WUZombies
Adventurist
Last month my family, another family and a few other friends set out from Texas to visit Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks over the course of three weeks. Over those three weeks the Family Adventure Van logged 5350 miles and I found that the coolest modification I had to the vehicle was apparently a working blinker when compared to other drivers. This was the Great Northern Expedition. Why name it? We, as a group, like goofy things like that, including the chance to have a logo and trip sticker made. The GNE is a throwback name to the history of Glacier National Park.
Overall I am going to try to keep this post short(ish), you can look for some more insight and different photographs coming up via Adventurist Life and on my own blog. The trip began as the 2015 trip in which much of the same adventuring families and crew went to the Great Smokey Mountains for over week in the park. That trip was a bit of a reunion camping trip for the three families, as we have known each other for a significant portion of our lives. The 2016 trip was born on the previous trip from campfire discussions of what the next adventure would be.
One family camping in the Cataloochee Valley with us in a rented class C RV, I was in my space shuttle of a minivan and had the big canvas wall tent, which I purchased in 2014 after dreaming about owning one again since the late 1990s. On that trip an important change happened, well changes, the minivan was acting odd (which we found out why six months later and after some warranty work was sold) and my buddy’s E-350 built impressed my wife for what we could do. On the drive across the country home from that trip, we located and purchased the 2003 E-150 that I’ve built (and am continuing to build) into the Family Adventure Van. The family in the rented RV saw the need and after the trip a surplus military trailer that had a work bed attached already was purchased to build into their family’s adventure trailer. The friend with the E-350 had a built out trailer with RTT, mounted hot water and other nicely done touches, so he was set. For the other family and I it was a bit like an arms race. We built quickly and inexpensively, fabricating our own parts and needs when we could to keep costs down, seemingly every three-day weekend we met somewhere in Texas to camp, testing out our setups, making notes of needed changes and trading ideas for our builds.
The builds were moving along quickly, they had to, and shortly after returning to Texas from the 2015 trip the dates and research for the 2016 trip were underway. Dates were set, calendars set to facilitate reminders to reserve campgrounds, we had a hard deadline to finish the build to meet our goals or have something incomplete and work around the best we could.
As much adventure seeking, dirt roads and far away locations we prefer, this trip would be more along the lines of a typical family summer road trip and it was necessary. As much as I would love to have driven a dirt road from Texas to north west Montana and back there were two things struck against me: first of all that road hasn’t existed in over a hundred years, secondly we only had three weeks to make the most of the trip. Some would argue that the backwoods adventure of dirt road driving is making the most of the trip and I wouldn’t disagree. All I would say is that this trip had different goals, a primary goal was to get the kids to these national parks so they can see some of the iconic things that make the parks so famous and popular in the first place. That meant highway travel.
Fast forward to the morning of June 11th and we are pulling a heavily loaded E-van out of the driveway to point north and adventures planned. Four days later we arrive at Dornan’s in Moose, WY just outside of the Grand Teton National Park entrance. Something the group decided in the fall of 2015 is that we would use cabins as transitional points to alleviate some of the time constraints and stress associated with setting and breaking camp within a few hours of each other to make another destination in time. For some of you that process is a daily camp routine, for us it isn’t. We would rather have the time to relax, enjoy some beverages together and let the kids all play. As sorry as I am to say this trip wasn’t pure in regards to an ideal overlanding adventure, I’m not sorry to say that the goals for the trip we set down were accomplished, family adventure was had and incredible memories were made.
Tetons
It is hard to resist taking photographs from the iconic spots of the often photographed things, it doesn’t matter that thousands and thousands of others have taken their own photograph of the same thing, I want my own photograph of it. The Tetons is great for that, well so is Yellowstone too. The first night was a big group cabin at Dornan’s, two of us woke up well before dawn to drive the five minutes to Mormon’s Row. About a half hour after we setup our tripods to wait for sunrise a photography tour group unloaded and made their way near the barn. I was setup off the corner of the barn, which is a bit off angle from the more popular framing of the barn on the mountains, but they were courteous (or the tour leader was at the least) and we all captured “OK” photographs due to the low clouds.
