California

Three Deer, a Raccoon, and a Big, Fat Skunk

/ L. Ryan Storms / Leave a comment

Day 13: 6/14/24
From: San Francisco, CA
To: Crater Lake, OR
Distance: 417 miles

I’m up at 6:45 and grab a quick shower before waking the rest of the family. We enjoy a hot breakfast and are on the road a little after 8, in time to catch rush hour traffic in the area. Congested, yes, but at least it moves. San Francisco is not LA.

We’re in for a long drive today and the next few as we head back east again. And back to windy mountain roads after the California highways. We travel the highway that wraps around Mt. Shasta and take in the snowy peaks growing ever closer. I’m thankful Husband’s cold is mostly gone, but he’s having issues equilibrating his ears due to lingering congestion, so the ups and downs on this leg of the journey are a bit of an annoyance for him. No one else came down with his cold, and for that, we celebrate.

We exit one highway into a town called Weed, and yes, they play it up here just as you would expect they would.  “I love Weed” souvenirs abound. We do not stop to buy any. Shortly after, we cross a lake called Grass Lake that looks far more like a meadow than a lake, which is where it got its name, I’m sure. (And not because it came right after Weed.)

We pass the Butte Valley National Grasslands with the Cascade Mountains as a backdrop and it’s all so breathtaking. The closer we get to Crater Lake National Park, the greener our surroundings. After the golden California hills, the deep pine woods of Oregon are refreshing. Husband stops to check out the gorge where Annie Creek runs…and finds a random dollar in the weeds. Who does this? Husband. Of course.

We reach Crater Lake and quickly notice the piles of snow all through the woods. It’s June 14th and there are large piles of snow in the woods. We check in and head to our adorable cabin at the Mazama Village where Husband immediately collapses facedown into a bed. I DID offer to help with the drive today. He declined. I absolve myself of his exhaustion.

After a short rest break, we’re back in the car and headed to the crater that makes this park so amazing. But the Rim Drive is closed after two stops. Why? There’s so much snowmelt and it freezes on the roads overnight. Yes, you read that correctly. There’s a lot of snow on top of this volcano.

There’s no shortage of views, though. The water at Crater Lake is an insane deep blue, and so calm, it looks almost inviting. But that’s a high dive you wouldn’t want to take now or ever. Even in late summer without recent snowmelt, the water here is cold, the average temperature reaching only 55-60 degrees at the surface.

Husband and Younger Child head up a steep hiking trail for a different view of the lake and the cinder cone inside of it. I stay put since I don’t want to challenge my hip today. I’d say Older Child stays to keep me company, but I think they’re just tired of hikes at this point and need a break to check social media.

Once again, I’m kind of glad for a change in plans. We were supposed to be camping in Farewell Bend campground, but pests and diseases meant they had to take down a lot of trees, so the campground has been closed until next year. I was notified all of two weeks before our trip, but was able to panic book the single remaining cabin at the Mazama Village. (Which is closer to the crater anyway – win!)

It’s supposed to be a low of 29 degrees tonight. It’s 53 now and breezy, but not bad in the sun as I type this from the crater’s rim. 29 degrees in a tent with sleeping bags only rated for 40 degrees? No. No thank you. So this minor inconvenience ended up being a major blessing. We’ll be comfy and cozy in our cabin tonight.

The nice part about arriving with plenty of time and already having seen the bit of the park we’re able to is that we have plenty of time for doing laundry, which is sorely needed at this point. So that’s our next stop. The kids stay in the cabin and we head for laundry. I am quite certain both kids are happy to be free of us for a couple of hours. We’ve been in each other’s faces nonstop for almost two weeks now.

Husband and I are celebrating our 21st anniversary today just the way I like to. (No, not doing laundry.) Low-key adventures like the one we’ve been on are all the gift I’ll ever need. This is the gift. This life we have together. And I mean, he DID find me a ring in Muir Woods yesterday, so…

After the laundry, we hang out in the cabin. The kids draw while I read. Husband is antsy and doesn’t like sitting still, so he decides to go to the park office to ask if we’re allowed to head to the crater rim for night photos. I’m shocked to hear it’s allowed and doesn’t require a special permit! So now we have to decide what ridiculous time we’re going to get up in order to take photos. Because this opportunity won’t come again. 

