Author: MIT Spokes

Sage Creek Campground, SD -> Madison Lake, MI

480 mi, written on March 8th, 2026

I woke up in the wilderness. Well, of course, right? I was in the Sage Creek Wilderness, after all. However, I can say that this is one of the only times I felt like I wasn’t in man’s world. When I left my tent, I was greeted by a lone bison just across the street. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how big bison are. Bulls have nothing on these megafaunas. As we started to pack up and prepare breakfast, two more appeared and they got scarily close. Bison are not exactly friendly animals; they will attack and kill if provoked. Thankfully, they seemed unbothered by our presence. In the distance, a lone coyote scurried across the landscape, keeping its distance from the campsite. In the middle of the campground loop, there was a prairie dog town buzzing with activity. Wildlife had been strangely absent for most of Spokes, despite us getting to out pretty far from civilization at times. Maybe it’s just the nature of road biking. This morning sure was making up for that deficiency.

Having admired the wildlife for long enough, we packed up our things and started our drive through Badlands National Park. We spent the next three hours seeing the sights and hitting all of the major viewpoints. It felt like we were on a safari seeing the herds of Bison and Bighorn Sheep running across the prairielands. The Badlands have a landscape seen in few other places, it’s quite something.

We reached the Eastern end of Badlands National Park, and with it the end of the “fun” of this road trip. I made this route prioritizing seeing the beauty of the northwest, with a time constraint of 10 days to make it to Boston. This meant that, in order to have time to enjoy the northwest, I had us plow through the Midwest on I-90. We left Badlands and got directly onto I-90. This marked the start of my hellish journey across the second half of the country. Three days on I-90, with long hours and few planned stops. All to make it back home. Needless to say, this quickly became boring. Even more than before, Ramona and I passed the time yapping about random things, planning impromptu stops, and finally starting to draft our blogs. The stop of biggest note was Sioux Falls, SD. The river flowing through the middle of the city and its accompanying falls were surprisingly scenic. As we were driving on this day, Sarah was flying back from Las Vegas. She sent us her location during her layover in St. Louis, so close yet so far.

We were approaching our destination for the night surprisingly early. Tonight, for the second time on this road trip, we were going to stay in a house. I managed to secure housing at my dorm floor’s GRA’s parents’ house. Thanks, Katie! (I doubt you’ll actually ever see this though). We were doing so good on time that we even told the parents that we would be able to make it to a 7pm dinner. Then, the heavy rain hit. It slowed us down a bit, especially since we were off the interstate now. The rain eventually passed but then google maps decided to route us through a closed road as we approached Madison Lake. Feeling confident in my off-roading skills in a Pacifica by now, I decided to ignore the closed road sign and made my way up the unsurfaced road. As far as I could tell, I only had to drive up the road for a mile, and besides, google maps was telling me to go this way! As I made my way up the road, however, I quickly lost my confidence. The recent heavy rains made the unsurfaced road extremely muddy. I was not in the business of getting the van stuck somewhere I was probably not legally allowed to be in, so I managed to power through a dirt wall onto the other side of the road and back whence I came. Google Maps fixed itself at this point and added like 15 minutes to the route. We got to the parents’ house about an hour after we said we would, yikes! It was fine though. We both got our bags out of the van and immediately showered. We had gone three full days without showering, since Duck Lake Campground. It was badly needed, and that warm pressurized water was heavenly. Our hosts had some food prepared for us, which was delicious. I definitely missed staying with people after our four days of camping. I collapsed onto a soft bed and began to recuperate and prepare for the following days.

Lizard Creek Campground, WY -> Sage Creek Campground, SD

560 mi

Looks like the 2025 website will become inaccessible for any edits or additions in the next week, so I will try my best to finish the road trip series of blogs today. It’s a great way to procrastinate my mountains of work as an MIT student. hahaha… – Joseph. March 8th, 2026

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We woke up in Lizard Creek Campground, located on the shore of Lake Jackson, overlooking the majestic Teton Range. I was excited to see them all morning as we quickly packed up our campsite. We drove out to the shore, and I was disappointed at the lack of the recognizable tall, jagged peaks in my sight. Fog had obscured the mountains from view. On the bright side, the fog made this a different kind of beautiful view and really gave the vibe that we were in distant lands.

