Always Onward Adventures

We just completed our first 3 day van trip - which was an all around success. We went to three different state parks and saw some very different terrain in each - super fun trip. Also figured out quite a few van optimizations, including how to watch movies and the best way to store clothes. Leadbetter Bay Loop So our first park was Leadbetter state park which is on the very end of cape disappointment. It’s a wildlife preserve and we saw a ton of birds. I didn’t realize until after we got back to the car that dogs were not allowed - so shame on me. The coolest stuff we saw was a stretch of beach where the tide had started cutting away at the land above the beach and caused a bunch of trees to fall and the dune grass north of the loop, which was a stunning view.

Second van trip was a wild success. I decided to do another on nighter with Sara down at Cape Disappointment state park in southern Washington on the coast. The views were amazing - especially the sunset on the first evening, which had the most incredible color spectrum. The van setup worked soo much better as well - still a couple of things to optimize, but we were much more comfortable.

We decided to do a day hike on Bainbridge Island and the trail was super cool so I decided to do a post about it. It’s a 5 mile trail point to point that goes from one side of Bainbridge Island to the other. The first mile was on a road and the first half mile was not super fun (small shoulder) but after that the hike was super fun. Old growth forests, open meadows with views, interesting landmarks, etc were all available. Angela dropped Sara and I off at one end and came to meet us at the other end (she was planning to hike in to meet us but got a little lost).

We did it! First overnight van trip was completed on Dec 22-23. We (Sara and I) went to Wenachee state park and camped in the campground there. It got cold… Down to single digits and I didn’t quite have the camping system optimized for that weather yet so it was a cold night for me! (Sara did fine, she just burrowed down in the middle of my sleeping bag). And during the day she had her backpack to keep warm!

Spoiler Alert! I picked the Chrysler Pacifica. Why you might ask? Great question. That’s what this blog post seeks to answer. Two primary reasons and a handful of secondary (nice to have) reasons. I’ll start with the standard pro/con analysis. Let me start off with my requirements The first question I had to answer was whether I wanted a compact/minivan vs a full sized sprinter van. For me, I decided to optimize for a perfect 3-4 day expedition vs a full time live onboard. This meant I didn’t need as much space and I could avoid the full size van - making it easier to drive in the city, better gas millage and allow it to be quite a bit cheaper. Cons are less space (obviously) and you can’t stand up inside. If I start looking at month long trips in the future (if my work situation changes) then I would reconsider. The rest of this post focuses on the mini/compact vans vs full sized vans.

Back in 2019, we decided to take a trip to Roatan in Honduras. Angela had a dream of staying in an over-water grass hut - and after some searching I found a place in Roatan that had over-water huts (they weren’t grass, but they did have AC!). So we booked a weeklong trip at Anthony’s key, left Sara with my parents, and headed out. I wasn’t doing this blog at the time, but I did keep a journal during the trip - so my memories from this trip were relatively good as I’m writing this 6 years later.

The Wonderland Trail! This was the most amazing backpacking trip that I’ve ever had (so far) and while it’s several years later as I write this, many of my memories of the trip are still very vivid. This is my first post of an adventure from before I started this blog - hopefully one of several to come. To start, I thought some background on the wonderland trail would be useful. The trail is anywhere from 93 miles to 102 miles (depending on route choice and detours) and a cumulative 22,000 feet (6,700 m) of elevation gain. It was first built/hiked by the mountaineers in 1915 and was considerably longer (130-140 miles) but took hikers an average of 3-4 weeks to hike it. For us, it took a total of 10 days and our final distance was a little over 100 miles.

When Sara was just a few months old, I took her and my mom on a train trip down to Eugene OR. 2017-08-22 We took off in the morning of 8/22 - heading to king street station to catch our train. The cascade line runs down to Eugene OR and up to Vancouver BC. We were taking the train down to Eugene and then back the following day. ‹ › Boarding the train was nno issue and we were treated with amazing views of the coastline for the first part of the trip. Once we passed through Tacoma, we were inland for the rest of the way. The trip was fun - there was a observation car that we spent quite a bit of time in and we grabbed lunch in the middle.