Hitched and Rolling

Waking up in Sonoma was cool. I have never been to “wine country” before and as we came down off the mountain it was very foggy, but we could see the vineyards that we had unknowingly driven past the night before.

After Bre tided up the van and Duke and I had our regularly scheduled programming of morning fetch: fog edition, we got back into the van and I typed “breakfast burrito Sonoma reddit” into google. Reddit did not lead us astray, and we found ourselves at a wonderful breakfast burrito food truck.

Bre was not very happy with me, and this morning was probably a low point on the trip emotionally. She said that my working and our fast pace was making her feel alone, and that we weren’t getting to see anything because we were moving too quickly and trying to see everything. A point well taken. Since then I have tried to separate work into discrete time periods, and we are thinking about cutting some things from the itinerary so that we can spend more time enjoying the places that we visit.

We were only about an hour and a half from our destination, San Francisco, so today was not expected to be a big driving day. And it wasn’t. We found ourselves in Marin around noon and stopped at Target for some dog food before heading over to Rodeo beach to admire the surf. We got to play fetch on the beach with Duke and then cruised Sausalito very briefly before heading over the Golden Gate Bridge into the city.

Because I spent a year in San Francisco after college, I had some favorite haunts that I wanted to check out, so we were able to arrange a dog sitter, Kathy, who was a friend of a friend, and also booked a hotel room in town for the night.

Having dropped off Dukem and the van at Kathy’s place in Daly City, Bre and I ubered into the city and checked into our hotel. It was nice to be out of the van for a while, and we showered and put on clean cloths for our night out on the town.

Every time I return to San Francisco I am reminded at just how hilly it really is. We had a drink at our hotel before heading out to a restaurant, and the view from hotel’s bar was great. 

We decided to take a self driving car to the restaurant. Yes, you read that correctly. In San Francisco they have a service called Waymo which is basically uber except there is no person driving the car. It was a thrilling and strange experience to watch the blinkers magically turn on and off as the wheel spun around on its own and the car navigated to our destination.

Bre and I had a great dinner down town before heading over to one of my favorite bars- the black horse. This is said to be the smallest bar west of the Mississippi. It has about 8 bar stools and whether you like it or not you mostly hang out with whoever else is there, because the small quarters force interaction. We met some really fun people and had a wonderful evening. The beer options are few, and your selection is drawn from a bathtub full of ice and bottles behind the bar. Bre loved the bar which didn’t surprise me. A wonderful night in a beautiful beautiful city. 

Waking up in the Jedediah Smith wilderness outside of Crescent City, we were now officially in California. We woke at an RV park along the Smith River which truly is a beauty. After a morning fetch routine, breakfast at a little diner, and stopping on a couple bridges to look into the glassy blue clear water, we continued south on the 101.

Around lunch time, probably 12:30, we stopped in Eureka CA. After a quick fetch session with the beast we did some lunch-oriented googling and realized that Eureka was actually known for Oysters. We found that the main oyster restaurant in town was not going to open for another 90 minutes so we decided to go to the grocery store and see if we could get some there. We did end up getting some there, along with a shucker, and we ate them in the park, but they were not very well-shucked (full of bits of shell), and by the time we had done our shop and park-shuck it was just a few minutes until the popular place opened so we just headed over there to be the first customers.

The wait paid off. WOW! This place was fantastic. The restaurant was called Humboldt Bay Provisions. They have a unique policy where in order to work in the restaurant you have to also work on the boats in the bay. The guy working there explained that the policy makes it really hard to find employees (people with both skill sets and interests are rare), but also makes it so that the employees who they do hire are very knowledgable.

The Oysters that they had there were absolutely amazing. Apparently this bay in Humboldt supplies 70% of the Oysters in the entire state, including a lot of the famous places in San Francisco. We ended up having a dozen each, in a few installments of 6. Some broiled and some fresh. 

Climbing back into the van we pressed south eventually arriving in Sonoma California for the evening. After an unfortunately radiused turn at a gas station left our silver chariot with a blue scar,  we found our way up and up and up a moonlit windy hill to a state park. Being that we were in Sonoma, California (and having just scraped the side of the van on a gas station’s pump-protecting concrete pillar), we had picked up a bottle of local red wine which we enjoyed at our moonlit mountaintop resting spot.

Things have been getting little hectic and moving a bit too quickly on hitched and rolling so this post is going to be a little different. We are doing a speed round today, cramming a few days into one post so that I can move on and be caught up.

We woke up at the Cidery in Brady, Washington to a beautiful morning and hit the road almost immediately. We were close to the coast so we wanted to drive down and see the Pacific Ocean. On our way to Astoria we reached our first emergency.

