My Favorite Piece of Travel Gear… GONE!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written! It’s not due to lack of travel. I’ve gone on several hikes in different parts of Southern Oregon and also took a fun weekend trip to Redding, California. I decided to take a break from posting because another matter came up took top priority.

You see, one of my most useful travel items was destroyed, and eventually taken away from me. It was something I used in almost all my travels over the past year, as well as something I used almost every day. It was also the most expensive item I owned.

On May 13th, my 2016 Subaru Forester got hit.

I’ve posted about this car on here before. I am a little sad that my car was wrecked and eventually declared a total loss. This whole ordeal has been a long, annoying process that I hope never happens again. But two weeks ago I purchased a virtually identical 2017 Subaru Forester, just a year newer. It’s almost like the wreck never happened!

In memory of my first Subaru, here are, in no particular order, some of my favorite trips I took with it:

1. Taking a baby on his first trip ever: home from the hospital.

2. NorCal road trip through the Redwoods, Avenue of the Giants, Point Reyes, and San Francisco.

3. The first trip I took was a day trip with my friend to Gold Beach’s Treasure Hunt.

4. National Parks road trip where I car camped at Lava Beds National Monument, then went to Lassen Volcanic National Park and later Crater Lake National Park.

5. The last “big” trip was down the Southern Oregon Coast. I went up to Bandon and enjoyed the stops all the way down to Brookings, where I spent the night in an AirBnB boat and met speaker/author/editor Susie Shellenberger.

6. A quick weekend trip down to Southern California for my cousin’s wedding.

7. While I typically ride the camp vans to volunteer at Wilderness Trails, there was one beautiful winter weekend where I drove myself up the mountain.

8. Driving it through Wildlife Safari with my sister and having animals stick their heads through the car windows.

On the night I purchased my new car, I celebrated by driving it to the movie theater to see Cars 3, especially appropriate since this is my third car. I was thinking about naming it 2.0, without even knowing that a car in the movie was nicknamed that!

Other than that, here is my favorite trip with my new Forester:

1. Up the I-5 for a night in Eugene, then spending the entire next day driving all the way South on the Oregon coast.

This was a fun trip that basically quadrupled my car’s current mileage, and I made it a bit of a challenge by packing super light. (Only a purse, toiletry bag, small packing cube, and food- not even a backpack!) I can’t wait to tell you more about it, but you can get a good preview on my Instagram account- just follow @jessicalippe!

Have you ever been in a wreck? What’s the most expensive travel gear you’ve lost?