Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going
This is going to be a long one. Future entries won’t be. I promise.
Dan and I have been living full-time out of our van for two and a half months now. I should also tell you now that for reasons I’ll get into in another entry, we’re traveling with my mom, who is known around here as momski. The fact that this is my first blog is a good indicator of the van-life adjustment period, at least for me. I quickly learned even exciting changes take some getting used to, but it finally feels like we’ve all found our groove, for the most anyway. Our three-person, two-van, two-cat, dog, and bunny caravan took off from Bentonville on April 28, 2021. It was pouring rain as we entered the final stretch of a marathon that had turned into a full-on sprint in the last two months before our self-imposed departure date. In that time, we sold our cars, put my house up on the market, and stored, sold, or gave away years worth of stuff, which was both stressful and cathartic.
Ironically, our year on the road started with a six-hour drive north to Missouri’s Arcadia Valley where Shepherd Mountain Bike Park celebrated its grand opening by hosting the first round of the Big Mountain Enduro race series. We didn’t get very far on our first day because our friend, Jesse, invited us to an impromptu vegan pizza send-off in Springfield. When we got to Ironton the next day, I wasn’t able to find my stoke during two days of pre-riding the course, so I transferred my entry to a friend. Meanwhile, Dan raced his way to fifth place in Masters class.
With a month and a half between the BME and the North American Enduro Cup in Idaho, we decided to head east before heading west to get in a couple of weeks of shuttle laps at one of our favorite mountain biking spots in the country: Windrock Bike Park in Oliver Springs, Tennessee. The first thing you should know about Windrock is that it’s where the majority of America’s world-ranked downhill racers do their training to get ready for international events. The combination of steep, raw tracks and massive senders makes for proper proving grounds. At that point, it had been my fourth visit to the park, so it was satisfying to finally string together a few top-to-bottom runs in prime trail conditions. The second thing you need to know about Windrock is that it’s right outside of Oak Ridge, a city that didn’t exist before 1942. That’s when the U.S. government decided to build a town that would serve as a production site for the Manhattan Project.
From there, we linked up with our trail builder pal, Morgan, to get a look at a few of the trails she and others have been working on in Townsend, Tennessee before heading to North Carolina for a few days to squeeze in a rip at Ride Kanuga in Hendersonville and put in some miles on a couple of the must-do trails in Pisgah National Forest. After a final dip in the creek by our campsite, we were ready to point our vans west. To break up the trek to Idaho, we stopped in Boulder, Colorado where we spent a few days meeting up with friends, riding Lefthand Canyon over and over again, and posting up at the Mount Alto picnic site, which sits on a rocky, dirt road high above the city.
We arrived at Silver Mountain Bike Park in Kellogg, Idaho on opening weekend about two weeks before the North American Enduro Cup. Since the bike park was only open on weekends until after the race, momski and I spent a chunk of our time cruising portions of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, which stretches for 73-miles across the Idaho panhandle between the towns of Mullan and Plummer. The rails-to-trails greenway connects all the small, historic towns in Silver Valley, but it also serves as a solution to the waste rock and heavy metal tailings that were left behind on the railroad bed by the state’s mining industry by encasing them in asphalt and gravel. Momski and I also hit another rails-to-trails attraction called the Route of the Hiawatha on the Idaho-Montana border. The trail, which requires tickets, took us through train tunnels and over trestle bridges on a portion of what had once been a railroad line that belonged to Milwaukee Road. In all, we spent nearly two weeks in the Idaho panhandle, so our whole caravan also made a one-night trip to Spokane where Dan and I got in some miles at Mount Spokane State Park.
NAEC race weekend didn’t go as planned for either of us. Dan went through pre-ride day and both race days with a brutal head cold and I backed out, again. But at least this time I did it after giving the first stage a try. The trails at Silver Mountain are some of the rawest, rootiest, and most off-camber tracks I’ve ever come across. They’re not quite as steep as the trails at Windrock, which actually made them more challenging. When we pre-rode the newly cut-in stages the day before the race, I already felt like I was riding on the very edge of my abilities. Then came the rain and I woke up completely intimidated by the racecourse. A fall on an already-bruised elbow and hip on stage one made me realize that I might be in over my head, so I decided to watch from the sidelines. Dan was also able to help a fellow Revel Rail rider with a cracked bolt after he saw the bike company logo on our van and stopped by to see if we could do anything. Fifteen-year-old Gavin then went on to win his class, so we at least had a hand in someone else having an unforgettable weekend.
