Here are all the photos

And here are a couple maps showing our route and where we were each day:

Tetons and Yellowstone

Our first destination was the Tetons. There was flooding in Yellowstone and we were waiting for the park to re-open. We did a couple hikes on the east side the first day, then rode the Aston-Tetonia rails-to-trails and hiked up Mt Fred the second day. Once Yellowstone opened, we spent a day there. We stopped at the upper and lower geyser basins, West Thumb, and the Yellowstone river. We were very impressed with the Yellowstone river canyon and loved “Artist’s point”.

After Yellowstone we did a bike ride along the Warm River in Idaho and headed north. Kira spent a day hiking Refrigerator canyon near Helena while I worked.

Glacier

We spent four days in Glacier National Park. The first two days were at the north east entrance doing Grinnell and Iceberg lake. We weren’t able to do all of Grinnell due to snow closure, but both hikes were very nice. The next day was at the St Mary entrance on the south east. Kira hiked Pitamakan and then we both hiked Scenic. The “Scenic point” that the scenic hike is named for was nothing special, but we did get to see mountain goats and some cool stunted trees.

Our final day in Glacier was my favorite. We hiked the trail of the cedars and then biked up “Going-to-the-sun” road. The road was closed at the top and cars weren’t allowed above the Avalanche parking lot. So we had the road to ourselves and rode up about 12 miles to the closure. It was very pretty with glaciers and waterfalls.

Idaho Hot Springs Tour

The next week was our big bike tour of this trip. We did the north section of the Idaho Hot Springs Tour. We were out for six days – camping all but one night when we stayed at a Warm Showers in McCall. We saw many hot springs and got into a few of them.

This tour was easier than the Arkansas high country tour we did in May. The climbs were less steep, we didn’t do any single-track, and it was not nearly as hot. We also didn’t have to deal with as many ticks. In general the mosquitoes were better too, but one night camping we did have to deal with mosquitoes that were so thick that there was an audible buzzing when sitting in the tent.

Our bike tour ended near Lowman and I dropped Kira off at the Granjean campground. She hiked from there across a pass overlooking Sawtooth lake and met me on the other side at Iron Creek campground. She really enjoyed this hike and the photos look great:

More Idaho

After the tour, we spent another week in Idaho. We hiked at Redfish lake, took a few days off to work and recover, hiked the Tincup loop in the Sawtooth mountains, kayaked and biked along the Salmon river, and climbed Trapper peak.

The Sawtooth mountains are very pretty, especially right around Stanley. The Redfish lake and Tincup hikes were both very nice. Kayaking on the Salmon river was a bit underwhelming after the Buffalo in Arkansas, but it still had some nice scenery.

Seattle and Olympic

We left Idaho and headed west for Seattle. We spent several days in Seattle working and seeing some sites. We biked around downtown, visited a science museum and spent some time in Chinatown. Parking was a pain and it was nice when we could park somewhere and bike instead of drive.

After Seattle we went to Olympic National Park. We started with the Enchanted Valley hike. I’d planned to only do part of this hike, but we met a couple other hikers who said that the destination was really special. So I did the whole thing and had my first marathon length day. In the end I enjoyed the rainforesty middle of the hike more than the scenery at the enchanted valley. The next day we hiked near Rialto beach which had some nice tide pools and rocky islands.

Our last day in Olympic was the Seven Lakes hike. This was a “five star” hike. We had good views of Mt Olympus and glaciers along with flower filled meadows and lakes.

Canada

At this point in the trip I stopped trying to work and started leave without pay. This was partly because I was low on PTO, and partly because I couldn’t take my work laptop into Canada. From Olympic, we took the ferry over to Victoria. We both enjoyed Victoria. It is a nice city that doesn’t feel too big and is very bike friendly.

After Victoria we did two costal hikes. One at East Sooke and another on the Juan de Fuca trail. Both were nice with good views of the coast and ocean. Juan de Fuca was a bit muddy for my taste, but it had a really nice forest section.

