Tag Archives: Travel

Road Trip

I will be departing September 3rd for a road trip from Olympia to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and will likely be blogging the endeavor.  I’ve decided that I probably won’t be using this blog to do it, though – stay tuned for further details and a link to be posted to whatever I decide to do.  This will be a three day drive with a four night stay and a three or four day return, depending on what route is taken.  I’m definitely looking forward to it!

Camping

[Edit 8/21/2006: This list has been superseded by my campground list.]
I thought it might be useful (at least to me) to keep a list of some of the campgrounds that I still want to camp at at some point. Amanda and I will be visiting one of the first two campgrounds on my list this week:

  1. Rainbow Falls State Park, Chehalis, WA
  2. Bruceport County Park Campground, South Bend, WA
  3. Bogachiel State Park, Forks, WA
  4. Sun Lakes State Park, Coulee City, WA
  5. Dungeness Recreation Area Campground, Port Angeles, WA
  6. Beaver Campground, Stevenson, WA

Some campgrounds I’ve already visited include:

  • Larrabee State Park, Bellingham, WA
  • Millersylvania State Park, Olympia, WA
  • Iron Creek Campground, Mt. St. Helens National Monument, WA
  • Eagle’s Habitat (private campground), Bellingham area
  • Maryhill State Park, Goldendale, WA
  • Lincoln City KOA, Lincoln City, OR

There is one campground that I know isn’t on this list, since it was back in middle school and I have no real recollection of the name. I would include Lena Lake within the Olympic National Forest, except that trip had to hike out because of bad weather conditions and never actually camped.

Visited States

Apparently, I’ve only visited California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington – I might have to do something about making that list longer this summer. Road trip, perhaps?

Slipping Backwards (and not in a good way)

I am an outspoken proponent of high gas prices. So, therefore, when NWCN tells me that gas prices are coming back down, I get frustrated.

Why am I against low gas prices? A few reasons, though don’t expect these to be well-explained:

  • Gas fails to reflect “true cost”. “True cost” is my name for what is usually coined “social cost“, or the actual, social consequences of the manufacture and sale of a particular commodity. A good example from the Wikipedia article linked to above:

    Negative externalities (external costs) lead to an over-production of those goods that have a high social cost. For example, the logging of trees for timber may result in society losing a recreation area, shade, beauty, and air quality, but this loss is usually not quantified and included in the price of the timber that is made from the trees. As a result, individual entities in the marketplace have no incentive to factor in these externalities. More of this activity is performed than would be if its cost had a true accounting.

    The same can be said for the production of petroleum; we don’t consider the loss of precious natural resources or the pollution cost in refinement (not to mention social consequences that stem from refinement, the economic costs required to transport petroleum, etc.). If these were accounted for, the cost of gasoline would be much higher.

  • Low gas prices promote fuel-inefficent vehicles. Keeping gas prices low offer no disincentive for the purchase of sport utility vehicles or other cars with very low MPG ratings (sports or “exotic” cars in particular); certainly, while those who can afford an SUV can likely afford higher gas prices, keeping those prices low isn’t likely to make people think about the amount of money they waste on gas instead of taking a number of measures to lower fuel cost.
  • Low gas prices only prolong our dependence on oil. Now, I’m not one of those “we must abolish oil usage yesterday” freaks, though I do believe that we have to conserve our natural resources as best as possible for future generations. The development of alternative energy, whether that be biodiesel, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, or fuel cell vehicles, is a worthwhile exercise in preserving our children’s future. It doesn’t matter where the solution comes from; fuel/electric hybrids are a great first step for transportation, but they are not the end-all of energy problems. They are also only one of many possible solutions.
  • As long as the “panic mentality” of high gas prices is maintained, no progress in bettering the world can be made. The issue of high gas prices affects far more than cars. It also has direct impact on the overall costs of running businesses, the ability of groups to cope with emergencies, and, rather indirectly, the development of community. That last point is a rather interesting one — so long as we can travel far on low gas prices, we aren’t as likely to pursue options that develop community: carpooling, living closer to an urban center, reducing the amount of distance between us and our everyday destinations (work, the grocery store, the bakery, the mall).

I admit, I drive a hybrid; I do this because of some of the reasons above, but also because I like to keep my costs low (and driving a hybrid car does, in fact, help me do this). I hope I will continue to drive hybrids as my primary vehicle for as long as I can drive.

Camping III/Moving

We have returned from camping. It was relaxing.

That’s all I’m willing to write at the moment on that subject.

