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ExecuDork posted:What is up with you Yanquis and assuming Canada is some homogenous strip across the northern edge of your country? Canada adjacent to Montana is completely different from Canada adjacent to New York. I just assumed he'd want to visit Canada on his trip, so made a pretty indirect statement regarding "go here at some point." "Full of boring white people" is kind of akin to visiting Minnesota, so.. Canada is Minnesota.
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Dec 25, 2014 00:17
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Yeah, Glacier National Park is a great idea, and it's a place with some interesting border features - you can hike / canoe across the international border, our two countries and parks services have some agreements in place for that kind of thing. The Canadian side is Waterton Lake National Park and it's pretty great. Fair point about the boring white people, though it's not so much "full" once you get north of the thin homogenous strip of Canucks huddled up against the northern edge of your country 
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Dec 25, 2014 00:21
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We call those Eskimehs.
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Dec 25, 2014 00:48
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I loved your Death Valley post. I've only been there once in the summer and camped at Wildrose, which I recommend (no fee, no RVs, out of the way). I forgot to bring tent stakes and of course the winds were over 30 mph that night. Piling big rocks at the corners of the the tent inside and out actually worked out. I also ended up driving down a progressively washed-out road in a Passat only to find a bunch of cones and the backside of a "road closed" sign when I made it through to the other end. Exploring! However, it can be really dangerous out in the desert. Case in point, some German tourists that met an unhappy end in the 1990s when they got lost in a rental minivan: http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
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Dec 25, 2014 01:41
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meatpotato posted:I loved your Death Valley post. I've only been there once in the summer and camped at Wildrose, which I recommend (no fee, no RVs, out of the way). I forgot to bring tent stakes and of course the winds were over 30 mph that night. Piling big rocks at the corners of the the tent inside and out actually worked out. Way cool post. Never seen that bit about the Germans. Awesome. What were you thinking driving down a road like that in your Passat??  I was careful (really) and we were in a proper 4x4 with good tires.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:55
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I probably wouldn't have driven down it if I knew it was closed! Only the exit end had a "road closed" sign  . I would have backed up if it got risky, dying in the desert isn't something I'm keen on.
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Dec 25, 2014 06:15
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Blaise posted:
I just did a trip to Joshua Tree and researched the gun laws, because we were also passing through some BLM land and I had some new acquisitions I wanted to try. According to what I read, thanks to a new law a couple of years ago you can indeed have firearms in NPs a long as they meet/are transported in respect to the laws of the state the park is in. No shooting in any park of course, but the BLM land a few miles down the fun 4x4 road? Cool (depending on any fire restrictions!) That being said I've spent a lot of time in CA deserts and never even come close to needing firepower. Almost always have something along with me though, especially if I'm out with the girlfriend. Good move texting your location - for those of you getting the wanderlust reading this, letting someone know where and what time you expect to be back is huge. Local search and rescue teams are very good, but figuring out where your dumb rear end started is the biggest part. My dad was one of the original first members of the China Lake area Mountain Rescue Group that operates near/in death valley. I grew up hearing "Don't be like a German Tourist"
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Dec 25, 2014 19:16
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Welcome to nomad life! My wife and I decided to sell everything and hit the road as well. I quit my job without another one lined up, Fate slapped a beautiful, awesome job offer down on my desk five days later, and we successfully relocated from NW Arkansas to Denver at the end of July. Currently we live in a 37' Class A motorhome with the two cats, pay $500 a month all bills paid for our lot and utilities, and I ride transit to and from work. I did keep my E39, though, and had it shipped up this fall. Currently fixing some annoying crap on it before I tag it up and get back on the road. It's nice, because I don't need it at all due to the bus, it's just a pleasure car now. We were planning to be a lot more nomadic before the job offer, we have been pretty planted here - but the ability to move everything we own with 72 hours notice and no packing is great.
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Dec 25, 2014 19:27
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:That being said I've spent a lot of time in CA deserts and never even come close to needing firepower. Almost always have something along with me though, especially if I'm out with the girlfriend. We never felt threatened either, but you really are in the middle of nothing. If anything were to happen (a big if), you're on your own. Thus the recommendation!
