Month: November 2020

Ahoy there Trippers! Welcome back aboard. Thanksgiving has come and gone and so has most of the warmth from anywhere north of the 30th Parallel. Which rules out a lot of places in the US except for New Orleans and Home… The Big Easy will have to be patient for now because we last left off just as we were leaving Tahoe and crossing into The Great Basin.

Reno to Salt Lake City is a long desolate drive and takes you through some pretty monotone terrain. Arid, scraggly, scrub brush dotted beige and maroon mountains for what seemed like 500 miles. We broke the trip up with an overnight in Winnemucca which according to Johnny Cash, means we’ve been officially everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov4epAJRPMw

After a long morning of driving the basin, the tumbleweeds gave way to pearl white salt and our visibility of the horizon increased drastically as we leveled off into the Salt Flats that lie west of the Great Salt Lake. We were told you could drive out on to it and before we could get a couple miles further east on the highway we saw several cars off of the interstate and wandering aimlessly about the salt. As flat, level and as far as one can see on a (allegedly) round planet, it would be a wonderful place to stay for a couple of days if one had the time and water to do so. We had neither at this point on our trip, our water pump has been on the fritz since our run-in with Iowa sheriffs, limiting us to our gallon jugs (which were mostly empty) and our time-frame to meet a friend for the weekend was narrowing. But we did get a great afternoon and evening to stretch our legs and get Ali out for a good run.

Also, Autumn had taken some time while in California to expand on her inventory turning out some pretty amazing pieces, and the salt flats gave a perfect backdrop for a quick photo-shoot.

What was of particular frustration about accessing the flats in the best possible spot, legally, was the almost 70 mile backtrack we had to do to get to the west-bound rest area. We were headed east to Salt Lake City and the side of the flat that didn’t have the railroad and private fencing was on the north side of I-80 accessible only by west-bound traffic. The UDOT did their due diligence in giving plenty of turn-around spots along that portion of the desert, but they were only legally accessible to emergency vehicles… There were no towns or exits for about 35-40 miles. Which gave us little choice if we wanted out of the van to see it. I’d be one to gamble the legality of the highway U-turn but traffic was oddly high considering the location and also, I was not keen on meeting Utah State Highway Patrol just yet having been in the state for maybe an hour, that would have to wait a couple of days.

We left the flats with the departing light and made it to SLC on time for our rendezvous with Autumn’s school friend. The days that followed were pretty adventure packed and exciting as we settled into the Mormon capital for a bit. We explored most of the city and the surrounding area including some amazing day hikes. Wind Caves near Logan, The Living Room near The University of Utah (it had rocks that were stacked like furniture) and Ensign Peak, where Brigham Young declared that this is where they would settle down.

We did eventually get a chance to catch up with the local police when we got pulled over early one morning heading to a hike, for not having any back running lights. The brake lights, headlights and turn signals all worked fine however. A blown fuse and circuit issue that would continue to be an issue for the rest of the trip. We were now limited to day time driving only, which didn’t shake up our routine all too horribly but gave a level of anxiety to the setting sun and the timing of where we needed to be to finish our day.

SLC was a beautifully clean city, accessible and with light traffic. The only regret was that Temple Square was under renovations, so there was no going inside. We enjoyed our time and the atmosphere so much we filed SLC to the list of potential candidates for future house shopping, and we headed south to start the long chain of gorgeous national parks that make up the southern part of the state.

Starting with Arches just south of the I-70 corridor, to 4-corners and down to the Grand Canyon. Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon, Grand Staircase, Brice and Zion fill the middle, just to name the top few. There was no possible way to tackle all of it in any sort of timely manner and still have any of 2020 left. So we had to make some cuts. We got some of it but Arches didn’t make our list this year. I know how passionate some of its visitors are but it’ll be the main hook for our next trip to the area.

This part of the country is an absolute must, and we intend to be reoccurring visitors as often as possible. The power of erosion, water and wind have profound and mesmerizing effects on the terrain and form unique and breath-taking features. Bryce Canyon offered a dazzling display of sheer canyon bluffs spiked with weirdly shaped stone hoodoos. A fun word that you won’t quickly forget after seeing a thousand little spires cast a thousand little shadows on flaming orange and red rock.

Zion was aptly named and king of jaw-dropping. Checkered mountain faces eroded by wind and prominent sheer cliffs cut through like a knife by the Virgin River.

It was by the time we were finished with Zion, did the writer Michael Frome began to resonate a bit more. “A national park is not a playground. it’s a sanctuary for nature and for humans who will accept nature on nature’s own terms.”

It’s hard to not feel inspired or passionate about these sanctuaries after passing through Zion canyon. I had been going to the Grand Canyon often since I was young, which gives you at least a base level of what is ‘Awe inspiring’ but Zion took the crown, bested or maybe tied by only Glacier National Park. While we got a couple of days and almost 4 drives through the park, we were sadly limited due to very little/no dog access on any of the trails. Had it not been that one snag, it would have been #1 for both of us.

