From Wrangell St Elias, we headed up north to check out the Arctic parks; Gates of the Arctic and Kobuk Valley. The first thing you should know about these parks… they are ridiculously hard to get to. For both parks, the majority of people fly into the parks. And most of those people just do a flightseeing tour and that’s about it. It is so so so expensive. Gates of the Arctic was a tiny bit easier for us to…
After an extremely long drive from Washington, through Canada, with many $100+ gas fill ups, new tires, and more…. we made it to Alaska! We tried to visit Glacier Bay first, but we found out that the ferry to the park was booked for more than a week. So, we headed up another 15 or so hours up to the largest National Park in the United States… Wrangell-St. Elias! This park is 13 million acres; larger than the 6 smallest…
After dropping Ry off at his hostel in Portland, we headed up to Washington; Mike on his bike, me in the car. We had plans to go to Bellingham, as that’s where my friend’s, Beth and Lauren, live. They are going to watch Luca for us while we go to Alaska (I’m already crying about leaving him). We decided to check out North Cascades National Park before heading over to their house since it wasn’t too far. Like most parks,…
After a long drive that felt surprisingly short, we made it to Port Orford, Oregon to watch Ry finish the American Trail Race. We were watching his tracker and made it along the trail to cheer him on. We didn’t have service where we were at, so we just hung out awhile and enjoyed the nature… and wine. I found an amazing bottle of wine at a local store that has it divided into four glasses already! It was amazingggg. …
After Yellowstone, we headed towards Glacier National Park! I was super excited for this park; I had heard so many wonderful things from everyone and I had never been here. First though, we stopped in the town of Bozeman and got our life together again i.e. we showered. We continued along the way and slept outside of the park. Okay, it was in a Montana saloon, Trixi’s, parking lot, don’t judge us. When we asked the bartender if it would…
After I got my Junior Ranger badge from the Grand Tetons, we headed back up to Yellowstone National Park! Mike decided to bike from Flagg Staff in Grand Teton to Grant Village in Yellowstone. We were originally going to meet at Old Faithful which is a little further than Grant Village. However, I drove there and was beyond overwhelmed with the sheer number of people and madness. It felt like I was at Disney World. So, I drove back a…
We entered Grand Teton National Park from the North entrance which meant we had to do a quick drive through Yellowstone first. Woof…. both these parks are poppin with thousands of people. Luckily, this helped remind us to get back into our good system; early evening activities, sleep a little, and get back at it around sunrise. Best way to avoid the crowds! When we arrived, we stopped at Flagg Ranch first for information. From there, Mike biked to Colter…
I didn’t know much about this park and wasn’t expecting much because…. it’s North Dakota. Boy, did it surprise me. For hours, during our drive there, it was the typical mostly flat plains, grassland, farms…. your basic midwest scenery. I was definitely not getting excited for Theodore Roosevelt National Park. But then BAM! We drove over an itty bitty midwest hill and it hits you. It’s a rugged landscape, full of badlands type rocks under all these open hills. It’s…
We’re back at it! After about 7 months of grinding and saving in Fort Collins, we are off to finish this thing! The plan is to head northwest up to Alaska, hitting up the parks we haven’t done yet along the way. We tried to visit South Dakota a few times while we were in Colorado since it wasn’t a bad drive, but the weather always foiled our plans. Thus, Badlands National Park became our first stop in Adventure: Part…
“How can you afford this?” is one of the questions we’ve gotten most, after “ew, how do you take showers?” and “how do you not kill each other?” (see this blog for answers on that one!). When we started thinking about this adventure, I turned to the never ending wisdom of the internet and social media van life accounts. I quickly became frustrated (and quite frankly, continue to be) on how many people, van lifers and others, claim to fund…