Meet Misty

We all name our vehicles. Betty Lou is the affectionate title of a friend's inexhaustible pick-up. Dusty Rose was the Honda Accord my roommates and I punished up and down the Sea to Sky highway in the early-to-mid 2000s. Baska was the moniker of Laura and I's VW Golf - named after a horse guide we had in Mongolia who, like the car, could push onward to infinity. And now...Misty.

When the decision was made that we needed a new vehicle - one that better matched our lifestyle of mountain exploration, logging roads and camping trips - we wrote down a list of desired features. Diesel, 4X4, 4 cylinder engine, 4 doors, with enough room to comfortably sleep in the back. Plug all of that into the craigslist search function and presto! Japanoid automobiles dominate the results. We settled on the 1995 Nissan Mistral because she was full of character and her motor rumbled with strength. The name Misty had been given to her by her previous owner. We felt no need to change it. Misty are the mountain sides when the clouds roll off the roiling Pacific; Misty are the valley bottoms when standing atop those remote summits. Misty has become a part of our adventure family, and to explain the motivations of this blog I felt the need to share.

The sun shines in the Pacific Northwest in unpredictable spurts. The rest of the time we find beauty in the rugged, wet, and bold scenes of misty clouds clinging to proud conifers on the mountainside.