Hello and thank you for visiting Evans Outdoor Adventures! We love to hike, backpack, fly fish, kayak, ebike, RV and explore the diverse and stunning American West. Our desire is to share our destinations with you. For those who are able, we hope to inspire you on your own adventures. Use our posts as a resource and feel free to leave a comment or email us questions as you plan your journey. For those who are unable to travel, or those armchair travelers, sit back and enjoy traveling with us here on this website. It is an honor to have you along for the ride.
A little about us. Jason is a retired software engineer and Navy veteran. Lusha is a ‘mostly’ retired microbiologist and quality assurance manager who does occasional temp work. We married young (19 and 21) and it has been an adventure ever since! Travel and time in nature have been our favorite hobbies for our entire marriage.
In February 2019, after fifteen years of planning and saving, we left our full-time careers to pursue a life that we didn’t need a vacation from. Jason retired from cubical life and Lusha transitioned to a part-time remote position. We spent that first spring and summer making local travels in our 2019 Jayco Greyhawk class C motorhome. This gave us and our two ragdoll cats, Jake and Indy, a chance to acclimate to life in a 28′ long box. From September 2019 – January 2020, we made our first snowbird trip south to escape the cold Northwest winter.
We returned from our first snowbird season the end of January 2020 with a new truck and immediately began shopping for a different RV that would better fit our travel style. We purchased a 2020 Outdoors RV Mountain Series Timber Ridge 24RKS, a decision we have been very happy with.
We spent the spring of 2020 preparing to full time RV, but those plans changed when we found ourselves the owners of my childhood home. It is a beautiful custom home built by my grandfather and now it is our turn to continue the family legacy.
We spent the winter of 2020-2021 hunkered down at home working on house renovations and minimizing travel through the peak of the COVID pandemic and associated closures. Fully vaccinated, we returned to active travel in 2021 with a spring trip to Utah, fall in the Black Hills, and winter snowbirding in Arizona. With an inflatable kayak and ebikes added to our adventure arsenal, we are experiencing The West in even more ways.
would be cool if you could get some video clips of animals and set to music. Great start.
D- I have a couple video clips that I’ll throw in my next post 🙂
Hey, beautiful web-site, so nicely done!
Thank you Jon! I hope all your winds are favorable ones.
Lusha
Hello Jason & Lusha! My name is Todd Holcomb, and I run a hiking group in Orofino, Idaho called The Clearwater Trekkers. I also work as a volunteer coordinator in the Orofino State Prison, and I found your site because an inmate told me to look up Walker Lake in the White Cloud Moutains. Your picture came up and I followed the link to your site. Once here, I found your article about your April 2016 hike along the Selway River.
Loved it!
I’m taking my group on that trail this weekend, June 24th 2017, so I’ve shared your article on our Facebook group page. You have so many great photos and “current” info about the trail. Very helpful!
I will enjoy purusing your site further, and invite you over to http://www.clearwatertrekker.com to see what we have been up to. Who knows, maybe we’ll cross paths one day! Thank you for the work you are doing on this blog. Happy trails!
Hi Todd,
Thank you for stopping by and your kind comments! These blog posts are time consuming and a real labor of love- so it is very rewarding when I receive feedback such as yours. Thanks for sharing your website and group- we hadn’t heard of the Clearwater Trekkers, but we’ll definitely be checking you out. Have a great trip this weekend. The Selway is a truly special place and we’re all lucky to have it in our backyard. We’ll be hitting the Blue Mountains in SE Washington for a backpack this weekend. Hopefully a good blog post with be forthcoming 🙂
Happy Trails,
Lusha
Rick and I enjoyed meeting you two at Alpine Lake recently in the Sawtooth’s. We ended up spending an extra day at Middle Cramer Lake, hiked the pass then came out and day hiked to Alice lake. As I said before the similarities to the Sierra’s are startling. I wanted to send along a few thoughts, so you don’t have to trust your memory on those things we talked about. Both “crests” of Spiller Canyon in Northern Yosemite are spectacular, The Minarets just south of Yosemite in the Inyo national Forest are sill underrated especially around Ediza and Thousand Island lakes. The Dusy Basin in Kings Canyon is perhaps my favorite of the southern parks although it is hard to go wrong. And don’t miss out on Crescent meadow in Sequoia if you get down that way…”The gem of the Sierras”. The Matthes Crest area is easily accessible from Tuolumne meadows and is (or at least was) off the beaten track. Almost everything out of Tuolumne is grand. Plenty of other ideas, if you make your way down here email me and we can talk more specifics. Best of luck and happy hiking, Randy
Hi Randy,
I was so glad to see your note! Jason and I really enjoyed you and Rick as well. I could have talked hiking, travels, and history with both of you all day. Thank you for sending all the places we talked about. My memory for names is less than impressive. And how did you enjoy your hike up to Alice? She is quite the beauty, isn’t she? We are already looking forward to our next trip to the Sawtooths, but for now our season will be wrapping up and winter here before we are ready. As you know, we are hoping for our future plans to include a lot of traveling, so I am grateful for your tips and your email address. You will hear from us again 🙂 In the meantime, don’t hesitate to use us as a resource for planning any Pacific Northwest trips. We have lots of wonderful gems!
Happy trails,
Lusha
p.s. Do you recognize the cover photo for our blog? Alice Lake, Sept 2015 🙂
I’m at the Copper Creek Inn right now enjoying lunch and checking out your site! Super awesome to meet y’all out on the Skyline trail today! I’ll let you know next time I’m headed back this way!