As much as I wanted to linger in the park until the fog cleared, we had a long distance to travel today. We had to cross Wyoming, the least populus state in the US. It is still a very large state, though. This would be my highest mileage day so far. As we made our way out of the park, we were greeted by gorgeous rivers with some of the clearest and serene water I’ve seen in my life. It perfectly reflected the landscape. We decided to admire this landscape as we ate our breakfast.

We made it out of the Tetons and continued East, until we made it to the town of Dubois. There, the National Bighorn Sheep Center caught our attention. We stopped to take a bathroom break and check the place out while we were at it. It was $5 to enter the exhibits, which we were a bit stingy to do, but we still talked to the receptionist at the front desk about the bighorn sheep. She told us that they appear around town in colder seasons, but in the heat of summer, they stay in the high elevations of the Wind-River Range. If we took the Fish Hatchery up into the Wind-River Range for a few miles, we might see some. Armed with a mission, we off the pavement and ascended. The views were truly stunning, and in a different way than everything we had seen before. This wasn’t even a park, just wilderness. We eventually saw a bunch of what looked like mountain goats running around but figured that they couldn’t be bighorn sheep. After all, bighorn sheep need to have their big horns, right? We made it to the end of the road and saw a glacier in the distance, but no bighorn sheep. On the way back, we saw herds of these mountain goats and decided to record them (these videos no longer exist, rip Ramona’s phone). On the way down, we also stopped at an outhouse. I distinctly remember thinking that it was one of the cleanest outhouses I had ever stepped foot in. As we descended further, we came to the realization that all of these mountain goats were probably the very bighorn sheep we were looking for, but we were too ignorant to notice. Haha.

We carried on deep into Wyoming, eventually stopping at a gas station in the tiny town of Wright with showers advertised. They were $20 per person… Unfortunately, a shower is not worth that much, as much as it pains me to say (Lizard Creek didn’t have a shower, and neither will our destination this night, yikes). We then turned onto the desolate Thunder Basin National Grasslands. It felt as empty as Northern Nevada was, and almost as dry.

As the day started to leave, we finally made it to the Black Hills, at the border between Wyoming and South Dakota. It was nice to see trees again after passing through dry grasslands all day. Since we were in the area, I wanted to see Mount Rushmore, an iconic piece of Americana. It was just bright enough when we got there that the faces could be seen. It was cool, but the $35 spent on parking felt a bit overpriced. We walked to a large auditorium where someone was giving a very good speech on the history of Mount Rushmore. I could feel the patriotism surging through my body.

Leaving the Black Hills, we still had to drive over an hour and many miles on a dirt road deep into the Sage Creek Wilderness of Badlands National Park. It’s always a strange feeling driving through the darkness and not seeing any buildings or other cars. It’s like you’re driving through the void. We made it to the road loop that was Sage Creek Campground without much issue. There were a lot of other campers around, but we were able to find a good space. We started to set up camp and cook in the darkness, and the Dark Sky certification of this place quickly became obvious. Skies just as clear as what we had seen in Capitol Reef painted the sky above while we cooked. At some point, we heard a pack of coyotes start howling close by. Ramona was understandably spooked, but I was more fascinated than anything. A bit later, I heard another coyote howl from a different direction, much closer to us. I shined my headlamp into the distance and saw its two eyes staring back. Spooky. We had some ramen for dinner and fell asleep with the rainfly off our tent to soak in the starry sky.

Duck Lake, MT to Lizard Creek Campground, WY

463 mi

Welp, I’ve finally run out of pre-made drafts. Hi everyone, Joseph here. It is January 29th March 8th, 2026. Spokes seems so far away now, so my retellings from this day onwards might not be as detailed, but I’ll try my best. I might do an update post after I’ve gone through all of the road trip blogs, but until then, let me reminisce on what happened 5 6 months ago.

