What 2017 Might Bring

Even though we have enjoyed the last three and a half months in Arizona, we know we need to start heading away from the heat that is coming. In fact there have been weeks of above average temperatures, at times 20 degrees higher than normal. So we may have already overstayed our welcome in this regard. We had only said we wanted to head to the Pacific Northwest this summer and try to time our 10,000 geocache find with one of the more famous caches in the Seattle area. We have a little over 400 more to find so we have some flexibility in our find rate.

To try to put a little structure around our travels, we had come up with three "events" we wanted to get to get to while up that way. The first is a geocaching event in Kennewick Washington near the end of June. Then a two week Habitat for Humanity volunteer assignment in Mt Vernon Washington a little north of Seattle the first two weeks of July. The third event was to try to be near the center of the solar eclipse happening on August 21. The original thinking was to include another geocaching event near Seattle but it is only 2 days prior to the eclipse so we prioritized. 

We have asked plenty of people over the last few months about what places to see in Washington and Oregon and which route to take to get there. If you put in Phoenix as a starting point and Kennewick as an ending point (since it is our first scheduled "event") into a mapping program there are three main routes: up through California/Oregon; Nevada/Idaho/Oregon; or Utah/Idaho/Oregon. We decide that the latter one interests us the most. So with that in mind we start to plan.

We began to make some reservations at some of the more popular areas although we discovered that we should have started some of that planning weeks ago. We also wanted to have places reserved over Memorial Day and July 4th and eventually Labor Day. The general plan after Apache Junction is to travel north thru Arizona hitting the Sedona area and Page. Then cross into Utah and stop near Zion, Bryce, and Capital Reef. Then continue north to Salt Lake City before crossing over into Idaho, the northeast corner of Oregon and then to Kennewick Washington. We have only reserved at 4 or 5 spots so far. The one that we were most concerned with was finding a place to stay for the eclipse. All the campgrounds we checked had no availability for that day and everything we read about what to expect was pretty bleak if you hadn't booked months ago

But we didn't let that deter us. We had heard about a service called Boondockers Welcome and chatted with the couple that developed the program when we ran into them at one of the rallies we attended earlier this year. We had signed up a few weeks ago figuring it was just one more tool in our planning tool belt. What is Boondockers Welcome? People that have property and room for RVs will sign up for the service, offering their property as places for people with RVs to stay.  Some may have electricity, water and even a dump while others just have a spot to park the rig. So we checked out what was available in the central to northern Oregon area since this is the center of the solar eclipse. We found one that is within the area where a total eclipse will occur and it's only 20 miles south of where the peak will be. We sent an email to the owner expecting him to laugh at us for asking this late in the game. But we were pleasantly surprised when he responded that he still had a couple spots available with only two others having asked to stay so far.

Here is a map of the current thinking of our route. We have some stretches where we haven't specifically identified where we want to stay but that will be part of our future planning. Things will undoubtedly change as we proceed but that is half the fun.

CLICK ON MAP FOR DETAILS