Day 70: Home yet not

The first token is of the Peter-Paul Castle in St Petersburg, Russia.  That castle is the building on the left in the token. Then the Bronze Horseman is the other significant part of the token. Commissioned by Katherine II (the Great) to Peter I (Peter the Great).
The second token is also St Petersburg, Russia.  There is the sphinx because there are a number of sphinxes on the banks of the Neva River in St Petersburg.  Then I would guess that the building with multiple spires is 'Hram Spas na Krovy' or 'Church of Savior on Blood'.  That being the very iconic Russian Orthodox cathedral in St Petersburg.
Token 3 is the Bronze Horseman again from St Petersburg Russia.  Written on top is "city of white nights."  Then below is "and water bridges."
The 4th token (which is on the second row) is this guy.  On top it says St Petersburg.  On bottom it says the guys name which is Auguste de Montferrand.  He was the primary architect for St Isaac's Cathedral in St Petersburg and for the nearby Alexander Column.
The 5th token is St Isaac's Cathedral itself.  On top it says what is on the bottom which is Saint Isaac's cathedral.
The 6th token is the other side of the third token.  As you might be able to tell it is another depiction of Saint Isaac's cathedral.  Then on top it says "City of White Nights" and on bottom "and water bridges."
The 7th and 8th tokens are the same tokens.  Just different sides.  I got the tokens at The Museum State Museum of Fine Arts which is in Moscow.  The token celebrated 100 years of the museum in 2012.  I don't know who Edgar Degas was.  But according to wikipedia he was a French Artist.  It might have been that he had some pieces of art in the Museum.  I don't remember.
The last token is a metro token.  It was good for one fare on the metro in St Petersburg.  In Moscow cards were used instead.

Day 69: Uinta Wilderness

Once up on a time I went on a hike in the Uinta Wilderness.  On this particular hike we kind of, somewhat followed a stream/ river.  It wasn't too wide or fast moving.  This particular place on that hike was where we were going to stay the night the next time we were going to do the hike in a week with a bunch of scouts.  So to pass the time I decided to throw big rocks in the river.  This way there would be a walkway across the river.  There is no need for the walkway but I provided one anyways.  I finished the dam and by the time I went back with my camera it was dark and so I didn't get a good picture.  Or at least a picture where you could see what I was trying to take a picture of.

So the next day, I went back to the dam and took a picture.  Like I said before it wasn't very far away from where we stayed the night so it was easy to do.  I don't know that dam is the right word because all I did was move rocks from the bank of the river stream and put them in a row.  The purpose was not to dam up the stream at all.  Oh the things that are done to have fun out in the wilderness.

Day 68: Vilnius

Here we have the Old Town Hall building for Vilnius, Lithuania.  It was pretty sweet because the hostel that we stayed at was right by here so we knew that if we found this building then we were close to the place that we were staying.  For a more comprehensive history of the Old Town hall click Here.

George W. Bush made a statement in 2002 that was then put on the wall of the Town Hall.  The statement was "any one who would choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an enemy of the United States of America."  I believe tour guide said that President Bush made similar statements in Estonia and Latvia.
You can see the Lithuanian flag displayed proudly in Lithuania. Go for the yellow, green and red.

Day 67: Moscow

This is the Cathedral of Christ Savior.  It is in the middle of Moscow not very far away from Red Square.  The cathedral was really big though.  We didn't go inside.  I do not remember why but we didn't go inside.  It probably cost money or we didn't have enough time.  Either way it was really big.  The outside was still really cool to walk around because, you see in pictures below, the outside was also very well designed and it is a piece of work also.

There were some cool lights, that we didn't get see turned on because we were there during the day time. Also the depiction of Christ and his disciples.  That is pretty cool.  Link to Wikipedia article.

Day 66: Lake Allsop

Hidden in the High Unita Wilderness there is this pristine mountain valley.  To get to this valley you had to hike up this steep hill after hiking the 8.5 miles into to Lake Allsop.  But the view was totally worth it.  I love the huge rocks to walk on.  There is something special about being able to hike and see the beauty of this world where few humans ever will be.  I also loved the mountain goat leg that we found.  Rev said that wolves had gotten to the live goat and then just left a leg.  Pretty awesome!

Day 65: Stockholm

This really cool, really tall, really old church is in the center of Gamla Stan (Old Town) Stockholm.  The island is called Riddarholmen and what you can see is the Riddarholmen church.  Link to Wikipedia article
I will say what the article says anyways.  The church was built in the 13th century and probably is the oldest building around.  It was not open when I went.  Later, I found out that a lot of Swedish Monarchs have been buried there. Official Link

Day 64: Riga

This picture was taken at the top of St. Peter's church in the center of Old Town of Riga, Latvia.  In the distance you can see the river that I don't know the name of.  I do know what a couple of the buildings are though.  There is a building in the back that looks like it is 4 airplane hangers all connected.  That was the flea market.  It was pretty awesome.  I bought a sweet roll there along with some magnets.  That was only part of it though.  To the left side of the structure there was this open air market.  It was pretty awesome.
Another thing in this picture that I know is right there also.  It is the bus station.  Not to be confused with the train station.  In some cities they are in the same spot.  But not here.  The bus station is that white building right by the market but just a little bit closer.
The last thing I can recognize is a mall.  That is across the hill from the bus station and then across the road.  It is the grey building with the 4 big posters on the side that only really look like 2 posters.  They are actually movie advertisements.  Skyfall, Twilight, Hotel Translyvania, and then some horror movie I think.   I can't actually see what it is.

