Gained my Independence on the 4th of July

Jeremy P.

Adventurer
After planning and dreaming about it for a long time, I finally quit my job, with the 4th of July being my last official day of work (conveniently a holiday!) Our immediate plans consisted of a couple family reunions in different parts of the countr(ies) and our longer term plans involve travel to some new places not decided upon yet. My family (wife, 3 yr old daughter, 1 1/2 yr old son) and I immediately set off on a trip to my wifes family reunion in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin camping:
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After about a week of hanging out with family we started heading toward home in Colorado with a detour through Rapid City to visit some friends.
We decided to stop at Wall Drug in South Dakota since I have driven by all the signs on the Interstate in the past. An interesting place with plenty of souvenirs for the tourists and gigantic jackalopes:
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There is a great place called Storybook Island in Rapid City which the kids loved. It has characters from all different fairy tales.
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We made the obligatory stop at Mt Rushmore and then headed toward home, camping at a state park just outside of Ft. Collins.

3100 miles and two weeks and the first reunion trip was complete. We are so lucky the kids travel well. More to come...
 
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Jeremy P.

Adventurer
After getting back from our trip to the midwest we had a week at home. In that time we prepped the house and posted it for sale, and I performed a bunch of maintenance on the 4runner as well as added a group 31 battery, fuse block, and wiring to the cargo area for an indel B 50 quart fridge. I also reorganized our camping gear into 4 large bins to carry on a hitch hauler. Tent camping with two small kids requires a lot of extra gear! I also can't stand it when I can't find anything in the vehicle after the 2nd day on the road.

We were heading to Edmonton, Alberta for another family reunion and took four days to make the 1500 mile journey north. The first night was spent at relatives in Lander, WY. The next day we passed through Yellowstone with a few stops at some of the sites, then found a place to camp in Gallatin National Forest north of Yellowstone.
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The next day was spent heading north through Montana, staying just south of Glacier National Park. We made a quick trip into Many Glacier to see the Lodge and hang out for a bit before completing the journey to Edmonton.
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We spent the weekend reconnecting with extended family at a camp outside the city, which was really great. Now our plans include heading to Jasper for a few days camping with my parents, then heading to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Northwest Washington to visit with siblings. We don't really have set plans and I would like to try to get off the beaten path a bit, so if anyone has any suggestions of things to see or do I welcome the input!
 

Jeremy P.

Adventurer
Jasper National Park

If you want to get up close and personal with elk, Jasper is a good place for it. I have been to Jasper a few times in the past, and the thing I remember most is the elk that seem to be all over the town, doing their best to ignore the swarming tourists. We didn't see any in town this time, but they were all over the campground when we arrived. As if I didn't already have enough work keeping a 20 month old boy out of trouble...
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There are many hiking trails and biking trails (I kept wishing I had my mountain bike along!) in the Jasper area. We did a 4.5 km hike around the valley of the five lakes, which loops around picturesque mountain lakes.
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After a couple nights of camping and having to pack the tent up in the rain, we headed down the icefields parkway. It was cloudy and rained off and on, but the views were still dramatic.
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Lake Louise:
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We located a free campground just north of Golden, BC called waitabit creek using the Allstays campground and RV app. You can also look up recreation sites in BC using the site http://www.sitesandtrailsbc.ca/default.aspx but its a little more difficult to navigate and hard to do while on the road. We snagged a great site right beside the river and luckily the weather turned sunny so the tent and gear could dry out. We spent a bit of time exploring some of the logging roads in the area, of which there are many.
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We are now in Kelowna to stay with my Aunt and Uncle for a couple days before continuing to the Vancouver area.
 

m(a)ce

Adventurer
congratulations on your newly found freedom! looks like you're thoroughly enjoying the outdoors & family time. :)


delivered by winged monkeys
 

theburtseoni

Observer
Best thing you can give your kids is a love for travel, camping, adventure, the outdoors, nature and then the life long resulting memories they will cherish forever! As a grandparent now, I commend your bravery for tent camping with the little ones. It seems many years ago we did the same when our kids were little. Now I like a few amenities that a small RV provides when it's raining, too hot or too cold, etc.
But- this will be a great adventure for the kids. :) Will look forward to your travels and updates!
 

Jeremy P.

