Living's Good

So we are currently residing in Santa Barbara where we are staying with David and Kaye, who have connections with Sally, who is the mother of James. It is really nice here and they have been so friendly to us! A proper home cooked meal today was definitely a nice change from our usual slight variations of Annie's Pasta (Annie's with pepper, Annie's with mushrooms, Annie's with kale, Annie's with mushrooms and kale, etc... You get the idea), and it doesn't hurt either that Kaye is an excellent cook.
So far we've only really spent one full day in Santa Barbara and James and I did an epic hike up to a place I believe was called Seven Falls? We didn't find the path that led up to the top so we made our own path - but this was a lot more fun anyways. In order to get there we had to do a little bit of rock climbing and a very minimal amount of bushwhacking. Once we arrived at the top there was an amazing pool of water which we both skinny dipped in - one at a time of course. We may be close friends, but not that close. :P
Anyways we are planning on probably spending two more nights here in David and Kaye's home. They offered us the place for as long as we needed, but we do have other areas to explore and a loose schedule to stick to. Tomorrow we are hoping to go body boarding and maybe biking too? Santa Barbara is beautiful and we feel as if we are being treated as kings, which is a pretty nice alternative to the previous "van life" we have been experiencing for the past few weeks.
Next stop L.A? Once we've been to L.A. it will likely be the last time we see the coast until we are back in Vancouver. This means that it is likely to get a whole lot warmer throughout the day, and for two "white kids" from Vancouver, we ain't exactly all too used to such weather. I already have a horrible farmer's tan which I am not very proud of. What makes it worse is that it is only on my right arm because I've been in the passenger seat for the entire trip, thus I get all of my sun on that side. Sigh.

Oh well until next time I can update this thing. Is anybody still reading it, or am I pretty much just talking to myself?

PS. The Headbanger is still running super smoothly.

Hooray!

THE HEADBANGER IS RUNNING SMOOTHLY!!! So we went to the shop and I believe they changed the coil and something else. Whatever it was they did, it sure seemed to work, because she hasn't misfired once! This is excellent news, because this means our road-trip can continue.
In the last few days we have been to Berkeley University which is a really nice campus full of cool shops and super chill people.
Yesterday we went to Yosemite park and were happy to find that it was apparently "National park week" or something along those lines, meaning that we didn't have to pay the usual $20 fee to get in. Instead James donated $2 to the park... what a guy. Whilst in the park we did an amazing hike up to Upper Yosemite Falls and had a little music session up there with the ukelele and the djembe. We got back just in the nick of time because it got dark about 10 minutes after we had arrived back to The Headbanger. There we ate Amy's Tomato soup in the dark. If you are reading this, I highly suggest you never purchase that soup because it was pretty disgusting and I had trouble finishing mine.
Next big stop we are planning for is Santa Barbara, where James has connections and a place for us to stay. I won't lie, a proper home cooked meal and a shower are going to be pretty nice. I'm sort of starting to get tired of our oatmeal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and pasta and/or soup for dinner. As "exciting" as they are, a bit of variety would be nice.

Still Here?

Alrighty then... So we took the camper van into the shop and the people there worked on it for a little while and charged us $145.50 for the work and supplies they had offered our van. We could have lived with that if that fixed the van, making it no longer misfire... However that is not the case. The Headbanger (which is the name we gave the van because it is small and we bump our heads in it all the time (I will also be referring to the van as "The Headbanger" from now on)), is still misfiring, almost worse than it was before. Today we returned to that same auto shop and talked to the gentleman who worked on The Headbanger. He re-assured us that they had fixed all of the problems in The Headbanger which needed obvious attention. This means that the reason it is acting up could be one of many things. So in order to fix the problem and for us to be able to continue on this trip smoothly, we need to keep fixing things which are "potentially" causing the problem. Unfortunately this could be relatively expensive. Meaning that our trip will inevitably be cut shorter regardless of whether we fix the problem or not. If we do not, we have to head right home (which I have no idea how we are going to go about doing so), but if we do fix her up, that means the costs of fixing it come right out of our road trip budget. 
We are still currently a little North of San Fransisco and it feels as if we have been here forever. We are both eager to keep going, but it is hard to do when The Headbanger is acting up. We have to wait until tomorrow morning to bring it into the shop again where they are replacing a few more items in the engine. If I remember correctly, they are replacing the cylinder and something else, however I am not an individual who knows a whole lot about cars and I could be very wrong.
So now we are sitting in Barnes and Noble which has a Starbucks - which basically means free internet. I don't really have all too many exciting stories to tell of from the past few days because we've been pretty much sitting in the same area cruising around, eating food, reading books, sleeping, and eating more food.

San Fransisco and Surrounding Areas

It's been kind of hard to keep this thing updated since we don't exactly have internet access whenever we need it. But the past few days have been really nice. We went down to San Fransisco twice (once on the 18th the other time on the 20th). Unfortunately we haven't been able to keep heading south and have kind of been sitting around the area of North San Fransisco for the past few days, this is because the Van hasn't been running all too smoothly and keeps misfiring. (*Insert, " told you that would happen" comment here*). So the van is in the shop right now and we have yet to go back and see how much money we need to spend on it. Hopefully this won't cut our trip short - in which case, if it would, see you soon Vancouver.
San Fransisco was pretty nice. However as a tourist in a new city, the transit system is always a little bit confusing. Also it has some interesting characters, such as naked men riding bikes, an older woman telling her little girl to "shut the fuck up", and a crackhead who throws footballs at people's faces (as James experienced first hand). Seeing as we were there for the second time on 4/20, there were a ton on potheads roaming around. This made the city just that much more interesting.
I don't really have all that much to say about it other than that it was nice, REALLY HOT (the weather here in spring is easily like summer in Vancouver), it would have been cooler if we knew our way around properly, and also a whole lot cooler if we were 21. Don't take the cable cars... We never did seeing as how they were $6, even if we only wanted to ride them for like 10 feet.
Also we didn't expect to see palm trees quite yet, but we did. It's sure starting to feel a whole lot more like Cali.

