The first night we laid low to let Meara recoup from her long road trip. The next day we played with my Mac laptop and she loved it…like a true Donahue would! She mastered taking photos of her self in no time. It really helped that there is a flashing “1….2….3″ on the screen right before the photo is taken. This one is of her right before she got her first picture taken.

We played with a sepia tone filter which was pretty cute..

Then before you knew it she was leaning in and hitting the the click button to take her own photos. She’s a natural with the computer!

And here’s another good one of her showing off her flexibility!

She’s a true ham and I loved it!

- Saved my roomates cat Kaiser from near death. He tried to eat a whole spool of thread.

- Attended a Citzen Cope concert

- Dressed up as a Canadian for Halloween…yes I wore an all jean outfit

- Played tour guide for several co-workers that were in town for work

- Celebrated turkey day with Mel & Jeni with a movie marathon and consuming a little food.

- Went to the Pats/Seahawks game at Quest Field. Oh did I mention I had suite tickets!

- Saw the Nutcracker

- Experienced Seattle in the snow. It involved me working at home for countless days on ends since no buses run. They only have 27 plows for the state!!! I think it’s time to invest in more, don’t you?

- Went back east for xmas and nye. Met my new neice Meara while I was there…she’s so friggin’ cute!

- After arriving back from the holidays, flew out 4 days later to Charlotte, NC for business(1/7). It was warm and sunny down there but I didn’t hear as much southern drawl as I thought I would. Oh and that flight that landed in the Hudson this week(1/15), my boss’s boss was on that same flight but the week earlier! Guess we picked the right week for the meeting.

They made the trek out for MA with a pit stop in San Francisco prior to coming up to Seattle. These two are the funniest bunch of people I know and I felt so special that they would come all this way to visit little old me! I’m sure it helped that I lived in a cool city. Thanks L&B, come back again soon!

Right before the game we stumbled onto a Pete Rose(aka grumpy man) signing in a bar right outside the stadium. We got a free shirt and his autograph…not a bad deal.

We went on to do a bunch of cool touristy things while we were there, including Sea World.

Thats myself and Maureen as Penny & Pete.  I had a fabulous time down there and now I remember why I loved it down there so much…perfect weather and great people.

We arrived back in Seattle and we couldn’t be happier to be at the finish line!!! Here are some brief stats about the trip.

- 2,387 miles

- 9 days

- 200+ hrs together

- 3 states

- national parks: 4; state parks: 4+

- encountered lots of fog, rain, & sunshine

- animals encountered: sea lions, blue bull, loud crows, bears, german shepard, 2 cats, deer & chipmunk

- vehicles: honda civic, dune buggy ride, elevator, feet, ferry, & bus

This was a great trip and well worth the long hours in the car! I’m glad that we didn’t kill each other because I was really worried about that. I believe my longest road trip prior to this was a family trip to DC when I was 10 years old.

A special thanks goes out to Michelle for making this all possible, she did all of the planning! And congrats to her because she recently got engaged!!!! I can’t wait to help her start planning for that!

Brianne was nice enough to put us up for the night and we couldn’t have been more grateful! She was even kind enough to show us the touristy spots of Portland.

Michelle had heard of Voodoo Doughnuts from a friend so this was at the top of our list to swing by. This place makes some crazy donuts and they’re open 24hrs! I think I heard people even get married here!

This isn’t a great shot but you can see that they had a wide variety! I think they even had a captain crunch donut and a donut as big as you head!!!

After getting the proper amount of sugar we jumped in the car for our last leg of the trip! Here we come Seattle!!!!

After seeing everything we could around Crater Lake we headed over to our awesome campsite. I was determined to make a solid fire for our last night of camping! As you can see above I worked quite hard at making sure this bad boy was a success! I went with the tipi technique which was full proof in my head.

It was a raging fire throughout the night and allowed us to stay warm and to cook some smores! We even used up all our wood that we never thought we would be able to!

It was a great last night of camping! Now we’re off to Portland!!!

After hanging out at Lassen we headed north up to Crater Lake in Oregon. Let me tell you this place is absolutely beautiful and I would go back here in a heart beat! The glacier water was a deep deep blue!!

We drove around the rim of Crater Lake and saw a bunch of beautiful senses. Above is Vidae Falls, which looked like it should have been in Ireland since it was so green!

The small rock island to the right of Michelle is called Phantom Ship since it looks like a small ship in foggier conditions.

We took Pinnacle Trail to check out these spires of eroded ash, rise from the edges of Sand and Wheeler Creeks. There were a ton of these things up and down the trail!

One last shot of Crater Lake that really takes your breath away.