Strawberry Mountain Wilderness Loop

On August 21st at about 10 in the morning, the moon cast its shadow across northern Oregon. In the weeks leading up to this solar eclipse, several unfortunate events caused the closure of virtually all designated wilderness areas along the PCT in the path of totality. (The excuse was fire danger, but it was most likely due to the hysteria surrounding the apocalyptic amount of visitors Oregon was predicting for the eclipse.) We had originally planned to be somewhere on the PCT, but in a short amount of time we needed to come up with an alternative. With the help of Google Maps, we randomly settled on the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness. Continue reading “Strawberry Mountain Wilderness Loop”

Hiking the West Coast Trail

For Rob’s birthday (and his one and only week off between school semesters) we wanted to do something kind of epic.  After tossing around a few different vacation ideas, we settled on hiking the West Coast Trail – a 75 km trek along Vancouver Island’s beautiful coastline.  We spent 6 nights and 7 days on the trail.  The following is a description of our experience.  (Planning to hike this?  Visit our West Coast Trail overview page for more info!) Continue reading “Hiking the West Coast Trail”