Revelstoke: The Adventures of Handles and Pogo

Hi there! If you are looking for the artwork and prints mentioned in Jeff’s YouTube video, click here. 🥰

In some ways, it feels like summer came and went. In other ways? It feels like summer has lasted for the right amount of time. In fact, I could have had a little less of it.

August culminated in a mental health crash, coinciding with two cold-like illnesses in a row. People in the Pacific Northwest talk about squeezing the last juice out of summer, and ending it with a grand finale that means fitting way too much into August. Well, leading up to August, I not only squeeze the juice out of summer; I squeezed the juice out of myself.

Oranges are made to be squeezed; not Savannah bananas.

Now that autumn is unfurling her foggy fingertips onto my skin, I feel nature’s unspoken permission to begin to slow down. Summer is ending with an abundance of adventures to look back on, with photos to edit and stories to tell. Every summer, I think that I can wring myself to an empty shell, diving into adventure after adventure… and spend the winter hibernating behind my computer. This was my mindset with traveling abroad, too: spend your time fully immersed in experiencing what is right in front of you, and when you get home, you’ll have time to sit with the words and photos, and relive the experiences without taking away from the time being present.

But, that never happens. Life continues to move on. It’s something that makes so much logical sense in my head, but has been difficult to put into practice.

Why? Looking back through journals and editing photos is a chance to relive the experience that you had. I struggle to understand what my resistance is, when it seems like it’s only good! Well, truthfully, I get bogged down in overwhelm. There are sooooo many photos, I have a hard time deciding what deserves to be published. And once that is decided… Where do they go?!

My intention is to make this year different. With how deep my recent burnout has felt, sitting still to work on things that I’ve created feels obligatory, rather than optional.

Over the summer, one of my projects was to work on captions for a photo essay for Jeff’s tourism board trip to Gunnison & Crested Butte. Captions are never something I’ve taken advantage of, but that project made me realize how much that method could help simplify the overwhelm. Yes, I want to tell the whole story — and elements rooted in philosophical introspection. But sometimes you just need to begin to hit publish on something to build momentum, and compiling a photo essay just might be a way to do that.

Well, let’s see what happens… Here’s a taste of our trip in July to Revelstoke, British Columbia, featuring a billion mosquitoes. And if you haven’t yet enjoyed the video, it is finally live here!

Our campsite for two nights — complete with our own private swim dock! Last summer, I enjoyed truck camping with a friend for the first time, and we found some fantastic private camping spots on the Sunshine Coast. That trip set my expectations for vehicle camping locations pretty high, so going into this I felt a little bit of worry that we wouldn’t find a decent spot. Fortunately, Jeff likes to be next to water, so that he can be clean, and we stumbled upon this private nook at the bottom of a questionable side road.

Clothes on, clothes off. Jeff being a handsome model in Woolly Undies. They reached out to him after he spent a lot of his social media likes on the photos that I shot for their spring/summer undies campaign. Full disclosure: we both seem to have some kind of allergy to merino wool. Fortunately for Jeff, the underwear work great for him, and I’ve heard glowing reviews from him as he’s worn them on almost all of our outdoor adventures.

It was a muddy ride! As I mentioned in Part 1 of “MTB Crash Protection: Helmets, Pads, Shoes, and More,” one of the most important and underrated pieces of gear are glasses. I rode for so long without having a pair, and once I added them to my pack, I realized how much I had been missing! Not only to protect my very important eyeballs, but also to ride faster without tears running down my face. My favourite have been the (pictured) Coast Optics Nita glasses, made in Whistler, BC.

Apparently, a theme to these photos so far is “Jeff in various stages of undress.” And cleanliness. Splat.

We enjoyed our first day riding flow trails, in what must have been the prettiest forest in the world, with the prettiest climb trail. You’ll just have to believe me, because I didn’t bring my camera in my hip pack.

(1) I couldn’t help not having fun with nighttime photography, with food lit with headlamps. Isn’t it pretty?

(2) Jeff cooking while simultaneously flapping around the spatula to try to scare the mosquitoes away.

Unfortunately for us, we brought an empty propane tank with us to cook our food. We discovered this our first night after already settling into our camping spot, and tired from a long day of traveling all the way from Bellingham, and a mid-roadtrip ride en route. Fortunately, we had an almost-empty backpacking gas stove, and decided to attempt improvising. I cut our beef up into small pieces, with the hopes it would cook efficiently — before the gas would run out. At first Jeff insisted we would have enough gas to cook rice, but we ended up pouring a can of beans into the beef mixture instead. Moments after beginning to cook our creative experiment, the gas died… Jeff has said many times that everything has a way of working out when I’m around, and with our just-cooked-enough-dinner, it seemed like he was right!