We got no pictures that do it any justice, it’s not easy getting that kind of experience limited into a single box frame.

Zion gave us goosebumps, and we stayed the night nearby in the town of Orderville, due to its rock shops that we saw as we passed through on our way to the park. We ended up getting a nice lesson on hospitality and history during our stay in Orderville.

Summary from the wiki entry: Orderville was established at the direction of Brigham Young in 1875 specifically to live the United Order, a voluntary form of communalism. Orderville was settled primarily by destitute refugees from failed settlements on the Muddy River in Nevada. Under the United Order, no person in Orderville could have private property, as it was all considered to be God’s land. Each person was made a steward over some personal effects, and every family a steward over a home. During the first two years, the settlers worked without receiving income. They were allowed to use supplies and take food as needed. The bishop of Orderville oversaw the distribution of goods. Credits were recorded for all work done by men, women, and children and used to obtain needed materials and keep track of the labor done in the settlement. In 1877, the Order began a price system to replace the credit system, and monetary values were assigned to all labor and goods. At the beginning of each year, debts were forgiven, and those who had earned a surplus voluntarily gave it back to the Order.

The community was quite successful and prospered for well over a decade before a change of local laws and flash flooding changed the dynamic of the community.

We had a cool side adventure while we were here that was covered on our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-QHTwXfPe0

Utah was the epitome of Godliness, in its nature, its community and its history. It is now in both of our top 3 states, and we will be returning. But it was time to put Godliness aside and cross into Sin City… Vegas lights are on the horizon!

Join us next time as we check out The Strip, Alien Brothels, Area 51 (ish) and our adventure into Death Valley and back into California for one of the top crown jewels of the national park system, Yosemite.

Welcome back aboard Trippers! Halfway through November and the spots where it isn’t cold at night are starting to dwindle. We are currently in the great state of Texas! We’ve had a Texas time too, big guns and big cows! But I’m ahead of myself.

We last left off as we were leaving Seattle and headed south. We had obviously reached the furthest North-West we could go (For now…) and had a very long coastal drive to look forward to. Southbound on I-5 out of Seattle takes you directly to Portland. I decided to skip Portland this pass through, with a fair amount of regret. Most of the things to be seen in Portland were mostly inside affairs, and we had some mail and people waiting on us at our next couple destinations. Just south of Portland we cut over to US-101, which is THE coastal highway, until US-1 takes up that job just north of San Francisco.

We wound our way through the mountains of Oregon with stunning views of the Pacific as it crashed into the rocky coastline and made our way to Coos Bay. We spent a few days hanging out with family and seeing some unique spots including a literal hole-in-the-wall….

Leaving Coos Bay we crossed east over the Cascade Mountains and descended into Bend to spend a day or two with a cousin before we wound our way south along the ‘Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway’. A long highway in Oregon that follows along the Cascade Mountains and numerous Volcanos, the ‘Byway’ took us to a couple of really intriguing destinations. We took a couple of days to check out Obsidian Flow, a mountain littered with thousands of obsidian boulders and shards from a large explosion and what would quickly become a favorite spot of ours, Crater Lake National Park.

Crater Lake caught us totally off guard. What used to be the large Volcano known as Mount Mazama, the lake partly fills a nearly 2,148-foot-deep caldera with sparkling blue water. No rivers flow in and out of the high cliffs, so it is an isolated ecosystem. Also, what was of notable interest to me, was it seemingly emitted its own local weather patterns. Deep rolling fog moved about in thick patches along the drive up the rim. Where the rest of the surrounding region was temperate and calm, the top of the caldera was incredibly windy and cold (An occurrence we would later experience at Meteor Crater in Arizona) and had spots of snow.

We fell in love with the park and spent the entire day seeing all the different views of the quite magical looking and aptly named Wizard’s Island. Which is actually a smaller Volcano made of leaking magma that came up through the deep lake and created what is called a ‘cinder cone.’ With another rock formation called ‘Phantom Ship’ which is, as it sounds to look like. It truly was a mysterious and breathtaking place.

We zigged back west over the Cascade Mountains… again… and over our 10,000th mile milestone since leaving our house in Tampa! We arrived back at the coast and to Coos Bay, to snag our Jackery which we got exchanged due to a damaged USB port, and continued south along the coastal highway. Lots of neat little shops and themed places dotted the highway.

