The Car Situation - One Week Left

385,357 – That number is the sum of our two 1998 Toyota Camery odometer readings.  Despite fear of jinxing us to a transmission failure 23 miles down some unpaved forestry service road I will go ahead and declare the following – these cars just will not die. 

Dubbed with the straightforward monikers of “Blue Car” and “Brown Car” for their most distinguishing feature, the brown car is AKA “Bruiser” due to some character marks earned while in our service.  Brown Car was the victim of a hit-and-run while parked on Peachtree one night resulting in a substantial dent to the driver’s side rear panel.   Days later my freshly licensed brother backed a mini-van into Brown Car.  Then Katie backed Brown Car into a parked flatbed-truck while pulling out of our driveway just days before I scraped the front panel on a length of brick wall pulling into a different driveway.

 Not done yet.

I honestly forget  where this fell sequentially, but somebody ran a red-light  downtown and slammed into the side opposite from  which my brother had just run into or was shortly about to smash. We did get money from our insurance company to fix the fairly significant cosmetic damage to Brown Car and we promptly spent the money on getting Blue Car to pass emissions. So while Brown Car looks and drips fluids like a boxer after seventeen rounds, Blue car is a fairly spry 13 years old.  With 64,429 less miles under the hood and the noticeably absent smell of burning that is Brown Car’s constant companion, we will indeed be taking Blue Car for the third straight year.   All I can say is we haven’t had a car payment in quite some time and Toyota should feature us in one of their ads.

As usual, the exact route the Blue Car will follow is sketchy at best. We know we have canoeing permits to put-in on the Colorado River outside Moab, Utah on June 23^rd.  From there we will paddle 54 miles downriver into Canyonlands NP where it should be gorgeous but hot enough to fry an egg on a rock Grizzwald-style.  We’ll get picked up three days later near the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers and taken back to Moab.  After that we’ll hit Great Basin NP in Nevada where a hike to the state’s only glacier is apparently just a 6-mile round trip.  One road we know we’ll be taking is Hwy 50, “America’s Loneliest Road”, out of Great Basin and across Nevada into Lake Tahoe (there may or may not be some degenerate gambling in Reno first).  Heading north somehow through northern California we will spend some time in the Sierras, see Lassen Volcanic NP, hopefully see Jared and Ryann, enter the southern Cascades and find our way to Crater Lake NP in Oregon.  After a possible backpacking trip there, we’ll head west to the ocean and take some time going up the whole Oregon Coast.  Lots of good hiking and sea kayaking possibilities abound.

From this point on we have no idea really.  Washington is a big mystery right now.  There is so much we want to do it looks like we might just have to wait and see what we feel like when we get there.  Beach backpacking in Olympic NP is an option as is a return trip to the Hoh River valley where we were two years ago.  Dare we repeat?  The San Juan Islands are inviting but seem a logistical nightmare for last minute travel.  The North Cascades NP might be up for a return visit because the wilderness area option just south of the park is really isolated and filled with Grizzlies.  Mt. Rainier again?  Mt. St. Helens?  Anywho . . . after we do what we do in Washington we’ll be heading across Idaho into Montana where we will be doing something somewhere in the state with Matt, Shell, Gramm, Molly, Eric and Roan.  We’ll come through Wyoming again on the trip back east where Ash may get her last horse ride of the summer.  We’ll keep you all posted . . . 7 MORE DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!      

P.S.  Katie took off for Bonaroo with Carley Wednesday.