Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:34:52 -0700
Reply-To: neil <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: neil <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Long Trip Report
In-Reply-To: <46A1670B.3080504@gmail.com>
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Michael, nice report and good read.
Since I'm still somewhat of a newbie to camping in a Westy, I find it
interesting to see that a "Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants" trip, in
terms of not booking sites ahead of time, works well.
I prefer this method, as it takes me where it does, and is more
relaxing in a way. I have done this a couple times in the off season,
but haven't tried in the summer season.
I guess it depends on where and what type of camp sites you go. i.e
going to a busy lake-side camp site or not.
Did you reserve any sites ahead of time?
Do you find that this kind of FBTSOYP trip works every time? In summer?
Curiously,
Neil.
On 7/20/07, Michael Elliott <camping.elliott@gmail.com> wrote:
> Long trip report:
>
> I left home at 4:30 am on Sunday morning week and a half ago. By noon I
> was in Lone Pine, CA, and it was over 100 degrees. Mellow Yellow does
> not have AC, and I parked in the shade of some little sycamores at
> Tuttle Creek campground to wait out the heat. Sweated a lot. Tried to
> nap. Drank fluids. Told myself I would stay there until 5 pm or when the
> temp dropped below 95.
>
> By 4:30 it hadn't dropped and I was purely bored so I cruised up to
> Bishop and ate some pizza, figuring the temp /surely/ would start to
> drop when I was finished, but no -- it was still hot. Decided to drive
> up the grade to Tom's Place anyway and Mellow Yellow did just fine even
> though the cheap-o bimetal temp gauge I have Velcro'd to the inside was
> registering 109 by the time I reached the top. Turned left and climbed
> up 1800 additional feet into the mountains and found a cool spot to
> spend the night at East Fork campground. I was hammered -- dehydrated
> despite having a Styrofoam cooler between the seats with ice and soft
> drinks in it into which I dipped a lot. But I was very pleased at how
>
> It was much cooler in the morning, low 40's. I left early and wandered
> up 395, driving through recommended and interesting campgrounds
> (Deadman, Glass Creek, Convict Lake, did NOT take the time to visit the
> Mammoth Brewing Company [because I had plenty of craft brews with me
> anyway], June Lakes Loop, and Lundy Canyon [Drillock]. Before I turned
> west at highway 89 to head into the mountains I filled up at the Topaz
> Resort.
>
> I followed 89 through Markleeville and Woodfords, then onto 88 to check
> out Woods Lake campground, passing through Woods Lake was a
> disappointment - the lake itself is very pretty, but the CG was not to
> my liking, feeling close and dark, and has no sites from which the lake
> is visible. I spent the night there anyway.
>
> The next day I decided to visit Wrights Lake down I-50 on the west side
> of the Sierra. I figured I had enough gas to get there, and assumed that
> I could find gas along the way. There was none to be seen and the drive
> from I-50 to Wrights Lake was longer and climbed more than I expected,
> so I began to keep a close eye on the gas gauge. Wrights Lake campground
> looked to be very pretty, but it was full. Drove all the way back UP 50
> and over Echo Summit (Mellow Yellow plugging along quite happily) and
> decided to visit the Blue Lakes, about which Pete (pete952@comcast.net)
> here on the list had once described and shown a pretty picture of.*
>
> But I was led astray by my GPS (DeLorme Topo 6). Instead of showing me
> the easy way in (off 88 via Hope Valley), Topo 6 decided that a 4WD road
> leading past Red Lake near Carson Pass would be more, uh, "direct" I
> guess is the word. I didn't have enough sense to check its reasoning.
>
> There is no way that an overloaded 2WD Westy could get in on that road
> -- the potholes could swallow a collie -- but while I was trying to
> horse Mellow Yellow around them I figured that either I was a weenie
> driver or the road had fallen into disrepair. It wasn't until several
> days later that I went and re-read the description of how to get there
> (Best of Tent Camping, Northern California) that I realized my error. We
> could have gone back to visit the Blue Lakes later, but we found a sweet
> spot that we liked. But that's getting ahead of myself.
>
> Saw a lot of bicyclists with high-end road bikes cruising along the
> highways and over the passes.
