Author: Sam

Categories
National Parks Washington

A Soggy Day at Mount Rainier National Park – Washington

A Soggy, yet beautiful day spent at Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington!

We’ve been excited to visit Mt. Rainier National Park as such an iconic volcano definitely needed a wander. Unfortunately, the perfect storm of off-season, incomplete planning, and, well, RAIN, landed us in a possibly less than ideal situation.

When We Visited: September 23-24, 2014

Ages of Kids: 9, 7, 4

Where We Stayed: Ohanapecosh Campground

From Puyallup, we drove north on the 410, and then State route 123 down the east side of the park. Our target was the Ohanapecosh Campground, situated conveniently close to the Ohanapecosh Visitors Center since we planned to earn another Junior Ranger badge during our stay. This situation seemed ideal. It rained on us a bit on the way out of town, but as traffic cleared, the rain did too, and we had an enjoyable drive all the way to the campground.

Compared to our drive, our arrival was less the ideal. As we pulled up to the campground registration, we realized that the conveniently located visitors center was closed. Not only was the center closed for the DAY, it was closed for the SEASON. No Junior Ranger Badges here, folks. After finding the dump station (which made the Most Scenic Dump Station Ever list) and a site, we talked over our options. We could drive down the crazy, windy road to the other campground (didn’t sound fun), or just camp here and drive the truck in on a day trip the following morning. The latter option won out and we settled in with our hot chocolate for a night full of rain.

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It rained. And rained some more.

We woke up to some German Pancakes, then packed a lunch and headed out in the truck for a day of adventure. Since there was no internet signal available, we turned a Thursday into a Saturday and I took the day off work. Some quick investigation after we arrived confirmed that the only visitor centers still open were on the other side of the park, so we drove the Stevens Canyon Road to the Paradise Visitor’s Center. Along the way, we paused for pictures in Stevens Canyon, which treated us to beautiful views of the landscape decorated with clouds low in the valley and wonderful fall colors.

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As we drove along, we noticed two soggy backpackers along the side of the road. They looked at us so hopefully that we just had to stop and pick them up. They had traveled from Idaho to hike in the back country, and had enjoyed it up till last night’s constant rain. I couldn’t resist helping, and we managed to squeeze them in the truck by having both Cara and Andrew buckled in the front bench with us. Luckily there were no rangers in sight. We dropped them off where the road forked and wished them well on their journey!

The Visitors Center at Paradise is a beautiful building. Built like a lodge, there are exposed beams and iron work. The entire lobby is pretty open with huge windows that (I assume) provide majestic views on sunny days. We picked up our Junior Ranger Books,  and then sat down in the theater for a quick movie about the park. The plus side of an overcast, rainy day was the lack of crowds so we spread out in the lobby and worked on the kids’ Jr. Ranger Books. We managed to time a short hike during a brief respite of the rain up to Myrtle Falls and then ate lunch inside on the picnic tables (you can tell they have inclement weather often). Overall, we managed to have a pretty good day!

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On the way out, we managed a quick hike along the Nisqually Glacier overlook trail for some great views of the blue ice.

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And, of course, the puddle jumping.

Mount Rainier NP_39Unfortunately, the clouds never broke, and we didn’t get a view of the mountain top. Despite our visit to the park, the best view of the mountain we had was from Tacoma, a few days earlier. Even with the rain, we had a great time. We discovered that there are quite a few activities in the park for kids, so we’ll be sure and return.

Categories
Airstream Accessories Inside the Airstream

Airstream Accessories We Love – Jambox, Reading Lights, Wall Clock, Garbage Can

Accessories We Love

We’ve updated a few accessories over the past few months, and it’s time to share some of the changes we’ve made. These are all items that we use regularly and love. All links are affiliate to Amazon (where we buy A LOT of stuff). You pay the same, but we get pennies for our Percy Jackson addicted children to buy books. Total win-win.

JamboxJambox

The Airstream has a cool built in sound system that even came with an external speaker. The tech is firmly rooted in 2005, however. The remote speaker is Mono, and requires either an AC plug or a zillion D batteries. We ditched the external speaker for a Jawbone Jambox, and it serves the need nicely. This also saves the power draw of the main sound system in the Airstream. We’ve had other bluetooth speakers before, and nearly anyone would work. The rubber top and bottom of the jambox make it not slide around, because sometimes we get lazy and don’t put it away during drives.

garbage canKitchen Trash Can

Under the sink, there is a built in garbage can. Over the first few months of travel, we decided we didn’t like it, and Jess came up with this Simplehuman Brushed Stainless garbage can. We place it in front of the pantry drawers, and it is short enough to fit under the drawers as they slide open. And of course, it’s silver! This is also nice and stable during drives, as it lives on the floor. In the space opened up by not using the under-sink garbage can, we hide an electric heater, an outside tablecloth, and an athletic roll.

reading lightsReading Lights

Our bed reconfiguration left us without reading lights in convenient locations for the kids. We found some cheap reading lights as replacements, and they have been perfect. In addition to saving battery life while boondocking, the kids have better light and can read without keeping each other awake. Better yet, these were cheap, and we can stuff them with the same rechargeable batteries we already keep on hand.

