Author: drewwfaust@gmail.com

We signed a year lease for our place in Portland in May of 2019. Since we could go monthly after a year, we planned to stick around until September or October. Portland summers really are the best.

The pandemic sure put a kink in those plans. To steal some business speak, we’ve decided to make a pivot to #vanlife. We started thinking about getting a van in July but didn’t want to do anything too impulsive. We figured if we were still excited in a month we’d get serious about it.

After lots of research – videos on YouTube, forums on Facebook – and some enthusiastic responses from friends and family, we went for it. We purchased a 2020 Mercedes Benz Sprinter 2500 cargo van in the 170” wheelbase with the 6 cylinder 4×4 diesel powertrain.

We’ll be building it out as an RV over the next 3 to 6 months with updates posted here (of course!). So far, we’ve zeroed in on a design and ordered lots and lots of stuff. Have you ever had 60+ items in a cart on Amazon?

Where are we headed? To be honest, we don’t really have a plan. We do like chasing the sun, so the timing of our launch means we’ll probably go south to California first and (cliche alert!) see where the road takes us. Speaking of roads, we’ll be taking as many backroads as possible since we won’t be in any rush. We’re looking forward to seeing plenty of friends (in a socially distant way) along the way.

Angels Rest is our favorite hike near Portland. It’s about 25 miles east of the city just off I84. It’s a moderate hike – steep but short. It’s 2.4 miles to the top (4.8 miles round trip) with close to 1500 feet elevation gain. It’s about 3 hours of hiking time though it’s worth spending some time at the top.

We’ve done a couple of summer sunset hikes here, packing a picnic to enjoy at the top while the sun sets. We highly recommend this, just remember to pack a flashlight for the trip down. It gets dark in the forest very quickly after the sun sets.

These pictures are from November of 2019 and guest star Bella, our friend’s very sweet yellow lab. Here we’re about a third of the way into the hike and already gaining elevation for some nice views of the Columbia River.

Looking north over the Columbia.

The forest clears to a talus slope affording a great view just short of the top.

A look northeast from the top.

More from the top.

Another view from the talus slope, this time on the way down.

The 2017 Eagle Creek fire swept through much of the trail area, closing the trail for over a year. You can still see lots of the fire’s effects.

This little gem of a hike is a few miles inland (east) of Lincoln City on the central Oregon coast. That said, the last 20 minutes of the drive is up a narrow and twisty fire road so it takes a bit. Is is paved though.

It’s a canyon hike – you hike down on the way out, but up on the way back. But it’s just three miles total. You wander through lovely coastal forest and come to a suspension bridge and the falls. There wasn’t much flow when we were there but the falls were still pretty.

We did a short hike out to Yaquina Head lighthouse, located just north of Newport. It wasn’t very long – perhaps two hours total – and was moderately difficult. It was mostly through forest. You emerged at the lighthouse with a lovely view of the coast and the ocean. I’m pretty sure you can just drive up and park at the lighthouse though there may be a fee for that.

South of Florence on the Oregon coast is the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. We did a 4.8 mile loop hike starting and ending at the Oregon Dunes Day Use area. There’s no overall elevation gain, but you do go up and down a bit on sandy dunes.

The hike starts in the forest.

You soon come to the start of the dunes.

Leena gives a sense of the scale here.

Here’s one of the trail markers.

After more than a mile going up  and down dunes you come to an area of trees, dense vegetation, and some swampy areas.

Fortunately there’s a raised path through the swamp.

You go through a final stretch in grasses before reaching the beach.

The loop back to the parking lot opens up to a few more open areas in the middle of the forest.

Cascade Head is a high point on the central Oregon coast between Lincoln City and Neskowin. We hiked up on the South Trail, 3.4 miles to the top (6.8 round trip) with 1300 feet of elevation gain.

The trail starts in the lush forest.

Our first view of the ocean was pretty foggy, but a taste of the views to come.

Our first view looking south down the coastline. This is perhaps half way through the hike. The rest of the hike just traverses higher and higher up the hill.

Fog came and went during the hike making for an ever evolving scene.

We were totally fogged in at times.

A look straight west over the ocean from the top.

There’s also a window through the trees for a look north up the coast.

A few final shots from the top.

With travel plans on hold during the pandemic, I’m going to dig into the photo archive and post some pics and recaps of Oregon hikes. First up, Saddle Mountain.

