Ever since our very first trip to Death Valley - when we passed through Butte Valley for a single night - I've loved this little pocket of paradise in the Panamint Mountains. While many seem to take joy in the cabins sprinkled around its perimeter, the highlight - for me - has always been a pile of granite boulders with the most fabulous view of Striped Butte. I am not the first to enjoy this place; it has certainly been a resting point for thousands of years. Still, I've never spent more than a few daylight hours in this wonderful…
14 CommentsTag: trip start (big)
First post of a major trip, great place to start reading.
It was a little windy when we closed our eyes on our own little patch of slickrock sandstone, but sometime during the night - after air temperatures equalized a bit - it calmed down and there was barely a breeze when our alarm went off about 20 minutes before sunrise. Our new-to-us Big Agnes Copper Spur UL 3 tent worked so much better than the semi-self-standing tent we had previously. Unlike most mornings where we might hit the snooze button once or twice, we were up and about almost immediately. Knowing that the forecast was for even hotter temperatures than…
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It's been more than a year since I visited my first Grand Canyon Polychrome site out on the Esplanade and I've been very curious to get back and look for more of these wonderful pictographs. Naturally, being rock art - and a relatively rare variety at that - the locations of the sites are a closely guarded secret by those lucky enough to know them. I'd hoped to finally meet and head out on a hike with of adventr.co - one of the foremost rock art enthusiasts I know - but family matters came up and he was unable to…
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Ever since Retracing Panamint Valley's Nadeau Trail, I've wanted to get back into the Argus Range to explore deeper into the canyons and higher along the ridgelines. As always, it seems that my list of things to do around Death Valley National Park grows at a rate significantly faster than I can cross things off, and so for half a decade, other trips have taken priority. It was my newfound desire - to climb the (accessible) high points of the 15 or so highest mountain ranges around my favorite National Park - that finally bumped this trip to the top…
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Five years ago now, I received an email that began thusly. Needless to say, I was intrigued. I just wanted to drop a quick line to say howdy. I only recently stumbled across your site and felt a bit of deja vu. I'm a photographer and I've spent the last 3-4yrs exploring the western side of North America in my 1998 Taco (with 400k miles on her!) and have been to a lot of the same amazing places you have. Luckily, you've been to a lot of places I haven't as well and given me some great inspiration. It seems…
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While it may seem that most of my trips are well-planned months in advance, the reality is that I usually only have general sense of where I'm going - Death Valley or Utah or Canada or whatever - until two weeks before I leave, at which point I'm frantically looking for something to do that will be amazingly cool. Luckily, there seems to be no end of amazingly cool things in nature, so I'm usually OK. This time, it was a Thursday when I suggested to @mrs.turbodb, "We aren't doing anything next week. Want to go to Death Valley for…
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The last quarter of 2025 has not been kind to Death Valley National Park. Major flooding occurred on September 19th, wiping out many roads that'd only recently reopened after hurricane Hillary went through in 2023. The September rains couldn't have happened at a worse time. The NPS - already historically underfunded in my opinion - had been gutted by asinine firings and government cutbacks. Budgets for managing and maintaining our National Treasures had been reduced dramatically. This resulted in cleanups that took longer than ever, a situation that was further exacerbated by a government shutdown - over the availability of…
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Last spring, on our final trip to Death Valley - and our first time exploring the Backside of the Black Mountains - I mentioned that after every visit to my favorite National Park, I always seem to come away with a longer list of places to see than I had going in. Of course, it happened again. After wandering around the Black Mountains for three full days - which included driving every road in the entire area - and before I'd even posted my stories of the adventure, I knew of several more places that I would take longer to…
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It's rare that I'm at a loss for where to go, but in trying to figure out a plan for an early-October trip, I found myself casting around a bit. It's not that I don't have places I want to visit - in fact, I've been itching to get back to Death Valley, longing to spend more time up in British Columbia, and curious to see if I can find more Grand Canyon Polychrome out on the Esplanade. But - as I looked at these places, and trips I already have mapped out for each of them - none of…
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For the second time in as many trips, I'd been abandoned. This time, a trip to the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon was on the books until life got in the way for a few buddies, and as they bowed out, so did @mrs.turbodb. This left me in a bit of a pickle, as I'd left the Tacoma in California at the end of my previous outing, and still needed to ferry it down to Las Vegas for the winter. So, it was back to the computer and a bit of time sorting through the many-lifetime's-worth…
