The Big Adventure: Part 5

On the 7^th, we rented some more aggressive full suspension bikes to tackle some of Whistler’s all mountain trails. We started from Lost Lake on a recommended route that passes through several trail systems. With nearly 6 inches of travel, Alisha was feeling ready for some more aggressive riding and on my Specialized Enduro I was also feeling confident busting some moves that could not have been done on a hardtail. From Lost Lake, we headed through the Emerald Forest and Cut Your Bars. However, the spectacular trail of the day was A River Runs Through It which is some classic black diamond Whistler singletrack with boardwalks, planks, jumps, drops, and even some crazy things like teeter totters. In many areas, there was often an easy line and a difficult line over obstacles. In many cases, I was able to clear the more difficult line but there were also some sections that were still way beyond my level. Riding some narrow twisting planks five feet off the ground in sections was both unnerving and exciting. The other obstacle to scare/excite me was the teeter totter bridge. The skies were cloudy and we saw almost no one despite this being one of Whistler’s most famous trails. As we headed back for some lunch, the rain started to fall. We went out again in the afternoon when it let up a bit and found out just how difficult riding over wet roots can be. Alisha’s riding was dramatically improved as she was able to conquer many difficult sections of trails. We camped in the Cal-Cheak walk in campground ten miles south of Whistler right by the river and pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

On the 8^th, we decided it was time to tackle Whistler’s mountain bike park. We rented full on 8 inches of travel downhill bikes, put on body armor and full face helmets, and bought tickets to ride the lifts. Whistler’s DH park is one of the most famous in the world with tons of trails and talented riders. One ride down a “green” fire-road style trail on the first run was enough to make Alisha realize that she was ready for some blue intermediate routes. A good one that we hit first was the B Line which has tons of banked turns and some jumps. However, our favorite for the day was the famous Crank it Up trail which has fantastic flow and lots of jumps. The jumps are such that you can control your speed and roll them without major air if you want. I am not a good jumper and spent the day practicing getting more air. Fortunately, the DH bikes have lots of suspension if you land too much on your front or rear wheel. We also took a higher lift up to some additional trails like Blue Velvet. I tried a black diamond technical trail for one section just to put my skills to the test. It was super burly. Once again, I was very proud of Alisha who rode the DH trails like a champ all day.

Whistler’s high mountain peaks and fantastic trails made it one of our favorite destinations and one of my favorite ski resort towns. However, it was finally time to leave on the 9^th and we spent a long day in the car driving down through Vancouver, Seattle, and then across North Cascades National Park and over to Cour de Alene Idaho. The North Cascades did have some good views, but to be honest I think the mountains in Whistler were actually much prettier to look at than those in the National Park. I told Alisha that we had seen so many amazing mountains and views on the trip that we had gotten spoiled.

We spent the 10^th in Cour de Alene and started the day off with a hike near the campground up Mineral Ridge to get a great view of the lake. Next, we headed into town where we got some lunch and rented paddle boards. We also did a bit of swimming. We were feeling lazy in the afternoon and laid in the park for a while. In the evening, we went to the movies for a rare taste of the civilized world.

We left Cour de Alene on the 11^th for some more driving. However, our main adventure of the day was riding the Hiawatha Trail about 30 miles east of town. This is a famous rails-to-trails section where long dark tunnels and high rising tressels have been converted into a bike path. The longest tunnel was the Taft Tunnel and at 1.7 miles long, it feels like you are riding through a cold mine shaft with no light on the other side and it’s quite an experience. The route was 30 miles and very scenic but completely nontechnical and the opposite of our recent Whistler riding. We continued driving and got some pizza in Missoula and a hotel in Butte which still looks a lot like an old mining town.

 

We drove into Yellowstone on the 12^th and quickly realized what a busy park it is in mid-July. Despite getting there early, many of the campgrounds were already full and we got the second to last spot in Indian Springs which was considerably north of where we had originally planned to stay. Our northern proximity made the afternoon well suited for a trip up to Mammoth Hot Springs near the north end of the park. There are many springs and red and white terraces which are pretty although not quite as exciting as the geysers farther south. We got some ice cream and went to the very old and not updated visitors center in the area as well.

