Traversing the US (and back)

[jessejman]

June 2015: Spain - climbing trip with school
Barcelona - Monserrat - Rodellar - Benas - Tossa del Mar - Barcelona


Though different from most trips on the portal, we did travel overland and the guys I went with were game for staying off main roads and making the transit between areas as much of an adventure as the destinations.


In Barcelona we did what most tourists do. We saw Las Ramblas and the famous Boqueria market.



We saw the famous Sagrada Familia at midnight and then, somehow, ended up locked in the Metro at 1am. We were rescued by a very unhappy station director who did not find our predicament as interesting as we found it. We still don't understand how we managed to end up there. I think we missed the last train and instead of realizing that it was the last one and leaving, we waited on the platform while above us they shut the gates rightly expecting that everyone would have left already.


Next day we went back to the airport to pick up our overland vehicles: 2 brand new Seat Leones. And yes, they were manuals and diesel!, though ground clearance was an issue. We found a supermarket and bought food for the next seven days and did what everyone else there does - packed our cars to the gills, made lunch on our overlanding tables (hoods) and mixed trailmix in a trash bag in the parking lot. Check out the great roof boxes we had at our disposal.







And then we headed out to our first climbing area: Monistrol de Monserrat.

 

[jessejman]

We left Barcelona with a short two hour drive to Montserrat, a pretty well known tourist site due to its monastery and less well known climbing area. The rode in was beautiful and fun to drive even with well-laden cars.


There was a great campsite a short walk up from the monastery and we hauled our gear up to stay for the next three days of camping and climbing.
The campsite was incredible. The deep ringing of bells woke us up every morning at sunrise. As the monks were called to prayer we also woke for some early starts.


The climbing was gorgeous and fairly straightforward on conglomerate rock, different than what we were used to.

Morning of day two we woke to the clouds flowing out the adjacent valley like an ocean. It was an awesome sight.

[video]https://photos.smugmug.com/Outdoor-Programs/Expeditions/Spain-Trip-15/Jesses-photos/i-xpnsbmL/0/1280/IMG_2844-1280.mp4[/video]

 

[jessejman]

 

[jessejman]

Leaving Montserrat with an Alpine start so that we wouldn't have to pay for another day of parking we traveled Northeast to a small town at the end of a long road, Rodellar. We made sure to soak in as much culture as we could stopping often in small towns along the way.

In Rodellar we car camped without our cars as it cost more to park vehicles in the campsite. There was plenty of shade and no crowd since we were there right after the busy climbing season. We had wonderful mild weather with rain every day but the cliffs stayed mostly dry due to their overhanging nature.

Rodellar belltower seen in the distant.

I have tons more photos of the climbing in Rodellar. It's a mecca for sport climbing and the hype is well founded as long as you enjoy steep long routes.

After six days of climbing in Rodellar we drove South to restock and then Northeast to Benas or Benasque in the Spanish Pyrenees. Benas was our starting point for a short trek into the highcountry of the Spanish Alps on the border of France and Spain. After restocking our supplies, we let the leaders-of-the-day (17 year-old kids) pick our route. They did a great job of making it interesting.

We wandered our way along north finding the most remote way we could that would eventually lead us to Benas. The young navigators made every route call. Even the wrong ones that led us to dead ends like this one, a dead end in the small town of Pano. And small here means small - below is the entire town of Pano. in the photo the near building is a Swede's home, Kurt, who is slowly rebuilding the town stone by stone on his own. No one else lives in the town except for the occasional intern or long-distance walker. The nearest market is an hour drive away.

First view of the mountains!

The road into Benasque:

Camping Aneto just North of Benas and preparing for the trek.

 

[jessejman]

A few of the photos from the mountains:

Benasque to Tossa del Mar on the Mediterranean was quite an adventure. With two different students as route designators we weaved our way along gravel and backroads. What could have taken an six hours by highway turned into a two half days of travel with a great campsite in between. Having enjoyed stopping in the small towns of Pano, Fornigal and others, we stopped at many more small towns for lunch, to see ruins or simply for a walk and a stretch.

