I managed to throw together 4 nights and 4 days off of work and made a run from Portland up to the Olympic Rain Forest to meet up with my two fishing buddies George and Lennie.
When I make this drive, if the weather is nice I like to cut out of work a few hours early to try to catch the sunset on the way north. It's always a crap shoot because I never know if a thick marine layer is going to muck it all up. There's a good Vietnamese bakery in town that makes a pretty solid bagette and their banh mi sandwiches are stellar so, I grabbed an extra one at lunch time for road apples and just barely made it there in time to enjoy the show and eat my extra sandwich.
Got to the spot where I like to camp in the dark and woke up to this in the morning.
That first night I had mice move into the van. I don't know where they were getting in, but they were disrupting my sleep.
Spring in the rain forest...
Between a major flood this season and a storm with 80 mph wind gusts, there was plenty of storm and flood damage.
After I hooked up with my buddies the 3 of us seemed more content to just soak up the sun and drink a few beers than really fish all that hard. After all the rain we've had as of late, I was really digging on the sunshine. But we did manage to fish a few nice runs.
Later, we cooked up some dinner.
My buddy had a few mouse traps that he loaned to me. I managed a get 2 of them before I even sacked out on the second night.
Pro tip, feta cheese works better than peanut butter.
Next day me and my buddy did a float.
I caught a nice bull trout.
Leaving always sucks. I stopped at the spot on the way home for some road apples and to soak in the view one more time before heading home.
Cheers.
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2023 Transit AWD w/ Van Haus build.
73 BMW 2002 O=00=O
Great photos. What is the name of the sandwich shop?
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Larrie
Read detailed trip reports, see photos and videos on my travel blog, luinil.com.
Current van: 2002 Ford E350 extended body camper with Colorado Camper Van pop top and Agile Offroad 4WD conversion.
gcvt's old van had a mouse that lived in it for months.. including on a roadtrip from Brooklyn to San Francisco, via Las Vegas (110 plus temps) and San Diego.