Photos back up.

Just letting everyone know the photos are back up.  Don't feel like typing much, so:  been hanging out at my house in Brevard, NC for a few days, gonna hitchhike to heather's house tomorrow, finished 2nd out of 5 teams in the hitchhiking race, photos sometime soon, hitched about 3000 miles in the last month, net some awesome people.  Other stops/visits coming up probably include: my bro and his wife in gainsville, FL, Uncle in Destin FL, couple peeps in Atlanta, Greenville, SC, Cuba, maybe MS, maybe NY, maybe Hawaii, maybe central america.  that is all.  oh, also, I freaking love not working.

Hitching around the west coast

So on April 29th me and my girlfriend Heather left Salt Lake City, UT with backpacks to hitch around the West for a few weeks. At the moment we're at her uncle's in Monterey, CA, after about 1200 miles of hitchhiking in 12 days, I'll just get to the photos, but it's been a great time, met some awesome people, and been to a bunch of national parks:

about to leave salt lake

salt lake city on-ramp, about 4pm (yeah, we got a late start)


this girl with a little kid in the back picked us up, and heather got recruited to hold his teddy bear for a bit.


Ralph, this really cool trucker picked us up for a couple hundred miles and invited us back to his ranch for the night, so...


we drove 12 miles down this dirt road in the middle of nowhere and had a whole basement apartment to stay in.  we stayed two nights, him and his wife cooked us some great food, and we basically hung out with him and his wife for 2 days.  Super nice people.





Ralph and his wife Julia dropping us off on the interstate


Tee, a uniform delivery truck driver picked us up against company policy and drove us to Zion National Park



we met will at Zion, he's driving his motorcycle all over the west for a few months.


so we all camped out that night.


next we hitched to Bryce Canyon National Park


got picked up by a tour bus full of french people leaving the park.


jon, the driver, had convinced everyone on the bus that they should stop and pick us up.  this was the first time we used the "we're nice!" sign, it works pretty well.


tobia drive us 2 hours out of his way the next day


Trying to hitch in Vegas...uhh.  damn Vegas.


April drove us a couple hours towards Sequioa National Park


Fresno, CA


Ronnie, really cool hippie trucker


Heather showcasing Ronnie's wheels

Camping in an orange grove in Visalia, CA outside of Sequioa

Freaking biggest trees in the world in Sequioa

we camped for 5 days in Sequioa and Kings Canyon national parks


hiked through a few feet of snow on a couple hikes


big ass tree.


another big ass tree you can walk through


we splurged on hot dogs one night.

driving down kings canyon, the deepest canyon in the US.


the aftermath of a controlled burn in the park


Jack, a park trail worker picked us up and took us to fresno, CA from kings canyon


the no hitchhikers sign in Fresno.


we freaking stood for 2 hours waiting for a ride.  we later found out they had run an anti-picking up hitchhikers ad campaign recently.


Paul eventually picked us up in his nice BMW 330i, he was a state trooper off duty, really cool, and we made awesome time because he was going 100mph in a 55 most of the time because he can get away with it. Me: "do you ever get tickets?"  Paul:  Nope.  every job has its perks.


then heather's uncle Carl and his girlfriend Serita picked us up outside monterey, and we've been staying with them in their condo for the last couple days.  We just decided we're gonna buy some plane tickets from LA to TX and just hitch to LA instead of the 1800 miles from monterey to TX, this way we'll only be hitching about 700 miles instead, and have a couple more days to check out stuff.

Summer stuff

Salt Lake

KSU car Skiing and such

We spent the day doing a variety of winter activities.  The photos are pretty self explanitory:

Aaron sidewalk kayaking


Myself Car skiing

Ok, here I was having such a good time car skiing that I forgot my skis wouldn't work on concrete, like, say, that huge barren car spot, so I just rode through it.  well, half way, anyway.


aaron car skimboarding.  you can't really steer so you have to rely on the drivers ability to keep you on the road and not swinging into cars parked on the street.  he had to bail out a few times while I learned that.