Apparently Bigfoot is a big deal in the area and also Oregon is a pretty big rock collecting state. Which makes sense due to the amount of volcanic activity and apparently numerous amounts of dinosaur fossils that have been recovered. Autumn was particularly fond of all the dinosaurs we kept seeing along the road, literally everywhere, and we made a fun game of yelling “DIINNNNOOOOooosss!!!” every time we would see one. Which then resulted in the difficult decision of whether we needed to investigate the shop. They have been an invaluable source of resources for her wire wrapped artwork. (Found at www.etsy.com/shop/castlekeepofdreams )

Speaking of Dino’s! We have been actively chasing Sinclair gas stations by this point. Which are dinosaur themed and usually feature a green brontosaurus on the sign and sizeable green figure somewhere on the property. With the app giving us an extra .20 off of each gallon, it was a bit of an incentive to single them out specifically making it worth our time. I’m not one to hype a brand but Sinclair at least allows me to ironically pump $50 worth of dead dino’s into my tank.

The dino became much welcome sight for the rest of our time in California due to gas being north of $3.50 a gallon ($4.20 near the west entrance of Yosemite, congrats to Lee Vining, California! The highest price of gas on the trip.) It was obvious, through some simple math, we would like to keep our driving in CA to a minimum and with an active pandemic, we would just skip the large cities. No San-Fran, LA, Sacramento, or San Diego! Major bummer… but! There were cool things to be found still in The Golden State.

Redwood National Forest was first on our Menu. Trees with bases the size of a house! Big enough to drive through!… Well, we tried but was told that the van was too big, so we had to skip that experience. Regardless! We had a wonderful time seeing all the different elder trees, some towering over 360 ft tall! We cruised the Avenue of the Giants and learned about the sheer amount of biomass that exists in the redwood forest and also about Flying Squirrels!

Basing ourselves in Eureka for a couple of days, in a Winco parking lot, we took in what the giant trees had to offer. We then continued our journey south along the coast into another change of terrain. The large trees and cool dampness of the Northwest, dried up and gave way to the wine region of central California. A stunning patchwork of vineyards dominated a lot of the drive leading up to the Golden Gate Bridge. “But you just said no San-Fran!” Well… We were headed through anyway to Vacaville to visit my Mother. Might as well get those Golden Gate Selfies in!

Settling into Vacaville for a weekend was a nice break from the road. Autumn took some much-needed time to be productive and made a beautiful pendant, while I kept it quiet and got some rest before our trip back east. We had an appointment to meet with a friend in Salt Lake City that weekend, so our time in California was kept pretty trim.

The drive east from the San Francisco Bay Area over the Sierra Nevada’s was charming and scenic, and we took a detour for a pleasant afternoon stop at Lake Tahoe. Surrounded by a series of resort communities, Lake Tahoe is the west coast lake resort of choice. It was peppered with activities of all sorts and sports crystal clear water with a slick Sierra Nevada back-drop. Mark Twain was avid about Lake Tahoe and wrote about it often:

“…the Lake burst upon us—a noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still!”

“As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

Our trail along the north shore of Lake Tahoe in The Golden State turned into The Silver State, and we climbed out of the lake basin, and over the last bit of mountain range before being quickly dumped into the desert on the I-80 corridor. Reno shimmered in the evening twilight and gave us a hint of what to possibly expect in Vegas although we didn’t stay long, we had a lot of ground to cover to Utah.

I think it was worth looking at a map here and noting the distance of Lake Tahoe to Yosemite National Park. An error in haste that has us backtracking to the area several weeks later! But for now Yosemite waits…

Join us next time as we travel across The Great Basin, wander off into the Salt Flats and press further into The Beehive State with all the grandeur, adventure and allure the great state of Utah had to offer.

Welcome back friends! I hope everyone is having a spooky time! (Edit note: I wrote this on Halloween… picture editing took a bit) We are currently in Scottsdale, Arizona. With a perfect view of Four-Peaks Mountains and an expected full moon tonight should make for a stunning evening.

Last I checked in we had finished up in Colorado, and we were headed for Yellowstone, the first and original National Park! For this part of the trip we would be going through Wyoming. I don’t know what a Wyom is or how one actively does it but it seems to be the only state that is also an active verb.

We took to I-25 headed north out of Denver, and we went through Cheyenne, Casper and then west over to Cody, the “Rodeo Capital of the World”. Most of this part of the trip was pretty uniform in how arid the environment was, clearly vast amounts of pasture land and rolling hills lead us up into the mountains right outside of Yellowstone.

We stayed the night in Cody before heading into Yellowstone. It was obvious this evening that fall was becoming less ignorable and that we would need to start to prep for colder weather. We had some pretty cold moments in Colorado, so we had gotten better at wearing layers to sleep. It’s not ideal or realistic to leave the van running, so we ended up getting a small electric heater to plug into the Jackery, not more than 200w, so my expectations of it were pretty realistically low. But with enough clothes and sleeping bags, 2 people and a dog can keep a camper warm enough. At least for now, it’s obvious we won’t be attempting to winter-over in some northern climate.