As far as emergencies go, it wasn’t terribly emergent. Let’s call it our first adversity. The van came to us equipped with a rear, external, cargo trunk attached to the trailer hitch. It held extra supplies like camping gear, coveting Hitched and Rolling T shirt inventory, and extension cords for electric hookups at campsites.

Somewhere along the 101 South we kept hearing some grinding noise and Bre convinced me to pull over and investigate. Thank god she did. The bumper itself, which is supposed to be connected to the chassis of the van and supports the hitch, had somehow sagged such that the storage rack was making contact with the road. Not good.

After an hour or so of tool use and a call with Jamie (the van’s owner) we threw the trunk into the bed area (Duke was not amused by the idea of sharing his riding area with a nearly-coffin-sized plastic trunk) and were back on the road. Jamie told us that we were absolved of any ownership of the trunk, as we obviously couldn’t have it occupying our bed for the next 4 weeks, and that we could throw it out or sell it or do whatever we wanted with it. Fair enough.

The trunk itself was in perfect condition (the van’s hitch was the issue) so we listed it on Facebook marketplace in Portland.

We stopped for seafood on our way to Portland where we would visit my friend Franky and have dinner. She lives in a really cool artist-style house, one of those places that is just good for the soul, and it was great to see her. 

In the morning we decided to head to the mountains of central Oregon instead of back to the coast. We sold the trunk to a fire fighter and dropped it at the station. We drove to Bend Oregon and it was a wonderful drive over the Mt. Hood area, a touch of winter. When we got to bend we found a dog friendly patio restaurant with space heaters that also played the Commanders football game. Ideal! Except we lost in overtime.

In Bend we stayed at a really nice state park and sprung for HOT showers in the AM. We walked around Bend and had a breakfast burrito before heading back over the mountains to the coast. The short days are tough because the daylight just gets away from you. Because we hung in bed for a few hours in the AM and didn’t get on the road until 1PM, it felt like it was dark before we knew it. That being said, between Bend and Florence (the coastal town at which we stayed last night) we did get an awesome hike in at a waterfall, somewhere along the McKenzie river.

Hitched and Rolling rolls on.

Bremerton, WA

Thursday morning we woke up at our hotel. The hotel is charming. It is clean and seems entirely unchanged from the 1970s. Complete with a shag carpet, some kind of infrared bathroom heat lamp and a faux-wood GE mini fridge. As is tradition, we stopped for a coffee and took Duke to a local park on our way into the morning world.

Bre’s sister Billielee and her wife Tiffany live around 10 minutes from the hotel and when we arrived we were met with some awesome bagels, cream cheese, and lox. Billielee and Tiffany have both at some point been professionals in the culinary world so they take food pretty seriously, which is of course appreciated by your author. For examples, with the bagels, cream cheese and lox was also available some sprig of dill as garnish.

We hung out for a few hours and as you can imagine the main event, the thanksgiving meal, was also fantastic. We had stuffing, cornish hens, green beans, and the most delicious squash-mash dish I have ever tasted. Billielee and Tiffany’s friend Julia came over with a pumpkin pie and there was also a homemade cranberry and cherry tart made by none other than ex-professional-pastry-chef Billielee.

We hung out at their place for six or seven hours and it was really Fun to hear stories about Bre and Billielee‘s childhood in Virginia. 20+ year-old family photos made an appearance which always ads a bit of color to any family gathering.  

It was raining most of the day but at one point it cleared up and Duke, who, as always, was quite popular, got to demonstrate his incredible fetch prowess on the back lawn. 

After a wonderful day we left with full stomachs and headed back to our humble accommodation, the Flagship Inn, which, I must add, has an incredible shower. On Friday we woke up to a different view from the hotel balcony. The fog and rain had been replaced by crystal clear blue sky’s and sunshine – a phenomenon that Bre explained to me is fairly rare in Bremerton, and should not be taken for granted. 

After a quick Starbucks run, we drove up onto the hill to an old cemetery to catch a glimpse of the only-visible-in-clear-weather Mt. Rainier. I parked the car so that we could just take in John Muir‘s favorite “fire mountain” in all of its glory for a few minutes, before we headed to a local park to play some fetch with our young beast.

We had all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch before heading back to Billielee and Tiffany’s to hang out some more, and take a group trip to the park for some fetch and walking. When we got back to their place, Tiffany, having driven behind us for a couple miles on the way home from the park, noted that our van’s rear storage trunk was surfing up and down somewhat alarmingly, an insight that would prove to be quite prescient later on.

After hanging out a bit longer on Friday afternoon Bre and I decided to hit the road and continue our journey. As we left the Bremerton area, it was now squarely nighttime, and Bre, sitting in the passenger seat, reflected on how nice it was to see her sister Billielee and her wife Tiffany. I agreed as I had not met them before. We were really grateful for the stop, the hospitality, the family time, and of course the delicious food.

