I'm gonna try something new this time. I usually sit a few days after the adventure has been completed and I've had a chance to decompress and then write all the stuff I can remember that I thought was worth sharing. This time I'm gonna try to keep a log as it goes. So here I am typing on the computer when I should be cleaning out the van. I have so much to do today to make this trip happen. So much planning and preparation goes into a big trip when you want everything to be just right. I have been googling and reading and viewing and planning for weeks on this. Then comes menu and gear lists. Then you gotta put it all together. I staged all our gear yesterday. I'm bringing too much stuff.
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| Why a mini-van? This is why. |
Noon. The van is packed. People have asked me, why buy a minivan, actually they said it more like "seriously dude... a minivan?" This thing is packed for the apocalypse, and in no uncertain terms if the big one hit and the van was all packed No Problem (as long as I could get out of the city with it intact....). Our team could fo sho survive the whole summer, plenty of time to build permanent set up for the cold wet months. Tangent: If I could choose the best time of year to have a bug-out scenario, this time of year would be be it, tons of easily identifiable wild edibles about to start popping up and plenty of time to put in a few summer crops before cold comes back. Side note, this dog is seeing me pack up the van and is all the way up my butt. No Luna, I'm not gonna leave you behind.
1pm. All packed up. Seriously, we are bringing WAY too much stuff. BUT... Then again. It IS car camping we are allowed to be comfy. I'm gonna wash some dishes and clean up around the house then fill the tank and my coffee cup and go get the rest of the team.
Get the team and were on the road by 4. Hit a little bit of traffic on the way but make it to camp by 7ish and set right up at site A-18 in the Ohanapecosh Campground. Home away from
home for the next few days. We picked a spot, set up on a bluff over looking the river. Get camp all set and make some quick and easy dinner. Franks and beans on the stove. Get settled in and just spend the rest of the evening relaxing by the fire before bed.
I always seem to wake up early in camp. I get the fire going, and get coffee on. I found an old, new to me, aluminum percolator at a yard sale and that is bubblin away before too long. Luna and I are running around and playing tag for an hour before anyone else is up in the campground. Breakfast is small, just bacon and eggs, bagels and some fresh cantaloupe slices. MAN..... I forgot the cream cheese. Clean up at our leisure and start our 'day two' portion of the adventure. Our first stop is the "Grove of the Patriarchs". A short easy stroll over a cable bridge and on a boardwalk through an ancient grove of giant trees. The walk is beautiful, a gentle stroll just about anyone could manage, the bridge is a little scary but totally safe and the boardwalk is good for keeping the little ones on the trail and on target. I'd say the whole walk, including the full loop comes in just about 1 mile. Atreyu did OK on this walk, he wanted to stomp though the brush and run around a lot. But he was impressed with the size and scope of the grander trees, as we all were. After the grove we head over to "Paradise", a mountain top resort and visitor center near the top of Rainier. The drive over is spectacular, a 23 mile drive took us over an hour and a half because I drove hella slow and kept stopping to take pictures. Fawn was starting to get irritated. |
| Fawns idea of camp chores. |
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| Natural curiosity |
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| One of many I had to stop and take. |
Paradise was cool. It was 60 degrees and sunny when we were there and the snow was 12 feet deep. We didn't do a whole lot up there the first trip, I got some info for a few hikes I wanted to do, we got coffees, checked out the gift shop and played in the snow for a while. On the way back to camp we stopped at Narada Falls for a peek. Man being lazy is tiring. So we just made up a few brats with sauteed veggies on the grill and hung out in the hammock, I baked chocolate chip cookies on the fire. Fawn and Atreyu took it easy and I went for a walk. The campground started to fill up around dinner time and we got neighbors on both sides.... ugh. But everyone was quiet even if they were giant groups of people. And we chilled out with some hot tea and listened to the river go by. |
| Silver Falls |
Moving right along. Up super early again. Bubblin away..... its nice to not have to boil water, then wait for coffee to steep just to have the coffee be cold by the time you get to drink it. A lazy morning with oatmeal and fresh corned beef hash and cheesy toast. Luna loves camping because she knows we don't want to keep leftovers. And off to a walk. 2.5 mile loop that includes a stop at the Ohanapecosh hot springs and Silver Falls. The hot springs are cool but you can't soak in them, sorta unimpressive. The falls are amazing and you might never guess they were there until you're right on top of them. The river runs blue/green, wild and fast. It cuts a hole in the side of the mountain and seems to break through the rock into the ravine where it boils and churns. There is a sight and smell and chill in the air when your standing over the bridge that makes you feel like your both an interconnected part of the world and yet such a small part that if you were to be swept away it would be just like erasing you from the memory of the world. After our big walk we head back to camp and make a late lunch/early dinner. Burgers and mac-n-cheese, told you keepin it simple. The fam lounges around while I do camp chores (cleaning up and cutting wood) then I went for a stroll just to find some peace and quiet. After a long nap we do a quick trip into the little town of Packwood, which is just a short drive outside the park.
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| Luna St.Helen Mae |
A couple little quick things about Packwood, super cute little mountain town. The people all seemed super friendly: I got into a chat with an old timer, the girls at the coffee shop were in good spirits even just a few minutes before closing, and the lady at the visitor center let me come in for a minute even though she was technically closed. Beer was limited choice and expensive. They seem to have a lot of tourist attraction events. We refill coffee cups and buy a sticker, some fruit and a beer for around the campfire.