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I woke up this morning in Duck Lake campground, tucked inside the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. What a tranquil place to be. The air is crisp and the only sounds I hear are those of nature. We couldn’t really see the lake the night before, so the first thing me and Ramona did was walk out onto its shore. The views were spectacular. We could see the mountains of Glacier National Park nearby, perfectly reflected by this clear lake’s surface. It really is a marvel of engineering that a road could cross those mountains. As much as I wanted to enjoy the views, however, time waits for no one. We had a long drive today, as per usual. We had to make it to Lizard Creek Campground, inside of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. To get there, we had to cross Montana and go through Yellowstone National Park. We wanted to see Yellowstone before dark, which meant that we had to get on the road early.

We were starting to get into a routine with this camping business. We would usually try to eat something quick for breakfast like yogurt, then quickly pack up our tent and get on the road, trying to make it to the nearest town quickly. I wanted my morning drink, at a cafe, and we also just needed a place with running water. Duck Lake Campground was primitive, meaning that there was no running water. We had gotten used to this style of camping already in Utah, but it definitely calls for some good planning. This time, we stopped in Browning, the headquarters of the Blackfeet Reservation. As with many other reservations, there were a lot of casinos in this small town. In fact, the cafe that we ended up going to was even located inside of a casino! We continued on, following US Route 89’s path straight up and over many hills. Upon crossing Glacier National Park, we were well and truly back into the Great Plains, but it looked a lot wetter than Western Kansas. Eventually, we saw signs for The Montana Dinosaur Center, and given there wasn’t much else to see in this part of Montana (and the fact we needed a bathroom), we decided to check it out. We contemplated buying a ticket to see the exhibit for a while, then decided that dinosaurs were cool and went inside. We spent a surprisingly long amount of time inside, marveling at all of the molds of various dinosaurs, a real T-Rex bone that you could touch, and even an active archeological excavation. We definitely enjoyed this museum in the middle of nowhere, and the guy working at the front desk was super passionate about his work too. Highly recommend a quick stop if you are ever in this part of Montana.

We continued onwards for a few more hours, eventually stopping in Helena, the capital of Montana. This was actually our first major city since Seattle! “Major” here is definitely relative to this part of the country, the entire Helena metro only has a population of 77k. No matter it’s size, the fact that we had come back upon civilization was huge. You see, after Helena, our next “major” city would be in South Dakota, which we wouldn’t reach until the end of the following day. We had the very pressing issue of fixing our cooking setup, which had already failed us for the last couple of days. This city had the only hardware stores for many miles, and we had to take advantage of this fact. We headed straight to a Home Depot. To summarize the events of the day before, we had figured out that the problem with our setup was seemingly not the stove. At first, we thought that the problem might be with the adapter for the large propane tank and our camping stove. We spent a while looking for the adapter, eventually found it, then bought and tested it with our setup outside. It still didn’t work. Next, we decided to replace the propane tank itself. It was possible that some component of the tank had gotten damaged and was preventing any gas release. So, we swapped the tank for another one. This also took a while. When we go to test it, guess what? IT STILL DOESN’T WORK. At this point, we were stumped. The propane tank setup HAD worked perfectly for most of the trip and only started failing on us on our last camping day in Austin, NV. We decided to ignore the results of yesterday’s troubleshooting and assumed that the camping stove itself was somehow malfunctioning. So, we went to an outdoor sports store to go and buy a new camping stove. We spent probably another hour in here deliberating on what to get and eventually bought a new stove. We unboxed it right outside of the store to make sure it would work with the propane setup, and won’t you believe it, IT DID NOT WORK.

I mean, at this point we had independently swapped out every component of our setup, and we still couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Even worse, we had spent well over two hours of precious daylight trying to fix this. We decided to give up on the large propane tank. This felt like admitting defeat, but admittedly we had been too stubborn to just cut our losses and try the only thing that we had seen did work. If we had just accepted the nice couple at Logan Pass’s camping propane tank, we could’ve avoided this headache. As the saying goes (with some liberty), the best time to make the switch was yesterday, the next best time to make the switch is today… So, we went back inside to return the new stove and bought our own camping propane tank. We try it outside to make sure it works, and of course, it worked beautifully.

