The Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 17 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 12,150
• Total miles by ferry: 537
• Total days on the road: 116
• Total nights in a hotel: 4
• Total miles hiked: 116.14

Kevin at the pebbly, driftwood-strewn Ruby Beach on Washington’s west coast

Some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 2 (diesel: $4.23/gal in Bremerton, WA; $4.06/gal in Hoquiam, WA).
• Technical Issues: 1-ish (propane alarm)
• Wildlife invasions: 1 (see below)
• NPS Sites Visited: 1 (Olympic National Park)

Sea stacks in the fog at Ruby Beach

Thanks to a couple of recent late-night scares, we are both feeling like zombies this morning.  Two nights ago, we were jolted awake at 2am by the screeching sound of our propane detector.  If you want to know what that was like, go ahead and light a match underneath your smoke detector, making sure that the speaker is as close to your eardrum as possible.  It was almost comical – both of us jumped up and scrambled around for a few minutes trying to remember the best way to shut it off.  (Turns out, it’s pulling the breaker on the DC power). 

Anyway, it was a false alarm – there was no propane leaking anywhere in the van.  But the end result was that we were definitely short on sleep all day yesterday.  We found a peaceful campsite surrounded by trees in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park and figured we’d have a quiet night last night.  But that was not to be.

As I was drifting off to sleep we started hearing some scurrying in the undercarriage, like a rodent or something.  It’s happened before, so I wasn’t too freaked out.  Until about 30 minutes later, when Kevin said “It sounds like it’s inside the van, doesn’t it?”  Kind of, but it was hard to tell for sure.  Maybe we were overly optimistic, but we both dismissed it as just some inquisitive squirrel running around in the wheel well or something.

I was sound asleep when Kevin woke me up by throwing back the covers and shouting, “It’s in the van!  I think it just ran across my pillow!”  Well, that got my attention.  We shook out the covers (twice), and then spent the next two hours slowly pulling everything out of the cabinets looking for this unidentified rodent.  Every once in a while we would hear more scurrying and we finally tracked it to the space behind the fridge/closet area.  It was clearly in the walls so we couldn’t actually get to it, and there was no way for us to do anything about it at 3am in the middle of a national park, miles from the nearest hotel.  We debated our options, but since we’d had so little sleep the night before neither of us felt up to driving more than an hour in the middle of the night.  We did our best to try to sleep, but neither of us got much shuteye.

In a daze this morning, we packed up and drove to the next town where we purchased 8 sticky glue boards that smell like peanut butter.  We haven’t heard any noise all morning/afternoon, so we are hoping that the critter left of his own volition before we put the glue boards down.  I am also hoping that the peanut butter scent doesn’t attract any new visitors.  But for now, it’s nap time!

Update from Sunday 9/9 – no activity on the traps for the past two days, so we think the whatever-it-was managed to find its own way out of the van, hooray!  In the meantime, we spent the weekend in Long Beach, WA at the Rod Run to the End of the World.  Every year the town is inundated with a thousand hot rods and classic cars.  There’s just one main street in town, so they spend all day (and night) revving their engines and cruising back and forth. 

This one was my favorite.  The license plate says “WHERERU”.  Clever!

Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park

The Hoh Rainforest looks like something from another planet.  Everything – and I mean everything – seems to be covered with a layer of spongy green moss.

The mild winters, cool summers, and a ridiculous amount of rain create ideal conditions for a temperate rainforest on the western edge of Olympic National Park.  This sign says it all – compared to Phoenix, which gets about 7 inches of rain each year, the Hoh Rainforest gets a whopping 142 inches – almost 12 feet annually.  No wonder everything is so green here!  Amazingly, there was not a cloud in the sky all day.  So we got to enjoy the rainforest without having to deal with any rain. 

One of the other exhibits in the visitor center noted that the conifer trees here grow to unusual size due to all the rainfall.  Something we saw for ourselves when we were out walking some of the trails.

One of the side trails was called – appropriately – The Hall of Mosses.  I can’t guess why.

The Northern Olympic Peninsula

We spent most of this week hopping across the northern shore of the Olympic Peninsula.  We started off in Port Townsend, one of my favorite places. 

The campground at Point Hudson is right next to the town docks and faces Whidbey Island.  We had a lovely view of the water and had a picnic dinner on the beach.

The next day we drove over to Dungeness Spit – the longest naturally occurring spit of land in the United States.  We stopped there briefly to take a few photos, but we didn’t do the ten-mile hike out to the lighthouse and back.

Instead we continued to the Sol Duc area of Olympic National Park.  There are hot springs here and some pretty waterfalls.  Since it was so hot outside we skipped a dip in the springs and instead hiked to Sol Duc falls. 

