Archive for November, 2007
November 9, 2007 at 6:34 pm · Filed under Places to go
I’ve been looking at the maps for Yosemite and realizing that the convoluted nature of the roads means it can be a very long drive to go a very short distance (as the crow flies). From our campsite, we can look up and see a sheer cliff of granite, above which is Glacier Point. Glacier Point is a spectacular place to view the entire Yosemite Valley and I wanted to go there.
It would be simple to get to Glacier Point if you had a helicopter. It is 3,200 feet above us and perhaps a half mile to the southwest. Not far at all. But that’s like saying outer space isn’t very far. After all, it’s only an hour’s drive away if your car can go straight up.
For us earth-bound residents, there are two ways to get to Glacier Point. You can hike the “Four Mile Trail” which zig-zags steeply up the mountainside. This was the historical route for early visitors to the valley, and it’s climbing all the way. I would expect it to take us about eight hours to get up that route.
The other method is to drive out of the valley on Route 41, climbing steadily and winding constantly, until you reach the Glacier Point Road on the left. Then keep climbing and twisting until at last you reach Glacier Point. It’s about 25 miles and takes 45 minutes to drive. Once you’ve completed the drive, you are almost exactly where you started, except 3,200 feet higher and lightened by a couple of gallons of fuel (which currently costs $3.77 per gallon at Wawona, by the way). It felt faintly ridiculous to have done all that driving to end up where we started, but the view from Glacier Point made it all worthwhile.
There are four managed burns going on in the park right now, which occasionally send layers of brownish smoke through the valley and obstruct the view, but we found that over the course of the day the view clears. Even with a light haze and occasional smoke, the viewing was superb. The valley is laid out before you like a model train set. We could see almost everything, including our Airstream, glinting through a gap in the trees.
While we were up around 7000 feet, we stopped off to hike to Sentinel Dome, which is another great viewing spot. That’s a relatively easy 2.2 mile roundtrip, even in the thin air of 7,000 feet, is worth doing if you are passing by on Glacier Point Road.
The next stop was near the southern entrance of the park at Wawona, the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees. These trees are absolutely incredible. The Pacific Coast Redwoods are magnificent and humbling as they tower in the fog, but the Giant Sequoias (close relatives) are just plain huge. They aren’t taller than the Coast Redwoods but they are bigger in diameter, and that has a tremendous impact on how you perceive them from the ground. Even a fallen Sequoia lying on its side will tower over a human. They are the largest living things on earth, and also the longest-lived (up to 3,000 years old). The Grizzly Giant in the photo is estimated at 1,790 years old. It’s worth the trip to visit the Sequoias, even if it means 25 miles of hairpins curves on Route 41.
This time of year the light fades early behind the mountains, and by 4:30 the Sequoia grove was getting too dim for photography. We hustled back to the cars and found ourselves driving back in the dark at 5:15. On the mountain tops we could see the prescribed forest fires glowing like lava on a volcano.
Back on the hotel’s wifi I reviewed the weather for the next few days and it looks like Sunday will bring some rain. We were thinking we’d head out on Saturday anyway, and the weather report solidified the decision. It is also going to get colder in Yosemite next week, possibly with a little snow overnight. We made the right choice zipping down through northern California to get here before the weather started to change. Now, it’s time to get back to the valley for a week of work, repairs, maintenance, and planning of the next trips.
November 8, 2007 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
We started off slow in Yosemite. On Wednesday morning I got up early and spent the entire morning dawdling over work rather than rushing out and hiking the park. This may seem like a cardinal sin in Yosemite, but I felt like getting some things cleaned up and I was taking advantage of the fact that Robert was running his generator. We’re plugged into it. Since Robert ran the generator for about four hours, we recharged at the rate of about 4 amps/hr and avoided draining the batteries in the morning when I was using the laptop and our furnace use was high.
I’ve found it’s better to avoid using power than to try to recoup it, because you use it far faster than you can recharge. It’s easy to consume 10-20 amps per hour with just a few lights and the furnace cycling on and off, but as I’ve pointed out before, the batteries will only recharge at a certain rate with a 2-stage charger no matter how big your generator is. So two hours of evening usage at 16 amps/hour will take about eight hours to get back with the generator!
I didn’t make the family sit inside while I fiddled with the computer, however. Emma and Allison are always off playing. Kelli and Robert headed off for a walk, and around 2 pm we all headed out for a Ranger program about wildlife in the park. We saw woodpeckers, deer, and red-tailed hawks, but Emma and Allison wanted to see a pika. They live only above the treeline. To see those elusive little critters we’d need to drive about an hour up to Tuolumne.