Day 63: Rovaniemi

This classic picture was taken in Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland near Santa Village.  This picture is actually of the entrance of the Husky Park.  In the middle of December the snow has fallen and none of it has melted.  The interesting thing was that the local people were saying that that year there wasn't very much snow fall.  Which was unfortunate because not all of the dog sled runs were open yet.  But they were really expensive anyways.

Day 62: Vernal

This picture is by no means unique.  But I still like it.  I like the phenomenon of the rainbow.  But having the double rainbow makes it all the so much cooler.  A double rainbow could really happen anywhere but this particular double rainbow happened some where near the city of Vernal.

Day 61: Stockholm

As alluded to a couple days ago, it was at this spot in Stockholm, Sweden that Jess went up to the Swedish guy and asked him if she could have one of the posters that he was taping up.  He ended up giving her one.  It was really funny also.

Since this was a place to remember I decided to take a picture by myself, which I have much practice with, and with Katie.  Obviously I don't have as much practice because it isn't as good of a picture.

Day 60: Vilnius

This picture was taken on the balcony at Jimmy Jumps Hostel in Vilnius, Lithuania.  The hostel was in the middle of Old Town.  It was really cool to see the houses together but I didn't feel claustrophobic.  It was cool.  It also helped that I didn't have a car and was just walking around.  Now looking at the picture it kind of looks like a place that James Bond or some other action actor would jump on top of chasing after some other guy.

Day 59: Camp Frontier

Sticking with the common theme of night pictures, I choose this one.  I didn't have to do anything with the shutter speed but just take the picture while the sun was setting.  I think it looks pretty cool that you can only tell that there are people by the edge of the lake in the reflection.  I was up at Camp Frontier to take this picture.

Day 58: Logan Canyon

Like I said with the fire picture I can change the shutter speed.  For this picture I did that.  I was up Logan Canyon, I am not sure where, but I thought that it looked really cool.  So then i tried to take a cool night picture.  I think it worked out.

Day 57: Helsinki

I was going to hang on to this picture and not really show it. The reason why is because I think that it would make an awesome album cover or something.  But then I realized that I would never actually need a picture like that.  So I am posting now.  I was at the Helsinki central train/bus station waiting for my bus to come and then I turned around and saw all of these posters and I was like "Perfect!"  So then I took a picture, purposely leaving my bag there.  I think it looks pretty great.

Day 56: Tracy

This picture happens to be at Camp Tracy but a similar picture could really be taken anywhere.  It is just a picture of the fire that we had one weekend.  With my camera I am able to change the shutter speed and so I changed it for this picture.  I think that it looks really cool.

Day 55: Vancouver, Washington

Vancouver is right across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.  We ended up here because we wanted to cross into Washington and also they have a Dairy Queen.  But before we got to the Dairy Queen we stopped by Vancouver Central Park.  You can't see that from the picture but that is what the sign to the right says.

Part of that park was the Fort Vancouver National Site.  We spent like no time here but it was still pretty cool.  There were some really nice grass fields and I guess they have had problems with people tearing it up because metal detectors and digging are prohibited.

 There were various buildings and gazebos.  That was pretty nice.
I really liked the cannons and cannon balls that they had on display in the park.  They were heavy and the real size.  There was a whole headstone looking thing that explained everything about the cannons.

After the park we went to Dairy Queen for lunch.  Granted there were a lot of us but it took forever for us to get our order. But it was a cool, old-fashioned Dairy Queen where you walked up to the window to order and then sat on picnic benches outside.

When we were driving Vancouver my mom was really confused by this sign.  So on the way out of Vancouver I took a picture of the "Save Drugs" sign.  Everything all checked out though.  It was a pharmacy where you could get discount drugs or something.  We didn't actually go inside.

Day 54: Lincoln City

Lincoln City is a city on the Oregon Coast.  A claim to fame that they have there in that city is that Abraham Lincoln came to their city.  He was on horseback.  Wikipedia article about Lincoln City.

There were various murals and other decorations all over town.  They were pretty fun.

The other thing that Lincoln City is known for is the ocean.  There are a number of beaches in the city.  We just went to one.

With the ocean you have to be careful because you never really know what the tide is going to do.  So there was a part of the city that part of the Tsunami Hazard Zone.  We knew about this because there were signs everywhere saying that you were entering and leaving that zone.  There were also signs showing the escape route if there was a tsunami.  Good to be prepared.

Even if you got away from the coast just a little bit it was still really beautiful.  Here was one of the streets in the more residential area of Lincoln City.  Those lots are probably for sale, people just haven't bought the land in order to build houses yet.

Day 53: Portland

To enter Portland there are a couple ways that you can do that.  To the left you can see that we entered on the freeway from the east.  In order to get to downtown Portland and Portland State University you need to cross that big bridge.  To the right is the bridge you take when entering Portland from the north.  The Columbia River is the border between Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA.

Though there were a lot of cars there were also a lot bicycles.  So Portland is known for being the bicycle capital of America.  It should all be known for all the pets that people have in Portland.  There are a lot of pets.

Another place we went was the Portland Temple.  On the left is the temple itself with the spires and Angel Moroni on the tallest spire.  Then we were also pleasantly surprised that there was a visitors' center that we were able to inside.  It was a small visitors' center but it was very nice.  There were a couple sets of missionaries there.

We were in Portland on Saturday and over the summer Portland has a Saturday Market.  It was a lot of fun.  It reminded me a lot of the рынки that were all over Russia and also the Baltic States.

Something that was really nice was that on the streets of Portland there were these drinking fountains as we were walking down the Pearl District of Portland.  It was pretty sweet!