One stretch on the first day began with a normal roughly paved road but as we climbed out of the valley it began to worsen.

If you look closely in the photo below you can see where the pavement ended and the double-track began.

The roads weren't bad but they also weren't easy considering the great lack of ground clearance. It didn't help that in addition to our gear we had four and five people in the cars. After dragging numerous times and actually pulling a small plastic piece of the the subframe cover we made the guys get out and walk any questionable section and also clear of the road of big stones.

I kept waiting for the really rough section that we wouldn't be able to cross and finally we hit it. I don't have any photos of it and it wouldn't have been impressive but it was a series of small rock ledges that took a couple of goes to get right without slamming the undercarriage and keeping enough momentum to pull through. I was pretty impressed with the little Seats.

The photo below is just after one of our students got shocked by some metric amount of volts at the gate crossing - they couldn't figure out how to open it. I'd never seen a gate like this but it didn't take long to figure it out. It was split in two like a saloon door with a rubber hose covering the metal and electrified wire hanging loosely from the rubber hose. You simply drove into the gate, the metal arms pivoted and the rubber rubbed along the sides of your car, closing automatically on springs after your passed. Super cool ... unless you have your windows open.

We finished the trip off at small apartment in Tossa del Mar, debriefed the experience, ate some Paella with flan dessert and climbed over the Mediterranean.

All in all, it was a great trip. It's the third trip to Spain I've planned and led but the first that included outdoor adventures. For the students on the trip it was the culmination of three years of dreaming, planning, saving and preparing.

 

[sethmeister]

Jesse-
Wow, what a thread! I've read through the whole thing here and there over the last week or so. Very jealous of the trip! Looking forward to seeing/reading about the upcoming one! I gather you're a teacher, and that allows you to take the long summer trips? Hmm...maybe I need a career change. 😜

 

[hyperboarder]

You need to knock it off with all the Idaho pictures, it doesn't look like that! It burned or something! I promise! Stay out!

Nice thread, good reading and great pics, I love family adventures. Need to talk my wife into something similar with our girls.

 

[jessejman]

Well, I'm two major trips behind at this point. Maybe I should start a new thread but I like the idea of leaving this one as my travel journal. A few nights ago, my son, now 13, was reading about our first trip across the country and couldn't remember many of the details. I was surprised and while he continued reading I reminded myself that I needed to write down my memories on the latest trips.

Summer of 2016 Chattanooga - Glacier National Park - Chattanooga
The goal for this trip was a little different. We had tighter time constraints. I had to help lead a trip to Africa in late July so we had to be back home before then. We also spend much less time planning this trip. Honestly, it was a fairly last minute decision. We realized we had the time and the savings in place. We came up with a tenant for our house in late April which gave us the freedom (and final impetus) to take off. So, really, we had about a month to plan out what we wanted to see.

I had been shopping for a trailer for almost a year and finally decided to build one from scratch with the help of a local shop. Two of the things we learned from our first trip (and others), were that we wanted to unweight our vehicles roof and we wanted the ability to drive into town, to trailheads, to explore without having to break down camp every time. A trailer seemed like a good solution but I was pretty specific in what I wanted out of it. Lightweight but strong, bolt pattern that fit the LC, simple/affordable, ability to carry five bikes, electric brakes, ability to go everywhere we wanted to go offroad (so not too extreme but needed ground clearance). It was a lot of requirements that didn't really match up with anything I could find in my price range so I built one.

Again, the focus was simplicity, durability and economy. I hit most of those using scrap metal and paint and putting in a lot of my own time. I was mostly pleased with the untested result.

There was no trial run. Before the paint had fully cured we were packing for our month-long trip. One of the major changes for this trip was that we were much less focused on route planning and staying off road. Instead, we used an Iphone based GPS map program and the trusty Benchmark atlases and simply took off with a few destinations in mind. We again had a fourth grade student and were able to make use of a free National Park pass which is super cool and saved us some money. It seems silly but it actually played into our planning and, ultimately, the financial viability of leaving home for a month in a gas-hungry SUV.