Sigh. We’re insane.

So we set the alarm for 2 am, layer up, and head out into the 34 degree weather to see what we can see. Which…isn’t much. Because the entire cabin village is shrouded in thick, white fog. Maybe it will be clearer at the rim?

Friends, it will not. We take the twenty minute ride to West Rim Drive to find out the fog is so thick, we’re now basically inside of clouds. There will be no Milky Way photos over Crater Lake. Twenty minutes back down and we jump back into pajamas and into bed again. 

Along the way, we happened to catch sight of three deer and a raccoon, so I guess it wasn’t totally pointless?

Nah. It really was.

Pivot

/ L. Ryan Storms / Leave a comment

Day 12: 6/13/24
From: Sequoia National Park (Potwisha Campground)
To: Golden Gate National Recreation Area (Bicentennial Campground Holiday Inn Express)
Distance: 294 miles

I am up at 5. Again. The variety of birds in the California wilderness is astounding and I have the Merlin bird app open to pass an hour before I even think about waking the kids. The California Towhee and the Acorn Woodpecker are fighting to see who can be the better alarm clock, I think.

At least the night eventually cooled down. We kept the rain fly off the tent and the windows unzipped, so the tent is comfortably cool this morning. I have no idea how long it took to get that way, but at some point in the night, as the temp fell, we all found our way inside sleeping bags.

When I get out of the tent, I notice a small shiny spring in the middle of our campsite. Husband thinks it must have come off of something we own, but I prefer to think a raven left us a gift sometime during the night since we’ve been befriending them everywhere we go. I’m going to miss the ravens when we head home.

We leave the campsite by 7:30 and hit up the visitor center for stickers by 8. Along the way, we encounter a black-tailed deer and two social ravens. See? The ravens have become our friends! Down the last stretch of the General’s Highway and back onto the main highways that will take us northwest to San Francisco we go.

We cross the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded in fog and get a glimpse of Alcatraz. It’s 2 pm by the time we arrive at the campsite and when we pull up, we all stare in dread for a moment. Sun? No, there’s no sun here. It’s foggy, misty, windy, and 54 degrees midday. And our campsite has a 1/4 mile walk-in down a steep hill. Older child takes a spill on the gravel and scrapes up an ankle, a thigh, and both palms. To add insult to injury, at the bottom of the hill is a clearing where there is only a port-a-potty for our bathroom needs. The kids revolt.

And I don’t blame them.

The view of the Golden Gate Bridge is spectacular, but even that’s not enough for me to want to stay. It’s time to pivot. I use that wonderful cell reception to find a hotel less than a mile away. Now both kids feel bad and say they could just suck it up, but guess what? *I* don’t want to be freezing in a tent all night, have no running water, and have to use a port-a-potty. We’ve done pit toilets a few times on this trip, but this is a new low. So yeah, I look forward to the hotel, too.

From there, we head over to Muir Woods, (Which requires a parking reservation — beware! We managed to book one before heading over.) and take in the Redwoods over the course of 3 miles of trails. We stick mostly to the flat boardwalk and paved trails, which is better for my joints. 

The trees are beautiful and so very different from the sequoia we saw yesterday. Walking amidst so many at one time is magical. And I love that the path is handicap accessible. It’s heartening to see. (In fact, I was impressed just a few days ago when we saw the National Park Service laying concrete on some paths at Bryce Canyon.) It’s encouraging to know that people with disabilities aren’t being left out of seeing and appreciating the natural wonders of our world. And…Husband finds a beautiful ring that fits my finger while looking at the giant clover for a four-leaf. No four-leaf, but I’ll take the ring, thanks!