Teton camp was in the northern region of the park and a quick drive to the southern gate of Yellowstone. This camp would serve as our base camp for the duration of our stay in Wyoming. We had more driving to see some things, such as Jenny Lake and Signal Mountain one day then Old Faithful the next, but the campground was more quiet than the campgrounds and massive herds of people we saw in Yellowstone.
Speaking of which, there is a little known invasive specious that is plundering Yellowstone every single day during the summer months: large tour buses. If you sneak off to the back country the tour buses disappear, along with the throngs of people with selfie-sticks that discharge from the brightly painted land barges, but we were balanced on two ideas for seeing the sights on the trip: first of all our kids ages 4-9 needed kid capable hikes, secondly the iconic places at each park alone is enough to keep someone busy for weeks, much less a week. Those spots are popular and well known for good reason, there are some really neat things to be seen. Those are the same things that the kids enjoy. So on the boardwalks we were fighting tight balls of people with selfie sticks blocking the way and the sights, like a pissed off porcupine, quills bristled and ready to strike if you dared to walk past.
Every night we had a campsite meal and drink of the day. This example is a wonderful combination of chicken fajitas and the infamous Skydiver Margarita. The meals and drinks of the day went out on my Instagram feed and author Facebook page, look for a meal guide, recipes and mixology for the happy hour drinks of the day in the near future.
Yellowstone
The only two animals I didn’t get to cross off my list on this trip were a wolf and a moose. Elk by the herd full, same with bison, a black bear and a grizzly all seen and photographed, deer and mountain goats came later in Glacier.
Our transition point to Glacier were the cabins in Mammoth Hot Springs. The elk there are relatively accustomed to people, but these folks were testing those boundaries way too closely!
A full day’s drive through Montana and the next evening we were in Apgar Village, another cabin, before setting camp in Fish Creek in the morning. The cabins were great at the time, but I am a little remiss for missing out on those nights camping. Especially now that I’m home and I wish I was in the tent in those temperatures again (needless to say it is slightly warmer in central Texas right now as opposed to northwestern Montana).
Glacier
Glacier is one of my special places, my wife and I visited in 2009 before we had any children and we have wanted to go back since. We spent seven days in the park and have barely seen the beginning of what there is to find. Glacier NP is much like Big Bend NP is to me, on the surface it is easy to hit the highpoints in a few days and decide you have “seen” the park, but the more exploration that can be done the more the park slowly reveals its secrets. Big Bend is easy for me, 10-12 hours from right now I could be in The Basin, long weekend trips are doable, Glacier is a solid 5-day drive from home, so a future trip will have to be again well planned to happen. It will happen, though.
Near our camp was an unimproved road, checking the topo map and the trail map we found that it lead to Polebridge. The women wanted to hike Iceberg Lake, which isn’t a young kid friendly hike, so the other Dad and I loaded our kids up and set off for adventure. The in-the-park road closed about 6 miles north of our starting point due to some reason, we turned around and drove around the edge of the park on gravel roads to reach Polebridge.
What a cool little place, reminds me a lot of Terlingua near Big Bend. A handful of outdoors people, artists and other similarly minded folks maintain this stop near the Canadian border, along with a small café and mercantile. Previously someone had told me Polebridge had a great bakery, I didn’t believe them (and since the majority of prepared food we purchased in this region of the country was, frankly, bland). I should have believed them, incredibly good eats to be had for a reward driving on cool dirt roads in the mountains.
The long time in camp had to come to a close to be replaced by a five day long drive home. Unlike the route up, the route home was specifically planned to cross through some small towns that are iatrical locations to the plot of my book series and I wanted to stop for some “where it happened” photographs. That meandering route meant that we were able to avoid the Interstates (for the most part) and drive the meandering two lane highways through hundreds of small towns along the way. That is a much more fun look at our country than following the big Interstate Highways.
That meandering route also meant we could hit Arches for an afternoon as well as Mesa Verde. We could have also stopped at Canyonlands but our time was as short as the drive was long. We were able to hit the fast and dirty high points, show the kids some neat things, even if we weren’t there long enough to complete a Junior Ranger packet to earn their badges (which they had done in the previous parks).
The trip was overall a success, there are some changes in store for the Family Adventure Van from our experiences on this trip and the planning for the 2017 trip is already underway!