Day 1: Chattanooga, Tn to Yellow Springs, Oh

Everyone slipped easily into travel mode as we knocked out a bunch of interstate miles heading north towards Michigan. About an hour in we came up on a pretty bad accident. I stepped in as first responder until the paramedics arrived. The guy was in bad shape. It was an auspicious start for all of us.

We hadn't planned any of the stops or camping ahead of time so we spent some time looking on the map app for some camping about two hours ahead of us. We found John Bryan State Park and they even had some mountain bike trails. The trails were decent and the camping was very nice but crowded. It wasn't the way we normally camp (paying and other people around) but it was what we had to expect as we traveled along interstates.

 

[jessejman]

Day 2: Yellow Springs, OH - outside Pentwater, MI

It was nice to ease our way into life on the road: bathrooms, picnic tables, lots of services and stores within a minutes drive, a raccoon that crawled into our truck, opened a storage bin and stole some of our food. The girls had stayed up late the night before chasing fireflies and doing cartwheels with our neighbor's kids, so everyone slept in. I went for a quick early ride on the trails and then we packed up and got back to the road. We spent most of the day on highways trying to get north and into less densely populated areas. Our goal for the day was to find some free camping somewhere upwards of Grand Rapids. The nearest goal we had was to make our way up to the UP to Copper Harbor and do some mountain biking. Again, we were rolling without a plan and looking for green on the map.

The day was mostly highway driving and we listened to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and James Herriot stories on audible. The trailer was pulling well and we made great time. Sometime in the early afternoon when we are all sick of sitting in the car with no stops, we turned West towards the shores of Lake Michigan. We had done a bit of google searching earlier and had decided to skip the Silver Lake OHV park even though we really wanted to drive in the dunes. I was a little worried about having a loaded and somewhat under-powered truck on the sand with the family in tow. The cost of the entry fee also turned us off. We ended up in the township of Pentwater. Pentwater is a small quaint shore village that probably relies on summer tourism. We drove through town and towards the shore of the lake to park, stretch and, of course, swim! It was day 2 and we were already bathing. The water took a lot of warming up to - it was cold but we all swam, enjoying, for all but me, our first swim in the Great Lakes. We walked through the town afterwards, ate ice cream and watched boats come in through the narrow harbor opening. We also did the non-touristy thing of looking for free places to park and sleep. We don't boondock very well. In fact, when we went into town we left wet gear hanging to dry all over the rig. And it caught some attention.

Before the kids could ask for another ice cream cone or shirt, we packed up and headed north of town. Not surprisingly there weren't any good options for camping in the small town. We had better luck not far to the North, pretty quickly finding a great spot for camping. It helped that we had so many hours of light in a day but that also made it difficult for the kids to fall asleep.

 

[jessejman]

Day 3: Shores of Lake Michigan, Pentwater

We had beautiful camping weather again. The days were warm but the nights fresh and breezy. We ended up camping on a small ridge with waist-high ferns surrounding us and covering the shallow valleys around us. The night before kids set up hammocks and we had a fire and smores. The mission for the day was pretty simple. Steph and I had decided the night before that we really liked the campsite and wanted to stay another night, so today was a play day. I woke early, stoked the fire back to life and went for stroll in the pine woods around camp. The ferns were incredible.

Once we were all dressed, fed and happy (not necessarily in that order) we loaded our day packs with lunch, sunscreen and some toys and drove to a nearby trailhead to hike into some dunes. I was really excited to experience some lake sand dunes and didn't really know what to expect. After a mostly-flat but grueling 1.5 mile hike in (ok, not for most of us, but for one or two of us it felt much longer), we found the dunes and spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon playing hide and seek in the maze of dunes, jumping off the tops and running down them, sunbathing, swimming and exploring and chasing shade in the area around us. We had the place practically to ourselves and it was great.

Back at camp we rode bikes, explored the area around camp and generally took it easy. The hammocks were a big hit too.