Well, that sucked. And, worse yet, we were barely going to have enough time to see any of Yellowstone. We got some smashburgers for lunch and then gunned it South into West Yellowstone. We managed to make it with a bit over an hour of daylight to spare and asked the people at the ranger station what we should do (and used the restroom there, of course). We decided that we should just try to go and see the Old Faithful geyser located at the other end of the park, and if we had time, we could backtrack to some of the other attractions. Speeding through Yellowstone felt like I was running through an amusement park, seeing all of the springs and geysers (attractions and rides in this analogy) but not being able to stop at a single one. Oh well, maybe next time I can stop properly. We eventually made it to Old Faithful. We had 15 minutes to spare before it was set to erupt. We went into the visitor’s center, used the restroom (again), got a sticker, and then sat down on the floor right in front of Old Faithful. The pictures don’t quite do it justice, but it was pretty cool. It’s also amazing how so many people can gather quietly to watch a marvel of nature.

Once we had gotten our fill of Old Faithful, it was unfortunately time to leave. I wish we could’ve spent more time at Yellowstone, but I suppose I will need to dedicate a future trip to it. The sun was setting and we still had to make it to our campsite in Grand Teton National Park. Darkness quickly crept in as we made our way across park boundaries, and we eventually made it to Lizard Creek Campground. Now that our stove problem was fixed, we could finally make the sausage pasta we had been trying to make for the two previous nights. It was quite good.

Curlew Lake State Park, WA to Duck Lake, MT

455mi

(Just like the other two, this blog was drafted back in late August, but I never got around to publishing it, whoopsie! – Joseph, 1/26/26)

It IS still summer, right? Well, it sure didn’t feel like it when I woke up shivering from how cold it was outside. Here we were in Northern Washington, only a few miles from the Canadian border and I really wished I had a beanie and socks. It was partially our fault, since we decided not to put the rainfly on our tent last night. Though rainflies are made to protect from rain, they also help to insulate the tent. I got up, put on two jackets and sped over to the bathrooms, which were unfortunately quite far away. Thankfully, the bathrooms themselves were pretty toasty, providing me some relief from what felt like a winter wonderland (there was no snow, no ice, no Christmas tree, just the cold).

Eventually we got ready and left pretty quickly. Although we were too cold to properly enjoy it, it was a very nice and peaceful stay in the park by a very pretty lake. The cold wasn’t the only reason why we were so eager to get out of our campground. Today was going to be (as many days will be) a long day and Glacier National Park was near the end of the drive. We wanted to make it to the park with as much daylight as possible, so we could enjoy it. Pretty early we stopped by a random overlook, hoping to catch some nice views of the mountains. Disappointingly, a lot of the views were obstructed by trees, but we did find some wild blueberries on the way. We continued on to a gas station in Kettle Falls, where we attempted to fill up on some gas. However, we were getting a strange problem. Every time we would pull down the lever gas would fill in the car for all of 5 seconds and then stop as if the tank was full. I can assure you, the tank was nowhere near full. Poor Ramona had to press down on the lever probably 20 times just to get us 30 dollars of gas, before we gave up. We thought maybe the gas tank was broken, so we moved to a different one, but it did the same thing.

We continued onwards and stopped down the road at a cafe inside of an antique store. It was really cozy, we sat on a couch and planned the day, while waiting for our order of a sandwich, burrito and a chai latte. It was taking a while, so Ramona ventured across the street to exchange our propane tank, since we thought our stove was not working because we were out of propane. This was something we would later find out to be not true. Eventually I left the cafe with our food and walked across the street. Before I could get to the gas station, Ramona walked out with the same old propane tank, but now twice as heavy. The gas station clerk was confused by Ramona’s request to exchange the gas tank. Instead, like it was common sense, he topped it off using the gas cylinder outside and pulling at least five different levers. We found out the tank was half empty as opposed to being fully empty. This also meant it was half full and our stove troubles were probably not because of an empty tank. That was quite suspicious. But we thought maybe with double the gas we would get double the pressure and the stove setup would work again. Spoiler alert, that was not the case. But that’s all for later.

So, we continued on. Passing through Colville, we saw a self-serve carwash. At this point, cosmetically, the car in shambles. Now, I normally wouldn’t care too much about this, but the windshield was so dirty that it couldn’t be considered fully transparent. This was an especially big problem in the mornings when the sun rays would illuminate the whole windshield, obscuring the road in front of us. Driving blind on windy mountain roads is less than ideal for obvious reasons. And so, we gave our car, Bertha, some love. Clean for the first time since we got her, she was shining.

