Tent stories 3: The first 4 days

It’s been a very active 12 days. This post will cover only the first few days.

After getting all my own stuff into the car (no mean feat), I picked up my friend Iris on Saturday June 23 and we crammed her stuff in with mine (still more amazing) and took off. We made it to a commercial campground in the foothills NE of Yosemite the first night, and got to practice setting up the Kelty together in the dark. This was our learning campsite. I got to learn to listen to Iris, she got to learn to be more persistant trying to cram things through my thick skull, and we both got to learn how to get the tent up, and then down. We got up rather slowly the next morning, and it was 11:00 o’clock by the time we had everything packed and loaded–and beginning to get hot. We’ve agreed that this partly explains the things we managed to leave behind at this camp–we just wanted outa there.

The trip through Yosemite was beautiful, the more so because I missed the turnoff that takes you over Tioga Pass and we went two-thirds of the way down to the village. Me not listening to Iris again. Oh well. We had lunch just east of the park, at the junction between 120 and 395. The place was new to me since I used to make this trip to and from the reservation regularly, and I think they’ve pulled off a good thing: the site they built on was nothing special, and they have a beautiful view of Mono Lake and serve good food, a specialty (I’ve decided) of California (little out of the way places having good food, that is.)

So we headed off across Nevada, about which there isn’t a lot to say. The desert does have its own kind of beauty–a kind of beauty best appreciated from air conditioning. I know this because in my younger days I crossed various parts of the Great American Desert (in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado) in non-air-conditioned cars, and all I saw was desolation (or, as my grandfather used to say, “sand and sagebrush, sand and sagebrush.”) But when you’re cool enough to appreciate it, the play of light and shadows and the sculpturing of the land are quite beautiful.

We had supper in Rachel, Nevada, which didn’t exist the first time I took this route. Now it’s a little bit of a town that tries to capitalize on UFOs and aliens–Area 51 is nearby. Pretty much a greasy spoon, but we made do.

We had spotted a rest area marked on the map at which we hoped to camp, but when we got to where we thought it should be, there was no sign of it, and no signs for it. We were starting to lose the light, so I pulled off on a little dirt road hoping for a wide spot in the road we could use just for oveernight–and lo and behold, there was a whole area set up for camping! It had tables, trash barrels, and areas cleared for tents. We were the only ones there, so we picked our spot and set up camp. Here’s what it looked like in the early dawn light:

We did much better setting up (and taking down) the tent this time. Can you believe we really had all that stuff in the car?

Here’s a view of the surrounding land:

It was actually much nicer than this picture shows–my camera insisted the early light was too dim to get a really good picture. The large tree in the foreground is a juniper; the small ones outlined on top of the hill are Joshua trees. We figured out (well, Iris figured out) that the orange plastic netting around the trash barrels was to keep stuff the wind blows out of the barrels from blowing around the camp, so unsightly as it is, it’s serving the interests of beauty.

The dogs got to roam free there, and I had to practically drag my Shiba boy back to the car–we had to trick him with treats to even get him to come down off the hill. This in spite of the fact that he is having a very hard time with his hind legs. But we got him (and everything else) loaded up, and headed off. Got to Cedar City, Utah late morning, did some shopping (to replace what we left back at our first camp, and get a few things we had forgotten), and headed up one of my favorite stretches of road in the entire country: Rte 14 heading east into the Dixie National Forest. I tell y’all about it only because so few read my blog, and those who do may never get to southern Utah. Here’s one if it’s more spectacular views:

This view overlooks Zion National Park, a very worthwhile tourist destination (Utah is full of them). But we were headed up, not down, and because I had never been there with all the times I travelled this way back when, we headed up to Cedar Breaks. Since they had campsites available, we decided to camp early and enjoy it.

First, the camp. I persuaded Iris (who is a very accommodating and understanding friend) that it made sense to put up the big tent over the picnic table, mostly just to see how it went. Here it is:

The stuff hanging from the corners is wet bedding from my bed in the car. I had failed to secure one of the water containers, and it turned over and leaked all over the bed. Did you know that viscoelastic foam holds water really well? I improvised a bed, hung out the wettest stuff overnight, and all was well.

The tent did what I wanted. It even kept the dogs in–until the girl figured out how to sneak through at the corners, anyway. Here’s Iris having her second cup of coffee in the morning:

Now to what took us there. Here are a couple of views near the Visitors Center, both looking back towards Cedar City:

Here are some from one of the self-guided trails. The first one is a Bristlecone pine, one of the oldest living things on earth. Iris standing underneath gives some sense of the scale.

This one shows the basic landscape.

The altitude is between 9-10,000 feet, which helps explain the presence of all the wildflowers we saw. I kept trying to capture the bludbells, of which there were many entire swaths, but the camera was a bit stubborn about getting the blue agains the green. This is the best I could do:

Here’s an attempt at a closeup:

Here’s a look at the forest we walked through:

The next morning we drove on up to the top of the mountain on a dirt road, and got this view. That’s a ski resort below us.

We then headed toward the Grand Canyon, stopping before we left the National Forest to walk the dogs. Here’s a picture looking back at the car. I think it looks pretty cool, myself.

From here we went to the Grand Canyon, but only after stopping at a motel in Kanab to get clean (and cool–it was HOT out there. In fact, it’s been hot almost everywhere I’ve been so far.) Nothing feels quite as good as a shower when you’ve been camping a few days. I’ll post Grand Canyon pictures tomorrow.