A New Kind of "Car" Camping

Imagine this: you’ve been driving all day long, and the sun is setting. You’re covered head to toe in sunscreen, sweat, and dirt. You just find out that the fire you’ve been watching burn on the horizon has shut down the highway, the very last leg of your trip. Do you set up your tent next to an irrigation ditch and wait it out, or do you push on?

We pushed on.

Let me be clear, we did not push on into the fire, rather we found an alternative route, a backwoods road that wound through grassy valleys, deep into the heart of farm country, that we hoped would spit us out closer to home. 

Owen and I were traveling home from a motorcycle camping trip in the eastern Sierras in early July. We did little planning ahead of time: I had the name and sketchy directions to a remote hot spring and we knew we wanted to see Mono Lake, but that was about it. We ran into some challenges but overall, things worked themselves out. For example, we hit temps in the 90s and a ton of traffic coming into Yosemite National Park, but that forced us to take a long break at Tenaya Lake to eat lunch and cool off. We didn’t actually know how to get to Mono Lake, but that made us to stop at a visitor’s center where we got beta on the best place to see the lake’s famous tufa formations and were told where we could dispersed camp in the nearby national forest.

Tenaya Lake, Yosemite 

Tufa formations at Mono Lake

The next morning, we went in search of Wild Willy’s hot springs. Until we laid eyes on a body of water, I was not convinced we were going to find it. We were driving down a random dirt road in BLM land, across cow gates and through open grassland. There was not a single sign for Wild Willy’s, but its mystery made me love it even more. It also meant we had the place to ourselves when we finally found it. Later that day, we cooled off at the lakes near the town of Mammoth Lakes, and it felt like an adult summer camp. The view was incredible, and there were dogs everywhere we turned. I was seriously tempted to call in sick to work on Monday and stay out there an extra day.

En route to the hot springs

We found Wild Willy's!

Horseshoe Lake

But, like the responsible adults that we are, we rolled on. That’s when all hell broke loose, and we found out the highway had closed because of a brush fire. Sunday evening traffic in the Bay Area is bad enough without a closed highway, and the roadways immediately clogged up. No one knew where to go and people were driving like lunatics. I seriously did consider napping on the side of the road, because we had been riding on the motorcycle for over eight hours, and the seat felt like slab of concrete at that point. We took a chance on the wild country road, and although we hit soul-sucking levels of traffic, our route worked. It was an extreme test of our will, endurance, and iron butts, but I know it’s all good training for our motorcycle trip to Alaska next month.

Back in May, over Memorial Day Weekend, we also went on a motorcycle camping trip. The plan was to drive six hours to see a waterfall in northern California that I’d spotted on the cover of a Backpacker magazine. I realized that there was a good chance we'd be disappointed. I’ve had the good fortune of seeing some incredible waterfalls in my life, so I am hard to please. We had all intentions of planning out the details, but we had trouble finding much information about the area: exactly where the waterfall was, and where we could camp nearby. We were also a little anxious because in California, holiday weekends usually mean everyone and their mother comes out of the woodwork to go camping and hiking. We decided to take a chance though, and told ourselves that at a minimum, it would be a good opportunity to get more practice on the bike and to test out our gear.

Things got off to a good start: we found a great place to dispersed camp in Shasta-Trinity National Forest, with Mt. Shasta looming above us. The next morning, we easily found the trailhead for the McCloud River Falls Trail, and saw not one, but three waterfalls, with the trails nearly all to ourselves. After glancing at another map, Owen realized we weren’t far from Lassen National Park, so we made the impromptu decision to head there for the night. En route, we stopped at McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, which was swarming with people but so worth it. We also happened upon a random cave, formed from lava flow from a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago. I could not believe our luck. I assumed I'd see one waterfall on this trip, but instead got four waterfalls and a cave. 

Searching for the perfect campsite in Shasta-Trinity National Forest

Mt Shasta loomed overhead

So many waterfalls! McCloud Falls...