After Muir, we check into our hotel and virtually collapse. We’ll need to figure out where to order food as we won’t be making any camp meals tonight, but the warmth of a room and the promise of a bed is simply heavenly and we’re soaking in the atmosphere. The wind outside is relentless and we can hear the incessant chiming of the flagpole. Still, no one will complain as we’re just thrilled to be inside. Unfortunately, my hip subluxed getting out of the car today, so that may be my body’s sign to slow my roll a bit. I wonder if it’s due to the extreme changes in temperature. It’s not every day you go from a high of 111 degrees to 53. And colder temps are coming.

Dinner from Floodwater, the restaurant directly next to the hotel, is divine. Pizza, burgers, pork rolls, they have a bit of everything you could want. We’d hoped to play a game of Oregon Trail cards, but everyone is too tired, so we end up asleep just after 9:30 — so tired that no one even cares about the snoring. A plus.

Gold in the Dirt, Gold in the Hills

/ L. Ryan Storms / Leave a comment

Day 11: 6/12/24
From: Las Vegas, NV
To: Sequoia National Park (Potwisha Campground) 
Distance: 391 miles

We leave Las Vegas by 8:30 and head to Goodsprings, NV to see The Pioneer Saloon. Last time Nate and I were here, we captured a video we weren’t expecting. That video is what made the kids want to come.

We reach the place an hour before they open and almost decide to skip it and just get on the road. But we’re hungry and there’s a new(er) enormous gas station/convenience store/beer distributor/casino with a White Castle where we can get breakfast.

By the time we finish with breakfast and restock our cooler with ice, the saloon is open and we can go back. 6 miles down the road again, we reach The Pioneer Saloon and the kids finally get to see the bullet holes in the wall. We show the bartender the creepy video and she says there’s still lots of recorded paranormal activity in the saloon including the presence of miners. She tells us about how Goodsprings was Vegas before Las Vegas was Vegas. It was the “it” destination. Which we knew since a plane carrying Carole Lombard and some crew members crashed into the mountains and Clark Gable drank at that very bar, hoping to hear better news than that of her death. A recovered piece of the plane is mounted to the dining room wall, but the majority of it remains in the hills, unrecoverable due to the difficult terrain.

But wait, there’s so much more than bullet holes! We didn’t know The Pioneer Saloon was featured in Fallout, and that Easy Pete from the game was inspired by a real person. We get the chance to meet Pete and he tells us all about the saloon, showing us the cool features of the saloon we knew nothing about. The original bar from 1860 is still in use and if you run your hand along the underside of the bar, you’ll feel a large hole where one could stash a gun if one were so inclined.

The parking lot? Well, people find gold there. Easy Pete dumped a few tiny nuggets from a shot glass into Younger Child’s hand, and proclaimed, “A gift, from me to you!” The kids stood in disbelief and thanked him. So we snap a few pictures and thank Pete again for sharing his experiences and knowledge of the saloon with us. 

By the way, the 3rd Annual Fallout fest is coming up in November. The first year brought about 3,000 people to the town of 176 people. The second year? 7,000. And the reason they moved it to November? People couldn’t take the heat and were passing out left and right. So anyway, it shouldn’t be 110 degrees if you want to visit in November and Easy Pete will be there to greet you.

We prepare for a long drive through the Mojave National Preserve and onward into California. Joshua trees stand out amongst the scrub and sand, like bizarre sentries from the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. And then we hit full-on “you will die if you try to cross me” desert. It’s 108 degrees and not even noon. The desolation here is intense, the mountainous terrain in the distance mean and angry-looking. The last time we drove through, these mirror solar farms didn’t exist. There’s something very creepy about glowing towers in the middle of the desert.

Most of our drive through California is much the same. But the mountains slowly change to golden hills that look like they’ve been covered in a velvet blanket. When we’re about an hour from Sequoia National Park, the family begins to wonder if I put the  correct destination into the GPS. How can we be close to Sequoia when it’s still 104 degrees outside with citrus groves and vineyards on either side of us?

