After quite a hiatus from our truck in Argentina and from writing anything here, we are now back to our home and on the road again. It feels great and we are both elated to be here. The flights went smoothly, they are nothing compared to the long trecks back and forth to NZ & Australia and there’s really no time change so it makes it easy. We set off yesterday toward Cordoba after a day of rest, bbq chicken, a restock especially of Mendoza wine which we love and some cash. We’re excited to be getting back to our hiking routine and seeing new places. Also hoping we’ll meet up with great friends Mark & Liesbet in Paraguay perhaps.
While we spent the first 2 months in the US building out a small camper for use there and working hard to get it done in that amount of time, we did get to lighten up and have more free time for the latter part of what was the longest visit back we’ve ever made in the 14 years we’ve been traveling full time. On the way across the country in the new camper, we got an offer on our land in VT that changed our plans somewhat as we knew we would have to return to VT to clear off our belongings. But until that time, we kept on moving westward.
After visiting Rocky Mtn NP which I wrote about last time, we headed to Oregon to visit Mary & David and my nephews. Along the way, we stopped at the Bear River bird refuge to see the pelicans that live there. In a little museum there, we learned that the first airboat was actually developed there in Idaho rather than Florida where you associate them most. And the conditions under which they developed it are ironic. It explains it in this museum exhibit.
Dean was working on his private pilot license, which he got. Meanwhile, we tabled our plans for this year. We spent a weekend up in Moscow, ID seeing Reilly & Cadi and their new house. One of the places we visited that weekend was an old growth cedar forest where they have a 3000 year old tree. Something moving about something standing there for so many years. After a few days at Mary’s house we headed to Mt Hood in Oregon to backpack the Timberline Trail which makes a 40 mile loop around the mountain. Built by the CCC, it is a well made trail and you don’t need a special permit to do it which is nice. We had perfect weather and over the course of 4 full days, we saw a lot of spectacular scenery, covered the miles while chatting away, and added another backpacking memory to our list or trips done together. We don’t usually have anyone else who will backpack with us other than Mary and we love to hike together. We celebrated our finish with clams and burgers at a great riverside restaurant in Mt Hood.
The day after we finished the trail, Jon & I flew from Portland, OR to Boston on a red eye and rented a moving truck the next morning. Over a week, we cleared off everything we had stored in our little Amish building and two storage sheds, making numerous trips to the thrift store, the dump and also filled up the truck with our keepsakes. Camping up there in our little building brought back the memories of building out part of the Vermonster there over 6 months of summer and we reminisced the privacy, peacefulness and beauty of the land. But, we need to move on. We got to have 3 more nights with my parents over good dinners. Then we were off driving BACK across the US again, this time in a noisy truck towing Jon’s old MGB on a dolly. We dropped everything in Boise at our new, big storage unit that holds everything and then carried on to Portland to reunite with our camper. It felt like a marathon but we were so happy to have it go smoothly and be done with it. When we had picked up the rental truck, it had a check engine light and a slow leak in one of the tires and we felt sure there’d be no way it would stay intact for the trip. But it did!
On the morning we dropped the truck off, we made a beeline for the Banks to Vernonia bike path outside of Portland as we were chomping at the bit for exercise. We got new bikes for the new camper and were anxious to ride them as much as we could. It’s an old rail trail that runs 22 miles and has some old fashioned bridges. After another hike the next morning, we headed to Yacolt to see some cruising friends Bob & Ann off SV Charisma. We crossed the Pacific together. We had an awesome night together gathered around their home made pizza oven and invited another set of friends John & Lisa and it was good to hang out together once again. I never got any pics.
After that we snuck in a hike to Tunnel Falls along the Columbia River Gorge which is a beautiful trail and crystal clear river. Then stopped for a night at Mary & David’s again because Dean’s wife Sydney was home for a visit and we could see her briefly.
No visit back to the US would be complete without a stop in McCall to spend some time with Mark & Anne. We did a flying trip to one of our favorite places, Big Creek Lodge for a BIG breakfast, we did some bike rides and socializing, then headed off on a roadtrip to Anacortes to spend a few days on their boat seeing some of the San Juan Islands. We visited Sucia Island, which is full of trails. It brought back memories of boating up in Maine because the scenery and climate is similar. Jon & I took out our packrafts that we’d gotten for use in the US and explored the harbor. We saw seals and a few otters. Then we moved to Roque Harbor on the big island which is a bit fancier with a sculpture garden, a cute waterfront and a restaurant tourist scene.
When the weather turned, we put the boat away and drove to Bellingham to visit more sailing friends, Val & Stan. I think we first met them in NZ but we also did the Indonesia Rally together and they’ve since settled there with a beautiful house. We took the rainy day to see F1 on IMAX and rounded off the evening with a delicious homemade meal of spanakopita since Val is a gourmet cook. I never got a pic of this either!
From there, we headed to Winthrop to meet up with our friend Heather & her husband Lal. We walked the nice little western town, took a walk across Heather’s family land and then took the packrafts out to float a little bit of the Methow river. I love doing this and it was a beautiful day. Heather also showed us a video of her rafting trip down the full length of the Colorado as it goes through the Grand Canyon and it planted a seed. We’d like to do the same one day.