Adventurer
Traffic
One thing that I have not grown used to is sitting in traffic. I have been fortunate enough to live where I have not had to deal with much traffic, but when traveling you have to deal with what you come across. What really is frustrating is travelling a secondary highway in the middle of Montana, not seeing another car for an hour, then being stopped for 'construction' which mostly consists of a sign holder. Or being delayed for an hour on the Coquihalla in British Columbia because someone decided to speed and kill himself by losing control.
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The ferry to Vancouver Island is something I remember as a kid, mostly because we would rush from home to catch a certain ferry, only to wait through a sailing or two because of the volume of traffic. This last friday we decided to make our way over to the Island to visit my brother without thinking about the fact that it was friday, which meant waiting for about three hours to get on the ferry. So where did we end up after all that waiting? Last vehicle on the boat, much to our relief and to the consternation of the person who was in line behind us:
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Over the last week we have spent a couple days in Kelowna, a couple days in Vancouver, a couple days in Lynden, Washington and now in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.

A must see if you have kids and are traveling on the Trans Canada highway near Revelstoke is the Enchanted Forest. All sorts of characters and structures based on fairy tales and nursery rhymes keep the kids entertained:
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Most of the fairy tale houses are kid sized:
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We spent some time on Granville Island in Vancouver:
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And my brother and I explored some logging roads (some slightly overgrown) to find some interesting vehicle-testing spots:
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I forgot how clean the rivers and lakes are on the Island because the waterways are relatively short and there is an abundance of precipitation. You can usually see the bottom ten feet down. We were able to locate a seldom used swimming hole on the Nanaimo river and lounge around for a bit:
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We haven't decided what we will do exactly over the next few days, but it will probably involve large trees and amazing landscapes!
 
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Jeremy P.

Adventurer
So what could be better than going to a pub that involves a boat ride across the harbor? That's what you do to go to the Dinghy Dock Pub, which also has really good seafood.
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The size of this yacht was impressive:
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The float planes regularly landing and taking off held the attention of my son:
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Jeremy P.

Adventurer
During our stay in Nanaimo, we visited Cathedral Grove north of Nanaimo to get our big tree fix.
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After a few days we headed south then west from Nanaimo to go through Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

We camped between Port Renfrew and Sooke then continued to Victoria.
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The Black Ball ferry between Victoria and Port Angeles saves a lot of time getting to the Olympic peninsula vs going through Vancouver and Seattle. It ends up looking like a jigsaw puzzle at the end of the ferry though because the cars drive on from the side of the ship and they pack in as many as they can.
I ended up parked in the opposite direction from where you unload.
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We spent some time in Olympic National Park and looped around the west side of the park.

Hurricane Ridge:
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Ruby Beach was very nice.
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Campgrounds are jam packed at this time of the year along the coast, especially ones that take reservations. Sometimes you need to look inland a bit for a place to camp. One night we still found a waterfront campground, it just happened to be along Lake Quinault instead of the ocean. The next night we found a decent campground at bruceport park which is on a bay, but about 150 feet above it and the shoreline mostly consisted of mud and rock. You take what you can get sometimes.

We discovered that there was a huge kite festival in Long Beach, Washington and enjoyed looking at the variety of kites.
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I also had some fun driving along the beach for a while since there are stretches of beach open to vehicles:
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How much busier could it get, between families getting their last camping trips in before school and a huge kite festival? In Astoria we first thought everything was booked solid because it was the weekend. In fact it turned out that it was prime fishing season, and also the Hood to Coast relay race was that weekend, which is a 200 mile relay race involving 12,000 participants. We ended up relegated to the Warrenton city park which was popular with the fishing crowd, who also liked to drink late into the night. I guess the city figured that if people were desperate enough to have to camp there, they could also gouge people for $28 a night for a patch of rough grass and overflowing porta-johns that were out of toilet paper. Worst and most expensive campsite of the trip. This was one of those days where I was ready and willing to spend some time exploring the forest lands south of Astoria, but the significant other prefers knowing that we have a place to set up camp.

The Astoria Column:
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Driving out to Rogue Ales Public House:
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Cool sandcastle on Canon Beach:
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If you are going to visit the coast, one thing you should keep in mind is the marine layer of fog that forms overnight and then seems to take until late morning or early afternoon to burn off. People will tell you 'the Oregon coast is so beautiful!' but then fail to mention 'for the few hours it is clear and still warm enough to enjoy it!' The coast is very beautiful, but best enjoyed in the afternoon when you don't need to be bundled up in sweat shirts and long pants.

At this point we decided to turn inland since we have some commitments back at home at the end of the month. We found a nice county park campground just outside of Hood River, where there had apparently just been a large windsurfing competition since it seemed like everyone had a surfboard on the roof. Something I have started realizing is it can be worthwhile to look up an events schedule for the areas to be traveled through, either to avoid crowds or to know when to join the fun.

We then put in some miles to make it to Boise, and will be continuing back to Colorado over the next couple days. Does anyone have camping recommendations for the Salt Lake region?
 
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