On the 13^th, we drove south to Old Faithful and the main geyser basins of Yellowstone. We arrived just before Old Faithful went off. After checking out a much better visitor’s center than the previous day, we went on a hike around the geyser basin that we timed to catch some of the geysers along the way. We saw Daisy and Riverside as expected, and then as an added bonus saw Castle and Lion. This section of the park is so unique and is like nothing else in the world (and was why Yellowstone was my favorite national park as a kid). We hit the other geyser basins in the afternoon to see huge springs colored by heat and algae, boiling mudpots, and steaming fumeroles.

We spent the 14^th touring the north and east sides of Yellowstone. Right as we were leaving the campground there was a huge male bison standing next to the roadway. Near Tower Falls, we pulled over to see a petrified tree trunk and wound up with the bonus of getting to see a black bear eating roots in the valley below. After a brief stop at Tower Falls, we hiked up Mt. Washburn. The trail follows an old road and so it is pretty wide but there were some nice wildflowers and mountain goats along the way and some good 360 degree views from the top. After having some lunch in Canyon Village, we went out to Artists Point to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which has some very unique yellow and orange sides. We hiked a bunch of stairs down Uncle Tom’s trail to get down into the canyon for views of the lower falls. We went to Norris Geyser Basin on the way back which was nice because it was late in the day and few people were out on the boardwalks. Norris is the hottest of the geyser basins but lacks the regular geysers of other areas in the park. 

On the 15^th, we took the long way out of Yellowstone by heading over to the east side of the park near Yellowstone Lake. On the way we stopped to see a grizzly bear alongside the road. After seeing the grizzly, we encountered a traffic jam as we encountered a huge bison herd crossing the road. I joked to Alisha that you could predict the wildlife by the level of traffic jam that it caused. Elk would be a 10 car jam, bison a 25 car jam, and a grizzly a 100 car jam. At the lake, we toured the geyser basin in the area. It had a lot of nice pools including one called Fishing Cone in which fishermen used to be able to catch a fish from the lake and then dip the fish in the cone to cook in the hot water. In the afternoon we made our way south into Grand Teton National Park. We found a campsite at Coulter Bay, went on a little walk near the bay, and got some advice from a ranger about doing a big hike the next day.

On the 16^th, we were ready for our biggest hike of the trip. We took the shuttle boat across Jenny Lake and started up Cascade Canyon. The glacially carved canyon was gorgeous with tall peaks on all sides and a stream down the middle. We saw a bear near the start of the hike and later a moose eating down by the water. As we got closer to Lake Solitude, the canyon became steeper. We went across numerous boulder fields where lots of marmots lived in the rocks. We stopped at Lake Solitude for lunch which is a beautiful glacial lake that is surrounded by tall cliffs and makes for an amazing panorama. The initial plan was just to turn around here, however we realized from looking at the map that we could take a trail that climbed over the spine of the mountain which eventually looped back to where we started. The climb up the Paintbrush Divide was steep and rocky but the views were incredible. We crossed over the spine of the mountain and across numerous snow banks. The sky was gray all day which offered pleasant temperatures and we got rained on briefly a couple of times. We came down Paintbrush Canyon past other lakes and ultimately looped around past String Lake back to Jenny Lake. The trip was just over 20 miles and we were tired by the end but it was an epic hike.

It rained in the night and on the 17^th we weren’t sure what sort of adventure we would be able to do because the weather looked like it might turn nasty. We packed up and drove south to Jackson Hole and as we traveled the clouds lifted and soon it was sunny and we were thinking that it might even be a bit too hot. We went out on an amazing mountain bike loop in Jackson Hole that goes up Cache Creek and drops down Game Creek. The ascent was moderate and when the downhill started it just kept going and going. We flowed through fields of wildflowers on tight singletrack and alongside a river where we saw a moose. The final five miles were on the paved path that runs through the city and which took us back to the start. It was hot when we returned and we wanted to float the river but couldn’t find a good way to get shuttled upstream or to rent tubes. Instead, we settled for a swim in the river and dinner at an interesting restaurant called the Lotus Café. We camped just south of Jackson in a national forest campground on the Snake River.