PS. We went to a place called Yolo because we saw it on the map and couldn't NOT go after seeing it... after all, YOLO. (You Only Live Once, for those of you who aren't quite up to date on the lingo).

Peace for now.

Still Alive

So it's been a while since I've posted anything new on here but we've kept ourselves busy. We are almost in San Fran and should probably be there by tomorrow. We've driven through the Redwoods, along the coast, and seen many beautiful viewpoints.
We also got kicked off of a campground because we tried using their showers without asking (it had been a while and we were getting desperate for one). I was almost already undressed when I was rudely interrupted by the caretaker. It was awkward enough not being fully naked yet, I don't even want to imagine what it would have been like if I was. We did however get a free shower at the next site after asking the people there kindly if we could. So lesson learned I guess? Always ask first haha.
Also I still have no idea how to upload photos to here yet so I'll just attach a link to James' photo album on facebook. I think you'll be able to see them if we're friends on facebook, otherwise I guess add me?
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200460512089820.1073741826.1067388543&type=1

Quick Update.

So James and I are once again stealing some internet from Starbucks, but this time we are in Tillamook, Oregon. Our expenses for how long we've been gone for, are so far relatively descent. Showers at the campsite yesterday were bloody amazing! (and free too). I think in order to save money in the future we'll just head into a campsite, use their showers and find a spot to spend the night for free in the trustworthy van... as opposed to spending around $20.00 to spend the night there. Oh well, this is a learning experience. The highlight of yesterday (April 11th) was definitely the jam session James and I had on the sand dunes by the beach under the stars, we had a djembe, a ukelele, and our amazing voices. :)
We've had several comments about our VW van, mostly from middle aged men who reminisce about how they used to drive their VW, "back in their day". We are also still rocking our Canada toques (a term most Americans are not familiar with) with pride!

PS. Some pictures are coming soon, we just have to figure out how to upload them to James' computer, unfortunately neither of us are exactly tech literate.

So Far So Good.

So we are currently in a Starbucks in Aberdeen, Washington with James Apple laptop feeling really hip. We have taken the Interstate 5 South highway so far and plan on heading out to the coast later today if we can make it then (it is currently 5:25 PM) or if not sleep somewhere and head out first thing tomorrow. The border crossing went really surprisingly smooth. I was pretty darn positive that our 1973 "hippy van" would have been searched, but the grumpy guy at the border just asked us where we were going, what we were doing, how long we'd be doing it, and he stuck his head inside the van to take a quick look (I think he was just jealous of how cool it is). But we successfully made it through without any hassle and are still currently heading South, next destination - somewhere in Oregon.
Also the first night we slept in our van, in a rest stop, and honestly there isn't much to comment about that, because we were both asleep. We saw a spot on the map called, Warm Beach, however that title couldn't have been any more misleading, the beach was minimal, pretty much all privatized, and it was far from warm. Oh well hopefully the warm sandy beaches in Cali will serve us better.

Until next time.

Moment of Truth

So the time has finally come to leave! We've got all of our gear packed up and ready to go, the iPod is filled with groovy tunes, the Ukelele is tuned, the gas tank is (hopefully) full, and our spirits are high. Bring it on USA!

Also I really hope they let us cross the border. Something tells me they are at least going to search a 1973 VW camper van driven by two 19 year old men, filled with bags and supplies. I'm almost tempted to wear a tie-dye shirt with the slogan "legalize" written across it accompanied by a marijuana leaf (if I had one of those to begin with). I somehow think it honestly wouldn't make a difference. Oh well, we'll keep our fingers crossed and see how it goes when we get there.

Bucket List

This is a little bucket list type of... list (?) which I created a while ago of, with stuff that I think needed to be done whilst on our road trip. It needs work, I know. But if anybody has any suggestions of things I should add, my ears (eyes) are wide open.

- Get chased off of somebody's property
- See the Golden Gate Bridge
- Make it back home
- Have a fire/bonfire so good that it attracts strangers
- Have a jam session with strangers around that bonfire
- High five a stranger
- Order a coffee anywhere in the US with a stereotypical Canadian accent... eh.
- Give a stranger/hitchhiker a ride 
- Get drunk in the US
- Get a girls phone number
- Make at least one person believe we live in igloos
- Walk around LA in Canucks attire
- Learn to play the ukelele 
- Tip a cow
- Ask where the nearest Tim Hortons is
- Go through a drive-thru and rap the order (thanks Misha for the suggestion)

Oh Hi There.

I figured since two close homies (James and myself) are traveling down South starting from Vancouver BC, Canada, I'd make a blog and keep track of where we've gone and what we've done. This way if anybody asks either of us about the trip, as opposed to be social about it and telling them, we can just re-direct those nosy individuals here. :)
It's also a great way to later look back and see what kind of crazy adventures we've had.
It is currently 12:44 PM on April 06, 2013. and we plan on leaving at around 7:00 PM on April 09, 2013. Our original date to leave was March 20, but as you can see, that never fell through. So March 09 it is, as long as I can find my passport by then, James gets our VW mini van pimped out and we've got all of our supplies. 


PS. This is the first blog I've ever done and have no idea what I'm doing.. so bear with me.