Leaving Colville, we continued on, soon crossed into Idaho, blogging all the while. Now, I of course could not write out the blogs, so as I drove, I would tell Ramona what to write and she would type it up for me. Thanks, Ramona! At some point we were passing by a big lake (Lake Pend Oreille) that we could see through the trees. We wanted to stop by and take a closer look, but there were no real overlooks. So, at some point we stopped at the side of the road and walked to the lake. We definitely did not need to cross any railroad tracks or anything. Note that to actually touch the water we needed to descend a steep hill full of loose rocks. With our terrific balance, we managed not to fall into the water, but there were some close calls.

We were once again running low on gas, so we stopped. And once again we were having the same problem as before with the gas only filling for a couple of seconds before stopping. At this point we started to suspect that maybe the car itself was the issue. I decided to do what I always do when I realize that there is a problem that I don’t have the knowledge to fix and pulled out Google. I managed to find a pretty helpful video explaining what was probably happening, but the solution would involve removing the gas tank of the car, which was not going to happen on Bertha without the help of a mechanic shop. As we were trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do, Ramona tried filling the tank once more and to our surprise gas started filling up as if there were no problems in the first place. At the same time, the gas tank door magically fixed itself and was able to fully close for the first time in days. We don’t have any explanation for why things started working again, but I am not one to question good fortune.

We continued on and at some point, something that hadn’t happened in weeks happened once more – our time zone changed, but this time the time skipped forward instead of back. The good thing about time zone changes is that it doesn’t actually change how much sunlight you have left, so we still had a good couple of hours to spend inside of Glacier National Park. We eventually arrived at the West Entrance of the park and checked out the Apgar Visitor Center. Inside, along with my routine of getting a National Park sticker, I also got a beanie and some thick socks – two things I would have really liked to have last night. We asked the park ranger what to do as we drove through Going to The Sun Road. Along with stopping at various overlooks, she recommended that once we get to Logan pass, we hike to Hidden Lake to watch the sunset. We still had roughly 3 hours before the sun sets, so I concocted a plan to make dinner at the top of Logan pass. I figured that cooking couldn’t get much scenic than this. Plus, it would be very efficient, since we knew that we were getting to our campsite after dark. Armed with a plan and some time, we ascended up into the park.

At first, the drive was very nice, following the shore of Lake McDonald for miles. Then the road veered away from the lake and started climbing. At some point the road became very narrow with barely enough space for two cars to fit between the rock wall and the cliff edge. I’m sure at this point the mountain views became very scenic, but I was too busy trying not to crash and die to notice. However, Ramona did snap a lot of pics (update: Ramona’s phone died a few weeks after this and we lost all of her photos from this day of the trip, RIP). We stopped at a few of the overlooks, so that I, too, could enjoy the views, but we didn’t linger for too long.

Eventually, we made it to the top of Logan pass. There was a visitors center up here, but we were too late and it was closed. We drove around to the end of the parking lot and set up our makeshift kitchen overlooking some beautiful views. We turned on our camping stove and put on a big pot of water to boil. Except, it never boiled. As previously mentioned, filling up our propane tank had not solved any problems. But we were hopeful that eventually the water would boil. So, an hour passed. It wasn’t enough. We were ready to call it quits. That was until a nice couple passed by and asked us what was going on. We told them about our plight. And they went back to their car to grab their small propane can and a small burner. They wanted us to use these to troubleshoot and isolate whatever the problem was with our stove setup. The first thing we tried was connecting the propane can directly to the stove. Seemingly, it worked flawlessly. The next thing we tried was hooking up our propane tank to their small burner. It did not work. So, we figured our problems did not lie with the stove itself, but rather our propane setup. They offered us their small propane can, but we declined, since it was a bit late to cook and we thought that we would surely be able to figure it out tomorrow. In hindsight, we should have just taken their can… But that’s a story for tomorrow. We chatted with them until the sun set. The hike was definitely not happening. We packed up our stuff and left for our campground at Duck Lake.

One thing I was glad about was that I would be able to descend Logan pass with some daylight left. It did not seem like it would be fun to drive in the dark. We caught some views of Saint Mary’s lake just before darkness fell. I did the last 40 minutes of the drive in the dark, always on the lookout to make sure I don’t hit any wildlife.

