September 16, 2019. I didn't wait in Rawlins long before Monte @Blackdawg and his dad Steve @woodnick showed up at the gas station across the street. Their trucks fueled up, we said our warm hellos and set about our first task of the trip - buying firewood. It's here - before I even really get into the story - that I have a confession to make. I do this only because it may be my last opportunity - this trip changing the way we approached camp fires all together. I don't like buying bundles of firewood. To me, it just…
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All the trips - because every trip is an adventure!
September 15, 2019. It was 2:00pm when I parted ways with Pops in eastern California - our relaxing trip into the Sierras just the start of a 3 week journey for me. The next two weeks would be adventuring to - and then through - Wyoming and Colorado with some of the normal folks - Mike @Digiratus and Monte @Blackdawg (and his dad Steve), and also a new face to me - Brett @Squeaky Penguin. I've been wanting to meet Brett for quite some time now, so I was definitely looking forward to the opportunity. But here I am getting…
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When you relax all day and know that the next will be more of the same, there's really nothing to do but sleep well at night , so that's just what we did - the only sounds around us, the rustling of a light breeze through the trees, and the tumbling of as it spilled through its channel a hundred-and-fifty feet below. Only the warm morning sun woke me from a restful night, my tent - a gleaming advertisement for @Cascadia Tents, the view - to rival any other. It was - as far as I'm concerned - one of…
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Well, it's not every day that I get to go camping with my dad, and it's not that often that I camp in the same spot for more than one night. I mean, I guess we camped in the same spot two nights in a row on the Idaho BDR when a brake caliper seized up, but that was clearly an exceptional situation! Plus, after last year's adventure - my first time experiencing one of Pops favorite spots in the Sierras - I knew this was a place that I wanted to return. Likely, for years to come. It really…
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August 30, 2019. As expected, there wasn't much sunrise to see and we all had a good sleep-in on the edge of Whitehead Reservoir. Turns out it wasn't just the fact that we had a hill to our east, but also the fact that it was reasonably overcast - a few minutes of light rain even falling on our tents about half an hour before 8:00am. Still, I could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. In no real rush, but also with no reason to hang around, we ate our breakfasts and packed up our stuff. Oh,…
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It was 5:00am or so when I awoke after a shockingly chilly - yet pleasant - night’s sleep. I could see Monte @Blackdawg hanging out behind his truck, waiting for the sunrise from my tent door. Figuring I'd let him enjoy the peaceful solitude, I donned my clothes and made my way to a spot 50' or so away to capture the morning, the colors joyfully doubled by the surface of Wells Lake. I'd later hear from Monte that I'd been ninja-like in my approach. As he told the story to Dan @drr and Mike @Digiratus, he described completely silent…
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August 28, 2019. The day had been hot, but it cooled right down overnight - much nicer for sleeping, we all agreed. And sleep we did - it was 8:30am before the last of us finally climbed down from our tents, having missed the sunrise entirely - a cloudless sky transitioning from deep blue to orange, then to pink and finally blue again. We all set about making our breakfast - coffee for Mike @Digiratus, cereal for me, an amazing looking breakfast burrito for Dan @drr, and - of course - Donettes for Monte @Blackdawg - as the sun beamed…
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August 27, 2019. Most of the trips I do require a full day - or more - of freeway driving just to reach the trailhead, so you can imagine my delight when we decided to do a trip on the west coast. Sort-of. At least, our meeting location was only four hours away - in the tiny little community of Mazama, WA. From there, we'd head north - to British Columbia, Canada - where we planned to run The Whipsaw Trail and then make our way north and west to Molybdenite Peak - before turning south again for the United States.…
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July 31 - Aug 1, 2019. We hadn't been back from our adventure on the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route (IDBDR) long when we decided that we should really get out with the child. After all, we had this nice 4Runner for her to sleep in and the last time we'd gone had been - to our surprise - the "best day of [her] life," according to her. Hoping to best our previous success, we figured that this time, we'd pair the camping with a nice restaurant for dinner and some pick-your-own peaches the following day. Oh, no naive we were to…
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July 26, 2019. Positioned well above the horizon, sunrise would have been one of the best if just a few clouds had made an appearance in the sky. Without them, an orange glow an hour or so before the sun peaked out was all we got. Shucks, right? 😉 The mosquitoes were out in full force again, buzzing and gathering around the windows of the tent - our scent like sweet sweet nectar to them. Not that our scent - after 10 days on the road - was anything but a sweet sweet nectar, mind you. 😉 Not wanting to…
