Steve & Deb's travels across the USA in a Subaru Outback (Sep-Oct 2015)

[Steve & Deb]

This is a journal of our 43 day cross-country adventure. As in our build thread, this is past-tense, and has been copy/pasted from other forums.

I thought I'd move on from my "build" thread, where I've been prepping the Outback to a travel journal. (Prep thread HERE)

A quick re-cap: Our youngest daughter graduated from high school this past spring, and on September 18th, we will be taking her to Seattle for college. Heading out (from Ohio) will be a straight through Interstate trip. Coming back will be exploring as many out-of-the-way places as we can find for anywhere from two weeks to two months.

After this trip, our plans are to spend long vacations exploring the US, going to places where other folks don’t, as I hate crowds in general, and especially on vacations. We want to get to those out-of-the-way places that don’t necessarily *require* an offroad vehicle, but having one makes the trip more enjoyable, such as dirt and gravel roads, forest roads, easy trails, etc. Of course I want the ride to be comfortable getting there on the endless miles of highways, too.

We’ve been watching a TV show on The Smithsonian Channel called Aerial America. Each episode covers a different state, filmed entirely from the air. It covers historic, geological, and cultural sites, making each state more enticing than the last. I’ve watched with my tablet in my lap, looking up especially interesting sites, and bookmarking them for possible visits. I think we have close to 100 bookmarks now, so we have plenty of places to visit over the next years!

Since our westbound trip will be the quicker, less adventuresome, I don't want to take one that will go through areas we want to explore coming back. But then, our return trip will be meandering, so we might end up going through some of the same areas in both direction. I'm thinking heading out on the highlighted route, and then wander across the upper two tiers of states on our return. We don't plan to go as far south as California, Colorado, Utah, etc. this trip, as each of them could take weeks or months on their own.

Our return trip ought to be something like this:

Suggestions on places to visit (or avoid) are welcome. We'll be using Roadside America and Trail Damage in our planning, as well as the previously mentioned Aerial America bookmarks.

If you want to follow along on our upcoming cross-country trip, follow or like one (or all) of these social media accounts:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExploringTheUSA
Twitter: https://twitter.com/exploringtheusa
Instagram: https://instagram.com/explore_the_usa/

 

[Steve & Deb]

Mile Zero: Leaving three hours behind schedule, but we got everything loaded. Definitely a bit of saggy butt.

Seattle Or Bust!

We left way late on the 18th, and made it to Indiana, just short of Chicago. Saturday, we got to Des Moines, Iowa, and this evening, to Rapid City, South Dakota. We need to do 600 miles each of the next two days, so doing a quick drive-by of Mount Rushmore, in the morning, and we'll be back this way to see it better, along with everything else in the area, on our return trip.

I'll get photos when I can on here, but we've been posting on Instagram, which then gets sent to Facebook and Twitter. Check over there via the links posted earlier in this thread.

 

[Steve & Deb]

September 29: I've not been doing a very good job of updating my posts here. I have been posting a lot of updates on Instagram, Facebook, And Twitter. So check over there for what we've been up to for the past week or so.

What I can tell you, is that I've been driving a loaner Forester from Roy Robinson Subaru since Friday afternoon. Coming across Wyoming, we noticed a burning smell. I first thought it was oil dripping on the exhaust, but later determined that it was grease. Only place for grease to leak up front is from the CV boots. I had a schedule to meet, so kept going. Of course you know what happened later. As we got into the mountains, I started feeling vibration, or thrumming while under load. Backing off even a little and it went away, but as the final day came, even slight loading caused the problem.

I'm sure being quite a bit overloaded, which caused the nose to be extra high causing additional misalignment for the CV joints, (As well as 8 year old boots) exacerbated the problem.

So after moving our daughter into her dorm and going through the orientation, I stopped at Roy Robinson Subaru, in Marysville, Washington for help. They diagnosed the problem right away, and had the parts in stock, so got to work on it that day. We were told that it would be finished Monday due to short tech staff on Saturday, but they called late Saturday afternoon and it was done. They had given us a loaner 2016 base Forester, and we had taken the ferry to the islands in the Puget Sound. So they told us to enjoy the weekend, and stop in anytime Monday to pick up our car.