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Dec 26, 2014 00:01
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California wilderness forests have bears and mountain lions, but the deserts are pretty well barren. There isn't much that's any bigger or more dangerous than snakes or coyotes. Mountain lions aren't unheard of, but still pretty unlikely. The coyotes know that campsites mean food but they spook easily; I've never in my life known a coyote to not high-tail it as fast as they can from a shout or a flashlight. Having a gun in the high desert is just trading one set of highly unlikely dangers for another. Not that people shouldn't be free to make that choice on their own, but it never made much sense to me.
Cactus Ghost fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 00:27
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Blaise posted:We never felt threatened either, but you really are in the middle of nothing. If anything were to happen (a big if), you're on your own. Thus the recommendation! Absolutely, I'm with you there. I've had plenty of strange vehicles roll up to my campsite late at night, and while they all continued quietly past you never know... something solid under the pillow in your tent makes sudden headlights a lot less weird in remote places. OMGVBFLOL posted:California wilderness forests have bears and mountain lions, but the deserts are pretty well barren. There isn't much that's any bigger or more dangerous than snakes or coyotes. The coyotes know that campsites mean food but they spook easily; I've never in my life known a coyote to not high-tail it as fast as they can from a shout or a flashlight. Having a gun in the high desert is just trading one set of highly unlikely dangers for another. Not that people shouldn't be free to make that choice on their own, but it never made much sense to me. I've never worried about four legs in the desert, and my backyard in the foothills above Los Angeles has more bears than I've ever encountered in the wild. Coyotes are chill as hell and I'd give more cautious thought to a stray dog. Mountain lions are a different story. I stayed overnight in a giant wash at the base of San Gorgonio once (Whitewater River), and we found recent evidence of a lion getting either a bighorn sheep or something else... fresh bones scattered all over. What was weirder was that they were right in the middle of an older abandoned campsite - chairs folded up and stacked under a shrub, tent collapsed and weighted down with rocks. Judging by sun fade and dust they'd been that way for a year, maybe two... kind of looked like deer hunters who planned to come back but never did. That was a bizzare, remote place and I was glad to have brought along a pistol. Once I was out with a friend in a fairly remote but well-traveled area - earlier that morning I heard some guys magdumping pistols a half-mile up the canyon and thought "geeze, little close to a campsite there guys...". . About thirty minutes later a suburban rolled straight into our campsite and four tacticlol cargo short guys, all with various sidearms strapped to their hips jumped out, and came walking straight up to us. loving douchbags... my poor hippy friend was scared shitless but I walked out and started with the "Sounded like .40 and 9mm you guys were shooting, did I hear right?" bit. They were a bit taken aback that the hippies in the old FJ60 playing reggae knew what they had, so that tactic worked well. They handed us an empty water bottle with a California Red Velvet Ant inside - apparently there were a couple of other people out in the area with a butterfly net, so they captured the little guy and brought it to us thinking we were the bug hunters. A very surreal experience, but one with some good lessons - mainly, don't be the rear end in a top hat waving your guns around in a public area just because you can. Also, don't go waving your steel dick back in the heat of the moment, because they probably just want to give you an insect. The high desert owns. The Royal Nonesuch fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 02:09
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So sorry for the massive delay on updating this post from december. Been busy! Alright, so last I posted I explained how we managed to get stuck on Hunter Mountain. The truck did great as did the Duratracs, but I chained the rear axles which lead to me not be able to steer.  So we turned around and went the looooooooooooooooong way around to Racetrack Playa. The drive was pretty but very rushed. Also I had aired down the tires to ~20psi so trying to speed was quite an unnerving experience. We aired up at the gas station in Stovepipe Wells (free air!), so at least from then on it was as fast as you can in a 4500lb xterra loaded full of crap.  Very few pictures of us on the way back, as we were annoyed and rushed. Goonz:   After 70+ miles of pavement, we hit the dirt. And then we hit the awul, awful washboarded part that everybody told us sucked, which was exactly what we had tried to avoid by crossing over Hunter. I aired the tires down to 16psi to try to save the suspension (and our minds). It helped, but there was no way to go over 20mph. And it was getting dark. FAST. At least we had really cool black volcanic rock to keep up company.... can you see the washboarding?  