Yellowstone had a lot of hype but justifiably so, stunning mountains surround the lake that is the center of the old super volcano. Geothermic vents are found everywhere around the parks which give it unique and exotic features, combined with a stunning abundance of wildlife, it really was everything it was hyped to be. I think being a fall visitor had its perks in that the crowd was pretty slim, compared to what I have heard about the summer months.

We spent the day going to and from the parks main features and had many wonderful encounters with Buffalo, Deer, Antelope, Goats and Elk. Including a couple traffic jams and an amazing Elk Buck who was serenading the hills from the center of one of the main Yellowstone villages. We stayed the night and listened to them into the evening and was greeted by a couple large herds in the morning.

With much regret we skipped The Grand Teton National Park, but we were headed for Glacier National Park in Montana and decided it was an ok compromise to have something new to see next time we passed through.

After Yellowstone, we were headed north on the Lewis and Clark trail highway (US-89), through Bozeman MT and up to the north border of Montana with Canada. We slowly rolled into the Blackfoot Reservation and decided to get lunch in Browning. Browning was a struggling community and heavily effected by COVID-19, it seemed most stores were closed or were closed most of the day except for small windows of time.

We didn’t stay long and attempted to enter the park from the East entrance. It was about 45 min from the middle of Browning. It had amazing views of the backside of the range that makes up Glacier National Park, and we could see the very stunning Saint Mary Lake shimmering like a sapphire… but something was off. There was no traffic and for it being one of the top-rated parks in the country I thought something was afoot. Well, it was as we soon found out. The East Gate was closed for the season, with a chain across it. Also, we had no internet at this point. So we backtracked our way back out to Browning and found our way around the south end of the valley and into the West Gate, a detour of about an hour or two. It was a nice drive between East Glacier Village and West Gate along US-2.

We got in just as the sun was starting to set, and we managed to settle into a nice spot for the evening along the shore of a very stunning Lake McDonald. We walked the shoreline and enjoyed a very moving sunset before sleeping for the night. The following day was our trip over the Going-to-the-Sun road. A very long route through Glacier that takes you up the mountains and along sheer cliffs with some of the best scenic views on a drive in the entire continent and if not anywhere in the world. I am usually only prone to minor exaggerations but I would argue it gave more to see in its small round trip drive then we had seen the entire trip through the Rockies and even our trip through the Alps in 2019. A stunning must-see destination and will be one of my top spots for the foreseeable future.

With the beautiful Lewis and Clark Ranges behind us, we’re finally headed for the west coast. Montana was a gem that we wouldn’t forget, but a shocker spot along the way was the Idaho city of Coeur d’Alene. It sits in the I-90 corridor, in the top panhandle of Idaho. A lake city with an amazing view and lots going on in the center of town. Also, a hub for events and festivals, it was a nice place to stay the night as we pressed west.

Without too much delay we crossed the arid and oddly flat and boring terrain of western Washington and zigzagged our way to Mt Rainier for a quick selfie on our way into Seattle.

For those unaware, Mt Rainier is a stunning standalone large active stratovolcano that sits kind of on its own outside the Cascade Mountains. It stands at 14,411 and has very noticeable permanent glacial ice that adds to its already eye-catching profile. We stayed the afternoon and got to see a variety of angles, including a trip up to ‘Paradise’, which sits at the base of the mountain with various national park swag and a visitor center.

After some pretty dope selfies we packed into the Van and made for Seattle at last. We didn’t get far before the fog of the northwest coast ate us. What started as a bright sunny day near Mr Rainier, ended in overcast, heavy-hanging fog for our evening. We went to an awesome outdoor Bavarian themed pop-up spot for dinner and finally put it in a park in downtown Seattle, across from the Ferris Wheel. We were ready for Pike Place Market in the morning.

The morning came quick with the city waking up around us. Traffic and the usual noise of a downtown area had us out of bed pretty early. Thankfully the original Starbucks was our first stop spot. We got in on that merch and started to browse the market. It was quite the spot even during a pandemic (with masks and most inside places closed or limited) we strolled through the open market and watched the show as shopkeepers and patrons interacted with all sorts of fruit, flowers, fish, and fashion. We learned at this point Seattle is a very dog-friendly city. Milk-bones materialized from the pockets of almost everyone we said hello to and were eagerly devoured into the bottomless hole that is our Aussie.

I’d love to return to Seattle when there’s a bit less of a pandemic threat. The amount of neat shops, artisan goods and interesting restaurants was quite alluring and could keep us entertained for weeks if not months.

Join us next time as we travel along the pacific coast. Sinclair Dino’s, Oregon with its volcano alley and stunning ocean views, and into ‘The Golden State’ with its giant Redwoods and and even larger gas prices!