Rachel in their service department went out of her way getting us in quickly, and getting us moving on our way in the loaner. The bad CV joints didn't delay us more than an hour. And Rachel applied a couple of coupons and saved us $160 off the bill. We picked up the Outback this afternoon (Monday), and we are currently outside of Port Townsend, Washington, getting ready to explore the Olympic Mountains and rainforests for the next few days.

 

[Steve & Deb]

October 5: After exploring Whidbey Island for a few day, we took the ferry across to Port Townsend. Lots of exploring through the north and west side of Olympic National Park. Hurricane Ridge, and the gravel road up to Obstruction Point, Elwha river in the park and at the mouth. It has been newly freed, with the dams removed, and is changing daily. Saw otter in the river. Up the Hoh Rainforest handsome hiking there. Too sunny and dry compared to what I was expecting.

Then we stayed in Forks (which is a big thing to Twilight fans) and visited the beaches and stacks at La Push, then up to the most NW point in the continental US, at Cape Flattery. Those were all foggy, wet, and exactly what I expected it to look like up here. 14 feet of rain a year! at Cape Flattery, we saw sea otter, sea lions, and a gray whale went by not 30 yards offshore. It was amazing!

Yesterday we drove down the coast, stopped at Rose Beach, which was beautiful, and stopped for a couple nights in Astoria, Oregon. Today saw many of the Lewis & Clark sites, as well as a maritime museum. Plus picked up a couple iPhone 6S at the local AT&T.

Tomorrow we head toward Portland, then either up the Columbia or down to Crater Lake National Park. Beyond that, we don't know yet.



October 6: Instead of heading for Portland, we kept going down the coast, and so glad we did! We found several little beaches, and completely stumbled upon Cannon Beach. It was crowded like a summer weekend, on a school day in October! Has to be the weather. It's been beautiful so far.

At Tillamook we turned inland, and are spending the night in Beaverton.


October 7: We didn't spend a lot of time in Portland. Went to the CVS in Nob Hill, then up to Pittock Mansion. Then to the Columbia Sportswear outlet store in Sellwood, had lunch there, and wandered the shops. That was it. I'm not much of a fan of cities. Drove down to Salem, then to Eugene. We are staying about three blocks from the UO stadium. Ate at Coolers, and will probably go to Voodoo Donuts, Hayward Field, and a couple more places before heading to Crater Lake.

Click HERE to see an ever changing Google Map of our progress.

 

[Steve & Deb]

October 11: In the last report, we were On our way to Portland. We did that, visited the Pittock Mansion, and wandered around a bit. Then headed south. We went to Salem, Eugene, visited Voodoo Donuts, Hayward Field, then down to King Estate Winery and then to Roseburg, Oregon. I didn't know that's where we were going to end up, but we stayed just a couple of miles from the UCC shooting location, and Obama was going to be there the day after we left.

Then we went to Crater Lake National Park, and took our time driving the loop around the lake. On a whim, we stopped at the lodge to see if they'd had any cancellations, and to our surprise, they had one room available. These places need reservations several months ahead! We had a great time, and the stars were in abundance.

The following day, we continued around the lake, then went northeast to Bend, Oregon, where we spent some time (and money at REI.) Bend is a neat town with a big city feel out in the central Oregon semi-desert area.

Today we went to Smith Rock State Park, the mecca of rock climbing. What a spectacular place! We spent the day hiking and watching the climbers. I don't know if I ever had attachments that large to climb those sheer walls!

Tomorrow, we're off to Mount Hood, then up to the Columbia River and east toward the gorge. We'll eventually be heading toward Yellowstone, with several stops before we get there.

I've added a lot more photos to our unedited gallery HERE, and continue to update the Google Map breadcrumb of our travels HERE

A few favorites:

 

[Steve & Deb]

October 28:
Sorry for the delay. The car is running great! I got 18.3 MPG on the outbound trip, and at 19.7 overall and 20.5 on the trip after leaving Seattle.

Here's one today in Blue Earth, Wisconsin. This is day 41, and we're at 7023 miles. We should be home Friday.

A few more favorites.

