I’m a little behind on my blogging and in the four months or so since I last posted the weather has turned from winter to spring to summer. If you blink, you’ll miss it! Luckily, we’ve had a couple long weekends that let us travel farther afield and explore the subtle, and not so subtle, changing of the seasons.
On a long weekend at the end of March (thanks to Caesar Chavez), we made one last “winter” trip to Lake Tahoe. On a snowshoe hike through an area torched by a wildfire, we found a truck camper buried in the snow- eerie! We splurged on a couple’s massage for the first time. I thought it was the most relaxing thing in the world but Owen was less thrilled. His masseuse went to town on his back and legs so snowboarding the next day was kind of rough for him. We toasted to surviving the day of snowboarding unscathed with some beers at happy hour, and though we didn’t know it at the time, it turned out to be our last day of snowboarding for the season.
In April, we went backpacking in Big Sur. It was a beautiful weekend on the trail: we saw wildflowers of every color, Denali got her swimming fix, and it was just nice to spend the whole weekend outside after months of rain. But the trip wasn’t without its challenges. As we were walking to our tent from the river that night, all of a sudden Denali held up one of her legs and couldn’t put weight on it. We carried her into the tent right away and for a few hours she laid on her side with her leg twitching in pain. It was pretty scary to see her hurting, but the scarier thought was how we’d get her out of the backcountry if she couldn’t put weight on that leg.
The next morning, she was able to walk as if nothing had happened. We’re still not sure what actually happened, maybe she just tweaked her leg strangely? After the trip a friend told me about Ruffwear’s emergency dog sling that can support dogs up to 100 pounds if you need to carry them out in an emergency situation. Denali scorns at even wearing a cooling vest, not sure if she’d let us carry her out in a sling…
I seemed to sustain an injury myself after that trip- a knee pain that would not go away, even after taking a break from running for a week, which turned into two weeks, then three weeks. Finally I went to the doctor who confirmed what I suspected it was, an overuse injury. I guess my body is not as resilient as it used to be! It drove me nuts not to run, especially now that the weather is so nice and the days are long. I tried to ride my bike instead, and promptly was reminded 1) how scary mountain biking can be, and 2) that I am NOT in biking shape.
By the time Memorial Day weekend came around, I still wasn’t recovered enough for backpacking or hiking so instead we planned to have a chill weekend camping and exploring a part of California we’d never been to, Mendocino National Forest. The route there went through a small community, Potter Valley, and we happened to drive through just as the whole town was heading to the Memorial Day Weekend rodeo. Between the old-timey general store we stopped at and everyone dressed in their cowboy boots and cowboy hats, I felt like we had traveled back in time.
That weekend we tried to relax and hang out, but we didn’t last long until we were itching to explore. We hopped in the truck and drove the Forest Service roads all around us. The higher up in the mountains we got, the crazier the conditions were. We almost made it to the road’s end, at a radio tower, but there were several feet of snow on the ground still, so we parked and walked the half mile or so to the tower. Owen and Denali reached the tower first. By the time I arrived I couldn’t find them but I heard a bunch of cats meowing and dogs barking inside the tower. I immediately thought oh my god Denali’s in there and she’s being tortured I need to find her. Yup, my brain can spiral pretty fast, but seriously why else would there be a bunch of animals in a creepy radio tower in the middle of nowhere? It turned out to be a sound recording of cats and dogs, presumably to keep rodents out. That’s just our theory though. As I was reeling from that, the skies opened up and it started pouring. We hightailed it back to the truck, and on the drive back to camp we saw a bear running down the road. All in all, we got a little more adventure than we bargained for that day!
Luckily the next day was much more chill. We had brought the refrigerator that’s powered by the truck and we feasted on gourmet sandwiches, icecream, and cold drinks. We might not have a four-inch thick memory foam mattress on our camping trips, but we know how to dine right! With full bellies we explored Lake Pillsbury and came across a herd of elk grazing in a meadow. It turned out to be a weekend for wildlife viewing - later that day we saw river otters in the nearby Eel River. Denali was beside herself, trying to swim across the fast-flowing river to get to their den. And she probably would have gotten to them if we let her!
We had another long weekend for Juneteenth and headed out to the Eastern Sierra via Highway 108 which had just opened up the week prior after being closed all winter. As we drove through the mountains we wondered why the road had only just opened since there wasn’t even a trace of snow left. But by the time we got to the highest point, Sonora Pass, which is over 9,000 feet, it became immediately apparent. There was still over ten feet of snow next to the road! There were lots of people getting one last dose of winter, going skiing and snowboarding and playing in the snow. We cashed in on it too, and went glissading while Denali took multiple snow baths. Just as we thought winter was well behind us.
We encountered challenging weather conditions the rest of the weekend, too. In our usual fashion we hadn’t identified a specific place to camp in advance. Instead we used our paper maps of the area as a reference and drove down a few National Forest roads to scope out a good spot. The “good spot” we finally found turned out to be in some sort of crazy wind tunnel. Have you ever experienced a bad campfire? Me neither, at least not until this trip. The wind blew ashes from the fire in our faces until we finally gave up on it, buried the fire, and drove out to nearby hot springs. Our shitty campfire was a blessing in disguise though, because on our way to the hot springs the sunset over the Sierra Nevada was nothing short of spectacular. It finally gave meaning to the Sierra Nevada’s nickname, the range of light. Technically, it's dubbed the range of light because of its light colored granite rock, but I like my explanation better.
I’d planned a hike for us in Mammoth Lakes to the Lakes Basin but there was still so much snow that the road to the trailhead wasn’t even open. So we shifted gears and found a slightly lower elevation hike that didn’t require trudging through waist-deep snow. The next day, before we had to head home we drove the scenic June Lake Loop which had us ogling at each of the four lakes and fantasizing about coming back when we had more time to hike some of the trails above the lakes.
If I needed a reminder that it’s officially summer, our trip to the Dominican Republic last week for Owen’s family reunion did just that. It was five days of morning yoga on the beach, pina coladas by the pool, and swimming in the ocean. If that sounds too relaxing for our usual trips, don’t worry - we worked up a sweat on a hike in a nearby nature reserve and got to swim in a cave! I’m excited to see how the rest of the summer pans out :)