Amanda and I may be moving by the end of the month to a townhouse about five minutes west of our current complex. We’ve already given notice and we’re waiting to arrange a tour so we can see what it looks like.

There’s a whole story behind that too, but that’s all I’m willing to write at the moment on that subject.

I will now wander off and write some poetry.

Camping II

It turns out that our two camping trips will instead be one long trip with two different groups of people. Millersylvania State Park is where the Writing Center booked its one-night overnight excursion for summer staff, and Amanda and I decided to extend that out to the 8th. So we will arrive there on the 8th, stay through the 10th, then switch campsites and stay on through the 11th.

Fun.

Not quite the break I had hoped for, but it should be relaxing anyway. I’ll need it, considering that I’ll be driving back and forth to Bellingham a number of times before school starts (probably three or four, minimum).

Camping

Amanda and I are trying to get another camping trip in before the school year starts, and it looks like we might actually get two. The first, if memory serves and without having my calendar in front of me, is between September 6th and 9th at a location that is yet to be determined. The second is a trip being planned by the Writing Center’s summer staff on September 10th as a wrap-up to all the summer work — sort of an “end of the quarter party” like we usually have during the academic year, only an overnight camping trip instead.

We’re trying to find a decent campsite for our trip earlier in the week that isn’t too long of a drive from Olympia — Amanda’s picking the place, and I told her that the maximum drive time was probably about three and a half hours. We’ll see what that nets us (since it definitely allows for a number of possibilities). The Writing Center’s trip, I’m told, is to a site no more than 20 minutes away.

Prius Experiences on Bainbridge Island

I also wanted to make note of the Prius’ performance on construction lots, since I had the chance to try it. Some friends of my parents are building contractors building a temporary home for themselves, and Amanda and I went over to see the construction. The driveway was a wheelbarrow type where there are two thin cement strips intended to assist trucks getting up and down the hill. Cassie handled this with no problem, and also handled the offroad parking and the tight turn needed to back out of the lot. Not once did I lose confidence in my ability to get out of the lot (though a tree got a little close to the hatch in order to get out, even with the wheel cranked — didn’t get close enough to do damage, just close enough to make me wonder).

The person who showed us around was also quite impressed with the car and seemed to enjoy the ride. Bonus!

Prius Experiences at Mt. St. Helens

I had a very interesting time with my Prius, Cassie, during our camping trip.

I keep up on Prius mailing lists via Yahoo fairly regularly, and before the trip, I had read a little bit about the “B” gear on the Prius. Basically, the “B” gear is equivalent to low gear on a standard automatic or an exhaust brake on a semi – it utilizes the engine as a braking mechanism to take pressure off of the brake pads. This is one of the rare things on a Prius that should almost never be used, since it can decrease overall MPG. However, anytime you see a low gear or hill sign, the “B” mode can likely be used quite effectively.

Forest Road 25 had a couple steep areas in which I was able to use “B” mode. Surprisingly, it doesn’t actually slow down the vehicle when used exclusively (though I suspect it does slow down the overall rate of acceleration). However, using it takes a bit of pressure off the brake pads so long as the battery doesn’t reach its full charge capacity. Once the battery reaches capacity through regenerative braking, braking results to the brake pads to slow down the car.

Shifting to “B” mode causes an interesting change in the engine noise to a fairly low-tuned hum and that hum lasts for the whole time in “B” mode. This is something I don’t recall from my test drive of an ’05 Prius, when the salesman (rather stupidly in terms of efficiency and demonstrating rather astoundingly his lack of Prius knowledge) switched to “B” mode in the middle of I-405, explaining it as a “battery-only” mode. At that point, I didn’t bother correcting him, since I didn’t know much about it either.

Cassie kept up very, very well during our trip. I never once had a concern about whether the car would break down or whether she would survive – we did the whole trip on a tank of gas which produced an astounding 75.45MPG tank (though the display calculated the tank to 53.1). This was after refilling the tank with roughly 4 gallons and filling a few days after the trip with nearly 7 gallons. Keep in mind that she was also loaded full in the back with cargo on the way to and from the campsite (though the day trips were done with very little cargo in the back seats).

The other nice part was the ranger in charge at Iron Creek, who started asking questions as I waited for Amanda to check us in. I explained that it was a Prius and that it was, in fact, on. He was quite surprised when I told him it was a hybrid and was fairly appreciative after that — appreciative enough that, when we went to make sure we didn’t need to do anything to check out, he thanked us for having “the quietest car in the campground”! That was the first time I had impressed anyone with this car, though I’m sure this will happen more.