Farewell, California

Nearly eight years ago I moved to California. I had four boxes, a duffel bag, a cooler full of deer meat (don’t ask), and my bike. I had no car and no job. I had no clue. No clue how expensive rent is, how intense Silicon Valley can be, how terrible the traffic is. But also no clue of the serenely peaceful redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains, how the granite monoliths in Yosemite literally make your jaw drop, how you can see millions of stars on a clear night in Death Valley. Luckily, I had Owen and together we learned that there is a lifetime of adventures waiting to be had in the forests, mountains and deserts of California. 

I’ve tried my best to chronicle those adventures and I am grateful for every single one. Looking back, it’s unreal how much we’ve done and seen in the past eight years. We learned how to dispersed camp on public lands. I trained for my first ultramarathon. Owen bought a motorcycle and we rode it up to Alaska. On a whim, we discovered hot springs in the backcountry of Death Valley. We took more road trips than any sane person would ever fathom. We almost got struck by lightning on Mount Whitney. We drove up to Oregon and bought a 30 year old truck with bags of cash. We trespassed in a giant sequoia grove on my birthday (story below!). We got married and adopted a Siberian husky. We took a three-month sabbatical from our jobs. We took Denali on a bush plane. We survived 30+ days without power last winter and became true “mountain people.” 

And also: we made friends, then said goodbye as most of them left the Bay Area. We watched in horror as the average price of a single family home skyrocketed. We celebrated many, many holidays alone. I didn’t see my family for nearly two years during the pandemic. We battled soul sucking traffic and commutes.

After eight years in California, our journey here has finally come to an end. So, what’s next for us? Well, in college my friends and I all dreamed of moving to Colorado and even joked about “the race to Colorado” to see who could move there first. Madeline lived there for a good stint, Evan moved there several years ago and is now a proud home-owner. Lots of people that were never officially in the race have even beat us: my sister, Owen’s sister, his cousin. So, while we may be DFL (dead freakin’ last), we are finally making it happen!

Now for the logistics: we leave later today (!!!) with Owen driving a moving truck towing the 4Runner and me and Denali in Yaris. We are renting a house in Louisville, Colorado. Owen starts his new job at Maybell Quantum on April 8 and I’m in the process of finding a job out there. Before I close, this wouldn’t be one of my blog posts without a few stories, so here goes, albeit a condensed version.

Just last weekend we went to Lake Tahoe for our last days of snowboarding at our favorite ski resort. That morning the road into the resort was closed because Caltrans was blasting to mitigate avalanche risk. While we were waiting in the long line of cars, I took Denali for a walk, all the way to the start of the road closure and ducked under the “road closed” gate, not thinking much of it. Beyond the gate the snow was untouched, the forest silent, and no one else was around - it was absolutely beautiful. It wasn’t until a Caltrans truck drove up that I realized I was probably not supposed to be there. I got a stern talking-to and solemnly promised to never walk beyond a road closure again. I also got important intel that they predicted the road might open at 11am. Score! The road ended up opening even earlier, and I made it to the women’s snowboarding clinic that I was taking that weekend just a little late. My group introduced each other and I updated them about the road closure, my accidental illicit activity, etc. As we were all chatting at lunch a couple hours later, I found out that my instructor’s boyfriend works for Caltrans. When she shared that he’s actually the one who opened the pass that was closed this morning, it dawned on us at the same moment: he was probably the one who caught me behind the road closure! She pulled up a photo of him on her phone and I confirmed it was him. What a small world. 

Back in February we went on our annual trip to Death Valley National Park for President’s Day weekend. Normally hundreds of people come out to these hot springs in a remote stretch of the park for a weekend of festivities, culminating in a baseball game. This year was different though because all the normal routes into the springs were snowed in. The options were to drive through extremely deep snow or an extremely rocky route. We chose the rocks and it was so bumpy it shook the keys out of the 4Runner’s ignition several times. In reward for our efforts we had a couple mellow days at the hot springs with a smaller group of folks. Afterwards we explored the frontcountry: we hiked Titus Canyon, a 4x4 road, at sunset with Denali. We also checked out the temporary lake that formed in Badwater Basin from recent intense rains (that area is normally nearly bone dry).

Best to drive in the dark right?

Running at the Racetrack

Near Titus Canyon

Badwater Basin

In January we celebrated my birthday with a trip to Shaver Lake, an area in the Sierras we had never been to before. We planned to explore a giant sequoia grove nearby, only to be thwarted by a closed road a couple miles before the grove. As we were sitting in our car wallowing a bit and deciding what to do, a contractor drove up and asked if we knew the code to the lock on the gate. Did we look like we knew it?! Sadly we said no and returned to our wallowing. He called around and after a couple minutes he got the code, opened the gate, let us drive through, and told us what the code was (so we could lock it on our way back out). He didn’t even know why we were driving that way or that it was my birthday! I will forever be grateful for that guy as the reason why I was able to celebrate my 32nd birthday among the massive trees, and how they put into perspective that 32 isn’t that old.  

Exploring a frozen waterfall

For New Years we went up to Mount Shasta, with not one but two dogs in tow since we were dogsitting Benno, our neighbor’s dog. We closed out one year and started the next in my absolute favorite way: snowshoeing in the shadow of Mount Shasta. Denali was completely in her element but Benno, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, originally bred in Africa, was not as enthusiastic about the weather. We got several comments about the two dogs, one with a natural coat, and one with an artificial coat. After our adventures in the snow we didn’t even make it until 10pm on New Years Eve, and instead celebrated East Coast NYE.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of goodbyes to the places and people we loved here, coworkers, running club, friends, and neighbors. I have been so touched by the kind words and tokens of appreciation everyone has given us: send-off meals, snacks for our road trip, bottles of wine from the local wineries. Our landlord’s daughter even sketched a beautiful portrait of Denali. In between all the goodbyes we have managed to pack up our life’s accumulations, which turned out to be a lot more than I thought, even for a minimalist. Now all that’s left to do is drive 1,500 miles to our new home. I have a good feeling about Colorado and what’s next for us. I might need a new blog title, but I hope to keep on writing, if you want to keep on reading.