...Lower McCloud Falls

... and the grand finale, McArthur-Burney Falls

One thing I love about riding the motorcycle is that it’s totally immersive. We experience the sights, smells, sounds, and temperatures of the landscapes we’re traveling through, which you don't always get when you're in a car. The morning of Memorial Day we drove through Lassen National Park, where the temperature dipped down to 40-some degrees and there was still enough snow to go snowboarding and skiing. By lunchtime, it was nearly 100 degrees outside of Chico. I've never shed layers faster! We took shelter at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, which was not a bad place to be stuck at while we cooled off. Owen has some experience riding a motorcycle in the heat (he made the mistake of riding through Death Valley in the summer a couple years ago), so he knew the trick to staying cool in our full gear. We soaked our heads, shirts, and bandannas at every rest station we passed on the ride home. It still felt like we were being spun in a dryer with the heat on full blast, but we did make it home in one piece.

Seeing geothermal features in the snow at Lassen National Park made me completely lose it- I couldn't stop taking photos

More snow at Lassen National Park. Not exactly what we expected for Memorial Day Weekend

Our motorcycle camping trip in early May to Big Sur was when I first discovered the joys of dispersed camping on the motorcycle in public land. We've done plenty of dispersed camping with the car, but there is something totally epic about riding the bike off road, directly into our campsite. We encountered water crossings, steep climbs, and dense fog, but all in all, but the trip was fairly mellow compared to some of our others. There was no fire, snow, or sweltering temperatures so you could say we got off easy.

Bixby Bridge, Big Sur

Los Padres National Forest, Big Sur

As you've probably gathered by now, we've become somewhat obsessed with motorcycle camping recently. But there are a couple other things we've been up to recently that I'm also excited about. I finally swam in the Pacific Ocean, we are on a Jurassic Park kick, and we've even managed to fit in some wedding planning. We have a couple more adventures coming up- stay tuned!

Early morning ride on Highway 1

The Start of a New Story

The book Wild, about a woman solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, is kind of my bible. So when I heard its author, Cheryl Strayed, give writing advice on a podcast recently, I gobbled up her every word. Believe it or not, her secret to getting uninterrupted quiet time to write is to literally check herself into a hotel down the street from her home and family. It made me feel less bad about my struggles to write blog posts, and how I have the best intentions to write every couple weeks but it always turns into every couple months. Now that that’s off my chest, on to the fun stuff: Owen and I are engaged!!

Many of you have already heard the story, but I’m going to tell it again anyway, because this kind of stuff only happens once. Back in March, Owen had been away at National Guard training for a couple weeks, and the mountains in California were getting hammered with snow. We planned a trip to go cross-country skiing as soon as he got back. Owen was chomping at the bit to go, but I didn’t suspect a thing. I was just happy he was as enthusiastic about the trip as I was. Last minute, he found out he had to work that Sunday, so I figured it would just be a quick, casual trip. I was expecting Owen to propose on this trip about as much as I was expecting him to break up with me, which is to say, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind for a second.

Celebrating at every overlook we drove by 

The fact that I wasn’t expecting it made the moment that much sweeter when, in the middle of our cross-country ski trek in Yosemite National Park, alone in a quiet meadow next to a frozen creek, Owen dropped down on one knee. As if on cue, snowflakes started falling from the sky. After I said yes, I think we were both kind of in shock, and it took us a couple seconds to realize I couldn’t put the ring on until I took my glove off (duh!). We made it back in time for Owen to go to work on Sunday, and I took it upon myself that day to take a mini photo shoot of the ring on my trail run in a nearby state park.

Our meadow

The past couple months, we’ve slowly started preparing for our motorcycle trip to Alaska this summer. Back in February, we went motorcycle camping in Death Valley National Park. If I’m being honest, the trip kind of kicked our asses. The ride down alone was an exercise in extreme mental and physical fortitude: nothing can really prepare you for sitting on a motorcycle, in the elements, for ten plus hours.

The approach to Death Valley

We were also in Death Valley almost a year ago, and we heard about this infamous place called the Racetrack which lay some 30 miles from the nearest paved road, and requires a high clearance vehicle, good tires, and “extreme caution” to reach. Our little Toyota Yaris didn’t quite fit the bill, and back then, Owen’s adventure motorcycle was still just a dream. Fast forward to now: we had the motorcycle, crash bars, and safety gear, and thus we had no excuse not to try it out! Ice cream and joshua trees powered us through the ride, and though it got pretty hairy at times, we made it there and back in one piece. The Racetrack is a dried up lake bed in the shape of a racetrack, complete with a “grandstand” of rocks in the center, and it did not disappoint. It’s hard for me to describe the landscape out there, because it felt otherworldly. Closest thing I can compare it to is probably the moon.  