>
> After giving up on the Red Lake road route with my furry tail between my
> hind legs, I began to wonder if I'd find a place I liked near enough to
> Reno to pick up Mrs Squirrel several days later when her conference was
> to end. I went looking up highway 4 and found a nice quiet site at
> Silver Creek campground below Ebbetts Pass. The day I arrived it was
> sort of overcast, and the next day was mostly cloudy. I deployed my
> solar panels in spots of sun where I could find them (trees and clouds
> in the way) and for two days it clouded and weakly thunderstormed and
> drizzled in a fairly disorganized fashion. But every day I was able to
> bring the aux battery back up to fully charged, so the little solar
> setup works fine keeping up with the Norcold and my reading lights.
>
> Made some bread, drank some wine, chatted with the campground host. At
> no time were there more than three other campers in the campground.
> However, I learned that the highway would be closed from 5 am until 3:30
> pm for the annual Death Ride (http://www.deathride.com/) on the day I
> was meant to pick up Mrs Squirrel. That explained the cyclists cruising
> all over the Sierra that I had been seeing -- they were in training.
>
> There was no cell service anywhere up highway 4 and I had to drive all
> the way nearly back to Markleeville to reach Mrs Squirrel to discuss the
> matter. She suggested I pick her up one day early. I headed back to camp
> with about a quarter tank of gas to camp until pick-up day.
>
> Left the campground, with camp set up, at 3:30 figuring on spending a
> bit of time in Minden, hoping to find a hardware store (needed some wood
> glue to repair a failed shower deck (http://tinyurl.com/34c8b4) which
> split at a hinge screw. When I got to Minden I was running on fumes
> (there is $4.50/gallon gasoline at Markleeville, but I didn't buy any
> out of principle, I guess) and tried to find the Ace hardware the host
> told me was there, but gave up after about 20 minutes of searching and
> made the long drive up to Reno.
>
> Unlike the highway south of Minden, which is mostly open road, 395 north
> of Minden is the main street through several towns and communities. It
> was evening rush hour and basically took forever to get to Reno through
> all the traffic lights and stop and go traffic. Some hefty grades, too.
>
> The short of it is that I picked up Mrs Squirrel and we hit an
> Albertsons supermarket for basic shopping and dry ice for the cooler
> (she likes lots of perishable food items), then Trader Joes for what you
> can't get at a regular supermarket (sun dried tomatoes in oil for a
> recipe she had in mind, a couple bottles of good wine). By the time I
> got her up to Silver Creek it was well after dark. We went quickly to bed.
>
> The next day we watched cyclists climbing up and racing down the highway
> road, and Mrs Squirrel napped a lot, which is how she always starts a
> camping trip.
>
> On Sunday we decided to leave, as Silver Creek is just an okay camp
> ground, not really memorable. But which way to go? We perused the camp
> guide books (whereupon I found my mistake in re Blue Lakes and felt
> silly) and all night long I debated whether we should head north and try
> Blue Lakes again, or pop over the top of Ebbetts Pass, drop to the west,
> and try our luck at Highland Lakes (see this guy's blog entry:
> http://kevingong.com/Hiking/200307HighlandLakesTrip1.html ).
>
> I chose the latter, and we were not disappointed despite our campground
> host telling us that he'd stayed at Highland Lakes once and would never
> go back due to the wind. The road in is dirt, but easy. When we got
> there we were not real enthusiastic about the camp sites, all of them
> being exposed to the prevailing westerly wind and very open without any
> privacy. But Mrs Squirrel is tenacious and soon had us driving into the
> upper campground. All the sites there face west, where the wind comes
> from, so any wind screen that a fellow might erect would not only block
> the afternoon sun, but the view of upper Highland Lake. There were a
> couple of other parties there, and when you see the folks bundled up
> like it's below 40F outside, sitting in chairs facing a smoky fire,
> hands in pockets, you know it's not comfortable.
>
> But, as I say, Mrs Squirrel does not give up easily. She had us drive to
> the farthest upper rear corner of the campground, and we found a sweet
> spot, site #32. It was over the crest of the hill so the wind was
> blocked, it had a spacious view of the lower Highland Lake, and starting
> at our feet and sweeping down to the lake was a carpet of grasses and
> wildflowers.
