Exploregonians

The box read “We want to go to Kyoto in your car” in Japanese, and a pair of women driving to Osaka for a One Direction concert gave the hitchhiking Katie and Jordan a ride from a roadside Starbucks. They were close to Kyoto, but toured around Osaka for a couple days, eating fried octopus balls, touring the iconic castle, and enjoying the Glico Running Man. When they returned a

Ten years ago, Katie uninvited Jordan from Newport’s Seafood and Wine Festival and he still hasn’t let it go. Katie enjoys the marriage of grunge and bourgeois in Newport and Jordan declares Newport as the Capital of the Coast before talking about the first celebrity he ever met: Keiko the orca, star of Free Willy. Katie is weirded out Newport’s Ocean to Bay Trail doesn’t

Jordan won front row tickets to Hamilton in New York City, which spurred a crazy two-day planning spree. Katie and Jordan have been together almost ten years, so it's only fitting they have now seen ten shows on Broadway. When they weren’t being dazzled by theatre, they were experiencing some of the most classic buildings in Manhattan like Grand Central Terminal and the flag

Because it is Valentine's Day, Jordan reads an excerpt from his memoir recounting pivotal moments in their relationship at Pacific City.Katie once drove Jordan to an interview in Pacific City and dropped him off like the good babysitter she is after they imagine the rom-com Country/City. Pacific City’s Haystack Rock is one hundred feet taller than its sibling in Cannon Beach

Katie forgot a swimsuit for a European trip so went to a Budapest bathhouse in just her underwear and Jordan talks about getting his chest hair in someone's pizza.Budapest is, to Katie and Jordan's surprise, two cities named Buda and Pest, separated by the Danube River! Biggest regret? Not getting a sweatshirt that read "BUDA SEXY PEST". Before Katie's birt

Wizard Island! Old Man of the Lake! Phantom Ship! Jordan thinks Crater Lake National Park is the GOAT of naming things. Katie accuses Jordan of not liking lakes and suggests he is backwoods, being raised on rivers and fed crawdads, just like all the nonnative fish that have been stocked in Crater Lake from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mount Mazama blew 7,700 years ago an

Katie and Jordan are off to school! Without any teaching credentials, the Inthanon school headmaster begrudgingly allows the honeymooners to assist the local English teacher, who quickly became Jordan’s favorite person in all his travels.Katie and Jordan are whisked away to help at “English Camp” which isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds. To get there, they load up the buses,

Thick clouds dumped an inch of snow an hour for 15 hours straight during Katie and Jordan's second wedding anniversary, marooning them in Downtown Bend an extra night and leaving the whole city seemingly abandoned for themselves to explore. Katie learns a hard lesson about drinking lots of beer before trying on fancy jeans and Jordan experiences some intense self-inflicted-man

Katie and Jordan get the ol’ Chiang Mai Shanghai in this week’s adventure. What started as a trip to teach English turns out to be ten days in a village atop Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand where Catholicism rules and the priest is a demi-god. On the first day, Katie and Jordan are welcomed to a house blessing as guests of honor where they eat the spiciest food of th

A tornado (or waterspout, depending on who you ask) tore through downtown Manzanita; Katie and Jordan rushed to cover it for the local newspaper, without really considering how storm-chasing would go in the town Katie used to call home.Jordan talks about the 16th Century treasure supposedly buried somewhere on Neahkahnie Mountain and Katie reminds everyone about the catastrophe of