Saddle Mountain is the tallest point in Clatsop County at 3288 feet. Though a very modest elevation, it provides panoramic views all the way to the ocean on a clear day. Saddle Mountain is located a short ways north of Hwy 26 about 10 or 20 miles east of the coast. The trail to the top is three miles long (six miles round trip) with an elevation gain of about 1600 feet. It’s about a three-hour hike.

We hiked this in August of 2018. As is typical for summer in Oregon, the day was overcast in the morning with the clouds burning off by noon. We started around 11a. The views start less than 15 minutes into the hike.

A look up.

A panoramic view as the trail winds around the lower of the two peaks – hence the name “Saddle Mountain”. The trail does not summit the first peak.

A view from the highest point on the first peak.

I’m very close to the top taking a picture looking down at Leena as she comes up the steep final ascent.

Some views from the top.

A view towards the coast – you can see the ocean.

A look back up the trail from the low point in the saddle between the two peaks.

And a few more views from the hike down. The views brightened up since the clouds had burned off.

The NBA recently announced their 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2010s All-Decade Teams. They included Kobe Bryant on the 3rd team, and Kobe stans were deeply offended that he wasn’t on the 1st or 2nd team.

I was offended he made the 3rd team. It wasn’t the only poor choice.

As usual, I start with stats. I made a list of every player who was in the top 10 in Win Shares in at least one season from 2010-11 to 2018-19. (To really get a full decade, we’d have to either start a season earlier or wait until next season is done.) There are 38 players on the list. I then totaled their win shares for the nine seasons and ranked them.

Based only on Win Shares, here are your 2010s All-Decade Teams:

1st Team
Player, Total Win Shares

1. LeBron James, 123.4
2. James Harden, 117.3
3. Kevin Durant, 115.5
4. Chris Paul 108.9
5. Steph Curry, 98.4

The NBA’s 1st team has four of these five players. They leave off Chris Paul and add in Kawhi Leonard. (Can you say recency bias? Kawhi ranks 15th on my list.)

2nd Team

6. Russell Westbrook, 88.7
7. DeAndre Jordan, 80.7
8. LaMarcus Aldridge, 78.9
9. Blake Griffin, 75.2
10. Kyle Lowry, 74.8

The NBA’s 2nd team has Chris Paul (on my 1st team), Russell Westbrook, and Blake Griffin, so there’s still some overlap. They include Anthony Davis, who’s #11 on my list and therefore on the 3rd team. And they include Carmelo Anthony, who didn’t even meet my criteria. Yes, he’s 2nd team All Decade despite not having a single season in the decade in the top 10 in Win Shares. WTF NBA? (He finished the decade with 52.3 Win Shares which would rank 26th among the players that met my criteria.)

3rd Team

11. Anthony Davis, 71.9
12. Damian Lillard, 70.3
13. Kevin Love, 68.1
14. Jimmy Butler, 66.1
15. Kawhi Leonard, 65.7

The NBA’s 3rd team has Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Paul George, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. LaMarcus Aldridge made my 2nd team. Paul George finished 16th on my list (65.3); Giannis (53.2) finished 24th; Dwyane Wade (50.9) finished 26th. And Kobe Bryant (26.8) finished 37th out of 38 players meeting my criteria, only edging out Derrick Rose (25.9). Kobe had just one season in the decade that was top 10 in Win Shares.

Now, this all comes with the huge caveat that my criteria is just a simple starting point for creating the 1st, 2nd and 3rd All Decade NBA teams. But I’d have a really hard time including a player (cough, Carmelo) who didn’t finish in the top 10 in Win Shares in even a single season in the decade. I’d refine this list some by looking at playoff success, All NBA teams, All-Star selections, etc. I’d weigh total value (my starting point list) against peak value. But there’s no argument for including Kobe Bryant or Carmelo Anthony or Dwyane Wade on the 2010s All Decade NBA teams.

Also worth noting: the notion of an “All Decade” team is based on the arbitrary end points of the 2010-11 and 2018-19 seasons. This helps some players while hurting others depending on how their careers align with those end points.

