Dec 2022, Part 1 - The Road To Moab
I remember watching an episode of Expedition Overland’s first season a while back and was amazed to learn that all their incredible adventures started with a trip to Moab to reflect and ponder the future. I remember Clay and his team felt it was time to pursue their passion and how they needed to, “go to adventurous places and do adventurous things” and “how you can really find yourself by going on adventures.”
With those words in mind and my own life taking a drastic re-direction in the last couple years I decided it was time to go on my first big solo adventure and to try to find myself again through adventure.
As Moab created such a life changing experience for the XO crew, I decided that Moab would be the perfect first adventure in what I hoped would become a long list of adventures to come that would help me, get back to being me. That there was an incoming extreme cold front coming into the BC area also didn’t hurt the decision-making process either!
The awe-inspiring highlights of this trip were so many, and will be presented in a series of posts to give them the proper attention they deserve.
Layka and I left a few days before Christmas. While crossing the border the CBP officer thought Layka and I were crazy to drive south given the weather that was forecast but let us through nonetheless. I’m sure the phrase “Crazy Canadian” was going through her head as we drove off! Arriving quickly at Bellingham I refilled at Starbucks (more important than gasoline) and then hopped on to the I5 and headed South. The first leg of our nearly 6000 km journey would take us as far as Bend, Oregon.
The weather wasn’t too bad while we were on the interstate but once we got to Portland and made our way alongside the stoic Mt. Hood and continued south, the roads started to get a solid covering of snow that gradually increased as we got closer to Bend. By early evening we reached Bend and apart from fuelling up and grabbing some food the only other significant stop was to Cascade Vehicle Tents.
I currently have a CVT Awning on the Jeep and have previously owned a CVT Rooftop Tent. CVT makes exceptionally well-built products, and it was a pleasure to finally be able to stop by and visit the store. After a short meet and greet it was getting darker and nearly closing time so we headed off to our first campsite. A great little hideaway just off highway 20 that I mapped out on iOverlander while planning the trip. Snow was still falling, and we were sitting at about -11C, about 12F, when we arrived so I quickly setup camp and off to bed we went.
We woke up early and still under a pitch-black sky. I brushed off the snow from the tent before closing it up and heading out. With a long day of driving ahead we left the campsite at around 06:30 and continued along Hwy 20 until we hit the small town of Burns Oregon, where we filled up with fuel for both the Jeep and myself, it definitely included…you guessed it, a large cup of black coffee! After the stop, we headed south along Hwy 95 towards Nevada.
As the glorious sun rose above the horizon it illuminated huge landscapes all around us. The lower eastern half of Oregon brought back memories of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, a few peaks but mainly rolling hills and open grasslands as far and the eye could see. As we made our way closer to Nevada, we drove through a beautiful pass in the Steens Mountains that descended into Jordan Valley to the town of McDermitt. McDermitt is a border town between Oregon and Nevada and home to a quaint little coffee shop called “Somewhere Out West.”
I picked up a very needed and very delicious cuppa Jo before heading on. We continued south until the town of Winnemucca, Nevada, where the road hooked to the left and put us in the direction of our second nights campsite, the famous Bonneville Salt Flats.
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a unique and vast natural salt pan, approximately 19 km (12 miles) long and 8km (5 miles) wide. This area is known for being popular with land speed racers at the Bonneville Speedway and where the very first world land speed record that occurred back in 1914, and where five major land speed events take place every year. This area has also been made famous in TV and film where the opening theme to Knight Rider was filmed, where Will Smith dragged an alien across the desert in Independence Day and more recently the backdrop for the scene where Jack Sparrow dragged the Black Pearl with the help of rock crabs while in Davey Jones’s Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End.
Again, thanks to iOverlander for finding us an unbelievable campsite just north of the town of West Wendover, Utah. The night sky was filled with an immeasurable amount of stars poking holes in the blanket of night. After a solid night’s sleep we woke to the most breathtaking sunrise and as the sun continued to increasingly radiate the warmth of the day, it unveiled a landscape that seemed just as cosmic.
Stay tuned for part 2 where we visit Salt Lake City, find an epic campsite along the San Raphael Swell and make our way to Moab!