VanTrip

We have been skiing every weekend since the begining of the year, but unseasonable warm spell this last week make the prospect of skiing more like ice skating. Instead, we picked a new campground that we had been meaning to go to and headed out for a weekend of hiking and camping. Sara, who constantly talks about camping when it’s been more than a month since we have gone, was thrilled.

Sara and I go on our first camping trip since returning from our boat trip to Alaska. We go on several hikes - one of them over 6 miles - and find a new way into the Olympic National Park. 10/13/2023 Sara has been very excited to go van camping again - we haven’t been in over a year with the prep for and then going on our boat trip. This weekend was our weekend - Sara was off on Friday so decided to leave on Friday morning and come back Saturday evening. Our location of choice was Dosewallips State park and the Dosewallips river valley near Brinnon, Wa.

Every time we drive down I-90 going into eastern Washington we pass a large bridge with a big sign saying “Palouse to Cascade state park trail”. Ever since I first saw it, I’ve had my eye on the Palouse to Cascade state park trail as an amazing adventure to do some day. Bit of background - It’s a 289 mile trail (350-ish including detours) starting in Cedar Falls near North Bend and going all the way to Treskow on the border of Idaho. The trail follows the old Milwaukee trail (railroad line) and is mostly gravel/sand the whole way. It’s relatively flat (railroad grade) the whole way, with the exception of a few detours that bypass broken bridges/tunnels.

Back to back trips! After heading to Utah with the family back in April, Angela has been hankering to get a dutch oven. After some research, she finally found one, ordered it, waited two weeks, and it arrived! We just went camping the weekend before, but you should never let the sun set on a new piece of gear - so off we went. We decided to head back to Whidbey given the fun weekend we had last time. Our trip out was pretty uneventful, picked up some groceries for Angela’s enchiladas dutch oven meal and found our campsite without any trouble.

Knowing we had several big trips coming up, we had been considering laying low for the next couple of weeks but a 3 day weekend combined with good weather was too hard to pass up. I made a last minute camping reservation at Birch bay state park which is just north of Bellingham right before you get to Blaine. We have been to a nearby state park (Larabee) several times so we knew the area, but this was a whole new place to explore.

Bit a a different trip this weekend, Sara has ski lessons on Saturday morning and I got a half day ticket to ski with her in the afternoon. The plan was to head to a Washington ghost town after that, but more on that later. Sara’s first magic carpet ride with her group lesson - they need to be able to slow down and turn before they go on the carpet.

For our first trip of 2022, we had a whirlwind adventure - hiking in the snow to climbing over logs on the beach. Sara started Ski lessons, so our first van trip of the year was Sunday and Monday of a long weekend (Saturday was ski lessons). There was alot of driving on this trip, more than I expected, but we got to see it all, snowy mountains, rainforest, and a very stormy (and rainy) beach.

Welcome back! Baker lake, round two. I think our plans must have changed 3 times before this trip - from Mt St Helens, to Langley, and finally to Baker Lake. The weather called for rain/snow all weekend, but we didn’t let that deter us! Sara made the final decision, she wanted to see snow. Baker lake had some obvious advantages - clear roads (to support the Dam there), I knew the landscape, and the hike I was planning (Baker Lake trail) was in the trees so, theoretically anyway, it shouldn’t be as windy/stormy - as it likely would have on St Helens.

We made a last minute decision to head to Ft Flagler this weekend (near port townsend). The origional plan was to head to Mt St Helens but the forecast was for lots of wind and rain, so we decided to change it up a bit. There is a drive-in movie theater that we were going to try and Ft Flagler an old historic fort with lots of trails and places to explore.

First trip since Lasik - We had plans to go to Mt St Helens to do some hiking and see the caves/observatory, but I realized at the last minute that Sara needed to get her passport (an appointment I made 3 months ago and forgot about) and I had to take her out to Port Townsend to get it - which is basically the opposite direction. So we packed up early on Friday and headed out to Port Townsend for passport paperwork… After the appt, we headed up to an area called Quilcene - a town of ~500 people that borders against the national forest and national park. We claimed our campsite and headed into town for dinner (decided not to cook given all the chores we had on the way to camping this time).

We went on a 3 day camping trip this weekend - joined by my parents and Sara’s grandparents. We didn’t have any particular goals for the trip - but managed a good mix of hiking & the outdoors with some window shopping and hanging out in some placed we haven’t been in a while. We took off on the trip Saturday mid-morning - after picking up Sara & my parents from a fun night of swimming and sleeping over at the hotel. We drove through to Leavenworth for lunch at a beautiful restraunt by the water.

We decided to do a last minute trip this weekend - even though it broke the every other weekend pattern and we went two weekends in a row… It was Labor Day so we had to take advantage of the opportunity! There were only a handful of campsites left in the state, but we got one down near Snoqualmie called Tinkham campground. It was a nice campground - other than how close it was to I-90 which made it fairly noisy while we were out and about (it was quite inside the van). I decided to leave early Sunday morning and do a big Sunday hike - that way we could take it easy on Monday monrning and still get back into Seattle at a reasonable hour (before the Labor Day traffic.