Yosemite Valley is really more of a small town rather than a quiet park site. It’s much more developed than many other national parks, but this concentrates the visitor impact in a relatively small area, leaving most of the park wild. There’s a great visitor center, theater, educational info, store, post office, etc in the village, and if I stand still I can even make a call once in a while — not that I want to.
Photographically the village (and indeed, the entire park) is ideal. Stand near the meadow for great scenes in every direction. You don’t have to go far to find pictures in Yosemite.
As I mentioned yesterday, Kelli and I are making a regular pilgrimage to the Ahwanee Hotel to borrow their wifi. There is a place in the hotel where you can sit on an overstuffed couch or chair and use your laptop in total comfort. After I had been there half an hour, the staff came over to light a fire in the giant stone fireplace, which warmed me nicely against the cool breeze floating in from the terrace.
The Ahwanee was built in 1927 as part of an effort to make America’s fledgling national park system more attractive to visitors. It’s a beautiful structure, with native American designs embossed in the concrete floors, hung on the walls, painted onto columns, and integrated in every aspect of the architecture. It’s old, rustic, and handsome without being rickety or overly fussy. I’d love to spend a couple of days there but the rooms start at about $385 a night. Our quiet spot half a mile away in the trees is $20 per night, which fits our budget better. Of course, we can’t schedule a masseuse and we have to ration our electricity, but we all see the same scenery.
Speaking of limited utilities, we decided that rather than rationing our water as severely as we did in Yellowstone, we’d live a little more luxuriously. Robert has a pair of 5-gallon buckets into which we can dump gray water. It’s a short walk to a graywater dump by the campground bathrooms, and it turns out that using the two buckets is a lot easier than the traditional “blue tank” in this particular setting.
But refilling our fresh water tank is a bit harder. I tried a 5-gallon flexible plastic water carrier that I bought at Wal-Mart, but it was a real pain, and the spout was too short. So after dark Robert and I hooked up all the water hose we both owned and strung together over 200 feet from the fresh water spigot all the way to our Airstreams. It was quite a production but after a few minor missteps we both ended up with full fresh water tanks and empty gray tanks (and no, we didn’t dump any on the ground). Thus we are set for another several days.
Is this the kind of adventure you want in Yosemite, or are you the type who would go for the Ahwanee every time? It’s a good question to ask oneself before emarking on the full-time life. Sometimes there are the awkward moments, like when I was carrying two sloshing buckets of gray water over to the dump. It’s up to you to decide if the compromises balance the rewards. For our part, we are staying in the Airstream.
November 7, 2007 at 7:57 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
We are in Yosemite at last, and it’s great. The weather is beautiful (upper 60s, sunny, and dry, low 30s at night), the pines are tall, and the granite of the sheer cliffs is glowing brightly in the sun. Best of all, there’s hardly anyone here by Yosemite standards.
Getting here was a bit of a challenge. Route 49 is highly scenic and dotted with cute western downtowns, but a tiring road to pull a long trailer on. Those who are averse to sharp turns and rolling terrain should, as they say, “seek alternate routes.”
It got even more interesting when we turned onto Route 120 into Yosemite. The Old Priest Grade has been replaced by a shallower but much more twisty route for several miles. The hairpin turns overlooking a steep drop where you’d most want to see a guardrail seem to rely on Darwinism rather than protectionism, e.g., if you drive too fast (over 25 MPH or so) you will leave the gene pool permanently. We kept the truck in low gear and took our time.
Good thing the brakes are working again, too. Coming into Yosemite Valley via Rt 120 means a lot of descending. We paused about 3/4 of the way down and I could smell the brakes. Overall, I’d rather take Rt 140 but it is still closed to vehicles over 28 feet long (total length) due to a rockslide and CalTrans says it will be a looooong time before that changes. On the way out of the park, we’ll take Rt 41 to Fresno. It features a hefty climb out of the village, but it is the only viable route to the south, and that’s where we are headed next.
On the way in we stopped for lunch along a lake just outside the park. It’s a beautiful area to visit anywhere around here. Hard to go wrong. That’s the flip side of the hairy roads. I wanted to get into the park by 2 pm but the scenery and twisting roads made us slow down to the point that we arrived sometime after three.
We have once again linked up with the McDills, and the girls are constantly off in the woods that surround all the campsites, playing adventure games. We had to establish boundaries so that they wouldn’t disappear on us. Robert is indulging his fetish for campfires (which is fine with me) and since there is absolutely no chance of gaining solar power in here due to the Ponderosa pines everywhere, the McDills are also graciously allowing us to plug into their Yamaha 3000 generator in the evening. That helps, since overnight temperatures are dipping into the 30s each night and we are using the furnace quite a lot.
