On the Road Again

It’s been a long time since I last posted, but the weather here in California this fall hasn’t exactly been conducive to blog writing. It’s been so beautiful that I haven’t been able to stay inside long enough to write! Even this weekend, when we were finally supposed to get some rain, the sun forced its way out.

See what I mean? It's too beautiful to stay inside

We kicked off autumn with a weeklong trip to Yellowstone back in September, our big excursion of the year and our first seriously long road trip together. Though we didn’t have much (OK, anything) planned, I wasn’t too worried. Owen always seems to luck out when it comes to finding places to stay and things to do last-minute. The first day we drove through the Sierras over Donner Pass, across the Nevada emptiness, into Utah past the Bonneville Salt Flats, and settled for the night at a campground along the shore of Great Salt Lake. 

En route to Salt Lake City

The next day we drove through Idaho and Montana and into the west entrance of Yellowstone. Within minutes of being in the park we saw bison and a fox. I was immediately hooked. We snagged a backcountry permit, only after watching a twenty  minute video detailing all the horrors we might run into in the backcountry. We arrived at our backcountry site just before the sun set. 

This greeted us at our campsite

The next morning, two park rangers on horses checked our permits. The encounter was great for two reasons: one, Owen and I realized that’s our dream job, and two, they gave us great advice about where to spend our next few nights in the backcountry. Oh yeah, and one of the rangers pronounced “creek” as “crick” which is the first time I've ever heard someone seriously pronounce it that way.

We hitchhiked to a new trailhead in a car full of old fly fishermen and spent the next three days even deeper in the backcountry, hiking along Cache Creek with a mountain looming over us named “The Thunderer.” The first night, we didn’t make it to camp until after dark and were utterly exhausted, so tired that Owen said he’d sleep in the bear box if it was possible. The next morning, along with most other mornings, I awoke to frost on my sleeping bag. Apparently it had gone straight from summer to winter. On our hike that day, I realized how remote this corner of the park really was: we saw more bison than people. The best part of the backcountry hike was the last morning, as we were about to start our hike, a herd of bison crossed the river that we were camped along and continued onto the trail we needed to take. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see wildflowers still in bloom

The herd of bison that beat us onto our trail

As we approached our car, we encountered more and more people and I realized we were effectively out of the backcountry and starting the next phase of our trip: touring Yellowstone’s frontcountry. We hid our dank hiking clothes in deep recesses of our car, cleaned 4 days of grime off ourselves in showers with advertised unlimited hot water, and toured Mammoth Hot Springs that night. We capped off the night by watching a very high strung male elk control his group of females.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Mammoth Hot Springs- this reminded me of an orange creamsickle

We attempted to see everything else in the park the next day. It started out great: we toured the Norris Geyser Basin early that morning, then checked out the geothermals along Yellowstone Lake. By the time we made it to Mud Volcano and Sulphur Canyon, we were totally geothermalled out. When we arrived at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, we were utterly relieved to look at something beautiful that wasn’t geothermal. On our drive back to our campground that night, we received some inspiration in the form of a mother moose and her two babies crossing a river.

Hot springs along Yellowstone Lake

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River

Our revitalizing moment

The next morning, our last in Yellowstone, we finally saw Old Faithful. Truth: I was more in awe of the Old Faithful Inn (picture a gorgeous log cabin on steroids) than of the eruption of Old Faithful geyser itself. We totally touristed out and explored the Inn and the plentiful gift shops. The last thing we saw in the park and the feature I was probably most excited for, as it graced the cover of our Yellowstone guidebook was Grand Prismatic Springs. The verdict? This was even better in real life than in the photos.

The grandaddy of hot springs: Grand Prismatic

Our route home took us through Grand Teton National Park. We probably could’ve spent a week in that park but we made the best of our half day. We did a short hike along Jenny Lake, enjoyed our first thunderstorm in ages, and got dinner in the town of Jackson. This area truly felt like the wild west.

Travel weary but enjoying our day in Grand Teton NP

Believe it or not, the next day we drove all the way home from Jackson, WY to San Jose, CA. We had planned to camp out near Owen’s cabin in Elko, NV but the place had been completely vandalized. Plus, we were completely over camping after 8 days of it. We were both filthy, as it had been days since the single shower we took on the trip. So, we pushed through to CA. The only thing that kept us awake through the night was reading my sister’s and Madeline’s blogs out loud… for hours. Overall, the trip was unbelievable. But we were both so grateful to be back in our apartment, with soap and running water, not living out of a tent.  

Owen's cabin

A few weeks later we were itching to camp again. We headed to Yosemite on a three-day weekend in October to try to snag permits to hike Half Dome right before the cables came down for the season. Unfortunately, we were thwarted yet again, but instead we backpacked around a lovely area called Ten Lakes.

After a several mile long uphill grind, we finally spot a lake

As Owen likes to say, this state is God’s etch a sketch, and Highway One through Big Sur had been closed until recently from last year’s storms and fires. With it finally open again, we headed down last weekend. We pulled into our campground at the fine hour of 1 A.M. (Owen had been on a National Guard mission until late Friday night) and spent the weekend relaxing amongst the redwood trees and driving the coast. We saw surfers braving the gnarly waves, whales, and the famed McWay Falls, which cascades directly into the ocean.

Besides our latest trips, things are going well with me: I’ve finally started trail running again after a months-long hiatus and work is chugging along nicely. Unfortunately, Owen's department changed direction and terminated his position. He’s still figuring out exactly what he wants to do next. In the meantime, it has been nice for us to be able to meet up for lunch, to both ‘work’ from home on Fridays, and to overall spend more time together. He was also able to help out the National Guard with two missions recently, one of which involved driving a tractor trailer through downtown Los Angeles. Go figure.

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I will end on this note: at Point Reyes National Seashore a few weeks ago, we spotted this fox lounging in the sun in an old farm building. What a way to spend a sunny fall afternoon. I might do something of the sort next weekend.