41kDopNSqnLWall Clock

This clock was actually our first Airstream customization, way back in Virginia. The real magic of this clock is how I mounted it to the wall. I cut a piece of a plywood  to fit just inside of the round clock. I used command strips to stick this to the wall, and the clock friction-fits right to it! Battery changes are easy, and we’ve never had a problem with the clock while driving.

We did modify this clock by cutting the tick marks in half, and cutting the hand wands a little shorter to fit in the space above our television (you can kind of barley see it in this post here). We love it, and I’d buy the same clock again!

eneloop

 

Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries

Jess has over fifty of these AA batteries from her wedding photography days. We’ve had to add a few more Eneloop AAA batteries for reading lights, dream lights, toothbrushes, and other kid’s toys. They work great, don’t loose their charge, and store easy.

 

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Battery Charger

To go along with batteries we needed something to charge them with. Jess also picked this Titanium Fast 16 Bay Charger up from a photography friend, and it works great. You can charge the batteries one at a time and it holds both AA and AAA batteries. Best feature? It also has a DC plug so no worries if we aren’t plugged into shore power.

 

These are all some additions we’ve made since we bought the Airstream. You can check out the kitchen post here as well. Happy shopping!

 

Categories
Oregon Video

Wandering Update: Learning to Crab on the Oregon Coast

Last Week, we rented the gear for crabbing and spent two hours on the water in Nehalem Bay on the Oregon Coast. I have plenty I could say and details to share, but for now, enjoy a Wandering Update from our YouTube Channel. We should follow up with details at some point, but for now, enjoy our experience!

Warning: Some of the camera work was done by the kids. Jess and I were busy piloting the boat and hauling crab.

This might have hit the top of our ‘favorite experiences’ list!

Categories
Airstream Meetups Oregon

Vaux’s Swift Birds & RovingRiveted in Portland, Oregon

During our time in Portland, several local friends recommended that we visit Chapman Elementary School and watch the birds. This seemed both unique and local, which are two of the best reasons for us to try something during our travels.

‘The Birds’ turned out to be Vaux’s Swifts, a variety of bird that roosts at night inside hollow trees. Over the years, the tall and hollow chimney at Chapman Elementary School became a popular roosting spot for these particular birds. Each evening in the fall, thousands of birds swarm and eventually enter the chimney to roost for the night.

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We began the evening down the street from Chapman Elementary at Stepping Stone Cafe, famous for some seriously large pancakes. We fed the entire family of a stack of pancakes and chicken fried steak, and then walked up the hill to the school. We arrived early, which provided us ample time to experience the pre-show activity. The grassy slope at the side of the school grounds is prime for cardboard sledding, and sledding there was. Our kids quickly jumped in and had plenty of fun. The boxes began to wear out as the evening continued, which was just as well as the hill became quite crowded as the bird-watching group grew in size.

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As a bonus, we were met by the RovingRiveted crew, local weekend Airstreamers who drove up to join us. We had almost met a few days before in their neighborhood. We were invited to dinner by a family from church, and we parked in the neighborhood. Susy was alerted by a friend that we were in town, and ran down the street to say hello JUST as we were pulling out. Some communication via Instagram led to Susy, James, and their son, Ethan, meeting up with us for the event. Ethan jumped right into the sledding fray as we talked and swapped Airstream travel stories.

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As the evening progressed, the hill filled with watchers and the bird activity amplified. It is a little difficult to describe the movement of the birds as they prepare to enter the chimney. It might be best described as a bird-nado, the flying birds forming a cloud that moved and swirled and twisted and moved around the sky. As the storm of birds passed by the chimney, a stream of birds would drive down to find a roosting spot. The stream would eventually break, and the birds would swirl and flow away and then back again for another round.

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Most of the people there to watch stayed seated and patient till the last of the birds entered the chimney. Applause broke out in the crowd, and people began to leave.

Watching the birds was a unique and education experience, and we loved the evening. We are grateful to the RovingRiveted crew that drove up to spend some time with us after a near-meet in their own neighborhood!