Sunday morning comes, and I couldn't be more excited. Not because its the last day, for the sake of what my plans are. Breakfast is granola and coffee ( I just gotta say one more time that the percolator was awesome) We do the last of our clean up and put camp away. **I often will pack away most of whatever we aren't going to use on the last morning the night before. ** Do the scan for ANY bits of garbage, not just ours (rule #1) and pour a gallon of water on the fire (rule #2). Back up to Paradise. I'm gonna do an alpine hike WOOHOO!! #Excited. Fawn and Atreyu plan to play in the snow and snuggle by a fire with some hot cocoa until I get back. I originally wanted to do a 5 mile loop that went past several glaciers, but they were only allowing permitted climbers through 80% of the section as there was huge avalanche danger, so that left really only two options, I talk to a ranger and we look at the web cam at the top and I choose the hike that is more likely to offer me a view. I decided to walk the "Vista Loop Trail" 1.8 miles trudging through the snow to a lollipop with a short vista off shoot, that looks out onto the Nisqually Glacier. Not another soul on the trail. **Lollipop is an out and back hike with a loop at the end. ** I realize after 3 steps I should've brought trekking poles with me but I'm determined. My reward was a view that renewed my faith. I was literally brought to tears. Looking out over the valley at waterfalls and creeks below literally seeping straight out of the bottom of the glacier and becoming the Nisqually River. In this moment I thought about all the things in my life that I was thankful for, I took time to reflect and to just be present like I haven't done in a very long time. I was blessed to be in that space and in that time. That view was something I never knew I needed and will never forget what it gave me in that short time I was there.
The rest of the trip seems fairly small in comparison thinking back on it. The whole thing was such a grand adventure and yet the whole of it was swallowed by just a couple of minutes.The rest of our trip was more good stuff. I met back up with the team and we decided to head out from there. We stopped for lunch at a little roadside place, IDR the name.... but the food was good and we got a great piece of pie togo. We stopped at Ike Kinswa state park to stretch the legs and let Atreyu and Luna get some running time in. After that we beat feet home. Tired, dirty and groggy. Unload the van, begin the process of resetting the gear and eat some pie.
A few reviews:
We did end up buying a new tent for this trip. I didn't want to have the review take up a lot of room in the post itself so I saved it for now. We bought the Coleman Flatwoods 2, four person tent. We were looking for something affordable and spacious, and we got it. I can say resoundingly I would NOT recommend this tent, unless.... your ONLY specifications are affordable and spacious. You can find this tent at most common retailers ie: Target, Walmart, Amazon. We got this tent hoping it would be of similar quality to the last Coleman tent we had, but no. This tent is poorly designed. It would be a great starter tent for someone with little to no experience that want something that easy to put up and will only be camping in summer weather months. It says this tent is tested to 35 mph winds, I wouldn't trust that at all. Trey had so much as simply leaned a little on the side and it looked that it would just cave in. I gave it so much as the most gentle tug and the poles bent right in. The door is cool looking but awkward and difficult. The fabric looks pretty good but I'm not sure I'd bet the dryness of all my gear on a whole trip to this tent. Coleman doesn't even sell this tent on their website. When I took it down the poles retained the bend a little.... that really makes me nervous. I mean my family is supposed to sleep in this thing. It'll do fine for this summer but I'm not going to mess around and keep this thing for long.
Ohanapecosh Campground: I saved a review of the camp for last because I have a lot to say about it TBH. So first impression. Cramped. I guess you might expect that from a place that boasts 2 million visitors a year and most of them come in the same 2 months but do the campsite literally need to be right on top of each other. No privacy what-so-ever. No quiet, even when it was quiet. There were only 3 loops (A-B-C) open in the campground even though they had 8 available. The loops that weren't open looked like they would be even more on top of each other in some areas. When everyone started to build all the fires for the night there was a visible haze all through the valley the camp was in. Granted, I also built a fire but isn't that the point, isn't everyone going to, didn't they know that when they started developing the campground... The sites all had fire PLATFORMS instead of pits, which is cool because it made them easy to cook on and it kinda made it necessary to keep the fire smaller so one wouldn't get too hot sitting next to it. The fire platform also had a grill top that came down and could be cooked directly on as well as a flat iron space that doubled as a heat reflector when it was up and a griddle when it was down. I did near all of my cooking right on that griddle, just threw down some foil and went to town. It worked out perfectly. I don't think everyone else put that together. Each spot had its own bear box, which totally defeats the idea of a bear box to me, 200+ campsites all with metal boxes full of food less that 20 feet from the nearest tent... I mean just tell people they need to keep their food in the car.... The encampment also had flush toilets and potable water but no showers, if your going to charge $25 just to drive into the park and another $20 a night for camping and then smash us all in together like sardines can we at least not have to smell each other. I mean we were all sitting by the fire all night and hiking all day, sweat happens, not to mention "camp diet". I don't want my random stranger neighbor to smell me anymore than I want to smell him. The last little thing, because I wasn't paying enough attention, (or because it's 2017) is that on the map of the campground and all the pictures seem to have the little wifi symbol soooooo... I thought there was wifi. There isn't, they have a amphitheatre and that is what that symbol means. Yup... I did that, that is why I went back to original format.
The thing that bothered me most of all though was the lack of empathy for dogs. This is important to know if you go to any national park (all that I have been so far) dogs are not very welcome. They can stay in your camp and in parking lots, but not on ANY trails, not even just one around the outside perimeter of the camp, you can't leave them in your campsite unattended and you cant leave them in your car.... My dog is part of my family, we try not to let her walk off trail, we don't let her chase critters and we clean up after her. Whats the big deal? C'mon Parks system, lets get at least one dog friendly trail per campground... huh? Thanks
HEY!! I Got an idea!! I'll send this tent to one person who either subscribes, shares or comments on this post. One entry per person per thing you do. So FREE TENT to one lucky winner. If I only get one person to enter we will know who will win. I'll pick the winner as soon as I replace it. LOL.