(1) Not sure why Jeff looks grumpy. Perhaps we hadn’t had coffee yet. And were probably being eaten by mosquitoes. (2) But, thanks to the internet, we learned that burning your old coffee grounds just might deter mosquitoes. Did it work? Difficult to say, but it seemed like they were less bothersome. (3) And, breakfast is served! In all of our campouts, I must say that Jeff is probably the fanciest camp food guy ever. We are often enjoying the great outdoors not only with freshly cooked meat, but even avocados!

Prepping for Martha’s Creek. Stoke is high. As it should be, considering we are in Revel…STOKE. I’m sure no one has said that before, eh?

Various stages of being tired of mosquitoes and needing to stretch out the groin muscles. As I have talked about plenty of times — just because it’s an e-bike, doesn’t mean that the biking is easy. Nope, “e” doesn’t stand for easy.

Scouting naked photo spots amongst quite the crew of marmot friends.

Test shot with minimal clothing because, well, mosquitoes. You think the mosquitoes are bad in clothing?! Try being a tasty human morsel out of clothing.

During our ride up the forest service road, we stopped a couple of times to fuel ourselves with snacks. Within seconds, clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around both of our heads. Normally, Jeff recommends keeping your helmet on to prevent putting on a cold, sweaty helmet. This time, however, we kept helmets on to protect every possible inch of us from the blood-thirsty vampires. These ones were vicious — even getting us through our clothes.

Just saying… Let that sink in before you enjoy the naked photos.

Tree pose on a yoga mat? Piece of cake. Tree pose on pointy rocks? It probably looks like a piece of cake, but is actually quite challenging. Hard. Rocky. Uneven. The twitchy foot muscles are firing to stay upright. Just a sneak peek at our mini-mosquito-invested photo shoot. You can see more over here on the adult website!

Saying “cheese” to a bunch of bike dudes who recognized Jeff at the top. It’s so very special traveling with a celebrity, who makes important bike videos. Thanks, bike dudes!

Jeff and his fancy bike skills.

The tip-top of Martha Creek: The adventures of Handles (featured riding the Pivot SL/AM) and Pogo (featured riding the Amflow).

Sandwiches are important. Sadly, cavemen did not eat sandwiches — but I have yet to find something truly paleo that I can take on backcountry adventures that matches in convenience. So, for now, I will make do with gluten-free sandwiches.

Eating a sandwich in record speed is even more important when there are mosquitoes.

Jeff: Always ISO the perfect thumbnail photo.

Savannah: Always ISO the perfect naked yoga photo. And if being dunked in buckets of mosquitoes, combined with running out of daylight impedes that… a clothed yoga photo will do. Complete with a helmet, because you never know what might go wrong in your warrior pose.

Did I mention there were mosquitoes?

And, it became a wrap! My nicely clean ruck got a splattering of mud thanks to this fun feature. A word to the wise: set your stuff down away from muddy trails.

It was a wild and mosquito-filled July adventure through Revelstoke, British Columbia — complete with private swim docks, questionable side roads, fancy camp meals, mud-splattered gear, and Jeff’s endless talent for both bike skills and accidental underwear modeling. And what made it even more special was that it was a new place to visit for both of us!

Between e-bike climbs, naked photo scouting, and mosquito survival hacks (burnt coffee grounds, anyone?), this photo essay captures the messy beauty of summer travel: equal parts laughter, chaos, and tenderness. More than just snapshots, these images are a reminder of what it means to ride smart, live fully, and share the trail with both marmots and a swarm of blood-thirsty vampires.

As with every adventure we go on, we learned a lot — about our relationship dynamics, traveling together, riding together at different skill levels. For the Amflow launch, Jeff turned this adventure into a fun vlog, showing the world a little bit of our personalities when we come together. Coming soon, I’ll be complementing that vlog with an article on Jeff’s website, giving some more behind the scenes insight into how we support each other at different skill levels of riding (three decades vs. three years of riding is kind of a big difference).

If you’d like more, you can sign up for more philosophical writings at my substack, Reclaiming the Wild Woman or follow along with my adventures on instagram.com/primalrevolutions.