 

With the adventures behind us, we drove to Logan on the 18^th to see family. We spent a fun day with Alisha’s sister Mandy, her husband Shane, and their two little ones Brody and Elsie. Kids nowdays love to play on tablets and I taught Brody how to play chess and downloaded him a chess app which he was really interested in (and I was impressed because he is only 5). On the 19^th, we drove into SLC and met up with both Alisha’s family and my family who happened to be in the area at the same time. In the evening, we went to see a cool concert in the Conference Center. On the 20^th, we did a run near the hotel around Wheeler Farm with Alisha’s sister Amber and her husband Devin who have gotten really fit and are into running. After breakfast, the whole family headed over to the Wheeler Farm area for some family pictures which is always an exciting ordeal with lots of young and hyper kids. After the pictures, the kids got to have some fun as Wheeler Farm has a lot of animals for kids to check out. The best was that the kids all got to feed the ducks and geese who came up really close for their food. In the evening, we drove down to Cedar City. We had dinner with my family including my grandparents who were attending the Shakespearian Festival in the area. Finally, 9 hours of driving on the 21^st and our road trip was over. However, the trip was the vacation of a lifetime and quite an adventure. Near the end, we compiled a few statistics about our big adventure.

Miles driven: 6,100

States visited: 10

National Parks visited: 9

The Big Adventure: Part 4

On the 29^th we disembarked the Norwegian Jewel and made our way back through Seattle to our hotel south of town where our car was parked. We did some laundry and a bit of trip planning for the next leg of the adventure and then jumped in the car and headed north. We found a campground near Anacortes called Washington Park and got one of the last campsites. After setting up camp, we took the mountain bikes to a great nearby trail system around Cranberry Lake. These trails were perfect for Alisha because they were intermediate level with some challenges that were mostly doable and they were some sweet singletrack in the dense Washington forest.

We woke up on the 30^th and headed to the ferry terminal in Anacortes to catch the 9 am ferry to San Juan island with our bikes. On the ferry, we met two very nice cyclists from Seattle who were very familiar with cycling in the San Juan islands and helped us to chart out a good course for the day. An hour later, the ferry pulled into Friday Harbor and we were off on our bike island adventure. The island is very bike friendly with light traffic and lots of cyclists so it was a great place to explore. Our route took us clockwise around the island. We climbed through some hills and road along the edge of the island to Lime Kiln State Park where we saw some dolphins in the ocean and had a snack. The next leg took us up past English Bay to Roche Harbor on the other end of the island and we had lunch out on the pier. Finally, we traveled back along a different route to Friday Harbor just in time to catch the afternoon ferry back to Anacortes. 

On July 1^st, we headed into Canada on the Canadian holiday Canada Day which is like the 4^th of July in the USA. Before leaving Washington behind, we did one more mountain bike ride around Cranberry Lake because it was such a great mountain bike trail system. We drove to Vancouver to our hotel in the suburb Burnaby which is to the east of town. After checking in, we caught the skytrain (light rail) to downtown. Canadians have a lot of national pride and the downtown was bustling with people wearing all sorts of red gear. All the Canadians were complaining about how incredibly hot it was. In actuality, it was in the low 80s and felt pretty good by Tucson standards. We walked down to the boardwalk along the harbor and found some dinner in a café next to a grocery store. After a bit more strolling around town, we finally found some seats on the grass in Vancouver’s waterfront park to hang out and watch the fireworks later that evening. It doesn’t get dark until 10:30 in Vancouver in the summer so we had a while to wait. It was an impressive fireworks show with tons of fireworks being shot off from a barge over the harbor right in front of the downtown waterfront. In total, there must have been several hundred thousand people in the Vancouver area watching the show. Afterwards, we made our way through huge crowds of people back to the skytrain. Amazingly, they had trains running continually to transport people out of the city and we didn’t have to wait too long. We eventually made it back to our hotel for the latest night by far of our trip around 1:00 am.

We slept in pretty late on the 2^nd after our big Canada Day evening the night before. However, in the late morning we put on our bike gear and rode our bikes into Vancouver which was about 15 miles from our hotel. The waterfront in the city area includes a bike path that goes on and on for miles. First, we headed around the bay to the south towards Grey’s Point. The bike path was awesome with a lot to see and beautiful views of the water and city along the way. We ate lunch at a bakery along the way and then turned around and headed back along the path to the north. We did a loop around Granville Island along the way and had a rest on the grass at a quiet park there. In the northwest corner of town, the path led us into Stanley Park which is a giant forested park with tons of trails. We took some dirt trails through the park and then did the directional perimeter trail back around the outside. We stopped for some gelato and then made things interesting by selecting a different way to go home through Gastown, the northern waterfront, the Canada Trail, and the Burnaby Heights trail. We arrived back at the hotel around 9 pm after an extensive day of biking. The paths around Vancouver are the best urban bike paths that we have ever done and we had a great time.