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July 25, 2019. I wasn't sure how sunrise would be given that we were in a bit of a bowl around Dworshak Reservoir - with no line of sight to the horizon - and no clouds in the sky - it could be a complete dud. And for the most part, that's what it was. Unimpressed, I went back to sleep. Having made good time yesterday, we still had a lot of making up to do - given our little brake caliper issue on the Lolo Motorway, and the fact that we'd spent two days completing the second stage of the…
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July 24, 2019. Rocky Point proved once again to be one of the best camp sites of our trip and we slept well through the night. Wanting to capture sunrise, I was up early with a new idea - video - which also allowed me to catch another 90 minutes of sleep and yet still not miss anything! Let me tell you, it was quite pleasant to wake up with the sun streaming in through the door at our feet, it's orange morning light illuminating the lookout visible through opposite side of the tent. Even with the extra sleep,…
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July 23, 2019. We couldn't have chosen a better spot to setup camp when we pulled up to Rocky Point lookout. Our view east was spectacular, and the clouds and lightning storms from the night before had cleared out, leaving just enough moisture in the air for an amazing sunrise - the orange on the horizon slowly emanating out to a pink before transitioning once again to the deep blue of the clear sky. Unlike most mornings where a few shots of the glow™ are enough for me and I climb back into bed, this morning was something special. I…
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July 22, 2019. Wanting to get an early start to the day so we could try to get ourselves through all of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route's Stage 4 from Elk City to Darby along the Macgruder Corridor, we were both up and out of the tent right around 7:00am - the plan to show up at the awesome Elk City General Store right as they opened at 8:00am. Or so we thought. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's back up for just a minute... As usual, I set my alarm for o-dark-thirty to see if I…
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July 21, 2019. Camped deep in the valley next to the South Fork of the Salmon River, getting up for sunrise wasn't even an option for us. The dual-sport bikers had we'd met the night before were surely later to bed and earlier to rise than we were, but that was just fine by us - we needed our beauty rest, bad. So it was that when the sun finally did start warming the tent that we figured we might as well continue on our route - I mean, it was either that or go back the way we'd come…
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July 20, 2019. Hard at work as we slept, the fire fighters working on the Vader fire had it contained - as far as we could tell given the complete lack of rising smoke - by the time my alarm went off at 4:00am. As fires go, it hadn't been a huge, but at 443 acres, it had taken a crew of two Type 6 Engines, one Type 4 Engine, one Type II Initial Attack Fire Crew, a plane load of smokejumpers, two Type I Helicopters, four Type III Helicopters, an air‐attack, two Interagency Hotshot crews, and 2 dozers to rein…
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July 19, 2019. The night passed uneventfully - a cool breeze blowing off the lake, a refreshing relief from the heat of the day. Now technically in Mountain time, I'd set my alarm for the absurd hour of 5:30am to catch sunrise - hoping that I'd be able to catch a bit of light despite our position relative to the horizon. It wasn't long, I was a bit too late even at 5:30am, and we've surely seen more dramatic sunrises, but it was still an enjoyable few minutes of color to see splashed across the sky. Plus, it was still…
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July 18, 2019. Having arrived late the night before, we were not up early. We'd slept well next to the East Fork of the Jarbidge River just outside Murphy Hot Springs, and it was a little after 10:00am when we rolled into Jarbidge, NV - the official start of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route. Our first order of business was to fill up with fuel. I wasn't sure that we really needed to do this (it turns out we didn't), but I wanted to make sure we at least started off on the right foot for this trip. Plus, we'd…
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We've run two Backcountry Discovery Routes (BDRs) in the past - Oregon in 2017 and Washington in 2018. So, when it came to planning for this year, we decided that we'd run what we thought would be one of the coolest BDRs out there - Idaho. Little did we realize that it would mean spending most of July in the beautiful state - we had, after all, just finished exploring the southeast and then the central parts of Idaho a couple weeks before we'd planned to embark on this south-to-north traverse of the state. Not that we were complaining - this was clearly,…
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Every year, during the month of October, a really great thing happens at Microsoft. Teams of all sizes - from just a few folks, to organizations thousands strong - rally around a common cause. Every year, that rallying cry gets stronger - millions of dollars stronger than just the year before. And every one of those millions is matched by the company - dollar for dollar, as high as it can go. Last year, over $163 million dollars and 760,000 volunteer hours were donated to various charities and causes that employees cared about. That is the power of the Microsoft…
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