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Yellowstone Staycation
We started planning our 10-day Yellowstone vacation over a year ago so that we could get reservations to stay inside the park. Michael took time off work and we were calling it our Yellowstone vacation until he said “Wait, isn’t this our Yellowstone staycation since we live here?” There are 12 campgrounds, but a 30 ft travel trailer pushes the size limit of how many campsites actually fit us, so planning ahead was key. Originally, we were splitting our time between 3 campgrounds, Mammoth (north entrance), Madison (west entrance), and Fishing Bridge (east entrance). Sadly, Yellowstone suffered major flood damage in the northern loop earlier this year and those entrances…
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Wild West Montana
A series of errors on my part led us to Bearmouth RV Park, 35 miles east of Missoula. I think our amazing campsite at Two Medicine in Glacier National Park went to my head and I began to believe every campsite should be that perfect. Months before, I had booked a mediocre campsite in a mediocre state park, which I hastily canceled when I saw a great site open up at a great state park. Afterward, I started to worry about the internet, so I canceled that one too. So, we left Two Medicine early and while Michael drove, I researched private RV parks. We had a long, but beautiful…
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Glacier National Park, Part II
After 10 days on the west side of Glacier National Park, we moved over to the east side to finish out the week. We stayed at St. Mary campground, a no hookup national park campground. Michael took a few vacation days, plus it was his birthday! The St. Mary entrance is connected to the west entrance via the Going to the Sun Road but since our truck alone is over the length restrictions, you obviously can’t tow any kind of trailer, and we took a long way around. The east side of Glacier is bordered by the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, and it feels less crowded and very remote. The prairie…
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Glacier National Park, Part I
One of our main summer destinations this year was Glacier National Park and it was perfect. When I was planning over 6 months ago, I was worried that we’d be dealing with haze and wildfire smoke that frequently occurs in the area. But we had beautiful clear days for the 3 weeks we were there. Ironically, a wildfire increased our time at the park from 2 to 3 weeks when one broke out at our next destination, Flathead Lake. Our Alltrails app tells us that we paddled for 8.5 miles and hiked for 88 miles over 3 weeks (and Michael took nearly a week of vacation over that time). We…
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The Idaho Panhandle
We are currently in our third week at Glacier National National Park in northwest Montana. On our way from the N. Cascades, we broke up the travel with a stop in Idaho’s panhandle. First, we stayed at the Kootenai (KOO-tun-ee) County Fairgrounds on Saturday night so that we could check out the town of Coeur d’Alene (kore-duh-LANE) that afternoon. We didn’t know much about it other than the town is located on a pretty lake and that we’ve seen other tourists wearing CdA t-shirts in our travels. We like staying at fairgrounds when they’re available because they are typically FHU for a much better price than nearby RV Parks. Plus,…
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The North Cascades
We arrived at the North Cascades National Park the last week of June during a 3-day 95-degree “heat dome” AND a park ranger told us that all the hikes I had planned to do were covered in snow and that we should have winter hiking skills and carry an ice ax. Interesting. One paved road, the North Cascades Highway/20, runs east-west through this lightly visited National Park. Most of it is a wilderness that can only be accessed by backpacking or taking a ferry across Ross or Chelan Lakes. There isn’t a lot of infrastructure for visitors and most only see overlooks along Highway 20, which is technically part of…
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Day Trips To Seattle & Mount Rainier National Park
Between our trip to NC and our fridge debacle, we didn’t spend nearly enough time exploring western Washington and it will certainly be a summer destination another year. However, this time around, Rainier View RV Park was about an hour’s drive to both Seattle and Mount Rainier National Park and we were determined to spend a day at each of those. It rained the entire week that we were there in May, but couldn’t let the rain stop us on a weekend day. We started at Pike Place Public Market for breakfast…and stayed for lunch. Since we rarely eat out for convenience, but as more of an activity, we researched…
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A Trip To NC & Camper Projects
We moved from the Oregon coast to Washington and our daily conversations changed from tide tables to “whether or not the mountain was out”. The mountain under discussion, Mount Rainier, happened to be out the day we arrived and it was just breathtaking. Similar to the feeling we had the first time we saw the Grand Canyon or Zion Canyon, which was honestly unexpected. We left our camper at Rainier View RV Park while we flew home to visit our family in May/June. Packing and preparing the camper to be left for a month ended up being a bigger job than we expected. We checked the roof for potential leaks,…
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Cape Perpetua To Cannon Beach, OR
We left Bandon and continued ~125 miles north along the coast to another great campground at South Beach State Park in Newport. About 2/3 into our trip, as we were driving through the Siuslaw National Forest, we came around a turn, saw the Heceta Head Lighthouse, and decided that we would come back to explore this area the next day. The Cape Perpetua Scenic Area is just north of Heceta Head. Some popular Oregon coast landmarks are here – Spouting Horn (left) and Thor’s Well (right), so we spent a couple of hours walking around various viewpoints. South Beach State Park got some extra points in our nonexistent campground rating…
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The Southern Oregon Coast
When we headed west at the end of December, we knew that by May we would either need to start driving back east or plan to fly home for some family time. Eventually, the lure of continuing up the coast won out over the terrifying thought of flying with our cat so we booked a flight out of Seattle. So, state park hopping up the Oregon coast we went. And, WOW! When I said the area around Redwood National and State Parks/Crescent City, CA has to be one of the most beautiful areas of the country, our sentiment continues up into southern Oregon. Oregon’s 1967 “Beach Bill” secured public access…
