Trip Plans 2016... and Beyond!

If you've ever met my mother, you'll know she's a planner. Like, I cannot even tell you how many times in my life I've heard someone tell me "your mom should be a wedding planner!" or "your mom should be a travel agent!" or something along those lines. She's really good at it, and growing up watching her plan trips all those years inevitably led to me being a serious trip planner as well (as exhibited by #ERT_2015, if nothing else). But as a kid following her plan, and even as an adult following my own plan, I have to say it's really nice. Sure, spontaneity is wonderful and I love that as well, but I feel like when it comes to trips it's really nice to know what you're doing and when you're doing it.
Anyway, my point in all of this is that I've planned out a rough itinerary of our trips for the next, well, okay, fine, 5 years. Hahahaha. Granted we'll probably take more trips than I have planned, but I wanted to allot time for big road trips especially. Thankfully Brady gets a lot of PTO at his new job, and the Salomon store is the most chill about time off. Yay. So, without further ado, enjoy our little trip plans...

MAY 7 - 15 - Jen's Birthday Trip! Channel Islands National Park, Disneyland (you're welcome, Brady), and visiting Brady's grandpa and grandma Eagar in Santa Ynez

SEPTEMBER 17 - 25 - "4 Corners" Road Trip - Mighty 5, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Four Corners, and Mesa Verde

8 parks, 9 days. You know, the usual.

2017

JANUARY 9-13 - Mountain Collective Trip - Ski Banff/Sunshine Village/Lake Louise

JUNE 2-11 - CORT (Colorado National Park Road Trip) - was supposed to be this summer but we opted for Channel Islands and time with grandparents instead! Easily postponed. And yes, I suppose I could have just done this one in the fall of 2016, but I want to go in June primarily due to Medano Creek in Great Sand Dunes actually running during that time. So 2017 it is.

AUGUST 18-21 - SOLAR ECLIPSE VIEWING EXTRAVAGANZA! I'm alternating between summiting the Grand Teton, backpacking the Teton Crest Trail, or just being lame and going to Tetonia or something. I refuse to go into the park unless I'm in the high alpine or backcountry because it's just going to be way too insane. Seeing a total solar eclipse is a major bucket list item for me.

OCTOBER ish - Dry Tortugas National Park, probably. It's difficult to get to. We'd probably throw Biscayne and the Everglades in there too.

2018

JUNE 1-10 - CANP (California National Parks) - no, we're not doing all of them, but as is my style, we're doing a whole bunch in a loop, plus Great Basin.

OCTOBER 15-19 - Texas + New Mexico National Parks 

2019

JULY OR AUGUST (probably August) - AK Mega Trip - might as well get those suckers out of the way before we have to start hauling babies around on bush planes

2020

EUROPE! At some point in the summer. Brady is gunning for Scandinavia, I'm pushing for Mediterranean cruise but would be happy with Scandinavia too.

2021 (yes I was serious about 5 years)

MAY 3-13 - HAWAII 3-0 oh my crap

Obviously this is nowhere near a definitive list, but these are kind of the biggies. Oh and New Zealand 2024 for the year of our 10th anniversary, for like a month.

And, yeah... I wasn't kidding about being a planner. Thanks, mom!

#ERT_2015 Day 14 - Drive Home

Deciding to stay at Crater Lake for the night and sleep was an excellent choice! Haha. We headed out bright and early on our exciting adventure home. We saw a lot of smoke from forest fires :(, a lot of trees, and after a while, a lot of sage brush. Hahaha. After a long time, we finally made it home, alive and in one piece! Amazing.

Nevada. It's pretty in its own right, I suppose.

All told, we drove just over 4500 miles and just over 101 hours. We visited 13 national parks in both the US and Canada in 14 days, visited 2 countries, 2 provinces, 7 states, and 2 time zones. We took thousands of photos, lot of video, and listened to a LOT of Sirius XM (it worked in Canada!). It was a crazy whirlwind of a trip, and while there are certainly thing I'd do differently given the chance, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have experienced so many amazing places and things, and I'm super grateful to everyone who made it possible! It was so rewarding to have all of the time and energy I spent planning the trip to pay off so well. Now, it's on to the next adventure! (Alaskan cruise? Colorado road trip? California road trip? Who knows.) And if you ever need a road trip planned, give me a call. It's sort of become my specialty. ;)