Hi Randy-
Thanks for stopping by! We both really enjoyed chatting with you on the trail today. You can’t go wrong talking to fellow hiker with a camera and a stuffed monkey 🙂 I stopped in at http://www.outdoordetour.com and you’ve got a really nice start there. Keep doing what you are doing. I book marked you and expect to see more great content in the upcoming months! Each post is a tremendous amount of work- it really is a labor of love. But I think you’ve got something really special started there.
Happy Trails,
Lusha
I made the comment before I really started digging thru the site, but HOLY COW you’ve got a lot of trail write-ups! Impressive!! Keep it up! I’ll be scoring the site when I plan my future PNW and Idaho trips!
Thank you very much Randy. I’m glad to hear that the site will be of benefit to you. Feedback like that is what keeps me posting 🙂 Don’t hesitate to ask us questions when planning your future trips.
Good luck and yes the floss comment is all about your dental health!! (not that you can get yours much better!)
Hi Lusha , hope you enjoying the great outdoors and retirement. What was the trail and hike you recommended to me for the Sawtooth’s?
Hi David-
I can’t remember for sure which I told you about. Might have been Alice Lake Loop which I have a blog post for. I think it was the pack we did last year from Redfish Lake up to Alpine and Baron lakes then over to Crammer Lakes. I’m just now writing posts on that. Both options are exceptional and can easily be longer packs if desired.
Happy trails!
Lusha
Yes, it was taking boat across redfish and you mentioned Cramer lakes for good fishing I think
Jason and Lusha, We are getting a 2021 Timber Ridge Titanium 24RKS and we pick it up in a week. I wanted to ask about your weigh distribution hitch. What is your fully loaded wet weight on the trailer axles and the fully loaded tongue weight? What solar upgrades did you do? Which equalizer hitch brand and what model did you go with? I am thinking about getting the Equalizer brand hitch and either the 12K model or the 14K model. Just want to be sure I am not undersized if fully loaded and with future solar upgrades with extra batteries. We have a new F350 Crew Cab Powerstroke like yours so any advice you have would be great on this or any other things you changed or upgraded. What was the upgrade you did when you took out the couch. Post pics if you can. Thanks, Kent
Good morning Kent,
Congratulations on your pending purchase! We’ve only managed a one week trip since purchase in May, but we are pleased so far. Jason had it ripped apart for a major power system upgrade (lithium batteries, whole house inverter, roof solar, battery monitor, etc.) and then we were tied up with a lot of moving and family activities. Storage and tank capacities on the 24RKS are amazing and the living is very comfortable. With the craziness of the summer, we haven’t had it to a scale yet. We knew we weren’t close to capacity for our trip, so it hasn’t been a concern yet. I imagine your Titanium will weigh a little more than ours. If you are on Facebook, I highly recommend joining the ORV owners group. You can then do a search. I’ve seen several posts from people who have weighed their loaded units.
I can tell you that you’ll absolutely LOVE that F350 diesel. This is our first diesel and it tows like a dream (previously we towed a TT with a 3/4 ton Dodge gas). You won’t even know that big, heavy ORV is behind you. Thompson RV set us up with the 10k Equalizer brand hitch and even I was able to tow it no sweat. I’ve seen where others go with the 12k or 14k, but this is what Thompson recommended and we haven’t felt it was inadequate. Pulls like a dream. Our previous RV was a class C motorhome and I had to white knuckle it every time there was a tiny breeze or semi passing. Now, I don’t even notice those things and am very comfortable.
LOL, the couch swap out. Yeah, so I’m a crazy cat lady. We only have one now, but he is very spoiled. We installed a RecPro recliner chair for Jason. Instead of getting a second chair for me, we put Indy’s cat tower in there. He is very good to use it and he loves the high perch next to the window. I spend most of my time outside or working at the table on my computer, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part.
Jason will be doing a full post on his power system upgrade. He is a slow blogger, so it might be a while before it is up. But you might be interested in that post if you are looking to go solar. I don’t understand most of the electrical stuff, but he did a fantastic job and it is so nice to be able to plug the coffee bean grinder in, use the microwave, etc.
Visit us again and keep us posted on how you like your ORV and what upgrade you do! Oh and yes- we did the Oxygenic shower head upgrade as well 🙂
Happy Trails,
Lusha
Hi Guys, would you please email me about possible use of one of your Heart Lake photos in American Fly Fishing magazine?
Hi Lusha and Jason,
It was great meeting you on the trail at the Hells Gate Management Unit in Lewiston this week. Hopefully we’ll see you again! I have been following the RV lifestyle for a few years now, although I don’t own one yet. Future idea!
I wanted to let you know I have an Etsy shop that has some cool outdoor tshirts including for RVs and I thought you might like to check it out. The link takes you directly to my design, foreveRVibes. I thought that was pretty catchy! 😉
Thanks again,
Annette
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1415556422/forevervibes-unisex-ultra-cotton-tee?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=foreveRVibes&ref=sc_gallery-1-1&frs=1&plkey=7256901afed96cc85896172a2b83f05a3c616c5f%3A1415556422
Hi Annette,
I’m glad you stopped by and left us this message! We really enjoyed chatting with you on the trail. It is always fun meeting people who enjoy the outdoors as much as we do. Thanks for leaving a link to your Etsy. We’ll check it out and hope others will too!
Happy trails,
Lusha