North Cascades, Olympic, Rainier: Washington's national parks are situated in a way that suggest a road trip tour of all three making a big loop around northwest Washington. After a bit of planning we set off to do just that on the last day of July. After a drive through the hot, dry, baked brown, eastern portion of Washington we arrived in the foothills of the North Cascades and set up a base camp near…
This trip started with a whoosh. Well, actually it started with a long slow drive up a rocky road, leading to that whoosh. The whoosh was the air rushing out of our right rear tire at record speed after being punctured by a rock. There’s nothing quite like spending the day working your way into a remote site in the forest to spend a few days, only to come up a mile or so short of your goal, and then feeling the need to go get a tire fixed. We passed the three options of camps we intended to stay at. They looked very nice. Maybe next time.
We spent the remainder of the day, and most of the next one driving out for a tire repair and then back to the St. Joe. Along the way out we picked up another flat tire. I guess the rocks are sharp on the St. Joe. Or they had a message for us. I’m going with the first option.
(more…)We had only been home from British Columbia for a couple of days, but we had worked diligently on rehabbing the truck and gear. I got the notification that Reckless Kelly was going to be in concert in the middle of Montana. Why not get back out on the road? Before we knew it we were packing the truck for a quick trip to Montana. This was a real whirlwind tour of western Montana, but…