MB2CB and Then CB2MB

Road Trip Mexican Border-To- Canada Border.

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I have been planning for a very long time to go on 2 long road trips one is border-to-border and another is coast-to-coast. At last one of the trip is materialized. As I was living in San Diego for 4 years before trip begins, it becomes very easy to start with Mexican border. it is just 30 mins drive from my home. Instead of driving border-to-border straight, i planned a long road trip covering bunch of national parks in Colorado, south Dakota ,  to go to Glacier national park then drive parallel to Canada border to north cascades national parks and the drive south from North Cascades National park. Planning to camp in national park camp grounds  more than half of the nights. Agenda is simple, drive in day time, reach one national park, stay there for 2 nights, next day is one moderate hike involves at least 3-4 hours hike/trail/bike, then come back to camp ground before sun set, Sleep as early as possible after dinner. get up as early as possible, pack things drive to next location.  

first 5 days went as i planned not changes, after that i needed to change for many reasons. North cascade national park is totaled closed. I cannot even drive near to park. even HWY 20 connecting to North Cascade NP from east, part of it also closed because of wild fires. they were that bad, even few fire fighters died controlling fires. It was very sad to know about the news.

a week or two weeks earlier Glacier NP also faced few wild fires near east entrance, but a week before of my travel fire is fully contained but lot of smoke in whole Glacier region. No clear visibility   in Glacier national park.  As a solo trip, i spent enough time driving many mountain roads, they very beautiful scenic drives.

Trip was partitioned into 5 separate continuation blogs covered in more details. Here it overall summary is updated with very few pictures not bore the viewers.

http://sureshpotluri.blogspot.com/2015/08/san-diego-rocky-mountains.html

http://sureshpotluri.blogspot.com/2015/08/mount-rushmorecuster-state-park.html

http://sureshpotluri.blogspot.com/2015/09/advanterous-road-trip-to-glacier-np.html

http://sureshpotluri.blogspot.com/2015/09/washington-state-trip.html

http://sureshpotluri.blogspot.com/2015/08/cb2md-return-to-sd.html

Overall i really enjoyed, driving long drives on scenic desert drives to Mountains drives to Glacier drives to along Ocean drives to beautiful pleasant sun set drive in Badlands to driving in north Dakota in heavy rain and heavy wind to 50 mile Going-to-the-sun road in glacier NP high light of the drives.
I camped most part of trip in tents except in glacier NP. I could not avoid not to rent hotel at Browning, MT as long as i was at Glacier NP it less than 30 mins drive from east entrance and an hour and half drive from Many Glacier entrance.  As i had National Park annual Pass expiring in Month August. i decided to take full advantage of annual pass. I visited as many national parks i can.

I camped at Sand dunes national park campground for one night, two nights at Rocky mountains, 3 nights at Sylvan lake in Custer state park, part of Black hills in South Dakota, two nights at Olympic NP and two nights at Mt Rainier, rest of the nights  spent at hotels. All indian dinners are prepared when i spent nights in tents. It is the first time in my camping experience I cooked Indian food while camping with very ease and in less than 10 mins. What ever I learnt about preparing camping food before I started the trip, paid off well. One of my Cymer Colleague is doing PCT 2015 with his family of total 4 including himself, wife and with two children girl(8) and buy (11 or 13). He gave lot of information and introduced me to very useful sites about backing gears, camp cooking. etc...I did my R&D and i customized to my needs planned this trip as a experimental solo trip.