But as is the nature of life on the road, circumstances demanded that we look ahead. Connecting to the starlink, Bre identified a farm and Cidery as a potential harvest host at which we could stay the night. Unable to reach them by phone or by website, we decided to just drive there and see what happened.

Upon arriving at the farm/cidery we introduced ourselves and asked about whether their parking lot was accepting overnight guests. We were greeted with an emphatic “of course!” before ordering a pair of cider flights. Duke was invited inside and the host’s husband Duncan soon appeared. Turns out Duncan had hiked the majority of the Appalachian Trail in 2018 so when Bre told him how we had met his face lit up and we spent the the next couple hours sharing trail stories over their homemade cider. 

The owners of the farm could not have been nicer and we had a wonderful evening hanging out. By the time the operation finally shut down for the evening, Bre and I had sampled every cider on tap and ordered a pizza for dinner, which buzz insisted we enjoy in the heated patio gazebo he maintained just a few steps outside the cidery.

Another wonderful day and night. One of my favorite things about this trip is the people that we meet along the way, sharing stories and having fun. Hitched and Rolling is very similar to hiking the Appalachian Trail in that way

Having made the necessary preparations for the necessary preparations for departing first thing Monday morning, and seeing as we are mostly adjusted-still to the eastern time zone, we woke up and said our goodbyes to Bean, and had wheels on pavement leaving Breckenridge before 7:30 am.

We drove out of Breckenridge, and on our way out of town we stopped for one more throw of fetch with Duke at Carter Park. Bre grabbed a Starbucks and she would need it because she was going to drive literally the entire day. This was first day of Hitched and Rolling’s second week and it was my first day back at “work“. 

Bre drove the entire day and the Starlink worked great (thank you to Mr. And Mrs. Duber for the wonderful starlink hardware, which was a wedding gift) as I did zoom meetings, wrote code, and responded to emails, all from my laptop while traveling 70ish Mph down i70. 

Aside from Bre driving and me working, the day was not particularly eventful. Soon after noon we stopped at Green River State Park in Utah where Bre took Duke for a walk while I had a zoom meeting.

I was sorry to not be participating in the road trip but the reality of the matter is that if we are going to be spending 6 weeks out here it is not feasible that I can ignore my gainful activities for that entire span of time. In the afternoon we hit a bit of traffic but kept heading west until we arrived at our stop for the evening – a harvest host called Uinta Family Farm. It was dark when we rolled in so we didn’t get to see much, but we briefly said hello to Robert the farm’s owner. The weather was nice and we cracked a chilly window for optimal sleeping frigidity. 

The way that harvest hosts works is that you get to stay in cool locations (vineyards, farms, breweries, etc) and in exchange you are expected to buy something. In the case of Uinta Family Farm they had a small store set up that sold Alpaca wool products. Uinta Family Farm’s primary resource, as it were, is alpaca, so their store had quite a nice selection of goods. Robert had just retired after 36 years at the Department of the Interior and offered to show us around the farm after our quick shop in the farm store. 

We got to see a variety of birds (ducks, swans, chickens and Pea fowl, as Robert called them) and also the alpacas. Robert separated the Alpacas by age and sex and he suggested that we might want to see the female pen because they were cuter and less likely to spit. Sounds good! 

We said hello to the Alpacas which was really fun. They are very curious animals, always wanting to walk up and say hello, and we didn’t get spit on even once. We also got to meet the guard dog Tank, who weighed 180 lbs. Yes, you read that correctly. Wow! Tank is right. 

Eventually we packed up and left the farm and continued our trip westward. Due to the presence of the farm animals and Tank, we were not able to play fetch with Duke in the morning. My new strategy when it comes to finding places to play with Duke wherever we are is to search on google maps for the keyword “county park”. I find these to be the perfect mix of accessible (nearby), open (expansive enough to play fetch) and unpopulated. The park at which we found ourselves this morning was unexpectedly tranquil – almost perfectly quiet. The cold night’s air had frozen the blades of grass which crunched and became imprinted as I walked in. 20 minutes and one tired dog later, the conditions had warmed such that my return walk made no such impression. 

For the second day in a row I worked on my laptop in the back while Bre did all of the driving. She drove for about 10 hours today, only stopping to fill up gas and occasionally use the restroom. I am more than happy to be her flight attendant, fetching her Topo Chico (seltzer water), coffee, or snacks from the fridge as needed.

All of the sudden I looked up and we were taking an exit. The captain had made a decision. It was night time. “Where are we?” I asked. “Pendleton, Oregon”, she proudly replied.