>
> We spent several days there. I had purchased and brought along a little
> Sevylor inflatable kayak to poke around the lakes on (the 120V pump
> draws about 17 amps from the battery through the inverter, took about 20
> to 30 minutes to fill the boat, but the panels were always able to bring
> the battery back to full by 1 pm at the latest).
>
> Made more bread, erected a screen house to keep out the bugs (not my
> kind of a place, I had originally planned to camp with the kids and
> grandkids and I got the screen house for the wimmins and chillens, but
> those things feel too confining and isolating for me); and kept an eye
> out for any Mr or Mrs Bear that might want to chow down on unguarded
> food. We hauled the cooler into and out of the van depending on whether
> we were there or not to act all threatening if someone of the ursine
> persuasion were to eye our foods with an appreciative and curious eye.
> But no bears. No critters at all.
>
> After a few days it became much cooler, and mostly cloudy although the
> wx channel out of Reno (WXK58, Slide Mtn., 162.550 MHz) never mentioned
> it. Mrs Squirrel was fretting about being out of touch with one of her
> sons for so long (a separation/child custody drama that was occurring)
> so she and I felt that leaving our lovely campsite was in order.
>
> By noon we were back on the road, by 7pm I put us back in Tuttle Creek
> for the night ($5/night, such a deal), where we would overnight before
> the final push back home.
>
> This would be Mrs Squirrel's first desert camping experience. The sun
> had just gone down behind the Sierra escarpment and the campground was
> in shade and cooling. The charming little creek was splashing and
> burbling. She was looking around curiously when the campground host
> stopped his Jeep out on the street to casually mention that there was a
> raccoon that had been raiding camps for food ("Okay," I said, trying to
> wave him on, knowing how Mrs Squirrel feels about loose critters), and
> by the way, a bear had been spotted a couple days ago ("We'll be
> careful," I said, hoping he would leave), ... oh yeah, he added, someone
> saw a rattlesnake recently.
>
> At this point Mrs Squirrel climbed up into the van and said that there
> was no way we'd sleep with any open windows. I shot that man a look that
> if looks could kill he would have left in a basket.
>
> "Thanks a lot," I thought.
>
> Of course there are raccoons -- they are little food scroungers but not
> aggressive.
>
> Of course there might be a bear coming by once in a while to check
> things out and look for freebies.
>
> And of course there are rattlesnakes: it's the frickin' southwest desert
> for crying out loud! I consider rattlesnakes to be gentlemanly guys who
> always warn you if they are getting nervous about you getting too close,
> and they don't range about attacking people. Rattlesnakes that have the
> poor luck to land near a campground have very short lifespans.
>
> But try to tell that to a woman. That fool did nothing more than scare
> my wife and put her off desert camping. I'll need to do a lot of repair
> to overcome the damage he did.
>
> Anyway, I reassured her that having the poptop screens open would be
> safe. But even so, it was over 80 in the van, and I knew I'd not be able
> to sleep in such heat, so I then convinced her to let me open the rear
> hatch and snap in the mosquito screen. I had to close off the bottom of
> the screen with our adjustable shower curtain rod at the foot of the
> mattress. This, of course, was nothing more than cosmetics, but it made
> her feel safe.
>
> A cooling breeze blew over us all night long. In the morning we found
> raccoon feetsprints on the windshield. Little burglar had been trying to
> find a way in. So THAT'S what Mrs Squirrel was investigating in the
> middle of the night with her flashlight when she said she heard
> something! I just said it was a moth beating its wings against the
> screen, rolled over, and fell back to sleep.
>
> Mellow Yellow performed flawlessly the whole trip, even after I baked it
> on the climbs, and ground the sh^t out of the auto transmission trying
> to force us up the steep hills of that 4WD road to Blue Lakes.
>
>
> * Pete also kindly provided to me a wealth of information about
> restaurants, camping, routes and insider information about the area
> around Calaveras Big Trees, where we had originally planned to camp for
> a couple of nights with the kids and grandkids. They bailed (decided to
> go to Disneyland instead) so our plans became a lot less structured.
> Never had a chance to meet Pete, but my thanks to him for all that he did.
>
> --
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
> 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> 74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
> KG6RCR
>
--
Neil Nicholson. 1981 Air Cooled Westfalia.
http://web.mac.com/tubaneil
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