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Author: Angela

All packed and eager to go

The car is now packed and just waiting for it’s next adventure. Yesterday we left the apartment and I worked the last day in Phoenix. Now I am at the airport waiting for the flight that will take me closer to home. I will spent a couple of weeks in Sweden, Andy in Switzerland and we will meet back up here in Phoenix 4 June to start our trip.

It is starting to feel very real now with so little time to go. And it will go fast I believe, I have a quite busy schedule in Stockholm in order to meet family and friends and 4 days of work are still remaining too. Probably need a long holiday after that. 😉

Our soon to be home – FJ Cruiser

Last week we put together our soon to be home for 4-5 months this summer. The car is serviced, washed and all eager to go.

This is the car and the boxes we custom made for it. It is a bit of a hassle to get them in place. They have some sharp edges and are fairly heavy which makes it a workout to mount.

The drawers we usually use for our cool box, food, water and cooking stuff. This is what they look like in place.

In the images below you can see the front box which is basically a storage box with 2 compartments. These are great to store backpacks, camping gear and other things you don’t need if you are on the road. The second image shows what it looks like when the extensions are in place and it is all ready for sleeping. It might look short but we do actually fit straight lying down. Good thing none of us is very tall, then we might have had to get a different car.

It looks very clean and roomy right now but wait until we put all our stuff in there. The boxes are full and there is lots of things also on top of the boxes. Usually during the day we just fold the mattresses once without completely deflating them in order to make it easier to make the beds at night. This takes up a lot of space during the day but is all worth it when you just want to go to sleep.

Could you imaging living like this for a year or so? 😉

Outdoor climbing finally

It has been a few months since we were outdoors climbing last time. We have been spending more time in the climbing gym which does not make any sense at all because the past month has been the best, temperature wise, of the year. But for some reason we have just not made it outdoors. Today it was time. We drove to Queen Creek which is just past Superior about an hour east of Phoenix. Just next to the highway is a fairly large climbing area with both bolted and traditional routes.

The image shows a very nice 5.9 route that we spent some time on. It had some nice moves and was a lot longer than what we are used to in the climbing gym.

The main objective today though was to try out some new gear we bought last week. A set of 6 cams is the happy addition to our rack.

We are currently learning traditional climbing where you have to place your own protection (like the cams in the picture). The routes are not bolted. This takes a bit getting used to. First you have to spend more time to actually find spots to put your gear. Second, you have to be sure that the stuff you put there will hold. And the gear weighs a bit so you are heavier than you are used to. It simply needs practicing and that is what we are doing.

Being able to do traditional climbing will make us more flexible during our trip. We like multi pitch climbing and actually reaching a peak of some sort. These routes usually requires that you place your own gear so this is something we just have to do.

Car upgrade

Last summer we build two large boxes that can be mounted in our car and used as storage and a sleeping platform. During our holidays in August we slept most nights in the car and it worked out great. Our car is a Toyota FJ Cruiser which is not the longest car ever so we have to push the front seats forward in order to fit while sleeping. After moving the seats we have to extend the sleeping area with an extra board that is stored in one of the boxes while driving the car.

Since this car will soon be our home for a bit more than 4 months we decided to upgrade. Instead of having a separate board we attached it with hinges on the box itself so that is easily folds out. The boards are supported by smaller pieces also attached with hinges on the side of the box.

It works very well and we are happy with the successful upgrade. Why did we not do this from the beginning?? Next step is to mount the boxes in the car again and go for a test trip. 🙂

More 14ers

The other day I took out my Colorado’s Fourteeners book and was going to decide if we should bring the book on the trip or send it home first. As I started to read I got an urge to go hiking. Last August we did 10 14ers in 10 days. It was hard but fun and well worth it. Then we did not have much time since we wanted to go to Utah as well during our 4 week vacation. This time around we can spend more time in Colorado and either do more of them or maybe not so many in just a few days.

We started to discuss which peaks to do this year and the more we looked in the book and talked about it the more we wanted to do. Probably we will do at least another 10 this year. I am hoping to do La Blanca, Mt Sneffels and Longs Peak (in Rocky Mountain National Park). The rest we will see as we go along. All depending on weather I guess. Since we are bringing climbing gear this time we might attempt to climb a peak or two. We both like multi pitch climbing and it would add some variation to the hiking. Maybe we will also do a favourite or two from last year. I wouldn’t mind doing Wetterhorn or Handies Peak.

Hiking the valley up to Handies is beautiful with all the pretty flowers.

Conclusion: we are bringing the book.