With this year’s summer adventure revolving around the construction of our new house, we’ve spent some time thinking about how we might also ensure our hiking boots stay well used. Inspired by our time spent traversing city sidewalks across America and Europe, I’ve devised a plan: Urban Hikes.

Sometimes all I want to do is get out in the bush, find a trail and see where it takes me. However, due to time, gas prices, weather and other constraints, this desire isn’t always fulfilled. Despite this, I don’t want anything to stop me from pounding out the miles. Therefore, armed with pre-planning, lots of water and a little fortitude, I propose to spend several days this summer exploring the green spaces and hills in my city. In order to add a little frivolity to this activity, I aim to link the green spaces with coffee shops, local restaurants and other diversions.

I hope to inspire others to don their boots and backpacks in order to hit the sidewalks of their cities too. Just because we can’t get out to the wilderness doesn’t mean we should lose out on the satisfaction of a good, quad-busting trek!

Welcome back!

Well, it has been a long cold winter up here in the frozen north, and it is time for us to dust off our old camping equipment, check out its servicability and prepare to get back out into the wilderness for another season.  Our work year is drawing to a close which allows us to plan for some camping trips this summer.  We will not be able to go as far afield as we did last summer as we are building a house, but we intend to get out as much as possible in our neck of the woods. 

After this summer, if you have been following the blog, you will have likely noticed that we have left you hanging for the last while.  Were we holed up in our home for the entire time? Pinned in a ravine a la "127 hours"? Had we lost the ability to type?  Luckily none of those fates had befallen us but we were hit by one force that was so overwhelming we could not overcome it: work.  The most vile of the four letter words.  Now that we have spent our year working, we are prepared to get out and leave that behind if only for a while. 

This is it. The final stop on our epic adventure across just over 50% of America. It has been a trip of a lifetime. We’d like to tell you all about the amazing sights and hikes at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, but we’ve been thwarted.

In a nutshell, it seems that Crater Lake is beautiful, there are 90 miles of hiking trails, and great camping available. However, our experience at the park was limited to snuggling up inside two sleeping bags each, and at least four layers of clothing in our tent as a crazy cold front dropped in like a lead weight and kicked summer out with a vengeance.

We arrived around 7 pm, set up the tent, ate dinner and then browsed around the gift shop to warm up. The temperature? Probably 38 degrees F, perfect conditions for breath to mimic smoke. Overnight it definitely dropped below freezing and we woke up to a heavy rain. What a contrast from the desert environment we’ve been enjoying since mid-August.

We had planned to pack up and go for some hikes in the morning. So to keep the inside of the car clean  we stuffed our sopping, muddy tent into a garbage bag and dropped it unceremoniously into the back of the van. The one good thing was that the tent still kept us dry despite the weather. We then headed for the visitor centre. Closed! That was disappointing as we’d been looking forward to breakfast there, where it would be warm and dry. In the time it took us to find this out, the rain quickly turned from sleet to quarter-sized flakes of snow rapidly accumulating on the ground.

Camping and hiking in Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada was a welcome surprise. Having experienced only the hot, dry desert environment surrounding Las Vegas, John and I assumed we’d find the same at Great Basin. We were wrong!

Located in the north-eastern quadrant of the state, and the 7the least visited national park in the system, highlights of this park include Nevada’s second highest peak, Mt. Wheeler and the formation-filled Lehman Caves. Campgrounds can be found in four locations in the park, starting at around 3000 feet, all the way up to nearly 10,000. We chose the Upper Lehman campground at just under 8000 feet.

Before we set up in the park, we stopped by the “honour showers” located in nearby Baker. Open 24/7 on the edge of this tiny hamlet, this was definitely a road-trip experience. A suggested price of $2 per person gets you a hot shower in a self-contained fully equipped washroom. The facilities are located at the Sinclair Gas Station in an abandoned-looking parking lot/dump station manned by only passing birds. Clean and festively painted, we were happy to take advantage before heading up into the mountains.