Finally we drove inland and did a hike at Landslide lake. The hike itself was just ok, but it was nice to see more of the island and see the different habitat/climate.

From there we took another ferry over to Vancouver. We spent several days in the city staying with a friend near the university. We did a lot of biking in Vancouver and saw Stanley park, Chinatown, several museums at the University and went to a BC day celebration.

Cascades

We drove from Vancouver through Seattle (where we saw the Asian Art museum) to the Cascades and spent three days hiking in different areas of the park. The first day we did the Sahale Arm hike. This was another “five star” hike. Great scenery, glaciers, lakes and flowers. We also saw goats and a bear. This was my first time to see a bear on a hike, and we were maybe a little too close, but the bear was taking a break in some snow and was pretty uninterested in us.

The next day we hiked Cutthroat pass and Blue lake which were just ok. On our final day, a storm front moved in. We’d planned to hike McMillan Spire. This is a less popular hike and is mostly used by climbers. We made it about 2/3 of the way before giving up due to the wet conditions, very steep terrain, and the clouds obscuring our views. We ended up pretty wet, but we did collect some wild huckleberries.

Mt Rainier

We spent four days at Mt Rainier, exploring the mountain from four sides. The first day was Spray Park. The scenery was spectacular with great views of Mt Rainier along with lots and lots of flowers. We went a bit off trail and climbed up a glacier near Observation and Echo rocks. We’d been looking for water and found some at the bottom of the glacier. We also found cell reception and sent people updates with a photo of Mt Rainier.

The second day was Mt Freemont lookout. This hike was good, but not really special. That night we camped at Reflection lake and got up near sunrise to take some photos of the reflection of Mt Rainier. While we were there a deer came by and we got a great shot of the deer and reflection:

The rest of that day was another spectacular hike. We climbed Mt Rainier as far as possible without rope. This includes maybe a mile of climbing on a glacier (and then sliding back down). We also hiked the Skyline trail which was a very pretty meadow with little rivers and waterfalls. The Skyline trail hike was probably the best hike for the least effort of all the things we did on the trip.

Our final day at Rainier was a bike/hike combination up the Puyallup and over to St Andrews and Aurora lake. This was a nice hike that included some very interesting rock formations and pretty lakes. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were very aggressive at the lakes and we couldn’t really relax and enjoy our time there.

Oregon

After Mt Rainier, we stayed a couple days in Portland visiting my aunt and cousin. We did a bike ride in the city and searched Chinatown for a sesame ball. We then checked out Astoria, Cannon Beach and Eugene. At Cannon Beach we got to see puffins nesting and some nice tide pools.

On our way south out of Oregon, we stopped at Crater of the Moon.

Lassen Volcanic

We spent two days at Lassen and hiked Cinder cone (which is a very conical dormant volcano) and Lassen peak. At the end we spent some time at Bumpass Hell which is an active hydrothermal area with sulfur mud pits, steam vents, and yellow/red rock.

Summary

I really enjoyed this trip. We saw a lot of spectacular scenery, stayed in shape, and travelled cheaply.

For the first month, I was working three days a week (except for the bike tour week) and we spent a lot of mental effort planning for those days, getting to motels, and doing the actual working. It also left Kira with the task of doing most all the trip planning. Once I started the leave without pay, the trip got easier and more fun. We didn’t spend as much time sitting in hotels, and I was a lot more relaxed.

We saw a lot of great things and it is hard to pick favorites when comparing such different scenery and experiences. But some of my highlights were:

• Barron Lake in the Sawtooth mountains
• Going to the Sun road in Glacier
• Sahale Arm in the Cascades
• Spray park and Muir camp at Mt Rainier

It was good to have the bikes along even though we were primarily hiking. Of course we needed them to do the Idaho hot springs tour and we did a few day rides. But they were also useful in the cities to avoid driving and parking downtown. And we used them a couple times to bike to a trailhead when the road was closed to cars.

Excluding losing money by not working for a month, going on the trip was cheaper than staying at my apartment. We spent less on hotels and gas than we would have on rent and utilities.