Since we didn’t have any obligations until late July, which is when Dan would be racing the second round of the Big Mountain Enduro series in Big Sky, Montana, we made plans to head to the Pacific Northwest where we’d split our time between Washington and Oregon. Our first stop was Leavenworth, a town that fashioned itself into a Bavarian-themed village in the 1960s to attract tourism after losing most of its economy when local lumber mills started shutting down. After taking in the town, momski and I did a nine-mile roundtrip hike to Lake Colchuck, a brilliantly turquoise alpine lake where saw a mountain goat. Unfortunately, during our brief stay in Leavenworth, we also lost a member of our crew. Rudy, a friendly, but feral cat that momski took in two years ago, escaped from her van, and attempts to lure him back with food and litter box were unsuccessful.
In the midst of all this, our friend, Lizzie, who was traveling in her own van after several weeks of army reserve training in Montana, met us in Leavenworth, so that we could make the trek to Crescent Bar together. We made the last-minute decision to spend a few days on the Columbia River after Dan reconnected with a friend from his personal training and software development days. Aside from taking a tour of the town in a golf cart, swimming in the river, and riding bikes at the foot of the Gorge Amphitheater, I finally got to see Dan’s wakesurfing skills in the flesh. A couple of nights later, we moved on to our original destination: Bellingham. Highlights included racing the first round of the Whatcom World Cup, a Wednesday-night race series put on by the Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition, which maintains the trails at Galbraith Mountain, and a tour of Orcas Island that involved orange and purple starfish sightings.
In an effort to escape an impending historic heatwave across the PNW, we then made the drive up to the snow line at Mount Baker, but even there we found little relief, so we decided to move on to the Seattle area. We settled in for a few days in Kirkland on Lake Washington with another one of Dan’s friends. Between riding at Tiger Mountain, Duthie, and Raging River, we mixed in staring out at the water, SUPing, and visiting the Space Needle. After the Fourth of July, we pointed the vans toward Dan’s motherland and headed to Oregon where another one of his friends opened up his home to us. We stayed outside Ziggy’s house in Gresham for several days but broke it up with a quick trip to Hood River where we rode a few trails that had once been Dan’s training grounds. Momski and I took our time on the way back to explore the Columbia River Gorge via Historic Highway 30. We started at Multnomah Falls, which is as beautiful as it is touristy, and while I recommend making the stop (you’ll need a free, timed reservation starting July 20th), I also recommend stopping at the other waterfalls along the way. They’re equally spectacular. We followed up our trek through the gorge with a trek to the Oregon coast that included a mandatory visit to Cannon Beach which is home to Haystack Rock of Goonies fame.
A final ride at Sandy Ridge outside Portland with Ziggy capped off our trip through the PNW as we set our sights on Big Sky, Montana where Dan and a few other friends will be racing the second round of the Big Mountain Enduro in about a week. We’ve both heard it’s one of the gnarlier venues in the series. I’m finishing up this entry as we enter the final few hours of our drive and we are surrounded by smoke that’s blocking out the mountains and sky. A quick look at a wildfire app I just downloaded shows we’re surrounded by “active incidents” that are in the process of getting contained by firefighters like the U.S. Forestry Service ones we saw at a gas station outside Missoula. Hopefully, conditions will be better in Big Sky for the race.
Once we wrap up the race, we’re making a short stop to visit friends in Idaho before heading to Colorado for most of August for the Winter Park and Durango rounds of the BME. The last race on our schedule is the final BME race in Brian Head, Utah. From there we plan to spend time in southern California and eventually make our way to Baja, Mexico for the winter to wrap up our year on the road. After that? Let’s just say, Dan is already looking at sailboats, which have three times as much living space as a van.
Cheers, Zu