Old Dream Fulfilled

Many years ago when Carol and I were so very sick, we had an important discussion about what was the one thing missing from our life that would make our life better if we could somehow do it again.  We decided it was backpacking.  There was no way we could backpack in the state of health we were in.  But soon we came up with the concept of "backpacking by car."  The idea was simple: create a very easy system for camping in our Toyota Tercel.  We did that and set off on our first "backpacking" trip.  We planed to stay just one night at each campground and be out about five days.  Well, the trip was a big failure.  Our bodies couldn't handle the weather and nighttime temperatures.  We ended up going home before dawn on the first day.  Undeterred, we came up with a new concept: camping in an RV (pickup camper).  We bought the camper for $200.  It was in bad shape, but it had


a comfortable bed and a furnace.  We were able to camp in that rig for years and, while it wasn't quite the adventure backpacking was, it was something that greatly improved our life.

About halfway through this trip to Alaska, we realized that we had been backpacking by car much like we had envisioned it years ago.  With the RTT, we were able to travel as far as we could each day and then just pull over and sack out.  Then we'd get up in the morning and be on our way again in 30 minutes or less.  It felt a lot like backpacking, especially with us travelling in territory that was new to us.  Then, when we got to DNP, the whole experience was closer to backpacking than we could have ever imagined.  This was because we were technically in a wilderness the whole time we were there.  It is amazing sometimes the way things happen.  When we first got married, we wanted live in Bend as soon as I got done with school.  Well, life had some surprise twists and turns and we never made it to Bend.  Then, some 10+ years later, some more twists and turns came along and we were moving to Bend even though it was no longer on our radar screen.

This trip was a real adventure.  It started with getting the car ready for the trip.  That turned out to be more complicated than we had imagined, but all that work made the trip so much more enjoyable.  We were able to adapt to different types of travel.  On the way up to Alaska, we traveled anywhere from 250 to 400 mikes a day and didn't spend more than one day anyplace.  We  then spent seven days in one campground in DNP.  After that things varied until we headed for Montana and started putting on the miles again.  Then we spent over three weeks in one campground in GNP.  Weather conditions varied from hot summer temps to single digits.  We experienced winds over 70 mph and even had to move camp one night because the camp we were in wasn't safe.  We also had a couple heavy snows which were not a problem.  Then, at the end of the trip, we ran up against conditions our equipment couldn't handle very well: ICE.  Zippers don't work well when iced up and we had to figure out ways to deal with that.  Then the tent didn't fold up well when the fabric got stiff due to the ice and cold temps.  We ended up having to close it up as best we could and then use a lot of rope to make sure it didn't come apart as we traveled home.  There was so much ice involved that we still had quite a bit of it three days later when we got back to Bend.  Plus, we did all of that traveling with Striker.  What a trip!