August 2008 Archives

Stefan answers a few questions about his experiences traveling across America.

Q:  Where did you have the best pizza?  
A:  Chicago of course!

Q:  What was your favorite "tourist spot"?
A:  Old Faithful

Q:  What was the most interesting thing you learned?
A:  That there are fossils of extinct mammals that lived millions of years ago in the Badlands.

Q:  What was your coolest animal sighting?
A:  The herds of bison.

Q:  Which national park was your favorite?
A:  Yellowstone

Q:  Which place do you most want to go back to?
A:  The 7-D dude ranch in Wyoming

Q:  What was the most awesome activity you did?
A:  Horseback riding on Geronimo (I miss him).

Q:  What was the least favorite part of your trip?
A:  Feeling car sick as we drove to Mount Rushmore ... I don't even like to think about it.

Q:  What was the best vanity license place you saw while driving cross country?
A:  ICE CRM

Q:  What was the best thing about the U.S.?
A:  The views.

Having just logged in 8,000 miles and 180 hours in the car as they made their way coast to coast across the country, the Global Bros answer a few questions:

Q:  Where did you have the best pizza?  
A:  Seattle

Q:  What was your favorite "tourist spot"?
A:  Wall Drug in South Dakota

Q:  What was the most interesting thing you learned?
A:  That the small islands surrounding Mount Dessert Island in Acadia were the peaks of mountains millions of years ago.

Q:  What was your coolest animal sighting?
A:  When the coyote was next to our car.

Q:  Which national park was your favorite?
A:  Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Q:  Which place do you most want to go back to?
A:  Orcas Island, Washington

Q:  What was the most awesome activity you did?
A:  Racing down the dunes in the Dunes National Recreation Area in Oregon



Q:  What was the least favorite part of your trip?
A:  Going to a big outdoor concert in Quebec ... it was crowded, late and I didn't like the music

Q:  What was the best vanity license place you saw while driving cross country?
A:  LAND HO

Q:  What was the best thing about the U.S.?
A:  Every state is different.

When we were in Oregon, we went to a cool beach at Oswald West State Park and stayed there the whole day. People we met in Orcas Island told us to go there because they said it was the nicest beach in the entire U.S. I think they might be right. We played in the sand for so many hours and explored tide pools with starfish and big, green, sea anemones. The next day we went to Ecola State Park and did a three-mile hike. We saw lots of slugs on the trail. In 1806, Lewis and Clark traveled on the same trail we were on, so we read all about their exploration as we hiked through the forest. The last thing we did in Oregon was visit the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Tyler and I raced down the giant sand dunes. They were huge! We ran up and down them five times.

Hello! It's Tyler here to tell you about our latest adventures. First, we went to Oregon for a drive down the coast along the Pacific Ocean. The first day we were staying in a town called Cannon Beach, which is famous for Haystack Rock, a huge rock sticking out of the ocean. We decided to go to a beach further south, but it was really foggy when we got there, so we thought we would only be there an hour or so. It ended up clearing up and we stayed all day. After our day at the beach, we started our drive down the Oregon coast. On the way, my mom and dad saw a sign for the Tillamook Cheese Factory, so we stopped in since my brother and I love cheese so much. We bought some cheese, but also had some of their famous ice cream.

The next day, we drove to San Francisco and on the drive down, we stopped at Oregon Dunes State Recreation Area where we went on a trail which runs through the dunes. Stefan and I raced down the dunes a few times.

When we got to San Francisco, we had to get our car washed because it was covered in dead bugs from all our driving. In San Francisco, we stayed with our parent's friends, Rob and Sue, who helped us find our way around. We all went to a baseball game together at AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants play.  It was a close game, but in the end, the Giants won. 

Hello everybody. I was just in Seattle, which is one of my Dad's favorite places. It is the home of the Space Needle. The Space Needle is a cool, needle-shaped building that has a room at the top that you can look out of to see the city and the surrounding Puget Sound. Being in Seattle also means that we have now officially traveled across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean! That also means I've spent over 150 hours in the car and have driven more than 7,500 miles since July 2nd.

The first night in Seattle we went to a great place called Via Tribunali, which is a restaurant with really good pizza, but that wasn't the best part. We had Nutella (hazelnut-based sweet spread) pizza for dessert and it was the best! Another highlight of our trip was when we got to see our friends, Simon and Theo, who we met at the dude ranch in Wyoming. We all went to a Mariners baseball game together.