Nothing beats dessert in the middle of the desert

The Racetrack

Death Valley can be a brutal place, and this trip was no exception. That night, a wind storm whipped through our campground, saturating sand into our tent, sleeping bags, essentially every crevice it could find. The wind persisted into the next morning, and temperatures hovered around freezing during our drive out of the park.  It’s worth noting that when we were in the park almost exactly a year ago, temperatures hit triple digits. Go figure. We hunkered down in a gas station for the better part of an hour, warming up, until we realized we couldn’t put off the inevitable forever. After a full day of driving in one of the only cold snaps that California experienced this year, we finally made it home and I promptly took the longest, hottest shower of my life.

It's hard to tell, but that's me!

Don’t get the wrong impression- we actually did enjoy ourselves, perhaps more than we have in a long time. For example, the night we arrived at the park, freezing cold and tired as hell after a full day of riding, I remember looking up at the night sky, freckled with stars, and a sense of peace washed over me. That same night, a group of nine people made room in their campsite for us because there were no open sites left at the campground. Maybe it was just coincidence, but it seemed like people went out of their way to help us because we were on a motorcycle. Maybe because they could tell we were more vulnerable, more exhausted, more reliant on the kindness of others. We got motivational pep talks about making it out to the Racetrack, offers of cold beverages, and when we arrived at yet another full campground, this time we didn’t even have to ask to share a site; someone approached us. One of my favorite parts of the trip was on the drive home. At one point, I looked to my left at a desert landscape dotted with joshua trees, then looked off to my right at the snow covered foothills of the Sierras. Riding at the confluence of those two, magical, wildly different landscapes was a treat I won’t forget any time soon.

Other than the Death Valley trip, between Owen banking lots of overtime and weekend work at his new job, and me training for a race and moonlighting at the running store every now and then, there hasn’t been much time for full blown adventures. Enter the concept of the microadventure. Introduced by Alastair Humphreys, it’s basically a small-scale, local adventure, and could be as simple as camping in your own backyard. A sampling of microadventures I’ve been on over the past couple months: a rock climbing class in a nearby state park, camping with a coworker on a Wednesday night, running up one of the highest peaks in the nearby Santa Cruz mountains, and mountain biking with a friend after work. It’s because of these microadventures that I stay sane at my desk job!

Sneaking in a post-work trail run before the sun sets

A day trip north of San Francisco, to the Marin Headlands

Marin Headlands

I returned to the motherland a.k.a New Jersey back in April for a short trip, and besides ticking off the usual eating checklist (thin crust pizza, a pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwich, and BAGELS), I attended my grandma’s 90th birthday party! It was all I could do not to cry tears of joy as I saw all her friends, from various walks of life, all together in one place, which she told me had never happened before.

90 years young

I also had to hold back tears at a recent work conference I attended. At River Rally, held in Lake Tahoe, I heard story after story of why people have made it their life’s work to protect America’s waterways and environment. One of my favorite stories is about a military veteran who struggled with PTSD, found solace on the river, and eventually started a non-profit organization that connects other veterans and at-risk youth on guided fly fishing trips. The conference was just last week, but Lake Tahoe did not get the memo that it’s spring. That meant I went for a run in the snow, my first and only run in the snow this season. I’m not complaining though: snow makes those mountains come alive.

Exploring in between seminars

The past couple weeks of being engaged have been pretty surreal. After dating for almost eight years, I still can’t believe we’re finally engaged. I kept a journal when Owen and I first started dating, and found a couple gem quotes.

From one of our first dates: “So basically, I still like Owen after today. Where do I go from here?”

My early thoughts on marriage: “It’s like, a shifty business talking about weddings.” Then a couple months later: “We were joking about it [getting married] and how our parents would kill us.”  We’ve come so far!

And lastly, I was writing about all the amazing qualities of Owen: “He loves running with me.” He kept up that act for a solid six months before the truth came out. Hey, nobody’s perfect :)

Winter Out West

It’s been awhile since I last posted, and I’m totally blaming this on Owen. It’s hard for me to hunker down and write when he’s home, and with him being in full-on job search mode the past few months, he’s been home... a lot. I finally had time this week to churn it out though, because Owen went on a motorcycle camping trip to Big Sur to celebrate…his new job! He starts working at Nio, an autonomous car company, at the San Jose office next week! So, what have we been up to the past couple months?  