In the parks we saw a number of built up adventure rigs, including some purchased rigs like Sportsmobile vans, as well as some really ingenious home built rigs. It's like we found "our people" when we went to the parks.
Overall I am going to try to keep this post short(ish), you can look for some more insight and different photographs coming up via Adventurist Life and on my own blog. The trip began as the 2015 trip in which much of the same adventuring families and crew went to the Great Smokey Mountains for over week in the park. That trip was a bit of a reunion camping trip for the three families, as we have known each other for a significant portion of our lives. The 2016 trip was born on the previous trip from campfire discussions of what the next adventure would be.
One family camping in the Cataloochee Valley with us in a rented class C RV, I was in my space shuttle of a minivan and had the big canvas wall tent, which I purchased in 2014 after dreaming about owning one again since the late 1990s. On that trip an important change happened, well changes, the minivan was acting odd (which we found out why six months later and after some warranty work was sold) and my buddy’s E-350 built impressed my wife for what we could do. On the drive across the country home from that trip, we located and purchased the 2003 E-150 that I’ve built (and am continuing to build) into the Family Adventure Van. The family in the rented RV saw the need and after the trip a surplus military trailer that had a work bed attached already was purchased to build into their family’s adventure trailer. The friend with the E-350 had a built out trailer with RTT, mounted hot water and other nicely done touches, so he was set. For the other family and I it was a bit like an arms race. We built quickly and inexpensively, fabricating our own parts and needs when we could to keep costs down, seemingly every three-day weekend we met somewhere in Texas to camp, testing out our setups, making notes of needed changes and trading ideas for our builds.
The builds were moving along quickly, they had to, and shortly after returning to Texas from the 2015 trip the dates and research for the 2016 trip were underway. Dates were set, calendars set to facilitate reminders to reserve campgrounds, we had a hard deadline to finish the build to meet our goals or have something incomplete and work around the best we could.
As much adventure seeking, dirt roads and far away locations we prefer, this trip would be more along the lines of a typical family summer road trip and it was necessary. As much as I would love to have driven a dirt road from Texas to north west Montana and back there were two things struck against me: first of all that road hasn’t existed in over a hundred years, secondly we only had three weeks to make the most of the trip. Some would argue that the backwoods adventure of dirt road driving is making the most of the trip and I wouldn’t disagree. All I would say is that this trip had different goals, a primary goal was to get the kids to these national parks so they can see some of the iconic things that make the parks so famous and popular in the first place. That meant highway travel.
Fast forward to the morning of June 11th and we are pulling a heavily loaded E-van out of the driveway to point north and adventures planned. Four days later we arrive at Dornan’s in Moose, WY just outside of the Grand Teton National Park entrance. Something the group decided in the fall of 2015 is that we would use cabins as transitional points to alleviate some of the time constraints and stress associated with setting and breaking camp within a few hours of each other to make another destination in time. For some of you that process is a daily camp routine, for us it isn’t. We would rather have the time to relax, enjoy some beverages together and let the kids all play. As sorry as I am to say this trip wasn’t pure in regards to an ideal overlanding adventure, I’m not sorry to say that the goals for the trip we set down were accomplished, family adventure was had and incredible memories were made.
Tetons
It is hard to resist taking photographs from the iconic spots of the often photographed things, it doesn’t matter that thousands and thousands of others have taken their own photograph of the same thing, I want my own photograph of it. The Tetons is great for that, well so is Yellowstone too. The first night was a big group cabin at Dornan’s, two of us woke up well before dawn to drive the five minutes to Mormon’s Row. About a half hour after we setup our tripods to wait for sunrise a photography tour group unloaded and made their way near the barn. I was setup off the corner of the barn, which is a bit off angle from the more popular framing of the barn on the mountains, but they were courteous (or the tour leader was at the least) and we all captured “OK” photographs due to the low clouds.
Teton camp was in the northern region of the park and a quick drive to the southern gate of Yellowstone. This camp would serve as our base camp for the duration of our stay in Wyoming. We had more driving to see some things, such as Jenny Lake and Signal Mountain one day then Old Faithful the next, but the campground was more quiet than the campgrounds and massive herds of people we saw in Yellowstone.