Here’s the remainder of the list:

16. Paul George, 65.3
17. Marc Gasol, 64.8
18. Dwight Howard, 63.6
19. Pau Gasol, 60.7
20. Kyrie Irving, 58.4
21. Dirk Nowitzki, 56.7
22. Andre Drummond, 56.5
23. Tyson Chandler, 56.1
24. Giannis Antetokounmpro, 53.2
25. Rudy Gobert, 52.9
26. Dwyane Wade, 50.6
27. Isaiah Thomas, 47.0
28. Joakim Noah, 45.4
29. Karl Anthony-Towns, 45.4
30. Draymond Green, 42.3
31. Nikola Vucevic, 41.8
32. Ryan Anderson, 41.3
33. Nikola Jokic, 38.9
34. Paul Pierce, 37.5
35. Deron Williams, 37.4
36. Clint Capela, 31.3
37. Kobe Bryant, 26.8
38. Derrick Rose, 25.9
BONUS: Carmelo Anthony, 52.3.

 

We spent a few days in Santa Fe and really enjoyed the city. The weather on the first day was miserable, but it was also the first day of March Madness (Thursday), so we found a sports bar and managed to enjoy ourselves though many hours of basketball and chatting with folks at the bar. Before leaving town on Saturday we checked out the extensive art gallery scene and the downtown plaza. Both were nice, though it was still pretty windy and chilly for walking around.

On Friday we checked out Bandelier National Monument, our third trip in four days on our new National Parks Annual Pass. This also fully realized our $80 investment ($35 for Grand Canyon, $20 for Petrified Forest, and $25 for Bandelier). Everything for the next year just maximizes the investment. We’ll be using the pass a lot as we road trip through the US of A.

Speaking of our road trip, here’s the basic plan: Santa Fe, Taos, Silver City (Gila National Forest), Phoenix, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Tucson, El Paso, Marfa (Big Bend National Park), Austin, Houston, New Orleans (first weekend of Jazz Fest), Birmingham, Memphis, Midway (Drew’s uncle’s place; potentially go to the Kentucky Derby), Chicago. That gets us to the beginning of May. We’ll then head back to Chicago, likely taking a northern route through the Dakotas (the only two states I haven’t visited). We’ll probably go to Badlands National Park and Glacier National Park and Boise.

OK, back to Bandelier National Monument. The site preserves the homes and territories of Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest. The structures at the site are dated between 1150 and 1600 AD.

We did two hikes. On the first, we followed Frijoles Creek up the aptly named Frijoles Canyon.

The first set of ruins shows the foundations of houses built away from the cliff walls. This was actually the third phase of construction. The first phase was making homes out of alcoves in the cliff walls and the second phase was extending homes from the alcoves.

You can see the many natural alcoves in the cliff walls.

We climbed a ladder into one of the alcoves. This one was quite small.

Here’s some of the second phase: dwellings built out from the alcoves.

We came to the Alcove House, a large alcove and dwelling located 43m above the canyon floor. We took four ladders to climb up to the house.

The Alcove House coming into view.

Leena reaches the Alcove House.

Here are a couple of looks back up at the Alcove House.

For our second hike, we took the Falls Trail which follows Frijoles Creek downstream deeper into the canyon and ends at Upper Frijoles Falls.

You can see a bit of Frijoles Creek in the bottom left foreground, and the muddy brown river in the distance is the Rio Grande.

The waterfall is about 80 feet high.

We stopped at a viewpoint of the Frijoles Canyon as we left Bandelier.

 

On our Grand Canyon visit, we sprung for an annual pass to National Parks, Forests, and Monuments. It was $80; a one-day pass to the Grand Canyon is $35. Our next stop was Santa Fe, and Leena saw that the interstate passed right through Petrified Forest National Park. Well, let’s start getting some return on that investment!

It was a great way to break up the drive. I can’t say I knew what to expect for the park, but you see pretty clearly that when a forest becomes petrified, there’s no forest still around. But there are old logs strewn all over the place. Except they’re now rocks.

Our trail map/guide book described the area as a badlands, pointing out that badlands are not only found in South Dakota, and are not just a Bruce Springsteen album. Now, I took a star off my review of the park because they described Badlands as a Springsteen album. Any fan knows it’s the first song on Darkness on the Edge of Town. Duh.

Some of the colors are striking.

One of the logs/rocks forms a natural bridge over an arroyo. It was reinforced with cement many years ago, though the park now states that they’ll let it collapse naturally when the cement fails.

We did a handful of short hikes. One went down into the canyon shown here.

The rock erodes quickly when it rains, and is described as elephant skin when dry. The clouds threatened, and there was a short shower just after we finished this hike.

Our last short hike took us along the rim of another canyon.