Well okay then! Pendleton, Oregon it is! 

The main street was old-fashioned and idyllic, kind of a quintessential western town. We stopped into two irresistible bars on Main Street, each with quite opposing appeal. One dive bar which proudly claimed to be the oldest bar in Oregon, and one luxurious hunting-lodge-themed cowboy bar, where we split a French dip sandwich before retiring to our evening’s improvised rest on a hill overlooking town and the highway below. 

Days 5/6 – Breckenridge, CO

We woke up at Bean’s house on Saturday morning. Bre made some breakfast sandwiches and we cleaned out the van and started some laundry while Bean hit the slopes for a couple morning runs. Jenny is out of town visiting her folks for thanksgiving so we didn’t get to see her unfortunately.

When Bean got back from skiing we all decided to go for a hike. The hike was a solid climb but it was an absolutely beautiful day. We hiked with Bean and his neighbors and friends, Miles and Christy. Duke was loving it. We climbed up almost 1000 feet, starting on a forest service road and then onto a hiking trail. There was a light dusting of snow that was only really present in the shade.

When we got the top Bean requested that we not look to our right hand side until we reached the peak. I complied. The view from the top was stunning. Like a postcard. Duke seemed to enjoy it too. Bean said that he sometimes does this hike before work, and that it usually takes him around an hour. What a way to start the day. Bean has clearly optimized his life for outdoor recreation, and as far as I’m concerned that seems like as good a thing as any around which to optimize. The smell of the forest somehow reminded me that I was out west and the chipmunks eventually caught Duke’s attention as we sauntered back down to our waiting vehicles.

Saturday night was a special night in Breckenridge, at least according to Bean and his friends. There was an annual event taking place, the Friends of CAIC Fundraiser. CAIC stands for Colorado Avalanche Information Center, and is apparently some kind of nonprofit that measures and tracks avalanche conditions. My understanding is that CAIC provides some kind of informational resource that Bean and his Breckenridge ski friends treasure quite dearly. What most of us think of as “skiing” these guys call “resort skiing” which is to say that they distinguish skiing at a resort as merely a subset of the wider sport. What they seem to prefer to “resort skiing” is “ski touring” which, as I understand it, involves climbing up mountains, usually multiple thousands of feet, and then skiing down on one’s own route. Without chairlifts or ski patrol or predetermined runs at all, this group of alpine pioneers depend heavily on the CAIC’s guidance when it comes to figuring out what is safe and what isn’t.

Before heading to the big event we went to a fancy seafood restaurant’s happy hour where we had some delicious oysters. Bean and Miles’ friend, Connor, was our waiter which was really fun because it felt like he was part of our table. After dinner we walked over to the fundraiser. I didn’t really know what to expect. The event was held inside an amphitheater type building and was vaguely reminiscent of a farmers market or a science fair, in the sense that basically all of the activity was divided into “booths”. Many major ski brands were represented by booths, where employees from the brands were giving out free gear. Importantly, there were more than a handful of beer booths, where local and regional beer companies were dispensing their product. Admission to the event came with two free drink tickets and for some reason those tickets flowed suspiciously easily. I’m not really sure where the abundance of tickets came from, but Bean and his friends somehow had seemingly dozens of tickets. The tickets flowed so easily, in fact, that I decided to switch to non-alcoholic beer, for fear of not being able to keep up. I’ll blame the altitude. Either way I think I made the right decision because in the morning I was feeling better than most. 

Sunday morning Bean wanted to go “resort skiing” for a couple runs so Bre and I joined him in taking the town gondola over to the mountain’s base. On the gondola we met an interesting guy named Eric who taught AP Bio at the local high school and was from my hometown of Bethesda, MD. Upon arriving at the resort base, Bean went up for 2-3 runs and Bre and I split a breakfast burrito at a small bar near the lift line. After our activities had wrapped up the three of us reunited and went back down the gondola to the parking lot where we caught the free Breck bus back to Bean’s house.

In the afternoon the three of us took a lovely walk into town where I got some much needed supplies (a new wallet because Duke had eaten mine a few weeks ago, and some sunglasses), and had lunch. On the way into town we took a scenic trail and Bean showed us the town’s new mountain bike course.

After our afternoon stroll we went back to Bean’s and napped. In the evening Bre made a delicious pasta with spaghetti from an amish market we had visited in Ohio and spicy tomato sauce prepared and canned by Bre’s friend Brittnee.

We were all exhausted and hit the hay around 8:30 Sunday night so as to tackle the new week head on. All and all a great weekend in Breckenridge with Bean. We charged up our batteries (literally and metaphorically), did our laundry, showered, and generally basked in the comforts of stationary life. Tomorrow we continue west.