Pacific Northwest Road Trip 2021 – Intro

With the COVID pandemic more under control this summer compared to the previous summer we returned to a cross-country adventure this year. We still could not enter Canada due to the pandemic so we planned our trip around that.  We signed up for another week-long hiking trip with Backroads to the San Juan Islands and Olympic National Park.  Using that as our trip anchor we drove from Michigan to Washington State and built a 28-day Pacific Northwest road trip itinerary that included (click link to go to that post):

Minneapolis

Badlands National Park

Sawtooth National Forest

San Juan Islands

Lake Crescent

Seattle

Olympic National Park

Mount Rainier National Park

Shoshone Falls

plus, numerous stops along the round-trip route.

Besides the week with Backroads which includes lodging, we reserved two other spots for the our Pacific Northwest road trip.  We pre-booked a campsite in La Push, Washington so that we would have a base for touring the vast Olympic National Park.  We booked that via Hipcamp, which is basically AirBnB for camping. The campsites that we wanted to stay in at Badlands National Park and around the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho were first come first served, so we had no reservations for those places.  We just hoped for the best.  For Mount Rainier National Park we very luckily scored two nights at the Paradise Inn inside the park.  The Paradise Inn reservation required persistence on our part, calling and e-mailing a few times asking for cancellations until we actually got an e-mail back telling us to call soon to secure a newly cancelled room.  We also planned a few night’s stay in Washington with friends that we met on our hike across England in 2019.  Our camping gear was stowed in our Yakima rooftop cargo box, and everything else was packed inside our Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk. We find it easier to car camp when all the camping gear is together in the cargo box. So, when we get to the campsite we are ready to just open the cargo box and set up camp.  Ultimately we ended up camping 9 nights in a tent, staying with friends 3 nights, and staying in motels/hotels 15 nights.

Itinerary:

Next: Minneapolis