Always Onward Adventures

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). We brought an air mattress since my foam mattress had not yet arrived so upgrading that will be immediately benificial. My next two priorities are to get window covers (I’ve read that they help hold in a lot of heat) and getting the house battery so we can run a heating blanket at night.

Spoiler Alert! I picked the Chrysler Pasifica. 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.

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.

This is my second trip down memory lane, and this one goes way back. In the summer of 2012, my brother and I attemped to climb Denali (formerly Mt Mckinnley) in Alaska. While we ultimately didn’t make it, it was an epic trip that changed the way I thought about the world. To be dwarfed by a mountain that big is truely awe inspiring. We started our trip in Talkeetna - a fun little mountain town where most of the climbing/hiking expeditions that go into Denali NP start from. We spent most of our time at the Alaska Mountaineering School (AMS) HQ (the mountain guide group we used for the trip) - but our climbing hotel/hostel was also worth note. It’s called the “House of Seven Trees Hostel” and it was run by this lady who lives on the premises. She had bunk room for probably 24 people - with a combination of bunks in a separate building out back and rooms in the building proper. There were communial breakfasts most mornings (cooked by whichever climber got up first) and lots of stories flying around about climbing challenges by this group or that. A few seemed like they were almost permenant residents - using it as their base for adventure for the summer. We met one guy who founded a “low pressure tent” that artificiality simulated high altitude while you slept. Kinda a weird guy and I don’t know how much of his story was true…