer Style

Ali’s Dad’s best friend (dating back to 7^th grade) – Bob Beyer – has a second home in Ketchum Idaho and he so kindly let us stay in his guesthouse which is an incredible ski lodge cabin right at the bottom of the slopes. The slopes are not so snowy right now… but it is so cool to see the area and it’s a great place for summer fun like biking, hiking, running, exploring, etc!

The guesthouse aka Village at Greyhawk is so well decorated and Bob truly spoiled us. We get to the house – after his e-mail with perfectly laid out directions and paragraphs describing the surrounding dining and hiking options and the house is fully stocked! A plate of baked goods, two bottles of wine, fresh chips and salsa out laid out for us. Thanks Bob! Oh and then we opened the fridge and freezer – orange juice, eggs, beer, Ben and Jerry’s. Kyle immediately said – any type of vegetable cooking and healthy eating can start... right AFTER this.

 

 

Ali was pumped to do some serious cooking! 

Since Kyle found out Ali had not seen past the 2^nd Harry Potter movie (crime!) he convinced her that needed to be done. So after cooking up a mound of veggies the Harry Potter bonanza began. I say bonanza because we didn’t just watch the 1^st and 2^nd movies that night, we then proceeded to watch the 3^rd and 4^th the next day. Truly basking in summer laziness. To all that know Ali well – it is nearly impossible to get her to sit still for more than an hour so props to Kyle and J.K. Rowling for getting her to just sit back, reeeeeelax, and watch.

Looking forward to a few relaxing, homey, non-driving days in IDAHO! Thanks again Beyer family for all your generosity. You’ve truly spoiled us.

Oh and a shoutout to Dave Soto aka the CHAMP.  He suggested a visit to Spokane. "But, be sure to bring guns. SpoKompton is dangerous year-round."  Looking at a map and realizing Kyle gets enough of Compton by going to USC, we passed.  It's the thought that counts.

Driving stats:

Drive time (from West Yellowstone – through Grand Tetons to Ketchum) 7 hrs. and 45 mins. 

Day mileage: 374

Total mileage: 3078