This is a daily write up for a Road Trip that Noelle and I will be going on that will tour the PNW and Big Sky Country. I will try to post them every night or the next morning here on this page. I look forward to writing about the trip here.
You can expect tons of photos of landscapes and animals, food and coffee reviews, my best naturalist interpretations I can share, complaints about the cold, joy about the cold and tons of happiness as we explore the beautiful country.
Trip Prep
A day of running around to get everything in order. From a +90 F weekend this morning was a cold all the sudden so maybe Mother Nature was preparing us for our big trip up north. A quick oil change, Noelle’s appointment, a quick workout and then breakfast got us ready to tackle the first REI stop of the trip.
We went to my home store in Sacramento to pick up our Kingdom 4 Tent, Coleman Stove, and Snow Shoes we were renting. It was a nice way to say goodbye to the store before I kickoff my guiding season this summer. I have many great friends in that store and I wished them good luck as I knew they were going to be preparing for their Anniversary sale.
Rounded out the day with prepping the Rav 4 with all our gear. While it was a lot of stuff, camping gear mainly, it was going to save us money on accommodations in the national parks.Camping also means we get to experience the parks in the best way possible, underneath the stars! And maybe the snow… Who knows what’s in store.
We packed…
Kingdom 4 tent
Coleman 2 burner stove
Big Agnes two person sleeping pad
Snowshoes, Traction chains and Snow gear
Enough Spam Musubi to feed an army
My Camp Kitchen Tote (More on this later)
A tote dedicated to blankets and sleeping bags
A Duffel of Clothes and personal layers for each of us
Way to much other fun gear and camera equipment
A raccoon bobble head (Thanks Cole!)
I would say we are more than prepared with our gear now lets see if we can do 8 hours a day of Noelle’s Taylor Swift playlists. I look forward to seeing new sights and enjoying the spring scenery as we are on the road. Noelle and I have yet to go on such a large trip and we are happy we were able to make this happen.
We had dinner with Mom Dad and Cole one more time, everyone is excited. We made sure they had our itinerary one last time. Cole and Dad commented how we had loaded down the Rav 4 but also mentioned how they were able to make it ride even lower when they moved Cole out of SD. We hope to not bring back more stuff from this road trip but we will have to wait to find out.
Noelle says about today as we lie in bed, “ I’m Cold”. Great. Sounds like I need to go and cuddle up next to her, I will write more tomorrow after Crater Lake!