We got to Teakettle Junction after the sun had set. If you look at the map, we were hoping to be here at 11am. It was 6pm. A few more miles and we got to the racetrack, and it was DARK.   My buddy in SF had donated a pair of Hella Driving lamps during the trip, which were suddenly becoming of very welcome use. This was a 1.5 second exposure shot. We could see only that we would be venturing out on the playa with NO idea of where the actual rocks would be. Ok so that's the bad news. The good news?  Once my eyes had adjusted, I could clearly, with NO uncertainty, see the milky way. Hooooooooly crap! I Hadn't ever seen it before! This photo was taken straight up, maybe 20 minutes later as my eyes had adjusted. Great, but how to find the rocks? Josh had brought along an incredibly bright 900lm LED flashlight. With the lamp on full blast, it was essentially one car headlight. Off we went, walking into the darkness, using the light only as needed. We wandered a lot, and the experience started to become surreal. We could see the stars and silhouette of the mountains clearly, but NOTHING of what was close to us. At one point I kinda freaked out as we had turned the lamp on and discovered a HUGE protrusion in the playa that I hadn't seen simply because its silhouette was lower than that of the mountain range in the background. Creepy. To reiterate the post above, about the headlights in the darkness being less weird - perfect example, about 10 minutes into our first attempt to find the moving rocks, an SUV appeared in the distance, drove up and then parked squarely next to the Xterra. We hadn't seen another car in at least an hour. We walked back to find that the guy was just an amateur photographer. No biggie, but feels good to know that when there is nobody around, you can protect what's yours. Anyway........ So what did all this get us? drumroll...   SUCCESS. I'm no pro photographer so this was very difficult to capture in total darkness. We got where we wanted and seen what we had planned. Unfortunately it was past 9pm and we had to backtrack the 27 miles (dirt) and another 40 or so paved and still find a hotel. To be continued... Blaise fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 16, 2015 03:43
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Whoa, that last one is the coolest picture!
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Feb 16, 2015 06:09
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What kind of exposure settings on those starry pictures did you use that the stars arent streaked? Please keep bringing updates I love this thread. Travelling vicariously!
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Feb 16, 2015 20:14
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Anything less 30 seconds or less should be good for not streaking.
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Feb 16, 2015 20:56
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Optional Options posted:What kind of exposure settings on those starry pictures did you use that the stars arent streaked? About 90 seconds for these. Unfortunately my ultrawide lens is very slow (f/4.5) so even at ISO3200 it takes forever to get light in.
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Feb 16, 2015 23:05
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Thabks for sharing your stories, this thread is a cool read!
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Feb 19, 2015 22:52
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So this thread has been a little dormant. Time for a small update. I was hoping to hit the road April 1st. That didn't happen. New hit road date: June 12. Crappy. Currently I'm in the mode of selling everything. To prove I've come a long way since the beginning of the thread, I present: http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/cto/4979932525.html And http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/mcy/4979885218.html  It's really happening.
Blaise fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 23:13
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I wish we were on the same continent, I want that Miata.
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Apr 25, 2015 15:20
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This is pretty incredible, dude, and I know where you're coming from. I went back to school in my mid/late-20s, got a decent engineering internship that was going to turn into a very good job, and then just said "gently caress it" after about a year. I do freelance and contract work these days and it's absolutely incredible not being tied to any particular location or schedule. It's very hard to imagine ever going back to that kind of life at this point. Good luck! I wish I had the guts to completely pull up stakes like you're doing.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:28
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bolind posted:I wish we were on the same continent, I want that Miata. I wish you were too. I'm getting tired of 4 word emails code:
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Apr 27, 2015 22:19
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