September '24
Key Stats
On a scale of fist (aka 0) to 5, how high is the stoke level for trailer life? Finishing at a 5!
Odometer reading? Start: 30,398 miles, End: 35,376 mi, Total: 4,978 mi
Which sports did we tackle? Rock climbing, rafting, mountain biking, and lots of epic hiking
What was the hardest thing this month? Having to call off our last objective due to a bent axel.
What was the most surprising thing this month? Even without work, we still managed to overschedule ourselves
Favorite memory or adventure? Glacier National Park was one of the prettiest places we've ever spent time
Any lessons learned? Make the most of every moment, even when things don't go as as planned.
Favorite book/podcast? Poverty by Matthew Desmond
Musings
September marks the bittersweet end of this particular adventure. While our original plan was to spend 11-12 months on the road, job hunt timing, our renters in Palisade moving out early, and another bent axle led us to wrap things up a little early. That being said, we went out with a bang in September, including an epic 4 night whitewater rafting trip through the Gates of Lodore with our Palisade crew, exploring Glacier National Park with Chloe's parents, and spending another week in SLC, right where we started the year off.
It felt great spending time in the Rockies again; they remain our favorite part of our wonderfully diverse country. And being able to spend a full week with friends followed by a full week with family solidly reinforced the importance of both. We also got some last minute mountain biking and rock climbing adventures in, ensuring we ended the trip full up on outdoor adventures.
Ben's learning adventure largely revolved around frantically researching the nuclear industry and nuclear engineering basics in preparation for his new job as Staff Integration and Testing Engineer at Oklo, while Chloe dove into her next college course...General Chemistry.
Our advocacy work picked back up, with Ben increasing his involvement with Citizens' Climate Lobby, including providing an update on CO State Legislation to CCL group leaders. Chloe made time to phone bank with Environmental Voter Project, encouraging environmentally minded, low propensity voters to get out and vote.
We will wrap things up with a final retrospective post soon, but our initial thoughts on the year are nothing but positive. Overall, we fulfilled our objectives and then some: we prioritized spending meaningful time with our loved ones (without the constant distraction of Slack and work emails), explored up and down the Rockies and over to the East Coast (we'll catch you next time West Coast!), were able to continuously engage in a diverse catalogue of education (without our brains being distracted by work, and we are both fired up and ready to jump back into our next challenges!
Trip Report
The month started with a week of camping in the North Fruita Desert. The idea was to mountain bike every day, but that was thwarted for Ben by a broken bike chain and several final round interviews. Thankfully, this resulted in Ben getting a job, and Chloe was able to ride almost every day.
From there, we pivoted back into paddling mode for a 5 day whitewater rafting trip on the Green River. We decided to take on the countless Class 3 and notorious Class 4 Lucifer in duckies; our first time soloing big water. The handful of swims on the trip left epic stories and no major injuries. The crew of 17 paddlers did not travel light, floating with a full camp kitchen and plenty of firewood for nightly fires. The level of solitude on a rafting trip was similar to the Boundary Waters, only seeing one or two crews a day, mostly having the river and side hikes to yourself.
After the rafting trip, we immediately headed North to Glacier National Park. We went in with high expectations, having heard Glacier stands above most other National Parks. And we were not disappointed! Every hike, be it a ridgeline, lake, or canyon, was absolutely stunning! While we didn't spot any bears, we had plenty of encounters with mountain goats and birds of all kinds. Ben also took Tom, Chloe's dad, for his first bike park experience, where Tom shredded a 2,000 ft top-to-bottom blue trail!
We had originally planned to finish the trip by spending October in the Pacific Northwest, but Ben received an incredibly exciting job offer while we were in Glacier, so we had to wrap things up a bit early. The plan was still to head to Washington to climb Fly Boys, but another axel bent by the rough Montana roads sent us limping back to Palisade. We made the most of this though by stopping in SLC for a trailer tire change and some incredible rock climbing and mounting biking.
We finished the month of with a taste of luxury, returning to Peche for an incredible anniversary/homecoming dinner, before moving back into our house and wrapping up our 10 month adventure!
Gear Eval
Shoutout to Patrick for letting us borrow his duckies and the paddling crew for providing a top notch, luxurious camp setup! We did not pick up any new gear this month, but had the opportunity to test drive a number of rafts and duckies, making Ben green with gear envy.
Chloe's Kitchen
September was the month of many kitchens!
Ben & I were accountable for supplying the 17-person river trip with desserts, and went with a birthday banana pudding and S'moreo (castiron cookie dough, marshmellows, and oreo goodness)
I got access to a FULL kitchen at our airbnbs where we grilled steaks, and had every huckleberry baked good you could imagine.
For the grand finally, I was finally reunited with our home kitchen. Very grateful for all the new recipes I got to work on this year, a refound love of cooking, and all the space (and dishwasher!) a traditional kitchen allows.
On a final note, if you are someone who did not grow up in the midwest, know that midwesterners are VERY serious about their Dean's Chip Dip. Counterintuitively you can find this dip next to the sour cream, and not in the area with all the other dips. Hopefully this saves you the two different trips I had to make to the store :)