I guess I’ll start by saying that all good things come to an end. Moving down to California and living on the bus for almost a year has been the best time of my life. Now I start a new chapter in my life which means working like the rest of the world. There are so many memories and experiences I have not just from the trip, but all the time we spent in Malibu and San Diego leading up to it. I know I’m very lucky to be able to have the opportunity to do something like this and that most people have responsibilities to take care of or obligations to fulfill. Traveling the country has opened my eyes which are closed in a lot of pictures, but that’s because I’m Asian. We’ve seen and done so much I think I have a pretty good idea of what I like and don’t like about every city we’ve visited. Lastly, this trip would’ve meant nothing without my friends so thanks for putting up with me. They are great people who I look up to and I hope they never change. And thanks to all our fans who followed us, I hope you enjoyed our stories and pictures.

It was nice to have a chance to stop in Bowman and walk around part of the ranch, but for more breathtaking landscapes and scenery, Yellowstone National Park is where we needed to go. So we headed for Bozeman, Montana and left from there in the morning. Yellowstone is the first national park in the U.S. and takes up a big chunk of Wyoming so we didn’t waste anytime and went straight to the visitor’s center. We booked a couple of rooms for the night and off we went. First stop we made of course was Old Faithful, the most popular geyser in the entire park. I was expecting water to shoot up hundreds of feet in the air from the ground, but what I got was probably 50 feet so I was a little bummed. I guess there are some geysers that do shoot up water really high, but very rarely and it’s unpredictable to tell when the high ones are going to be. Hot springs are also common in the park, but you are not allowed to go in them. There was this one called Morning Glory that looked so blue I wanted to do a cannonball in it, but I guess the more blue the water, the hotter it is so I opted for taking pictures instead. There was also this place called mud volcano which was kind of interesting, but I renamed it Graham’s butt because it smelled really bad just like his farts. We saw plenty of elk and buffalo, a bald eagle, a wolf or coyote, otters, but what we really wanted to see was a moose. No luck there, but while we were looking for a moose, we saw a brown bear in the distance walking towards the forest so that was cool. Buffalo are funny looking because their butts are really small compared to the rest of their body and they walk in the middle of the road like they own the place which is very rude to all the cars that have to wait until they slowly get their small butts out of the road. They look kind of scary, but when I tried to get close to one, the buffalo starting walking away from me so I guess I’m a force to be reckoned with. What a way to end our trip, it has truly been an adventure of a lifetime and there’s still so much to see in the world that I just want to continue traveling. I’d just like to say thanks to everyone for following our tour.

I’m not sure how exciting writing about Bowman will be for the fans. The town probably has a population of something like 2000 people, it has just a few restaurants, two grocery stores, and only a couple dozen businesses in town. Most of the residences work on the ranches and farms that surround the town. So why did we stop there? Well, like Bismarck, my brother and I have a lot of history there. Only in Bowman the history is a little deeper, I think it was my great great great grandfather from Norway who settled there a long time ago and acquired some land to work. So the land has been passed down generation after generation and has been divided and divided, but now my brother and I own a few sections of the original Roen land that has been in the family so long. My grandfather and my dad both worked on the ranch for many long and hard years so it has always been very important to our family. A funny story happened when we went to the local western store. We got to chatting with the clerk and eventually she wondered why we were in town, we said to visit our land and our family heritage, she said what family, we said the Roen’s…she said, oh yeah I knew them well, Leland (our grandfather) sang at my wedding. I don’t know if that’s a tribute to how well the Roen’s are known in the Bowman area or to how small Bowman is, but either way it was fun to know that people still remembered our family. So we picked up a couple pairs of Wranglers from the western store and headed out to the ranch to explore a bit. It was nice to be back out there, the land is pretty cool, and surprisingly there is a good diversity of landscape on our piece of land. Check out the pictures if you want to see what I’m talking about. Anyway, Bowman was nice and it was great to be back in town. We also had a nice bite to eat with Carl who had worked with my grandpa for 30 years or so and who knew the land and our family very well. Although we didn’t spend much time in Bowman we did get to see a large chunk of the land as well as nearly the entire city. It was a good time, but we were in a hurry to get back to Seattle, but not before a stop in Yellowstone.

- Carson

On our way from Minneapolis to Bismarck we stopped in Fargo to rest for the night and to catch up with an old family friend, Ross. Our server at Denny’s was one of the best I’ve ever had, he was on top of everything, but that’s beside the point, we had a nice meal and caught up with Ross. After Denny’s he came back to the bus to check it out, and consequently entered an elite group of people who have actually seen inside the vehicle. The next day we woke up and quickly headed to Bismarck, well not that quickly, like 55 mph, but we were trying to get there in time to go cruise the river on Kyle’s pontoon boat.

