Exploregonians: Travel Misadventures

Katie and Jordan go to a place near and dear to their hearts - and, geographically, because Bay City, Oregon is 5.6 miles north of their hometown. Is it a different place? Technically! Listen this week as Jordan talks about his first crush, a neighbor-girl that may or may not also be Katie's childhood best friend!  Katie reveals Bay City was the first place she ever saw those intense "Ne...

Katie and Jordan are alive after a two-year hiatus! What have they been doing? You'll just have to tune in and find out! This season, our plucky hosts would love to feature your travel misadventures, so please record yourself sharing a couple minute anecdote or write one up for us to read and send them to exploregonianspodcast@gmail.com or send a sweet, sweet message to our Instagram @explore...

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 week later to Osa...

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 end at Yaquina Bay, bu...

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 flagship building of...

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 and a mile offs...

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 birthday, the two...

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 and its caldera...

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, which are truck beds pi...

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-manbun-induced bod...

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 their life and pound...

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 a movie that wa...

Katie and Jordan were evacuated out of Yellowstone National Park and need to tell you all about it. As the snow started to dump, it made the bison look even more magnificent and somehow made the duo think that coyotes were wolves and a single cow elk was somehow a moose.  The night before the evacuation out of the world's first national park, the pair watched a man in their lodge make a huge...

December 13 is Katie and Jordan's wedding anniversary, and to celebrate, the duo reminisce on one of their most treasured anniversary adventures to New York City! Jordan finally sees his first proper Broadway musical with a revival of "Hello, Dolly!" featuring Bette Midler and David Hyde Pierce and Katie regrets not accepting free tickets from a Radio City employee to see the Rocket...

When the weather outside is frightful, Oregon is always delightful! The month of December has Katie and Jordan reminiscing on tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago! Jordan tells his wife about his first experience to ZooLights that ended before it began in a shipping container full of toilets for a catostrophic trip to the "bathroom" and Katie quizzes Jordan on everything fr...

Sorry, Vancouver, but Victoria is, apparently, the capital of British Columbia! Katie and Jordan visit the city on the world's 43rd largest island (a fun fact Katie says may be a little too obscure to be fun) and Jordan talks about donating his DNA to the Mormon Church. Yay!  Victoria is home to North America's second oldest Chinatown, which leads to Jordan going on a tirade about Homewa...

Salem, Oregon doesn't have any witch trials (that Katie and Jordan are aware of...) but the capital of Oregon is home to many great parks and one contains the wettest nutria, a legendary rodent Katie had always heard of on the farm but never saw. Knowing Salem, allegedly, grows cherries in some form, Katie guesses Salem's nickname is "Poppin' Cherries", for some reason, an...

Guadalajara's Colonia Americana district has recently been named the coolest neighborhood in the world and Katie and Jordan stayed in the heart of it! Vibrant colors! Mariachi music! Lucha libre! Guadalajara is considered by many to be the cultural center of Mexico and captured Katie and Jordan's hearts and completely changed the way they think about our neighbors south of the border. Ka...

Eastern Oregon is much farther east than many people we talk to realize and this week, Katie and Jordan talk about vibrant Baker City, named not for baker potatoes, but the only sitting U.S. senator killed in military combat - and Katie researches it in real-time! Jordan talks about the time he tried to take Katie to Baker City and ended up in Burns instead, while Katie describes the five scenic b...

Romantic images of pizza and gelato conjured within the minds of Katie and Jordan when they thought of Italy -- only to be replaced by a deserted alpine resort town and eating the tavern's last sandwich.  The Dolomites are a mountainous region within Europe's Alps range and UNESCO has described them as among the most beautiful mountains in the world. In this episode, Katie and Jordan stu...

In the land of canneries, historic buildings that transform into breweries, and exactly one mighty column, Katie and Jordan visit maybe Oregon's film mecca: Astoria! (Sung to the tune of Rihanna's 2008 masterpiece "Disturbia".) The city is the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies and one of Katie and Jordan's favorite cities in the Pacific Northwest.  In 1940, Ka...

Every day in the city of Si Racha, the ancestral home of the namesake sauce, was a strange adventure as Katie and Jordan watched raw hunks of meat slap tigers in the face and elephants trunk-chugging beer.  The plane landed in Bangkok about 12:05 a.m. on January 1 and Katie and Jordan are nearly denied entrance into "The Land of Smiles" because they had no idea where they were staying an...

That's right, kids, we're visiting our hometown of Tillamook, Oregon! Land of cheese, trees, and ocean breeze! Katie grew up on a dairy farm and, because he was raised within city limits of Tillamook, Jordan will always be a city boy in her eyes. However, Jordan does a very good impression of milking a cow to Katie's horror. Jordan starts the episode with a jicama incident before di...

The coffee is burnt and the mics are hot! Mania sets in as we unleash our trailer on the world with a good latte on the horizon. Join Katie and Jordan as they warm you up for the travel stories ahead! Support the show

In 2004 they met in band class on the Oregon coast; little did they know they'd travel the world together less than ten years later. Meet hosts Katie and Jordan as they recount their relationship with travel and introduce themselves to you, dear listener! Support the show