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One of the very first trips we took was to run the original Oregon Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) in July 2017. In fact, we attempted a segment of the route in May on our way home from a trip to Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, but lingering snow and dozens of down trees made progress painfully slow. We enjoyed it so much that every year since, we've picked another BDR to tick off the list. This year, Colorado is the name of the game, and it's one I've been looking forward to for quite some time. The route begins at…
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It's been almost a year since we last found ourselves north of the border, in the land of lakes and glaciers. Then, our final night necessitated a painful retreat as thunder and lightning exploded overhead and gale force winds whipped down off the glacial ridge. We were high in the Kootenays, beyond the deteriorating old bridge at Farnham, hoping the tent would remain attached to the Tacoma. Now, we're headed back. We'll work our way along the same road system, to similar elevations, and to the base of some familiar - and some new - glaciers. This time, we'll add…
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In Reykjavik, we deplaned outside. Last time I deplaned in Iceland on my way to Norway, it was February, and the weather was very different. Windmills in Oresund - Denmark, you are so efficient! (left) | Danish flag on Radhuspladsen - city hall. (right) After a blessedly uneventful flight, we arrived in Copenhagen, a little groggy, but excited for our adventure to begin! Having purchased the Copenhagen Card in advance, we now activated them, which gave us 72 hours of all-inclusive train and bus travel, access to every museum and castle we could think of, and even a boat tour!…
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Last year, we didn't get to Owyhee at all. This was entirely due to the fact that the Tacoma didn't come home to the Pacific Northwest - from Las Vegas - until early July. By that time, we'd missed prime Owyhee time - a short period of weeks right around Memorial Day - when the grass in the high desert is green, the rains (and resulting mud) are largely done for the year, and the temperatures haven't yet climbed into the unbearably hot range. Missing the undulating grass, we are trying our best to make up for the lack of…
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We've been going to the Owyhee for ages. Or at least, "ages" when taken in context of the time that we've been adventuring around the western United States (and Canada). In fact, our very first trip was to Owyhee, a trip that @mrs.turbodb planned on the same weekend in May, nine years ago. In that time - as we've traversed many thousands of miles of road - we've learned much about this wonderland in southeast Oregon, including the fact that it's not limited to Oregon! The Owyhee extend into southwest Idaho and even into northern Nevada. For the first time,…
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I was two days late - at least according to Ben @m3bassman - when I rolled into the camp site they'd found just outside Capitol Reef National Park. As usual, the first order of business was a round of hellos with Mike @Digiratus and Zane @Speedytech7, followed by some good-natured ribbing. It was Zane, as I recall, that predicted my arrival time most correctly - at least according to The Price is Right rules that we all seemed to disagree on - and it was Mike who grinned a big I told you so, when I moved my truck into…
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"I want to do something epic for @mini.turbodb's spring break," @mrs.turbodb mentioned to me a few weeks ago. At the time, I think we were on our way home from a day of skiing, and I jokingly suggested that we could take @mini.turbodb on her first ever backpacking trip, through the Grand Gulch. After all, I'd recently created a goal around hiking the length of this amazing gash on the Earth's surface. Anyone who has followed along for a while will likely recall that I don't like carrying weight on my shoulders. In fact, I have a collection of variously-sized…
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Every time I go to Utah's Cedar Mesa, I find myself wondering why I don't visit more often. When I really think about it, the answer is a combination of factors, with the largest being: Distance - It's a 24-hour drive from home. Anything over 19 hours is a slog - even for the younger me, who could conquer long drives and still hike the next day. Even when the Tacoma is stored in Las Vegas, it's a 9-hour trek - nearly a full day of driving - just to get there! Death Valley - Much of the time I'd…
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Every time I visit Death Valley, I cover some amount of ground. I know this because I fill every daylight hour with hiking, driving, climbing, and poking my head into places that a younger, smarter me would certainly avoid. Somehow, though, at the end of each trip, I realize that my list of places to explore has inexplicably gotten longer. It happens without fail. Every. Single. Time. In 2018 - when @mrs.turbodb and I were exploring the Ibex Dunes and the talc mines near Saratoga and Ibex Spring - I noticed a little valley on the eastern flank of the…
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After spending two weeks (one) (two) in Death Valley, and a week in the Mojave Preserve before that, I figured it was time to get out of the Mojave Desert for a bit. My first inclination was to head east towards Cedar Mesa to continue my search for the Juniper Tree ruin. This, I figured, would be a relatively straightforward affair, since I'm confident that I've narrowed down its location, so I knew I'd need more to fill a trip. Pouring over my usual sources of inspiration, I came upon a reference to the Shamans Gallery along the North Rim…
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