Luckily we made it while it was still warm and managed an hour or so on the river. If you don’t already know this about me, Bismarck is my second home to Redmond; I spent every summer there growing up. I still remember all those summers we spent cruising on the river on Kyle’s pontoon boat, or on his jet skis or with Brian and his boat. Needless to say as we played on the sandbar in the river all the memories came flooding back, it was awesome. Just driving around town was a lot of fun for me too; I got to see all the old places we used to ride bike to and whatnot. The city has grown a lot, many things were new or have changed. The Mini Mart on the corner at the bottom of our hill is now a Loaf and Jug but I can still remember riding bike down there nearly every day. The city has grown like crazy too, which I’m sure Lieu and Ann Marie laugh at, but Graham and I still remember when there was nothing north of Century or on the West side of town. Bismarck has always been a fun place for me because we always knew so many people and they were all so friendly and fun. During the summers there were constantly people over at our house, watching TV or playing video games, and if it wasn’t that then we were off on some quest or just cruising around town. So this time around there weren’t as many people in town as before, but we still had a blast with our old friends that were there. Kyle is working in Bismarck now, so we got to hang out with him and his fiancée Kristin a bunch, he grew up across the street from us so we’ve known him for a really long time. We were also able to see the Godfread’s which was nice, I haven’t seen them in years. Tom happened to be in town too so we went to his dad’s house and played a bunch of video games like old times (the same Tom from Minneapolis a few days prior). I could go on and on about the good old days with Kyle, or Tom, or Brian, or all the other buddies in town but it was a lot of fun to be back in Bismarck reminiscing. Next time I’ll have to come back when it’s warmer and the summer stuff is still open, like the wave pool or the amusement park. Anyway I had a blast, we ate at all the places we used to eat at, we drove to all the places we used to go and we got to cruise the river on Kyle’s pontoon boat. Great times in a small mid-western town.

- Carson

Minneapolis was a nice relaxing stop for us. Our good friend Tom allowed us to stay at his house so we had full amenities which we haven’t had for a long time now. Needless to say we watched a lot of TV in our free time instead of reading books or what have you. The first night we went out a bit downtown with Tom. One of the places we went to was called Brit’s, it was probably the coolest bar I’ve been to, but more on that later. The next day Tom left to go to a friend’s wedding so we had to cruise around the city by ourselves for a while. We went to the sculpture garden and museum. The sculpture garden was awesome, my brother and I climbed around it like monkeys, it was like a play ground for adults….as we were leaving we saw a small sign posted near the grass that read “Please do not climb on the sculptures.” I felt a little bad about it, but it was so much fun and I’m pretty sure we did not damage anything. The sculptures were made out of like 2 inch thick steel, basically invincible stuff. Anyway, after that we played a nice round of bocce ball in the park and waited for some of our other friends in town to call us back. Then all of sudden the stars aligned, our cousin Shannon called me back at the same time Paul, a family friend, called Graham back. So we decided to make a nice little group get together at some pizza joint near downtown. The pizza place was on Hennepin and 3rd, so we used our map and made it to the intersection and parked. Upon further investigation we determined it was Hennepin EAST and 3rd so we had to cross the river. We decided to drive because it was like 8 blocks or so, but as we were driving Paul called and asked if we made the same mistake as he did. Graham said “yes, now were driving across the river to the other 3rd street.” He said, “Did you just stop at a red light on Washington?” Graham said “yes.” It turns out Paul was right next to us walking so we just opened our door and he hopped in as the light turn green. It was pretty crazy how that all worked out. Then we finally met Shannon at the pizza place. The pizza was pretty good but nothing like Chicago style, although it was a good time and we got the chance to catch up with two old friends. After dinner we took Paul back to his car and then we went out with Shannon back to Brit’s downtown. This time around at Brit’s we did things right, we got to play lawn bowling outside on the roof, we also played a little pool, and watched a bit of the Australian Football League championship. For those of you who are not familiar with lawn bowling, it’s basically curling on grass, and if you’re not familiar with curling you should be, because it’s awesome. Shannon and I won, but mainly because Shannon dominated. We all think she must go there all the time and practice, but she says that’s not the case. The next couple days we spent watching football at Tom’s house, like I said we haven’t had TV for a while. Saturday there was a pretty good match between UW and USC, but it did not end very favorably. Then Sunday right before we left Minneapolis we watched the infamous Vikings-Packers game. We couldn’t afford tickets to the stadium which would have been fun, but the TV worked for us. That one didn’t end to favorably either, the Packers won, but I’m happy for Favre who got the all time TD record for QBs. Minneapolis was pretty cool, but the most fun was catching up with our old friends and our cousin. Maybe next time I visit the town I’ll be a little more active and not watch as much TV, but it was a nice break for us.

- Carson