On the 3^rd, it was time to head across the river to Vancouver’s famous north shore. We started with a trip to Grouse Mountain up the infamous Grouse Grind trail. It’s only 2 miles long but it is the steepest 2 miles that you will find anywhere with rocks, roots, logs, and stairs that go right up the side of the mountain. The resort offers timing chips, there is a big race there every year, and many of the locals like to blitz up it as fast as possible. I did my best to keep Alisha in check and it took us about an hour to make it up to the resort at the top. The steepness of this hike means that it is an uphill only hike and we took the gondola back down. However, we first had some lunch outside at the resort where we could overlook all of Vancouver. We also took a walk around on top of the mountain and saw some giant wood carvings, the grizzly bear habitat with two bears, and a bird show that was just starting with a bald eagle and some other hawks and owls. Alisha also got her very first souvenir of the entire trip which was a Grouse Grind t-shirt. Next, it was time to try out some north shore mountain biking. However, the north shore is in a league of its own when it comes to the trails with their “intermediate” trails riding like expert trails everywhere else. We hit the bridal path trail which is complete with boardwalks (some are super skinny), log rides, drops, and of course tons of gnarly roots. We were pretty cooked already from a couple big days of adventures but Alisha gave it a good go and we had a good time. To give you an idea of the difficulty of these trails, we got passed by trail runners who were able to do most of the technical stuff faster than we were.

For the Fourth of July, we started the day with some paddle boarding in Deep Cove on Vancouver’s north shore. Alisha has been wanting to try this for a long time and it turns out to be a watersport that I also like because you get to stand up on the board like a gondolier with a paddle and you don’t get wet or cold. We had a good time cruising around the bay and had some pizza for lunch before leaving Vancouver behind and traveling up Canada’s Highway 99 which is the Sea to Sky Highway en route to Whistler. Our big adventure of the day was hiking “The Chief” in the Squamish area. The Chief is like another version of the Grouse Grind meaning that it is straight up with rocks, roots, stairs, granite cliffs, and even some chains and ladders. However, the reward is getting to stand on a massive granite top with 360 degree views of Horseshoe Bay on one side and the mountains towards Whistler on the other side. As usual, we found that the trip down actually felt more challenging on our legs than the hike up. We rolled into Whistler in the early evening and stopped by the visitor information center to get some info on the mountain biking in the area before arriving in our campground out of town to the north at Nairn Falls.

On the 5^th, we headed into Whistler ready for some mountain biking. We talked to a guy at the shop in Lost Lake who recommended some trails in the area and we went out on some of the classic Whistler Valley trails in the area with some great swooping and dropping boardwalks on the singletrack. In one spot, I got to ride a long skinny plank for longer than I’ve ever done before. We returned to the shop for some more advice and he sent us out on a longer afternoon ride on the Flank trail. This trail had a bit of everything: some brutal climbs and painful hike-a-bikes, some sweet flowing singletrack, some amazing views of the valley and mountains, some white knuckle descents, some wood plank bridges over raging creeks, and even some swarms of mosquitoes in the deep woods. We were exhausted by the time we were done and also really smelly. Fortunately, a lake near town had a nice beach, swimming area, and outdoor shower where I smelled bad enough that I was willing to brave some cold water in order to get clean. We returned to our campsite to make some spaghetti feeling more tired in our legs after our last few days of adventure than perhaps at any point so far in the trip.

With tons of strenuous hikes and bikes in the last few days and more to come, we took things a bit easier on the 6^th to try to get some life back in our legs. After a short hike to Nairn Falls near our campground, we headed into town where we saw the finish of the BC Bike Race in the Olympic Plaza. We did Whistler’s beautiful and car-free village stroll up to the top of town. This weekend there is a longboard festival and world cup race in town and we checked out a skateboard show on the plaza and then went up to the longboard track where we watched the quarter and semi-finals as the competitors raced down paved switchbacks in tight groups at high speeds. All the campgrounds were full for Saturday night, however we were able to find a room at the HI Hostel which was built as athlete housing for the Olympics. We finally got a much needed shower and an opportunity to lie down and rest for a few hours.