pacific northwest

Hello all, I had some time for a nice day hike and physical conditioner the other day. Loaded up my backpack full of my old and (new) backpacking gear. Minus food of course. In order to get my backpacking legs back. I actually felt really good the whole hike and was able to keep a great pace...

Hello all, Got to get out in the nice sunny weather. Still don't quite have the time for backpacking yet but we do have time for some nice day trips. My wife and I went to where I proposed to her. A long Rialto Beach near Hole in the wall. A Rock formation with a literal "hole" in the wall...

Lacey and I hit up the Olympic Peninsula again to get away from it all real quick. The past two weeks have been hectic with the seattle snow. I've racked up 72 overtime hours at work in 6 days plowing snow for the city I work for, something I thought I wouldn't do too much of again (coming from...

The first destination on our trip last summer was Crater Lake National Park. The trip started the first day by leaving Utah and making the 12 hour drive to Lakeview, Oregon. It was a long drive, but it shortened our driving time drastically the second day. We did make a brief stop at the salt...

I went in the middle of June. The West Coast Trail was originally built a century ago as a life saving route in response to the frequent shipwrecks along the southern coast of Vancouver Island facing the Straight of Juan de Fuca. It runs between the Gordon River at Port Renfrew, and Pachena Bay...

I took this summer off to ride my motorcycle up to Alaska and do some backpacking along the way. I left in June, and after seeing some friends in the Seattle area i went to do some hiking on the Olympic Coast. This was my best trip of the whole summer, which was a little bit of a bummer since...

My daughter, Holly, going to school in Seattle, had the great idea that I should come up in the summer and we could explore Rainier National Park. Our research led us to the Wonderland trail, so we decided to apply for the hard to get camping permits that would take us all the way around the...

My daughter and I stopped by this park for a first time quick visit on our way back to Seattle from Glacier NP. We were expecting a point of entry with a booth but never saw one. We drove in from the east and were impressed by the mountain scenery in the fading light of the day but never saw...

The Pacific Northwest did not have a winter this year. That was followed by perhaps the hottest June and July on record. By July, snow was mostly gone. Glaciers were icy or huge crevasses had opened as to make travel perilous or impossible. In this, my 21st, 3 week, July trip to the North...

My wife and I took our first backpacking trip over Labor Day week in 2012. At the beginning of the year I did not even know that North Cascades National Park existed. Hiking, camping, and backpacking were not on my radar. Then I saw a copy of a Backpacker magazine at a newsstand. On the cover...

I had been wanting to do a trip to Eagle Cap for years, so with the husband laid up with a torn achilles, the mutt and I escaped for a long weekend in September. We started at the Two Pan trailhead and set up camp by Sunshine Lake. It was a nice little spot, had it to ourselves. We spent the...

In july my parents told me that they were going to a geocaching event in Seattle in august. So it crossed my mind that perhaps i should catch a ride with them and do some backpacking. They said they could handle that. So i cleared some time off of work. I hadn't planned to do the Wonderland...

Vancouver Island's west coast is an incredible area for adventuring. Vast, rugged, hard to access, complex to navigate and seldom presenting the traveler with favorable conditions, it's a place whose secrets take time, experience and a fair bit of luck to uncover. Sea kayaks are typically...

nick wanted more ideas for the trip he's planning to the Pacific Northwest, so I thought I'd post another fun little spot about an hour or so north of Portland. The Trail of Two Forests is on the south side of Mt St Helens National Volcanic Monument. You miss all of the new eruption geology on...

Another hike from my trip to Oregon. Also cross posted from my blog at www.livevicariouslythroughus.blogspot.com I'm a big fan of slot canyons. As I was researching for the trip, I stumbled on a picture of Oneonta Gorge. It immediately went on the "MUST DO" list for while we were in Oregon...

Posted from my blog at www.livevicariouslythroughus.blogspot.com The next stop on our Oregon trip was at Silver Falls State Park. It's a beautiful and peaceful park, about 30 miles east of Salem. I'm sure it's crowded on the weekends, but in the middle of the week it was very crowd-free. We...