Kevin in “Where’s Waldo?” mode

Then today we decided to drive over to Cape Flattery, which is at the northwest tip of the lower 48 states.  It was a bit of a detour off of highway 101 (and we were stopped four separate times for single-lane construction traffic), but the views from the cape were worth the hassle.  The mist seemed to hover only over the shore area – otherwise it was a bright sunny day just a mile or so inland.

The waves from the Pacific batter the rocks and slowly carve out caves in the cliffs beneath the forest, leaving the trees almost floating in midair.

Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge at George, WA

When my brother Todd mentioned he’d be in Washington over Labor Day weekend, we knew we wanted to meet up with him at some point.  When he said he planned on seeing the Dave Matthews Band with some friends at the Gorge amphitheater, we bought tickets as well.  The stage is built right beside the Columbia River, overlooking the gorge below (hence the name).  It’s an amazing place to see a concert.

Every year Dave Matthews plays three shows over Labor Day Weekend, and people come out and make a weekend of it by camping in a huge field near the amphitheater.  During concerts, this field turns into a 5000+ site (or thereabouts) campground.  Here’s what our site looked like from the ground.

Here’s what it probably looked like via satellite (I’m not sure but I think our site was somewhere around the 5 o’clock area of the circle). 

Photo courtesy of Google Maps.

Luckily we were able to find Todd and his friends before going in so we could all park and camp together, otherwise I don’t know how you’d find people in such a huge space.  Parking was kind of chaotic, but a controlled chaos.  The people running the venue gave everyone enough space to set up tents so we ended up with a good-sized gap between us and the next people, which was nice.  And we got there in the early afternoon so we had plenty of time to hang out and enjoy the sunshine before heading into the concert. 

The band jammed for hours, playing a few older songs but mostly songs from their later albums.  When they finally came back out for an encore just before midnight, we realized how exhausted we were and decided to skip out early and beat the crowds back to the campground. 

The Yakima Valley Wine Trail

We are headed to the Gorge at George for the Dave Matthews concert this weekend, but since we had a couple of days to kill we figured we’d spend some time in Washington’s wine country.  The Yakima Valley is dry and sunny – perfect for growing all kinds of fruit.  Luckily the Yakima River runs through it, providing much-needed water for irrigating the vineyards and orchards.

We found lots of great wineries to choose from.  Most tasting rooms charge only a nominal (like $5) tasting fee (a few are even complimentary), so its an inexpensive way to spend an afternoon.

Well, it’s inexpensive until you start racking up “souvenirs”, anyway.

We loved just driving through the countryside.  I couldn’t believe all the apple trees.  Huge clusters of red and yellow apples, just waiting to be picked…can’t wait to hit the Saturday Farmers’ Market!

Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 16 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 11,391
• Total miles by ferry: 537
• Total days on the road: 109
• Total nights in a hotel: 4
• Total miles hiked: 110.44

Camping at Deception Pass State Park on Whidbey Island

Some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 2 (diesel: $4.10/gal in Puyallup, WA; $3.95/gal in Grandview, WA).  We are averaging 22.6 miles per gallon, not too bad! 
• NPS Sites Visited: 2 (San Juan Island Historical Park and Mt. Rainier NP)

Great campsite in old-growth forest at Mount Rainier National Park

We’ve had a couple of people send in questions about day-to-day life in the van, so I thought I’d answer those today. 

Q: How do you do laundry?  Do most of the campgrounds have laundry facilities?

A: We haven’t had too much difficulty with this aspect.  Most RV parks have a few coin-op washers and dryers.  And there are always Laundromats – most small towns seem to have one, and we’ve used them a couple of times.  Some places are cheaper than others, of course, but usually it is anywhere from $2 to $4 to wash and dry, per load. We try to keep a good supply of quarters on hand.

One complaint about the van is that there’s not really a good space to put a clothes hamper.  So we have a mesh bag that we keep on the floor in the bathroom.  It’s not too bad at first, but as the pile of dirty laundry grows we sometimes have to shuffle the bag around when it gets in the way.

Q: A question about your shower in the Sprinter - do you use it, or have you been using campground showers?

A: We have yet to use the inside shower in our Sprinter, although I have used one in a Roadtrek we rented before we bought our van.  The bathroom is pretty small as it is, once you pull the shower curtain around you don’t have a lot of room in there.  Other drawbacks are: the handheld shower nozzle makes it more difficult than it needs to be, the water tankage isn’t really sufficient to take a lot of showers “off the hook” (not a problem if you are at a campground with full hookups though), and probably the most important drawback to me is that the bathroom floor (and sometimes the walls if you’re not careful) ends up all wet.