Speaking of which, there is a little known invasive specious that is plundering Yellowstone every single day during the summer months: large tour buses. If you sneak off to the back country the tour buses disappear, along with the throngs of people with selfie-sticks that discharge from the brightly painted land barges, but we were balanced on two ideas for seeing the sights on the trip: first of all our kids ages 4-9 needed kid capable hikes, secondly the iconic places at each park alone is enough to keep someone busy for weeks, much less a week. Those spots are popular and well known for good reason, there are some really neat things to be seen. Those are the same things that the kids enjoy. So on the boardwalks we were fighting tight balls of people with selfie sticks blocking the way and the sights, like a pissed off porcupine, quills bristled and ready to strike if you dared to walk past.
Every night we had a campsite meal and drink of the day. This example is a wonderful combination of chicken fajitas and the infamous Skydiver Margarita. The meals and drinks of the day went out on my Instagram feed and author Facebook page, look for a meal guide, recipes and mixology for the happy hour drinks of the day in the near future.
Yellowstone
The only two animals I didn’t get to cross off my list on this trip were a wolf and a moose. Elk by the herd full, same with bison, a black bear and a grizzly all seen and photographed, deer and mountain goats came later in Glacier.
Our transition point to Glacier were the cabins in Mammoth Hot Springs. The elk there are relatively accustomed to people, but these folks were testing those boundaries way too closely!
A full day’s drive through Montana and the next evening we were in Apgar Village, another cabin, before setting camp in Fish Creek in the morning. The cabins were great at the time, but I am a little remiss for missing out on those nights camping. Especially now that I’m home and I wish I was in the tent in those temperatures again (needless to say it is slightly warmer in central Texas right now as opposed to northwestern Montana).
Glacier
Glacier is one of my special places, my wife and I visited in 2009 before we had any children and we have wanted to go back since. We spent seven days in the park and have barely seen the beginning of what there is to find. Glacier NP is much like Big Bend NP is to me, on the surface it is easy to hit the highpoints in a few days and decide you have “seen” the park, but the more exploration that can be done the more the park slowly reveals its secrets. Big Bend is easy for me, 10-12 hours from right now I could be in The Basin, long weekend trips are doable, Glacier is a solid 5-day drive from home, so a future trip will have to be again well planned to happen. It will happen, though.
Near our camp was an unimproved road, checking the topo map and the trail map we found that it lead to Polebridge. The women wanted to hike Iceberg Lake, which isn’t a young kid friendly hike, so the other Dad and I loaded our kids up and set off for adventure. The in-the-park road closed about 6 miles north of our starting point due to some reason, we turned around and drove around the edge of the park on gravel roads to reach Polebridge.
What a cool little place, reminds me a lot of Terlingua near Big Bend. A handful of outdoors people, artists and other similarly minded folks maintain this stop near the Canadian border, along with a small café and mercantile. Previously someone had told me Polebridge had a great bakery, I didn’t believe them (and since the majority of prepared food we purchased in this region of the country was, frankly, bland). I should have believed them, incredibly good eats to be had for a reward driving on cool dirt roads in the mountains.
The long time in camp had to come to a close to be replaced by a five day long drive home. Unlike the route up, the route home was specifically planned to cross through some small towns that are iatrical locations to the plot of my book series and I wanted to stop for some “where it happened” photographs. That meandering route meant that we were able to avoid the Interstates (for the most part) and drive the meandering two lane highways through hundreds of small towns along the way. That is a much more fun look at our country than following the big Interstate Highways.
That meandering route also meant we could hit Arches for an afternoon as well as Mesa Verde. We could have also stopped at Canyonlands but our time was as short as the drive was long. We were able to hit the fast and dirty high points, show the kids some neat things, even if we weren’t there long enough to complete a Junior Ranger packet to earn their badges (which they had done in the previous parks).
The trip was overall a success, there are some changes in store for the Family Adventure Van from our experiences on this trip and the planning for the 2017 trip is already underway!
In the parks we saw a number of built up adventure rigs, including some purchased rigs like Sportsmobile vans, as well as some really ingenious home built rigs. It's like we found "our people" when we went to the parks.
Attachments
Last edited:
