In this blog post we do a deep dive into the logistics for planning a visit to Katmai National Park and Preserve. The park isn’t accessible by road thus it takes a little extra planning and strategy to get to.

Juneau was our first official stop in Alaska! We’d heard wonderful things about the area and looked forward to a week of stopping in the state capitol.

It’s hard to believe this day has finally come. This is a project that’s been in the works for nearly a year now… Our first episode of our series Lost & Found documenting our travels and the lessons learned from them as we traveled through Alaska this summer.

As people who love to be active it’s important to us to get regular excersize as we travel. However, it can be hard to make that happen depending on the season and climate we’re in. So we’ve found that the best way to get consistent exercise is actually to have a few different options at any given time.

Today we’re diving into an introduction to, and the theory of backpacker meals. We will detail how we plan food for backcountry travel while also taste testing a few different major brands of backpacker meals out there.

I’m sure you’ve picked up on the fact that I really like to leave places cleaner than I found them. We typically stay on public land where camping is free, I see “Leaving it Cleaner Than We Found it” as paying these places back for our stay. Today I’m going to be taking you through all the ways that we leave places cleaner than we found them so you can do the same while you are out camping and exploring!

We rarely drive from point A to point B. Instead, we like to take the scenic route when we are “commuting”. This spring as we started to make our way, slowly, towards the US and Canadian border we wanted to find a creative route to get us off the beaten path so that we can see something new, have some fun and still get to where we need to go.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the ferry because it’s not a widely known option of transport to this area. When we were doing our own research we didn’t find a ton of information on things like how to prepare your vehicle, what to pack, the many ways you can sleep on board, food, boat amenities, and things of that nature. Since taking the ferry we’ve been able to clear a lot of those things up and now will be able to come better prepared in the future and I want to pass that wisdom on to you all!

Today we’re going to sharing how we find camping! We haven’t shared this info with you all yet because it’s a process that we’ve been practicing and evolving for the last five years. Often people ask us how we find camping so we are excited to finally distill the process into a video and blog post!

Today we’re talking camp coffee brewers. The idea here isn’t to declare one brewer as better than the others, but to figure out which of these eight brewers will be best for YOU and YOUR needs when you head out camping! In addition to reviewing individual brewers, we also share our favorite brewing recipes we used for our testing!

Before we get into this final episode, I want to take a moment to thank you all. This series, A Summer Adrift, was the first of hopefully many. We had no idea how this format of video would be received, but we wanted to take the time to record, write, and make something more in-depth than we’ve ever made before as a way to process this turbulent year. At the time that we started putting this series together, we had no idea that it would turn into the biggest creative undertaking each of us had ever been apart of. This is the kind of work that we want to make in the future. It’s fulfilling to be able to go out and live all of this, but it’s something else entirely to reflect on it to make a cohesive storyline out of what this summer has meant to us.

We started this episode with a bang. We were waiting for enough snow to melt off of Teewinot so we could climb it. This mountain is why we were going in and out of Jackson countless times over the summer. For those who are not familiar Teewinot is the peak that stands just to the right of the Grand when viewing the Tetons from Jackson. When we arrived after the Winds we were warmed up and ready and so was the mountain!

After being in Jackson and saying goodbye to Chase and Aimee, we ventured farther south to Pinedale, Wyoming with Peter, Shruthi, and Micah. We came here with plans to head into the backcountry for a four-day backpacking trip.

In Yellowstone, we had a few specific areas and creeks that we wanted to fish. Chase and Aimee know this area well and had an itinerary already in place before we arrived. For our second day in the park, we loaded up with a day worth of gear and hiked into the mountains to spend the day on the water.

After being in Butte we finally started to make our way towards Yellowstone National Park. We’d been looking forward to going as a group since we first got together after leaving quarantine. We were excited to finally be getting so close!

Feeling content with everything we’d accomplished in Idaho, we decided to relocate to Montana. Not moments after crossing into the state, over the radio Peter told us that he thought their van Blitz was having some problems.

Just a day or two after the hike into the Frank Church Wilderness we were ready to head back out on our next adventure! This time we were heading back into the Sawtooths with our sights set on the highest peak in the range!

When we came to Idaho we had already done a lot of research on overnight backpacking trips. We knew that this area is choke-full of them, however, this one as not on our radar.

At the tail end of the previous episode, we celebrated Owen’s birthday with a fancy dinner out on the town. Leading up to his birthday, Owen explicitly said he didn’t want me to get him anything for his birthday. But with every passing day, he was borrowing Chase and Aimee’s spare rod more and I knew that his very own fly rod was the perfect gift.

Three weeks of staying in Jackson meant that we had three weeks of watching the sunrise and sunset over the Tetons. Just about every night we all made our way out to a clearing to watch the sun dip behind the mountains and light up the sky. We came to realize that no two sunsets in Jackson are alike. We were treated to so many unique views that we’re more captivating than the last!