All in all a great experience and something that I’d like to do again someday.

Here are the photos

Preparation

Car Conversion

We’ve slept in the Prius before, and even took a multi-week trip in it, so we knew how it worked to sleep in the car. The Prius is surprisingly roomy: with the seats folded down I can lay flat without a problem. The issue is that all the luggage then needs to be moved each night. We’d slide the front seats forward, put the back seat down, fill the gap between the back and front seat with cloths and move everything else to the front seats. For this trip, we decided to build a wooden bed after we visited a friend in Grand Junction who had taken out his back seat and built a foldable bed.

As with all construction projects I attempt, this was harder than expected. But with a lot of time and help we replaced the back seats with a piece of plywood that folds up during the day and down at night. It added more storage and a more stable sleeping surface. This video gives the basic idea.

The conversion is an improvement. The extra storage is very nice and it takes less time to switch from driving to sleeping because we don’t have to fill in the space between the seats. We also setup the bed with lots of pads and foam and it is quite comfortable.

Bike

Both of us needed a new bike for touring. The bike packing trips that we wanted to do were going to be a combination of pavement, gravel and single track. Having a pure mountain bike would be great on the single track, but would be heavy and slow on the pavement. A gravel bike would be worse on the single track and they also typically don’t have as much luggage capacity. We need to be able to carry quite a bit of weight with the food and camping gear for a week long trip.

Another complication is that COVID caused a big increase in demand for bikes while also messing up supply chains. So it was difficult to find a bike in stock.

We ended up with the Priority 600X. It is an aluminum hardtail mountain bike with a pinion drivetrain and 2.25″ tires. The pinion drive is an internal hub that replaces the cassette, chain, and derailer on a standard bike. It is more reliable and has a bigger gear range – which is what we need to be able to climb steep hills with lots of luggage and also be able to get decent speed on pavement.

Trip

Arkansas

Our first destination was Arkansas. Part of the reasoning was temperature. It was early May and lots of mountain destinations would still be cold and snowy. The other draw was the Arkansas High Country bike loop. This is a path created by Adventure Cycling and has a quality map that we could follow. Since this was my first bike tour, I wanted to have more assurance that our planned roads would be good.

Before going on the bike tour, we spent a few days hiking near the Buffalo river and we did one day Kayaking on the Buffalo. After the bike tour we did more hikes in the Buffalo area, the Ozarks, and the Ouachita national forest

Oklahoma and Iowa

We were headed to North Dakota next, but on the way we stopped in Tulsa to see the Art Deco architecture and the Philbrook museum. Tulsa was better than we expected and was quite nice for biking with very little traffic.

Then we did a small part of the Wabash trace bike route in Iowa and tried to find White Pelicans at the Chase lake wildlife reserve in North Dakota. We did find pelicans, but not as many as we’d expected.

North Dakota

In North Dakota we went to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park which is kind of like the Badlands and has a petrified forest. We also biked a bit of the Maah Daah Hey trail which was very nice but a bit difficult because of the mud and cows.

South Dakota

Finally we went to South Dakota. We did two days of the Mickelson tail, made a brief stop at Mt Rushmore and then the Badlands.

Summary

The trip was great in a lot of ways. The waterfalls and flowers in Arkansas were spectacular. The Theodore Roosevelt NP and the Badlands were both great. We saw bison up close and an armadillo. We met some nice people on the bike rides and both the Crystal Bridges and Philbrook museums were very nice.

The bike tour was both fun and very challenging. The single track sections were difficult for me and my butt hurt a lot the last few days. But the worst part was the heat, humidity, and the mosquitos. The worst part of the trip was pushing the bike up steep hills in the heat, and not being able to stop to rest without getting attacked by mosquitos.

I was working part time during this trip and we would stop for a couple days a week at a motel so that I could work and Kira could plan the next week of hikes.

By the end of the trip I was more comfortable with living out of the car, and with not knowing exactly where we were going to sleep each night. I was also stronger and could hike and bike further each day. I was ready for a break, but I was also ready to head out again for the next couple months.