Owen's setup in Los Padres National Forest

View of Big Sur from the fire roads in Los Padres

A long, long time ago (aka November) Owen and I went to Pinnacles National Park. It’s the newest national park, just a couple hours south of us, and has these sweet caves you can hike through. We explored them during the day, then went back for seconds and checked them out at night. 

The caves at Pinnacles National Park

Someone's pumped to go spelunking

For the long Thanksgiving weekend, we were originally planning on backpacking on the northern CA coast with our friends Dusty and Brian. In the interest of staying alive (think impassable trails at high tide, sneaker waves, and swollen creeks) we headed south instead, to Joshua Tree National Park. We spent a wild three nights there, exploring a desert oasis, climbing the jumbo rocks, testing out Brian’s new truck off-roading, and shooting guns in BLM land. We even got Thanksgiving leftovers from a couple camping near us! We also got kicked out of our campsite one night…we shared a site with someone because the campground was full, then he went rogue the next day for an unidentified reason and kicked us to the curb.

Joshua trees and jumbo rocks

Owen top roping at Joshua Tree

Back in December, Owen and I went on what I like to call a microadventure: motorcycle camping on a week night. There’s something about sleeping outside, then going to work the next morning, that makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. After my baby wipe bath and ample body spray, my coworkers had no idea I’d been camping the night before.

The bike was loaded down with our camping stuff

December was a good month: Owen and I got to spend one glorious day with Madeline! She visited with her boyfriend Evan, and we joined up with Will, another college friend. The five of us went on a whirlwind tour of the Bay Area in one day: we got lunch in the Santa Cruz mountains, hiked amongst redwood trees, watched the sunset over the ocean, and capped it off with extreme gluttony- bread bowls then Ghirardelli sundaes in San Francisco. Needless to say, Owen and I were not hungry until after lunchtime the next day. 

Butano State Park. Photo cred- Madeline

I almost never run short races, because clearly I like being in pain, but recently I ran an 8K up in Marin County north of San Francisco. For a race that short, it packed in some of the most epic scenery I’ve experienced in a trail race. I also ran a 5K “prediction run” which means we predicted our finishing time before the race, and the runner that finished closest to their prediction won (no watches allowed). I was way off my predicted time, but I finished second in the race!

Rodeo Beach Trail Run

We returned to the motherland (what I fondly call NJ) for Christmas. We were eager to experience true winter weather and we got it: the temperature hovered around 15 degrees. I had to wear two pairs of pants to hike outside. Two! We had some much-needed friends and family time and finally got to meet Owen’s nephew, Antonio, who just turned one.

Dressed up as a greaser and "bad Sandy" for a 50s themed NYE party

Braving the cold with Kelli and Mom in New Hope, PA

For MLK weekend in January, we planned an impromptu trip up to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Lucky for us, our friend Evan lives not too far from the park so we had a place to crash and a host. Even with last minute notice, he got us El Salvadorean food one night and took us to a game night. Crater Lake was so beautiful that you could literally just “point and shoot” and all the photos came out amazing. During our hike along the lake’s rim, we tried glissading (sliding down the snow on our butts) and even used our hiking poles as makeshift ice axes to self-arrest as needed. Luckily, we never needed to put it to the test: we were able to stop before smashing into the trees at the bottom. 

Crater Lake was incredible

Owen in post-glissading bliss

Last weekend, we went to Yosemite National Park to celebrate my birthday. As Madeline kindly reminded me, I am now closer to 30 than 20. Yikes! I wanted to see the park in the winter, blanketed with snow, but the Sierras had been seriously lacking in snowfall so I wasn't sure what to expect. We lucked out and found snow: we hiked out to a snowy sequoia grove. Mission accomplished! We also spent a good bit of time searching for fireplaces and falling asleep in front of them. It was the perfect birthday weekend.  

Hiking underneath a sequoia tree

Tuolumne Sequoia Grove at Yosemite

We found a fireplace you could sit inside!

I celebrated my one-year anniversary at San Mateo County recently. Work is going well- I'm going to be working on a watershed restoration project, which will hopefully allow me to get out in the field a bit more. I did a site visit a couple weeks ago with an engineering geologist who was drilling some super deep soil cores, and he insisted on getting a photo of me pretending to operate the drill.

Don't worry- I'm just pretending to operate this drill

 

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I'm excited for the coming months and for the days to get longer. If you call us and our phones are off, it means one thing: we are out in our playground in the woods, running or riding down some dirt road, chasing the next view.

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.