Exploregonians Jordan and Katie

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 hotel right next to the wrong airport and the duo had the best time in their extravagant, rent-by-the-hour room.
Also, Jordan was fooled again by ordering what he thought was an iced latte and receiving a tall glass of milk with coffee ice cubes. Oh, Japan! 

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 town and once received the shirt of a barista’s back at the local Dutch Bros. 
Jordan tells Katie about how Newport is the western terminus for Highway 20, the longest road in the United States, and also how he was probably unaware of highway signage as a child because he was busy creating and choreographing a jukebox musical about the cast of Super Mario Bros. to the discography of Shania Twain.

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 Katie and Jordan met the real Winnie-the-Pooh (and friends) that inspired A.A. Milne’s classic books.
Katie declares her love of outdoor NYC dining and Jordan regrets not asking Seth Meyers for a writing job. 

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 objectively superior and tells Katie some people refer to it as Chief Kiawanda Rock.

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's original ruin bar, an enormous abandoned factory where wild art is everywhere and every nook and cranny is filled with a bar and someone mixing spirits and pouring beer. Ruin bars are the strangest, most amazing thing Katie and Jordan experienced in the city. They are basically dystopian McMenamins.

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 make Crater Lake the deepest in the United States, yet only the ninth in the world. What gives? Jordan also says, "What gives?" about Oregon being home to only one national park and Katie thinks it's just enough.