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Categories
California State Parks

Trinidad, Patrick’s Point State Park, and Lots of Blackberries in California

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Our visit to Patrick’s Point and the Trinidad area was most notable for it’s amazing blackberries. I’ll get to details there, but first, let’s talk about fun on north coast beaches.

When We Visited: August 10-14, 2014

Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4

Where We Stayed: 4 Nights at Sounds of the Sea RV Park, 1 Night at Trinidad Head State Park

Our general policy is to not make reservations ahead of time (more freedom that way), so we were unable to spend much time at Patrick’s Point State park itself as it was booked pretty solid. We opted instead for a commercial RV park that came recommended by a few fellow travelers. Sounds of the Sea RV Park is nice and conveniently located between Trinidad and the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for exploring (the wifi was even really great, which saved us from a severe lack of Verizon during our stay there).

After getting settled and eating dinner our first night, we walked to Palmer’s Point (inside Patrick’s Point State Park) for a short wander and some tide pool exploration. The stairs down to the tide pools were nice on the way down, and gave us quite a workout on the way back up. Cara wore her buzzwings on the hike which always makes us happy. Lately, she hasn’t been wearing her wings as much, perhaps as a sign she’s growing up?  At some point she will be done wearing them completely, but until then, we’ll take the wings whenever they make an appearance.

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Our love of tide pool exploration started in San Diego last spring, and we have enjoyed discovering and exploring the variety of pools we’ve had the chance to visit. Mostly we’ve learned to be patient and to look carefully. It seems that we find a lot of anemones, and occasionally luck out with a seastar or some crabs.

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The next evening, we decided to hike to the top of Trinidad Head. We’d heard from some friends that the view was pretty stellar. Parking at the south end of Trinidad State Beach, we piled out of the truck to start our hike up on the Head. On a whim, we first took a peak at the beach and the fog rolling in led to some immediate photos for a few minutes before our hike. Though the fog limited our views later on, it made for fantastic photos down below.

If you don’t believe that it actually looked that awesome, consider the behind the scenes picture below, taken with a totally different camera. When Jess wants the kids to run, she’ll often yell “Come get me!” and this time, they really did. They piled right on.

Our hike on the Head itself was pleasant, but not particularly scenic. The vegetation is thick enough that much of the trail is cut through tall thick bushes, only opening to the views here and there at a viewpoint. The aforementioned fog did an excellent job masking any views there, so we mostly had a great hike with an ocean soundtrack. We found out later there’s an EdVentures Quest patch you can earn on this hike and were tempted to hike it again JUST for the patch (and maybe a clear view?) but didn’t make it enough of a priority in the time we had. There’s always next time.

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Okay, on to the blackberries. Here we go. For those of you that live in Oregon, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?” But for us, walking down the side of the road picking as many as we can and shoving them in our faces is a treat. I can only imagine what we looked like to people driving by.

In addition to All-You-Can-Eat Roadside blackberries, right behind the Airstream and along nearly every walkway and border in the RV Park, were huge patches of blackberries. We picked and ate, and picked and ate some more. Finally, Jess got the idea to actually make something out of them and googled up some dessert recipes. During our several days there, we made two blackberry crisp style desserts and some fresh blackberry pancake syrup. There was something very surreal about eating a dish that was picked 10 feet to your left and baked 5 feet to your right. Hyper-local dessert! Yum!

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By carefully watching the online reservation system, Jess was able to snag us a one night stay at Patrick’s Point State Park Thursday night before we left town. One night wasn’t much, but it did get us into the park and gave us easy access to the activities there.

While we were in Patricks Point, we met up with Shelley Beinsfield and her kids. Jess had met them at Prairie Creek State Park a few days earlier while working on Jr. Ranger Badges with the kids. They were in town for the summer and  visiting as many as the state parks as possible to earn the EdVenture Quest Patches. We joined them in Arcata for a swim at the public pool Tuesday night, and they joined us on our first day at the State Park for a hike. It was a blast having so many little hikers to entertain each other. We worked our activity books for their patches and enjoyed some clear views of the ocean and landscape.

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Just down the hill from our campsite was agate beach, known for the ease of finding the beautiful clear stones polished by sand and sea. During our last morning, we walked down the hill to the beach to explore despite the foggy, slightly wet weather. We found plenty of beautiful rocks there, but none of them were actually agates (don’t tell the kids!). We had a fabulous time anyway enjoying the fog wrapped coastline.

Trinidad_49Patrick’s Point & Trinidad was a wonderful stop on our travels. It was an excellent break from the summer heat, and I loved having so much fog around. We had hoped that as we traveled north, our blackberry bliss would continue. We did have some more blackberries, but Patrick’s Point and the Sounds of the Sea RV Park turned out to be the highlight of our berry enjoyment.