New Rig!

It's been quite some years since we've done such a long road trip, and a big motivating factor for this trip was our new truck and pop-up camper! In recent years I've gotten tired of sleeping in the back of our old Toyota Tundra, to the point where I wasn't really excited for road trips any more. So this year we finally sold the Tundra and bought a Ford F-150 with a Tune M1 pop-up camper. We seriously considered a van, but ultimately decided that with the amount of off-road travel we do, we needed the clearance and 4x4 capabilities of a truck.

Unlike traditional slide-in campers, the Tune clamps directly onto the truck bed rails and the interior comes unfinished – it's just the empty truck bed inside. The big advantage of this style is that it's much lighter weight so a normal 1/2 ton truck will carry it just fine, even off road. With a translucent roof, huge glass side windows, and six big mesh windows around the top, the space inside is bright and airy.

If my blog has been quiet this spring, it's because I've been super busy researching, designing, and building out the interior of the camper in preparation for this big summer road trip. I did it all from scratch, learning about wiring and fuse boxes, propane routing, plumbing, building the cabinetry from extruded aluminum, and a whole lot more. The new rig has a queen sized bed, benches to lounge on (and store stuff in), a kitchen cabinet with shelves, sink, and stove, an electric cooler, propane heater, a swivel table, and solar power with a battery powerbank. I even got an on-demand water heater with an external shower tent! Claudia sewed curtains and installed mesh bug screens on the lower windows and back doors, providing a bubble of serenity when the mosquito vampires are out.

The new truck and camper with all its upgraded features are a total game changer! It has made road tripping fun again, having all the creature comforts and most of all just having a cozy and comfortable place to hang out inside. We already look forward to future road trips!

Northwest Highlights

Here's a quick bullet-point rundown of the highlights of our road trip in the PNW:

• Lassen Volcanic National Park: We camped a few nights at the Butte Lake Campground and enjoyed checking out the surreal volcanic landscapes around Cinder Cone.
• Mount Shasta: We did a quick one-night backpack trip above Castle Lake, with a big view of Shasta across the way, then spent a day hiking up into the granite playground of Castle Crags.
• Trinity Alps: During a heatwave we did a fantastic 2-night backpack trip into the Trinity Alps. Very Sierra-esque with all the granite, and the waterfalls and swimming ponds are legendary.
• Redwoods: We spent a week camping and hiking in the majestic redwoods of California. Such magical forests!!!
• Oregon Coast: After the redwoods we continued up the southern Oregon coast, staying in campgrounds and doing little hikes to various beaches and coves.
• Bend: We had a fun visit with a friend of Claudia's in Bend and even caught a Broken Social Scene concert there!
• Mount Hood: As far as adventure goes, the highlight of the entire road trip was trekking the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood. We were blessed with excellent clear weather and it was such a pleasure to see the sunsets and dusk skies from high above everything else. We even got to watch the little blips of 4th of July fireworks all around Portland.
• Chuckanut: We drove up towards Bellingham to spend a week in a rental house with my parents and sister (visiting from Sao Paulo!). Good fun, good food!
• Western Washington Cascades: I was super excited to do a backpack trip to Snowking Mountain, a peak I hiked nearly 25 years ago! Unfortunately the mosquitos were absolutely swarming up there, so we abandoned all our other July backpacking plans and opted to do a bunch of sunset hikes instead. Of all those, two particular highlights were an eye-popping sunset on Excelsior Ridge near Mount Baker, and the stunning view atop Vesper Peak.
• Squamish, BC: We spent a nice four days in Squamish visiting Claudia's family who were on vacation from Germany. No photos, unfortunately, as wildfire smoke drifted in most of the time.

Overall, this road trip was a little slower-paced than previous road trips. With the new camper rig (along with Starlink internet) it was nice to take some down days at good campsites, getting computer work done and relaxing between hiking adventures.

Wildfire Summer

At the end of June as we were camping and enjoying beautiful weather and clear skies near Mount Hood, we got word that a small wildfire had started back home in Colorado just north of Ouray. Over the next days we were horrified to see the Gold Mountain Fire explode into a massive inferno that ended up torching 40,000 acres of beloved mountains and trails between the towns of Ouray and Ridgway – everything between Bridge of Heaven to the Cimarrons was up in flames. Our friends were sending us apocalyptic images of mountainsides on fire and towering pyrocumulus clouds just a few miles from town.

Fortunately, the prevailing southwest winds were blowing the fire mostly away from town, so our house was theoretically not in imminent danger. But still we felt uneasy and possibly irresponsible to be off on a road trip while our home mountains burned, never quite knowing if the town would need to evacuate at some point.

Part of me kind of wished I was back home to witness (and photograph) the wildfire since it was such a momentous event in our small town's history. But the reality is that we were lucky to be away somewhere else enjoying clear skies while our town was smoky and apocalyptic. Numerous friends told me we should be glad we were away and not witnessing the fire in person. It think it was a bit traumatic for people to see so many beloved mountains burn up.

Within a few weeks, wildfires were popping off in eastern Oregon and Washington. In mid-July, I noticed a small 17-acre fire east of Glacier Peak in the central Cascades in Washington. That one soon exploded into the un-aptly named Little Giant Fire which is still raging as I write this a month later, having consumed 136,000 acres of prime mountain terrain by now.

During the month we were camping and hiking in Washington, big wildfires were burning in BC, Washington, and Oregon, so we stayed on the west side of the Cascades which remained clear for the most part due to prevailing westerly winds, aside from a few days when the smoke drifted over from the east.

Sadly, in late July we discovered that our favorite truck camping site of the entire trip so far – the epic site near Mount Hood pictured above – had burned up along with the entire mountain it's on, in the Grasshopper Fire which has now burned over 90,000 acres just east of Mount Hood. I guess we were among the last people to enjoy that campsite.

By early August it felt like wildfire smoke was closing in on the small bubble of clear skies in western Washington, and the writing was on the wall that we'd better just take off and drive through all the smoke to get home.

You know how scientists have been warning about global warming and climate change for the last three decades? Well it's sure as shit happening and we are in the thick of it now. As with many things these days, every year it seems to become more and more difficult to strike a balance of living the good life amidst the ongoing and accelerating destruction and degradation of nature. Just gotta keep on truckin, I guess, at least to wherever you can without smoke.