Kevin did use the outside shower once (with swimtrunks on) and it worked well, but used more water than we thought it would.  Not a big deal if you have a water hookup available, but the fresh water tank only holds 25 gallons so if you are boondocking for an extended period of time you’d want to watch how much you use.

But I think for a short trip of boondocking in a national park or something like that, two people could probably use the shower once or twice with not too much fuss.  We probably would use it if we were just on a three- or four-day “camping” trip.  But for day-in, day-out use on a long road trip like we are on I think it would get old to have to heat the water each day, then dry out the bathroom when you are done.  Much easier to just use the shower facilities at the RV park.

The shower facilities at RV parks run the gamut – some are incredibly nice (private bath/toilet/sink) while others are more college dorm-style (several small private changing alcoves and shower stalls in a large room).  Cleanliness runs the gamut as well (always wear shower shoes, obviously), but so far we’ve only come across one place where we took a pass.

One item that I am glad we picked up before we left on the trip are our quick-dry Sea to Summit towels.  There’s not a lot of towel rack space in the van to fully dry out the nice fluffy bath towels that we usually use at home.  The quick dry towels are great, although they take some getting used to (think car shammy cloths).

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington

It’s hard not to love Mount Rainier.  With its spectacular meadows full of wildflowers, it seems like the most tranquil place on earth.  But it’s not.  As an active volcano, Mt. Rainier is fraught with danger.  As an active volcano in close proximity to major metropolitan areas, it is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.  It hasn’t erupted since the 1800’s but even a small eruption could release catastrophic volcanic mudflows, as the mountain’s glaciers would melt and push a slurry of deadly debris towards Puget Sound.  (Can you tell we went on a walk with a Doom-and-Gloom Ranger who did his best to scare the bejeesus out of us?)

Putting on a brave face for the camera.

And the dangers just multiply if you are one of the insanely brave (or bravely insane) climbers who attempt the summit.  Crevasses, rockfalls, avalanches, and whiteouts are just some of the conditions you’ll face.  The mountain claims the lives of about two climbers per year, on average.

A team of flea-sized climbers make their way through a snowfield

Dire superlatives aside, Mount Rainier is one of our favorite parks.  There are plenty of hiking trails that reward you with wildlife encounters and gorgeous views of the mountain.

There are also some lovely waterfalls, like Narada Falls.  A cool mist permeates the air around it, making it a perfect stop on a hot day.

And one of my favorite trails in the park leads through the Grove of the Patriarchs.  It’s an easy walk through an old-growth forest of cedars, hemlocks, and Douglas firs.  Some of the trees are 1000 years old.  Not quite as old or as large as the giant Sequoias (which I love) but still very impressive and humbling. 

Awe-inspiring.

Everett, WA: Boeing’s Future of Flight Tour

It’s no secret that Kevin’s a smart guy – he married me, didn’t he?  But seriously, he’s like rocket-scientist smart.  When he was still in college, he had an internship at Boeing, working on the 777.  So it only made sense that while we were here in Washington we should stop in at the Boeing plant and take a tour of his old stomping grounds.

Unfortunately all of his old Boeing cronies are long gone, so we didn’t get the VIP treatment, just the regular tour that’s open to the public.  While we waited for the tour to start, we looked around the state-of-the-art Future of Flight center, which had interactive plane design software, full-scale replicas of the engines, and even a 727 cockpit (fun for kids of all ages!).

Captain Kevin – Don’t call him “Shirley”.

The tour took us inside the main assembly building, the world’s largest building if you measure by volume.  It’s so large you could actually fit all of California’s Disneyland inside it, with room to spare for parking!

They didn’t allow cameras or phones inside the building, but we did see some cool planes parked outside.  This oddly-shaped one is the Dream Lifter – one of four modified 747’s that were built to carry the parts for the new 787.  Parts for the 787 are sourced from all over the world, and each section of the plane (flight deck, tail, fuselage, etc) is pre-assembled elsewhere and transported in a huge chunk to the plant here for final assembly.  You can see the tail is hinged like a door to allow them to load up the enormous cargo. 

We also had a chance to see some of the unpainted 747’s sitting out on the tarmac.  The green color is a protective coating that they wash off before they give the plane the final paint job.

As I mentioned, we weren’t able to bring our own cameras into the assembly building, but I did find some photos on the web.  This is pretty much what the inside of the plant looks like.  Here’s a 777 being assembled.  It was pretty cool to see them assembling one of the planes that Kevin was involved with!

Photo courtesy of johnnyjet.com