#ERT_2015 Day 13 - Toketee Falls and Crater Lake National Park

This morning got off to a bit of a slow start, but we weren't in too much of a hurry. We stopped at Walmart to get some quick last-minute supplies for our group dinner in the evening and snacks for the way home the next day. After about a three hour drive, we stopped at Toketee Falls and Umpqua Hot Springs. An adventure photographer of mine, Josh Hydeman, lives in Oregon and has taken some really cool pictures of Toketee Falls, so I was determined to 'follow in his footsteps.' The trek down to the base of the falls was sketchy (to say the very least), but completely worth it. On a hotter day with more time I would've spent hours there! The other car went to the hot springs, and we met them there.

Best morning views.

Fresh blackberries with breakfast! (Side note, I'm sad Ivy and I never got a matching QALO ring picture, haha.)

This is what you see of Toketee Falls from the viewing platform you hike to.

This is what you see when you're brave and scramble to the bottom!

After the falls and the hot springs, we headed to Crater Lake. Like Mount Rainier, if you've never been there, you'll never understand how huge it is. It's MASSIVE! I was so excited for the "big reveal" after reading Wild (by Cheryl Strayed), and it didn't disappoint. You crest a ridge, and BAM there it is. And it's big and beautiful and so incredibly blue. Unfortunately there were several very large wildfires nearby, and right as we arrived the wind shifted, so by the time we got on the Rim Drive, you could barely see to the other side of the lake. It was still beautiful, and I would love to do the drive again with a bit more time (getting behind schedule is rough).

This was two weeks after we were there. :( So sad.

We sat here for a bit discussing how we thought they got the boats down to the lake (it's super steep). In case you were wondering, they built them on Wizard Island (the big island) and helicoptered in the motors. The more you know, right?

After the Rim Drive, we headed back to camp for our last group dinner. (Ivy made curry, it was delicious!) The other car decided they wanted to drive through the night to get home earlier, but I wanted to get a good night's sleep before driving for 11 hours straight (I drove pretty much the entire trip, except for crossing the border into Canada, I was weirdly worried that they would give me crap for not having a passport as the driver), so we stayed the night.

#ERT_2015 Day 12 - Oregon Coast

Our first stop this morning was Cannon Beach. If you've ever seen the Goonies, you'll recognize it. (Goonies never say die!)

Some intense wind must rip through here!

Yes. I lounged on the beach in the sun the entire time. It felt amazing.

These little bikes looked like so much fun!

Ally found this cool dead crab in the tidepools. He was big!

After enjoying a decent portion of the morning on the beach or tidepooling, we headed down to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for a tour and some lunch! It was cool to see the huge blocks of cheese, try samples, and have a cheeseburger with fresh cheese on it - YUM.

After lunch, we headed down the coast to the Devil's Punchbowl. The tide was pretty low, so it wasn't cool as I had hoped, but it provided a good potty break and another chance to enjoy some fresh ocean air.

Crazy tree!

This is what it looks like when the tide is up. 

After that, it was off to Thor's Well, which was actually one of the coolest things we saw the whole trip! There was some great tidepooling there as well, but I'll let the video show you what Thor's Well is, because pictures just can't capture it!

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Pointing out the sea stars to Brady.

Brady got hit by a HUGE wave. At least his bum stayed dry!

After that, we headed to the sand dunes to play. Oh my goodness. If you ever take a trip to Oregon, you MUST find a way to visit the sand dunes! You have to! It was legitimately one of the coolest places I've ever been. I could easily spend an entire day there just playing and being goofy. There's something about sand dunes that brings out your inner child. We spent at least an hour there and could have easily spent more!

Gorgeous Oregon Coast views. Pictures do it no justice.

Climbing up this dune was HARD! It was at least 100 feet.

Brady: "Oh look, my wife is climbing something. What a surprise."

I know it doesn't really look it, but that tree was HIGH. I was a little too chicken to climb to the highest branch (even though I'm sure I would've been fine if I had).

Me: "Oh look, my husband dug a huge hole. What a surprise."

After a fun time at the sand dunes, we headed down to Sunset Bay State Park to camp. State parks in Oregon are the bomb deezy, seriously. I definitely would camp at Sunset Bay again!