Before we arrive at our campsite, we stop at the Leaning Tree Campground, only a few minutes down the road from our campsite. This was where we were told there were showers and laundry available. At this point, I had completely run out of clean clothes, so the laundromat was well appreciated. We left our stuff in their laundry lounge and showered as the washer went through its cycle. After some warm showers, clothes went in the dryer, and I attempted to call the other Spokies. The connection was good enough that they could hear Ramona when she was talking to them, but the moment I took over the call, they couldn’t hear me. The connection wasn’t good enough to do anything else, so we waited patiently until we had clean and dry clothes. With our business at the Leaning Tree Campground done, we drove a few more minutes down the road to Duck Lake. After missing our camp site at the first drive through, we went all the way to the end of the campground, which was in complete darkness. We set up camp, brushed our teeth and promptly went to bed. This time I slept with a beanie and socks. I did not wake up in the middle of the night from cold. Yay!

Humbug Mountain State Park, OR -> Seattle, WA. 485mi

(This post was drafted in August. Ramona transcribed my thoughts as we drove across the country. I never got around to publishing it until now, whoops! – Joseph, 1/23/26)

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I woke up as we have many times this summer: in the tent from the rays of the sun. As I get out and look at our campsite, I see two tents instead of four and am reminded that we are three instead of eight.

We pack up fairly quickly and get on the road, since it will be a long day of 9 hours of driving. The plan was to drive along the Highway 101 along Oregon’s coast and then eventually head inland through Portland to Seattle.

Our first official stop for the morning was the Sea Lion caves, which were two hours away. While Charles was driving us there, I decided I wanted to do a morning beach stop. I found a pretty isolated beach in a place called Seven Devils State Recreation Area. We pulled into the parking lot. As I was hoping, the place was nearly empty. There were only two other cars in the lot. The three of us got out of the car and ran straight to the beach, only stopping when we felt the cold water on our feet.

I look around and am amazed by the sights I see. In the front of us: the vast Pacific Ocean with a wall of fog running parallel to the shore. To our left and right: beautiful sandy beaches and rocky cliffs. With nobody else around we frolicked along the beach, doing whatever we pleased.

Charles found a washed-up kelp plant and started swinging it around. Ramona climbed up a cliffside and walked around prickly plants. I Jumped around the sand dunes and picked up blocks of hardened sand. Charles also attempted stand a log up in the sand and succeeded (for a couple of seconds). Once we were all satisfied, we headed back to the car. Once we were inside and getting ready to leave, we realized that we had spent way too much time in this unplanned stop.

We continued onwards to the Sea Lion Caves. We arrived at a building a few hundred feet above the water. We were told that there were around 30 sea lions in the cave and in peak season you can see hundreds. We were indecisive if we wanted to spend $18 to see 30 sea lions instead of hundreds. But eventually we decided that 30 sea lions are still a lot of sea lions and went in. We descended down 200 feet into the cave. They had some exhibits and further down was an opening in the rock, where through metal bars you could see where sea lions are gathered. Sea lions are quite the goofy creatures. For some reason they were all trying to fit on this one rock in the middle of the day. I can only assume it was the cool kids rock and everyone who couldn’t fit was lame and a loser. Eventually we decided we’ve seen enough, ascended back up and got back on the road.

Our next stop was Thor’s Well – a set of rocky outcroppings on the coast with a lot of underwater holes that at high tide can create some very cool natural phenomena such as geysers, loud booms and some generally volatile water. We arrived right at high tide and saw some cool stuff. Me and Ramona almost got taken out by a wave, but we survived by standing on top of a rock.

Our next stop further up the coast was a beach town named Cape Kiwanda. But before we could get there, I had an advisor meeting scheduled to register for my classes. I was a little worried about this, because for most of the day, outside of towns, I had no cell service. And towns were few and far between in this area of the country. Luckily, we managed to make it to a town where I had good signal. I was dropped off at a cafe while Charles and Ramona went to find some fish and chips. After troubleshooting many problems and attempting to join the call for more than half an hour, I was finally able to talk to my advisor and register for classes. Unfortunately, this meeting had lost us another hour and a half. At this point it was already past 3pm and we had 6 hours of driving and multiple stops left. We knew we were getting to Seattle pretty late. But we still wanted to see some sights. So, we headed onto Cape Kiwanda.