We had grand plans this weekend of heading to San Juan island to take the Jolly Trolley tour and do some hiking, but after a 3am wake-up to catch an early ferry, I checked my email to find that they had cancelled all but two of the ferry sailings that day. For a minute, we though about just leaving and seeing if we could get standby for one of them - but decided that would be a miserable day (up at 3am to catch the 2pm ferry…). So instead, we decided to go to someplace new.

I decided to do something a little bit different for our trip this time - we went to an outdoor theatre “built” in a forest. I say built because apparently they built the theatre with the idea that they would not cut down any trees or change the landscape any more than necessary. I found the concept facinating, so I decided it would make for a good van trip. Relatively tame considering our trips of late, but the curveball this time was a heatwave coming through western Washington this weekend - so crusible by fire on the new van optimizations for hot weather camping (more on that below).

This was a trip of first - Our first overnight kayaking trip with Sara, Our first time doing an overnight trip in the inflatable kayaks, first time doing a (minor) ocean passage crossing. Overall the trip was close to 12 miles - 5.5 each way but the current pushed us off course a bit. Lots of paddling - but totally worth it! I thought Sara’s video did a great job summing up this trip.

Welcome to the second post in our yellowstone travels. This post covers all of the touring around we did during the trip - lots of wildlife, thermal features, and exploring. There were a couple of day hikes, but mostly we were just driving around… Our first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs - where we hiked around on the Travertine terrace and Sara got her first introduction to thermal features. I think it took a couple of days to sink in, so her reaction was a bit mutted.

And we are off! This was our first big van trip - and part of a bigger vacation. In all, we travelled 1400 miles over 5 days and saw some really interesting sights - and learned some new tricks for longer van trips & van trips in hot weather. I’m going to write this trip up in 3 blog posts - this one covers the road trip there and the other two will cover the backpacking trip we went on and touring around Yellowstone national park.

We went to Alta lake for the weekend, near lake Chelan - left Saturday morning and made the 3.5 hour drive up there. We had a great time, but it was a crowded little lake - very different from the lakes I have gone to in the past (when the weather wasn’t as nice). The most exciting news though was that Angela came with us! It’s the first time she has made an entire trip (she met us on Saturday night for the last one. This was the first trip with a working water system as well - which was super exciting. I now have 6 gallons of water (2 3-gal tanks) connected to a pump that we can use for dishes, cleaning ourselves, or drinking water.

Another great camping trip - and this time we had some first time campers as guests! We went up to Baker Lake on Friday afternoon and stayed for two nights - with Barun and Roshni joining us just before noon on the second day. But first, let’s check out our beautiful campsite! ‹ › Wanted to get Sara in a couple of those pictures - but she was not having it!

Larabee state park round two in the last couple of months - this time with a kayak. Derek came along as well - which was super fun for a change. In total, almost 7 miles of kayaking, playing on the beach, camping, movie watching, campfires, and games galore. Here we are all ready to go: And then the morning paddle - about 3 miles, but very choppy/rough seas. Made paddling any distance really hard… I didn’t get a picture, but we saw some seals from up close - which was super fun - but Sara didn’t seem super impressed. She was far more interested in the bubbles!

Our first trip to Larabee state park - which is right on Chuckanut bay near Bellingham. Beautiful location and lots of fun stuff to do. There are railroad tracks that run right through the park, which might be n issue for some people, but Sara and I did great (didn’t wake up at all) and it was fun to watch the trains go back while we were playing around. We went on a fun hike and Sara hiked the most I have ever seen her do - almost 2.5 miles!

Our first Van trip as a family - and our first trip with a working battery… :) This was also our first trip with our new inflatable Kayak, which was super fun. Sara and I left early Saturday and got a campsite, bought some groceries, and went on a hike around the south side of deception pass. The hike had some amazing views and we were able to get some play time on the beach as well. Almost a 3 mile hike and Sara did about half of it on her own.

So I decided to try to find something on the Olympic peninsula for this trip. I found an interesting camp near lake Cushman with some trails nearby that looked like fun. Lake Cushman is a beautiful area with some amazing day sites right along the beach. Here are some pictures of the lake ‹ › You can see it in some of the photos below, but the water level was super low - which I suspect had to do with the snow we got and the melt overwhelming the dam (Lake Cushman is man made). It was an erie sight at times with these fields of sandy stumps where the water used to be…

Our latest trip was up to the North Cascades National Park - which was an amazing place, far more than I expected this time of year. It’s a national park, but they allow dogs to hike on trails and they don’t really have an entrance/exit. The place we went hiking was about 3 miles from the end of the road (where the close the north cascades highway for the winter) and right after the big dam/lakes in that area.

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.

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.