Hello, it is me Stefan! This week, I was in the Pacific Northwest. In Seattle, we went to a Mariners game (baseball). We went with our friends Simon and Theo, who we met at the dude ranch. The Mariners are not too good this year and lost the game 10 to 1 to the first place team, the Tampa Bay Rays, but it was still fun. We also went to the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, where I got to play with an electric guitar machine and learned to play the drums..

When we went to the San Juan Islands, we stayed on Orcas Island, which had a lavender farm, sheep and apple trees we climbed. I loved cutting the lavender. It smelled really nice and I gave a batch to my Mom.

While we were on Orcas Island, we went on a whale-watching trip and saw orca whales. It was cool when we saw them "spy-hopping," which is when they pop their head out of the water to see what is going on (check out the video in Tyler's post). There was a two day-old baby in the pod, but it was hard to see because all of the adults were swimming around it to protect it. I was able to see it for a few seconds.

Howdy again! After our stay at the dude ranch, we went to Cody, which is also in Wyoming. My favorite part about Cody was the world-famous rodeo. A rodeo is when people come out and ride horses and bulls. I loved seeing guys trying to ride bulls and the cowboys were amazing at riding horses. At one point, all the kids got to go out onto the rodeo arena to try to get a bandanna off the tail of a calf and if you did, you got a prize. There were two calves. Unfortunately, me and Tyler didn't win.

After Cody, we went to Yellowstone National Park, which is famous for their geysers and hotsprings. They smell like rotten eggs, but they were cool to look at, so it was worth it. There's the geyser called Old Faithful, which can shoot water over 100 feet in the air. We also saw a geyser called The Beehive, which is even bigger than Old Faithful. We saw a lot of animals in Yellowstone, including some more bison. We also saw a coyote that was eating, what we think was, a mouse. It was really exciting to see the coyote because it was right next to our car.

Hello, everyone. I'm here to tell you all about our trip to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. One thing Yellowstone is famous for are hot springs and geysers. Hot springs are pools of water that are heated by the earth's core and are really cool to look at because they come in all different colors. Geysers, on the other hand, are smaller holes in the ground and when it gets hot enough, water shoots out of them, sometimes over 100 feet high. We saw Old Faithful, a very famous geyser that everyone knows, which goes off about every 90 minutes.

Yellowstone is the oldest national park, as well as the largest (the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined!), which is so cool. Yellowstone also has a large amount of wildlife. For example, on our way into the park the last day, we saw a coyote as well as a few buffalo herds.

Hi, it's Tyler from Wyoming. The first place we went was Jackson Hole. Jackson Hole is home of the Grand Teton mountains, so we got to do a lot of hiking in the hills surrounding them. We also saw some wildlife there, including buffalo, bald eagles and moose.

When we saw the moose, it was grazing on some marsh grass on the side of a lake and when it finished eating, it walked just a few feet away from me.

Howdy, partner! I'm a cowboy now. I was just at the 7D Ranch in Wyoming and I learned how to ride a horse. My horse's name was Geronimo ... cool name. Geronimo is brown and white in the front and white with brown spots in the back.

On my first day riding Geronimo, one of the wranglers named Teddy played lots of games with us on the horses. One game was called "Teddy says" (instead of "Simon says") and another was "Red light, Green light." We learned how to steer, stop and turn. One game we played was a cow naming game. Tyler named a cow Potato because he was the only brown one out of 228 black ones.

We went to the ranch with some family friends who have three kids, Ben, Nicole, and Anna. We all had so much fun on our horses and doing the activities, like kickball and line dancing. The dances I did were so hard! I was much better at playing horseshoes. I also learned how to lasso. So now if I get mad at someone, I can just lasso them!

The last day we did a thing called Gymkhana. It's where all of the riders come out on their horses and play lots of games. We had trotting races (I came in 5th) and an obstacle course. I also tried to balance an egg on a spoon while riding Geronimo. I'm happy to say I didn't break my egg!

After the Gymkhana, we went to see them wrangle the horses (check out the video in Tyler's post). They run the horses out at night to a grassy place where they can graze. At the end of the day, we had a barbeque with s'mores, which I had seven of. They were so yummy.

Learning how to ride a horse was so much fun! And that was my trip to 7D Ranch in Wyoming ... Yee haw!