We parked next to the beach and went to check it out. Charles had been hyping this place up all day. It was a frequent vacation spot for his family. We came upon a beautiful beach with a huge rock coming out of the water directly in front of us. To our right was a pretty big dune. We went into the water and pretty immediately our feet started to go numb from the cold water. So, Charles, being the innovator that he is, started stomping in place in order to bury his feet in the sand. The sand provided an insulating effect against the water, allowing him to stand and appreciate the views. I proceeded to do the exact same thing. We then headed over to the sand dune and saw a lot of people climbing up its face and then running down. We followed their lead and started our own hike up. For some reason this became one of the most difficult hikes I’ve ever done. Every time I would take a step my feet would sink back into the sand back to where I started. It felt like I was making no progress climbing up this dune. It was like I was on a Stairmaster. Eventually though, I made it up to the top of the sand dune and there were some nice views. Then we prepared to run back down. Charles went first. He sprinted down the face of the sand dune, swinging his arms around and made it pretty far down upright, until he fell near the bottom. Face first into the sand. Ramona was up next. She copied Charles’ strategy of swinging arms, but midway through she transitioned into a roll. She made it down just fine. I was last and was really afraid of falling, so I started running down a bit more cautiously. But I picked up speed and then started jumping down the dune. I too transitioned into the roll at the end for the full experience. Charles was a bit jealous that he had not also rolled, so he went halfway up the dune and also rolled. He however did not have my flawless rolling technique. So, when he stood up, we saw his face, caked with sand.

At this point I was getting a little hangry. I had not had enough food and was starting to suffer for it. But everything in Cape Kiwanda was way too expensive. So I decided to get food at our next and final stop at the town of Tillamook. For those unaware, Tillamook is the name of a popular dairy brand in the west and in their namesake town they have their factory which also doubles as a tourist attraction. On our way out, Charles backs the van out of our parking spot and, with our bike rack, pierces the back lights of another car. Yikes.

The owner of the car was nowhere to be seen, so we sped away as fast as we possibly could! Just kidding. We left a note and the owner did eventually contact Charles and file an insurance claim. With this, we lost a few more precious minutes. At this point, Tillamook Creamery was going to close basically at the time we would get there, so made a beeline to the creamery in order to get some ice cream. Funnily enough, when we do get there, all of us get milkshakes. They were quite good. Unfortunately, as we were walking out of the creamery, Charles dropped his milkshake and lost half of it. rip.

Now it was my turn to drive, and I looked for food in town. I found a highly rated taco truck that was still open. We get over to the truck only to find it closed. I was pretty sad about this, until a lady came out from behind the truck. I can tell that she probably speaks Spanish, so I ask her, in Spanish, if they are closed. She says that they are closed, but she can whip up something quick for us. And so, she whips up some delicious steak burritos. The best part is that they are pretty cheap. With haply taste buds and a full stomach we continued on.

At this point the sun was setting, and we still had almost 5 hours of driving to Seattle. We were set to arrive at Charles’ house after midnight. So, we locked in, stopping only for the occasional restroom break or for gas. Eventually, we see the Seattle skyline. A welcome sight after this long, long day. A bit later, we arrive to an even more welcome sight – Charles’ house. And with it – Charles’ boat. A few years back he had bought a broken boat and attempted to fix it, unsuccessfully. Maybe one day he’ll fix it. Or maybe it will sit in his parents’ lawn for all eternity. We go inside and see that Charles’ dad is still awake. It seems that being a night owl runs in the family. He heated up some rice and meat dumpling-like dish that Charles’ grandma had made and frozen for a late-night snack. It was quite delicious. He also set out a tub of watermelon, which I nearly completely demolished. Ramona went to sleep, but I stayed up chatting with Charles’ dad the next 45 or so minutes. Then I too went to sleep. I needed all the rest I could get, because Charles would not be coming with us for the rest of the trip, so I would be the only driver for the rest of the country. This is where the real struggle begins.