Last minute switch from the SRA with no hookups to the private place across the street with hookups. I forgot when I made the reservation in January that it gets hot in July.
Well, there you have it. Another summer in the books. This was a fantastic trip and we would do the whole thing again in a heartbeat. Literally the only thing we would change is not staying in Lake Louise. But we learned from that, so it’s all good.
This was AFTER Richard scraped about fifty squashed locusts off the front of the car. Gross.
Bruce and Dory started nice and clean and shiny and ended up fully gross and filthy. The locust clouds in Oregon and Northern California were disgusting and left bug pieces so embedded in the grill that I’m not sure we can ever be fully cleansed. I don’t know that those were in fact locusts, but I’m going with that until someone corrects me. Dory came through it like a champ, with only a few parts missing on the road somewhere in Canada. Her electrical system all seems to be ok, and we’ll have Randy do an inspection when he comes back from his well earned summer break. We learned to always set the water heater to Eco because everything else is unnecessarily hot. All of the pantry and recipe planning worked extremely well. We had a nice balance of Blue Apron recreations, pan dinners, and eating out. I was able to manage calories and even sodium pretty well on the road, though I have not weighed myself in over two months, so I guess I don’t really know how effective I was. It’s not like we travel with a bathroom scale, but I could have stopped at the truck weigh stations I suppose, if I’d really wanted to know.
Still stuck on body parts. Yuck.
A few items that were packed and not used once include: the Yoga tent (I know. I feel shame. Don’t talk to me about it.), swimming suits (because we were going to so many damn hot springs), and Gochujang (I thought I had more recipes that called for that). The bear spray purchased in Canada also did not get used, but that’s kind of the hope there. By now we are up to three unused canisters of bear spray that we bought on the road and unloaded at home. Do not make us angry, at least not when we are at home. We had TP anxiety early on, but remedied that with a Walmart stop. We were able to restock everything we needed on the road and had plenty of coffee with 450 pods packed. I learned to branch out in the types of La Croix water I can tolerate, but continue to reject all of their weird flavors. It is annoying how well stocked everyone is on Pampelmousse, but not normal flavors like lemon, lime, orange, or tangerine. I had alcohol wipe anxiety but we made it. We did not suffer too many mosquitos, which is great because I do not have a solution for how to cook dinner outside when it is super hot AND full of bugs. I guess we would just eat sandwiches inside or something. I packed way too much Margarita mix.
Very pleasant last night out by the Sacramento River.
Probably the toughest problem we face on summer trips is my sometimes resentment of Richard’s second wife; i.e. his bike. Most of the time I’m fine with the hours and hours and hours he spends riding. I can usually entertain myself. But it seems there is at least one point on every long trip where I loose my shit over it. We end up fine on the other side, so we should probably just see if we can predict when it’s going to happen, like start a betting pool. Long trips can bring up all kinds of emotions, but that is part of the reason we like them. We always resist coming home, but appreciate it when we finally do. We love seeing our daughter, and Kitty, and the wifi. Home wifi is awesome.
It even came with a sunset.
If we were on the road for longer than two months, we would have to figure out how to defrost the freezer and how to get prescriptions on the road. I would miss friends and coworkers, and eventually my job. The idea of retirement gets more appealing every year, but being home reminds me I’m maybe not quite there yet. And that is great, because we can’t quite do it yet.
D’oh!
Really the only straight up traveling fails this summer had to do with mandarins. Noted for the future: 1) remember to take ALL of the mandarins when we leave, and 2) do not restock them right before crossing back into California.
Now we return to our regularly scheduled programming of repeat campgrounds every weekend. But not this weekend. This weekend is bath time for Bruce and Dory. Ew.
Total miles from Woodson Bridge: 164.7, 17.8 mpg, 3 hours 53 min. Site 12, full hookups. Cell service for both, but not enough to upload pictures. Fast Wifi at registration office. Sewer outlet less gopher holey in this site than in 4. Nice view of the river.
Total stats for summer trip ’22: 4,178 miles, 66 nights, 32 campgrounds, 8 national parks.