But the directions are correct. Our campground is at the base of the park, before the Giant Forest. After seeing our military park pass, the park ranger at the entrance salutes Husband and thanks him for his service, almost bringing Husband to tears. Once again, we arrive when the sun is directly on our campsite. So instead of setting up in 95 degrees (it’s dropped a little), we opt to take a drive to see General Sherman. It’s 13 miles up the General’s Highway, a windy road that’s almost as bad as Independence Pass in Colorado.

But when we finally start to see the Sequoias, the kids are astonished. They almost don’t believe us when we tell them the trees they’re looking at are small compared to some of the others. So when they finally see General Sherman, their mouths drop. A walk through the Giant Forest gives us all an appreciation for the massive towering trees and how many hundreds to thousands of years they took to reach that size.

Unfortunately, we’ve also finally hit the part of the trip where mosquitoes abound. Meh. Back to the campsite by 8, we set up our tent just in time for dusk to the sound of chirping crickets and distant fellow campers. Remember those cooler temps AccuWeather told me we’d have? Lies. These temps were for the Giant Forest about 4500 ft above where we are. Instead, it’s 88 degrees with zero wind. It’s going to be a long, hot night.

To See a Giant

/ L. Ryan Storms / Leave a comment

Original Post: August 11, 2015

Though we could have enjoyed the coast forever (And really, who couldn’t?), we packed up early and hit the road for Sequoia National Park to meet with The General.  (Sherman, that is.)  We were on our way early and fully prepared for hitting LA traffic in full-on rush hour.  Yeah. Well. It’s one thing to say that and another to do it.  We weren’t really prepared.

How can you be prepared for this?  See those red dashes?  That’s a delay.

Los Angeles traffic only added an extra hour to the trip and I guess we should have been grateful for that.  It could have been worse.

One thing we discovered along the way was that most of California looks like this:

With the exception of the times it looked like this:

Or like this:

Seriously – weird, grassy, rolling hills or orange orchards or vineyards.  That was it.  I’m certain there must be more to California than this, but in all the miles we traveled (from San Diego to the Redwoods) this was, more or less, what we saw.

We reached Sequoia National Park at three in the afternoon and headed straight for the world’s largest tree. But first, a massive downpour.  It was hard to imagine that California was in a drought when the view through our windshield was hardly visible at all.

When we finally got to into the park and had our first views of Sequoias, our jaws dropped.  There is nothing that can prepare one for the sheer mass that is a few-thousand year old Sequoia.  They are awesome in the true sense of the word. The gorgeous rust-hued trunks are not what you would expect.  I put my hand on one and expected to feel a tree trunk (duh, right?), but I was shocked to feel a soft texture, almost spongy.

We made our way down the path to General Sherman, and while he was not the most gorgeous specimen, he was regal nonetheless.  There was a line to take photos next to him.  Dutifully, I stood in line so that Nate could get a picture of me with the tree, but no camera could really capture the stunning presence that these trees have.  (So go see them in person!  You won’t be sorry!)

If Sequoias can convince Nate to hug a tree, they can convince anyone.

We made our way to Lodgepole Campground, which was, hands down, one of the best sites we booked on the trip.  The park ranger who checked us in quickly reminded us that we were in bear country and that just the night before, they’d had to shoo away a black bear from the campgrounds.  This made me somewhat nervous, as I’d booked a campsite on the outskirts of the grounds.  Oh well.  You only live once, right?  And that’s what bear boxes are for.

The campsite was perfect, and right next to the Kaweah River (which was more like a creek at that point in time) and you know exactly where Nate went.  Fishing, of course.

The native brook trout, though tiny, were feisty and Nate caught several.  Since they weren’t used to people, Nate discovered that some stealth was required to catch them.  If they saw you, they were gone…  

Of the woods, Sequoia National Park was one of my favorites.  It’s a long and windy drive to get to (But unlike the Rockies, there were guard rails and stone walls!) and it’s a hike to see General Sherman (although there is handicapped access available), but it was worth every second. 

And we managed to avoid a bear encounter.  Woohoo – that’s two for two in bear country!  Safe!