First off, I didn't get to respond to anyone's comments because we headed off into the middle of nowhere immediately after I wrote all that up, and I had no signal on my phone until I got back home. I just wanted to say thank you to all you guys, reading all the kind comments and advice I got really helped me feel a bit better during the whole debacle.

Just thought I'd give a followup on what happened after I posted, in case anyone was wondering. The trip was totally insane start to finish, but honestly ended up being really good in the end.

I sort of snapped not too long after I posted my rant, maybe a few hours later. I basically wound up screaming the whole thing at them verbatim (minus the lame self-pitying shit). Everyone was reaaaaallly quiet for a while afterwards, my mom quietly texted me a lame almost-but-not-quite-an-apology a few hours later, and while the shit that they were pulling never really stopped, it kind of dropped to tolerable levels after that. I think they were just scared of me yelling at them again; they're not used to that at all, I'm usually such a doormat. Things were really tense and weird and not all that fun after that, but not as miserable as they were.

And then, something serendipitous happened: they realized that they'd scheduled their return flights wrong, and they had to go home early, leaving me and my brother to the rest of the trip we'd originally been looking forward to. And it was awesome. Highlights:

• Spent a night sleeping in hammocks under the stars in the hoh rainforest. It didn't even rain on us.

• Saw a huge pod of whales near the shore when we stopped at some random beach off the highway. They were jumping out of the water, and waving their flippers, and poking their heads out of the water to watch us.

• Saw some big-ass trees.

• Saw a BANANA SLUG.

• Helped catch the perpetrators of a drunken hit-and-run. Was told they probably wouldn't have found them without our help. All within, like... our first 30 minutes in Oregon.

• Trekked through the Oregon dunes. Got so much sand in our eyes. It was the best day ever.

• Saw so many salmon in a river. So many. Salmon are like... my second or third favorite animal. It was magical. I wanted to swim with them but I think I may have wound up getting washed down the river and dying.

• Watched my brother have a borderline emotional breakdown because he got to see his favorite bird in the wild. (He really likes birds.) He was totally on the verge of crying.

• Camped in wolf-territory, which was like... a lifelong dream of mine. Didn't last long though, we had to pick up and leave like right after we finished setting up because the forest fires switched direction and started coming towards us. An awful lot of ash blowing around in the wind. That sucked, but it was sort of exciting in its own weird way, so I wasn't too bummed out.

• Stayed in Portland on our way back to Seattle to catch our plane home. Good lord they had some good food there. My small-town vegan heart almost couldn't handle all the options. I got vegan pizza delivered to our hotel room. With soy curls on it. Soy curls, guys.

• Found an injured baby pigeon, freaked out because our flight was the next day and every single facility told me they'd just euthanize them if I dropped him off. Smuggled him into our hotel room, and did a little digging around online for someone to help us out. Wound up getting to meet an internet friend I've known since I was like... 12. That was really cool. Pigeon is gonna be alright, she says she should be able to release him and his new buddies within a couple weeks. All's well that ends well.

• TSA stole some vegan mac and cheese I packed out of my bag when it got randomly selected for screening. This is not a highlight. Seriously, fuck those guys. I bet they're not even going to eat it.

I've got a ton of fun photos saved up on my phone, but it's dead right now. Also, I'm really dang tired from our 12 hour flight. I'm probably gonna go comatose for a while, but I'll be back with some pictures. Thanks again for all the support, y'all. You guys rock.

https://imgur.com/a/TkT55