First things first-- we made it to Seattle safely. Second things second-- it frickin' rained every stop along the way. Seriously. It rained in the middle of a damn desert. We broke droughts in three different places. It rained on us and not on the other side of the campground. Clearly, someone is trying to get us ready to live in Seattle.

I've tried to provide a sort of photographic log of our trip. To start off, we have the family about to leave the 'chester. As you can see, our car is packed to the limit and primed to get a solid 15 miles per gallon:


I initially recommended that we all go cross-country by means that pollute less and use fewer of our precious fossil fuel resources. This idea was nixed, sadly:


Once we hit the road, I did most of the navigating. It appears from this picture that we were currently driving through New York. Hmm...


I went camping for the very first time in the Badlands. It's a good thing our tent doubled as a Darth Vader costume, because it rained all night:


This is me in the Badlands, right after what will heretofore be known as the Graham Cracker Incident. No big secret-- it basically involved me whining for a full hour about how I had broken a graham cracker into pieces and wanted to put it together again. The episode culminated in mom chucking the crackers out the window of our car onto federally protected land.


Luckily, things turned out OK when we got to Wall Drug, the cure-all for everything:


Next up was Mount Rushmore. I think I'm laughing here because I saw Teddy Roosevelt give Abraham Lincoln a "wet willie":


Later that afternoon, dad and I did a grueling hike through the Black Hills which involved a bit of a rock scramble near the top.


Here's dad and I later that evening, nursing our massive leg wounds incurred during the aforementioned hike: (oh, it rained soon after this)


Next day, we drove to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Wyoming is forevermore the state that smells yucky:


Snow in May-- sweet!


This part smelled somewhat better. I think the federal airfreshener program seems to be working here:


Crud, back to bad smells. As my dad explained, this is where the earth goes to fart:

(as you can tell, it's about to rain)

On to Craters of the Moon in Idaho... soon to be known as Yellowstone II. Ha ha...


We did a bit of spelunking in the lava caves here...

...and back up for air!

Boise was the next stop. After resting for a few minutes, the cousins and I hit the trails:

Monty took the wheel for part of the last leg of the drive (through the rain):

At long last, we arrived in Seattle. We don't move into our dinky apartment for a few days, so this is our temporary digs. Remind me again why we're living in a dinky apartment?


I'm figuring they don't have Pac-Man in our apartment. Seattle is freakin' unbelievable.


More soon as we get settled in. It stopped raining today, so maybe there's hope.