Then we said goodbye to Mark & Anne for a few days and to Heather and headed off to North Cascades NP to get some hiking miles in. We did a full day on the PCT up at Washington Pass and to Blue Lake and it felt good to be in the woods. It is a beautiful part of the country and the air smells like balsam. We camped at the visitor center in Newhalem where they have a pretty network of old growth forest trails. I’ve been wanting to go to Stehekin for years. It is a little village in WA adjacent to North Cascades and you can only get to it by hiking in or ferrying up Chelan Lake. The park service has a large presence there and they care for the trails and orchard. We talked to the staff at the visitor center and made a plan.
As it’s hard to get a permit to backpack to it, we parked the camper and took the ferry with our backpacks instead. And we could bring the packrafts too. We spent 4 days in Stehekin hiking all over, visiting the old apple orchard, doing a really long and high hike up to Purple Pass and beyond to Boulder Butte, visiting the best bakery we’ve ever been to hands down and relaxing a litte bit in our campsites talking with PCT hikers. By the time they get here, they only have 80 miles left out of 2650. They can see the light at end of the tunnel and it’s fun to talk to them about their experience. I’d love to do it, but it isn’t worth being away from Jon for even a day much less months so it’s unlikely I would ever do it. The orchard is beautiful and we talked with a ranger who said that the apples basically get divided up 3 ways. A third to the people who come to pick them during the apple festival, a third to the deer who make the orchard their home and a third to the bears who come in at the end of the season to fatten up for winter. I think thats fair!
We took the packrafts out on 2 of the days. One was to raft down the Stehekin river which isn’t the easiest of rivers as it is full of log snags and narrow sections. It moves fast but the rapids are small which is what we need for our lightweight rafts. At one point, Jon tried to avoid running into a log by grabbing hold of if to pass but that only served to flip him into the water. While he got himself back in the raft, I picked up the drybag and water bottle and we continued on down the river. It was a blast and we would have done it again the next day except we couldn’t catch the bus back to the ferry in time. While I wanted to get pics of the rapid sections, I had the phone put away for obvious reasons.
We paddled the lake early in the morning when the light was still pretty and the lake flat calm. There are pictographs on the cliff walls too. The whole trip felt like a vacation and we had such a great time together. If you get a chance to go to Stehekin it really is a neat little getaway.
We spent a couple more days at in McCall visiting Mark & Anne before heading to Boise to start getting ready to put the camper away until the next time we’re back in the US. We had ordered cushions for the camper from an upholsterer in Boise several weeks prior and we were excited to pick them up. However, it seems making RV cushions wasn’t his specialty and it was one issue after another and the final product was pretty bad! Well at least we have something soft to sit on now and that’s about it.
We did some truck maintenance and then headed down to the Snake River to get out of the city for the night. Even though it is desert, the river has a certain feel and we really like it, especially the peachy colors and the quietness of it all. We hiked up into the hills knowing it would be the last we’d see of that area for a while now. We toasted to a successful, albeit long trip back to the US to see family & friends. We wish things were different in our home country though. It has a creepy edge to it and we don’t think it is going to get anything but worse.
One last thing I wanted to do before we left was float the Boise River again. You can park in a park and take a shuttle upriver 6 miles to another park and then float back down to your car. It’s such a fun thing to do and the vibe of everyone doing it is great.
Then it was time to put the truck away and fly to Miami. We flew in at dusk and the city was glittering gold. I grew up there and have so many memories there it always feels good at first. Then I remember I’m not the same person I was then. I need more open space than that. We rented a car and drove to Vero Beach to spend a week with Jon’s mom. Everything was normal in that we didn’t capture the moments on film but we had a nice visit together. As usual, we cooked together, played with KL, took walks together, got some decent Mexican food and did some shopping together. Florida has great bird life and the ponds at Jon’s mom’s development encourage them to live there.
We also had a get together with my nieces Nichole & Michelle. Nichole & Gil were kind enough to have us over for lunch so we could all catch up. It was a great afternoon.
We spent 3 more days with my sister Ann and her partner Bruce. We had decided that we wanted to swim the Fort Pierce inlet, the Blue Heron Bridge in Palm Beach and then visit together on her boat in Indiantown. So we did all of those things on the respective days. With recent rains, the water wasn’t as clear as it should have been but we still saw lots of fish, conch, crabs, shrimp and starfish. Blue Heron Bridge is famous for shallow scuba dives looking for critters like seahorses, nudibranchs and sea robins. I’d like to come back there and dive it just to be able to study things closely. On the Ft Pierce swim day, we did a long swim and sat on a very shallow shoal and talked away an hour or more with the current at our back and then swam the rest of our loop. It’s hard to explain how much I love to do this kind of stuff. And my sister Ann is a true swimming addict. We gorged on great food from Fresh Market, hung out on her boat, swam in the pool and enjoyed each other’s company. Jon & I spent 2 weeks on our honeymoon on her boat cruising the Bahamas with her and that planted the seed that got us in to sailing. Later that year, we bought our first sailboat and the rest was history. It was a great visit.
Our time was up. We returned the car to Miami airport and flew all night to Mendoza. It was another beautiful day to cross the Andes. I will miss these mountains. We got picked up from the airport by Valentin’s daughter Marlene, the place where we store our truck. Our truck was just as we’d left it. Stored inside, it’s such a great deal. We were so ready to be here.
As we walked around the corner to the grocery store, a couple of guys doing construction on the parking lot came over to chat and asked where we were from. When we told them they said, there’s a lot of guns and violence there isn’t there? Sadly, yes. To me, no news is good news.
Then they walked over to their BBQ where they were grilling pork and fixed us both a sandwich with a squeeze of lemon. What a welcome home.
