Exploregonians

Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti (even though it’s, like, 200 miles away), Katie and Jordan take a very special trip down memory lane this week with guest Jessica, who spent eight weeks in East Africa, primarily in Tanzania, during a study abroad trip in college!

Jessica was on the worst boat ride ever on her way to the paradise that is Zanzibar and bought spices that are probably stale by now. Jordan attem...

It's Independence... Week? Katie and Jordan discuss iconic Fourth of July events and memories across Tillamook County in Manzanita, Rockaway Beach, Oceanside, and Pacific City. 

When Jordan was, like, three, a stray bottle rocket attacked him, but he was protected by his San Francisco 49ers sweater and the spirit of Joe Montana.

Katie's first time watching fireworks on the beach resulted in a sulfurous fog that obscured the...

We'll always have Paris!

This week, Katie and Jordan visit the City of Lights and discuss what saved the seemingly doomed Eiffel Tower in 1909, escargot tongs, and melt their brains attempting to pronounce "Louvre". 

Katie goes down memory lane when she had to literally crawl up and over a Parisian barrier wall for a flight she didn't actually have and Jordan picks a fight with Paris's coffee game. 

Have a tra...

Let the Cajun Tots rain! 

McMenamins is an iconic Oregon and Washington staple famous for some of the state's first modern brewpubs, historic buildings that have been renovated into funky hotels, and a wild scavenger hunt that awards you while visiting every one of the 50+ locations! 

Katie and Jordan have been to every single McMenamins location twice in pursuit of serendipity and the wondrous glamor that comes from becoming a ...

Katie and Jordan drove across North America to visit the birthplace of "Anne of Green Gables" and her creator Lucy Maud Montgomery. 

Beaches with red cliffs, a free toll bridge that charges when you leave, and a sky-high lobster roll awaited us on this beautiful island, that is the smallest Canadian province and is only larger than one U.S. state: the mighty Rhode Island.

Jordan gives Katie way too many "fun facts"...

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 "Neighborhood Watch" signs and neve...

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 @exploregonians.podcast 

We have a great seas...

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 Osaka, Katie accidentally booked a love ...

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, but seemingly someone’s yard in to...

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 the New York Public Library, where K...

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 offshore. Jordan thinks it is o...

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 stumbled into Budapest&apos...

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 was filled over time to mak...

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 piled high with fifteen children each ...

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 body dysmorphia looking at frumpy ...

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 rice whiskey for the ceremony. 

Jorda...

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 was inspired by the legend. The c...

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 mess cutting a cork out of a wi...

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 Rockettes. 
Jordan will always rememb...