The Wander Blobs

The morning dawned on our campsite, at the normal time mornings do, but unlike most mornings, instead of sleeping later than necessary and then having a slow, luxurious breakfast that takes until the afternoon to complete, we woke up with a chiming alarm at 7:30am. The air was cold—it had dropped to at least 40 degrees in the night—but we knew it would heat up to around 80 as the day wore on. We made a decision to do something we had not yet done in our micro-camper travels: we would return to this same campsite that evening again. Sleeping in the same spot twice, located about thirty minutes outside the Yosemite National Park, meant we could spend all day exploring by foot without worrying about searching for our next place of rest.
We had purchased our 7-day pass into Yosemite the day before, so once we were dressed and our camp tidied up, we made a relatively quick journey into the park. We drove around the valley for a short while, wondering where we ought to leave our car and begi…

On this sunny 7-day mark from our departure, we greet you all from the bustling city of San Francisco. We've been shown around so far by my sister's boyfriend (slash our wedding guitarist) Sebastian, and after an incredibly filling lunch from Taqueria El Buen Sabor, we rest at the Ritual coffee shop to catch up on journaling, blog-writing, and general Internet-ing.

(Okay, embarrassing truth real quick: I wrote this a few days ago. It's being posted on day 9.)

Last night, snuggled up on our hosts' futon, was our first night since heading out on this trip that we didn't sleep in our beloved Element, which means we have six nights of car camping under our belt. In those six nights, we've covered a variety of overnight venues: dispersed camping in the mountains, a secluded side street in the middle of downtown Portland, a casino parking lot, a county campground, BLM land, and a very public state park. We've of course found pros and cons to each of these locatio…

Many things go into a planning a trip, especially one as extensive as ours, and yes, we have spent many hours looking over places to stay and sights to see... but nothing has been more pressing than readying our vehicle. Indeed, building a bed platform and camping system for our beloved 2004 Honda Element was one of the last things that we did. (Just behind getting "his and hers" travel wine glasses.)

Little did we know, getting a small car ready for an extended road trip with almost no motel stops is a real chore. All this time, it has been our intention to remove the seats from the back of the Element and build a bed/storage system enabling us to live in the car for the whole two months, minus some stops with family. Naturally, we hadn't really put much thought into this hypothetical bed platform, and our only real concept was a vague sketch, stored in my sieve-like brain, for something that may not work at all. As I've frequently been taught to expect, though, thi…