 

[Steve & Deb]

October 30:
Mile 7758: After 43 days and 2 hours, we are home. We have gone 5209 miles after leaving our daughter at Seattle Pacific University back on September 25th. We averaged 18.3 MPG on the way out, 21.0 on the way back, and 20.1 overall. The 7786 shown is the GPS. I used the odometer for this running log. Only a 0.36% difference isn't bad at all for non-stock size tires.

All in all, we had an amazing time, and I'm ready to leave again! We saw and experienced wonderful places, had great food, met interesting people, and enjoyed each other's company the entire trip. The weather couldn't have been nicer, with only 3-4 days with any rain at all, and a tiny bit of snow.

Thanks to everyone for following along with us! I'll have some follow-up posts with things we hauled all over and didn't use. Plus I have a ton of photos from my dSLR camera to go through. So don't unfollow us! We will be taking a trip south sometime in January or February that you can take with us, and I'm sure there will be outings here and there to post, too.

Thanks again!
Steve and Deb

Here's the final map for our 2015 cross-country adventure. (Click HERE for a link to Google Map, where you can zoom in.)

 

[Steve & Deb]

November 2:
Fog seemed to be the theme in several photographs. Our day in the Badlands started so foggy that we couldn't see the walkway to the overlook from the parking lot. It cleared during the day, but the Badlands was very hard to photograph in low contrast lighting due to the low contrast views. Fog in Yellowstone was sometimes indistinguishable from the steam from the various thermal features.

And we saw a wide variety of critters, as well. bison, grizzly bear, moose, elk, white-tailed deer, black-tailed deer, mule deer, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, coyote, red fox, prairie dog, river otter, sea otter, seals, sea lions, gray whale, bald eagle, golden eagle, and any number of birds and small animals.

Notable in what we did not see, are wolves, which I didn't expect to see, but I sure hoped. Didn't see any black bear, marmot, or pika, which are all pretty common in the areas we travelled.

 

[Steve & Deb]

November 4:

We took this with us on our trip to use in photos to tag with ‪#‎overlandbound‬. We just found it while putting stuff away... We took so much a) stuff we didn't use, or b) stuff we wanted and couldn't find. We need a much better organization method!


Clothes I took but didn't wear. Mostly warm weather clothes, Gore-Tex, pants, workout shoes &shorts (like I was really going to take advantage of the motel workout equipment...)

More stuff we had with us that we didn't use. If I knew where the Kestrel was I'd have checked the wind chill a couple of cold days! Thankfully no need for any emergency stuff or the portal

Here is the pile of larger items we took with us and didn't use. Again, fortunately no need for the tools, spares, or fire extinguisher. I was looking for the monopod one day but didn't find it.

I did have some camera problems. I have half a dozen wonderful prime lenses, but since the Nikkor 18-200 lives on the camera 99% of the time, I only took it and my 50mm f/1.4 lens. You can already guess what happened. The 18-200 broke. It has a VR switch to steady it when shooting, and the cable to the switch appears to have melted off. Between about 28-150mm in the zoom range, the end of the cable is in the image. This leaves a large dark spot, but more frequently, blocks auto focus and exposure, so the camera won't take the photo at all. I missed a bunch of action shots due to this. If I turned the camera upside down and shook it, or zoomed all the way out and zoomed back in whilst holding the camera sideways, I could sometimes use the middle range. Extremely frustrating, and after taking the cost of the entire trip into consideration, I should have gone to a camera store and bought a new one! (or the newer 18-300)

Now I'm weighing an entirely new body/lens package. The new, smaller bodies (5xxx or 7xxx) don't fully function with my old lenses, though, so I'll still need to keep the D200 (and probably use it as much as the 2nd hand F4 film body I picked up...)

 

[bob91yj]

Wow, that was an awesome report, thanks for sharing!

 

[Paige Novy]

Looks like it was a great trip! I enjoyed the pictures thus far! I look forward to more!

 

[machine1]

What a journey! Some excellent photography also, I thoroughly enjoyed the report.

 

[Steve & Deb]

Thanks, guys!

 

[Dave]

@Steve & Deb - Epic!

Thanks for sharing your journeys here!