Rafting the Rogue River in Ashland, Oregon! Such great fun.
Another month on the road! We are officially just over 3 months into our trip, and it has been flying by! Here is the tally of facts and figures for our road trip from May 3rd through June 10th:
Miles Driven: 5,222 miles (11,994 miles cumulative for the trip!) [63,843 miles on the ‘Ru as of June 10th]
Days on the Trip: 89!! This doesn’t count the few days that Ryan and I both headed to Florida for a quick visit with family.
States Visited: 5 – Utah, Nevada, Arizona (we just drove through Nevada and Arizona on our way back to California), California, Oregon
National Parks Visited: 5 National Parks – Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Lassen Volcanic (10 cumulative for the trip, adding Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Saguaro, Grand Canyon and Zion). If you count national recreation areas, national monuments, etc., we have covered several others (Lake Mead, Montezuma’s Castle, Sonoran Desert, Glen Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Natural Bridges National Monument, etc.), and state parks. The Oregon State Parks that we have most recently been exploring are absolutely amazing!
Campsites: 14 campsites for this period, just over a month: Sno Glow (outside of Capitol Reef NP, Petrified Forest State Park (southern Utah outside of Escalante), Potswitha (in Sequoia NP), Azalea (in Kings Canyon NP), Chris Flat Campground (on the Walker River in the Eastern Sierras), Bodega Dunes State Park (in Bodega Bay, CA), Van Damme State Park (just outside of Mendocino, CA), Howard Prairie Lake (outside of Ashland, Oregon), Emigrant Lake (Ashland, Oregon), Rogue Elk Campground, Armitage Park (in Eugene, Oregon), Honeyman Memorial State Park (at the Oregon Dunes National Recreational Area), Beverly Beach State Park (north of Newport, OR), Nehalem Bay State Park.
BLM and dispersed camping (off the grid): 10 sites – Valley of the Gods, site on Highway 95, near Natural Bridges National Monument, a site on BLM land just north of Escalante, John’s Valley Road (near Bryce NP), National Forest land just outside of Tahoe, BLM site on Hat Creek in Lassen National Forest, BLM land near Mackenzie Bridge in Oregon, dispersed camping in the Deschutes Forest (outside of Bend, OR), backpacking in Three Sisters (Ryan did this while I was in Florida for my sister’s baby shower).
Hotels: 1 night for this time – a tiny house in Portland, Oregon! We couldn’t find anywhere to camp close to Portland, all the campsites in the nearby parks were booked because it was the weekend, so we opted for a Tiny House and absolutely loved it!
Friends’ Homes: 5 nights at friends’ homes in San Francisco when we spent some time seeing friends, unloading extra things into our storage unit and generally catching our breath for a few days in our favorite City by the Bay!
Other: 1 night in a WalMart parking lot in Bakersfield, CA – if you can believe it!!
Miles Hiked: 93.9 for this period (187 miles cumulative on the trip)
Hikes Completed: 25 hikes (46 hikes cumulative): Mule Canyon (5 mi), Bullet Canyon (10 miles), Grand Wash Trail in Capitol Reef NP (2 miles), Capitol Gulch Trail (2 miles), Hickman Bridge (2 miles), Petrified Forest Hike (1 mi), Queens/Navajo Loop Trail in Bryce Canyon NP (4 miles), General Sherman Trail in Sequoia NP (1 mi), Park Ridge Trail in Kings Canyon NP (5 miles), Crescent Meadow Hike (3 miles), Mist Falls Hike in Kings Canyon NP (8.5 miles), General Grant Trail in Kings Canyon NP (1 mile), McKerricher State Park Beach hike (3 miles), Bruhel Point Tidal Pools Walk (1 mile), Chamberlain Creek Trail in Jackson State Park (3 miles), Sulphur Works hike in Lassen Volcanic NP (2 miles), Devil’s Kitchen Trail in Lassen (4.2 miles), Paradise Meadow hike in Lassen (2 miles), Castle Lake to Heart Lake trail in Shasta National Forest, CA (2.2 miles), Linton Lakes hike (5 miles), Proxy Falls Loop (2.5 miles), Waterfall Loop (1 mile), Senoj Lake/PCT hike (15 miles), Honeyman State Park Dunes hike (2 miles), Beverly Beach run (2.5 miles), Nehalem Beach hike (4 miles).
Visitors: 2 – our friends Kevin and Agata joined us in Ashland, Oregon for Memorial Day!
Fish Caught: 11 fish caught by Ryan, 6 caught by Jackie
Books Read: 5 (by Jackie): The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Ryan is still reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and is also reading a financial book. We are also just about to finish Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything on audiobook in the car, which I have absolutely loved and will definitely be going back to re-read.
Flies Tied: 0 – May was a busy month with very little downtime – perhaps June will bring more time for fly tying.
June is bringing more crowded campsites and busier parks and hikes, but lovely weather and a joyful sense that summer has arrived. There will be more bugs, and we are trying to figure out how to combat the mosquitoes (if you have any tips, we’d appreciate them!). We are so excited to be exploring the Pacific northwest, a part of the country that neither Ryan nor I have spent any significant time exploring, and to continue north to Canada and eventually Alaska. We are feeling time crunched, and will never be able to explore all of the places in this part of the country that we would like to see, but we are making quite a long list of places for us to revisit in the future! We have some great friends coming to join us north of Vancouver for the July 4th holiday, so we can’t wait for what the next month will hold.
BY Jackie
BLOGGED FROM Portland, Oregon