The photo above of Upper Pines campground shows the typical conditions in the early afternoon. Although the sun is shining brightly above, in the forest it is fairly dark all the time. It reminds me a little of our very dark and damp stay in the redwood forest last summer.
Internet is only available at the Ahwanee Hotel, so Kelli and I are making a daily pilgrimage there to get our email and post our respective blogs. Verizon does have limited cell service in the center of the village but it is “extended network” and as is commonly the case, that means my Verizon data card won’t work. Verizon claims it will work everywhere I can make a voice call on my Verizon phone, but it just is not true. I look forward to the day they finally get it all together.
November 5, 2007 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Not long after we arrived in Amador City, I knew we would want to stay two nights. The town is just a tiny blip in a valley, the remnant of a gold strike along historic Route 49 in California. There’s not a lot to do here, but the simplicity and quiet of the little town were hugely appealing to me.
Our Airstream occupies a huge chunk of Rob & Sadie’s driveway next to their Airstream, forcing them to park on the street, but they were very gracious about our request for a second night. With an electric cord from the garage, a connection to their outside water spigot, and absolutely perfect daytime temperatures, we’ve been very comfortable here. They are lucky that Yosemite is calling us, because otherwise we’d be tempted to stay a lot longer.
Just across the street are the remains of the first hard-rock gold mine in California, soon to be re-developed into housing. The developer is considering plans to retain some of the gold mine remnants, since the site is somewhat historic. He drove by our Airstream today and paused to admire it in the driveway. I told him to remember to leave space in the development for Airstream parking, and he said, “No problem!”
Our mail arrived at the little post office one block from the house, two big boxes, two fat Priority Mail envelopes, and a box of ten advance copies of the Winter 2007 Airstream Life. When we get mail, we usually get a lot of it. I sat down in front of the laptop and spent most of the day processing all the business mail that came in. The two big boxes contained a treasure trove of CDs, mostly photographs and past electronic layouts of the magazine that I need to organize and copy. I’ll be buying a new external hard drive soon for this project, and possibly moving my thousands of photos from the Mac’s default program (iPhoto) to something a little more robust.
By the way, copies of the Winter 2007 magazine should be in the mail to subscribers this week (but keep in mind they can take up to three weeks to arrive!) The magazine has a little surprise about it which long-time subscribers will notice immediately. I’ll let you find out for yourselves.
Rob gave us a little tour of his 1973 Airstream Safari, which he has been renovating for some time. We last saw this trailer at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Vintage Airstream Rally in Creede CO. The interior is very cool, with lots of interesting customizations. Among other things, it has solar panels, a retrofitted gray tank, a pure-sine wave inverter that powers every AC outlet in the trailer, a security system, custom cabinets, and custom lighting. It’s still not quite done but very usable and quite unique.
This afternoon Kelli called to say that Rt 140 into Yosemite is closed to vehicles over 28 feet long due to a rock slide. They found out the hard way, and were in the process of figuring out their detour. Fortunately, we will be coming in via Rt 120 (the northern entrance) and shouldn’t be affected.
Tonight and last night we have had dinner with Rob & Sadie in their little house. Like us, they are fans of small architecture. The house was expanded out of a 3-bay garage on a tiny plot of land. Rob and Sadie have managed to create a beautiful townhouse that functions beautifully in hardly any space at all. Like the Airstream, it reflects an appreciation for utility, form, and durability. The house feels very comfortable because it takes into account the needs of human beings first, rather than trying to impress, which is what the best RV’s do also.
November 5, 2007 at 12:47 am · Filed under FAQs, Tips & Ideas
It has been a very pleasant Sunday. Our overnight parking spot on the street in front of photographer Doug Keister‘s house turned out to be very quiet. Doug gave us a quick tour of Chico, and then did a little photo shoot of Emma for possible inclusion in one of his future projects. By 11:30, we were shoving off and moving south on Rt 99 again, toward tonight’s courtesy parking spot in Amador City, CA.
Courtesy parking is one of our favorite modes of “camping.” When you park at someone’s house, you often get the benefit of a fun visit and great insider tips about the local area. Since we’ve been in campgrounds a lot lately, I’ve been looking forward to a few nights of courtesy parking. It makes a nice balance, in addition to saving money.
But campgrounds still constitute the bulk of our nights on the road, so it pays to have a solid understanding of what to look for in a campground. I know from talking to other RV travelers that there is a lot of confusion about this. I’ve rarely talked about the differences between campgrounds, but perhaps it’s time. Campgrounds are not all made equal.
With time, you can develop a sense of what sort of camping experience you’ll get just by looking at the entrance to a campground, or from reading its description in a guide. If we want a scenic, natural, and peaceful experience above all, we tend to avoid places with hundreds of sites, those that are visible from the Interstate, and those with high percentages of permanent residents. Often just the appearance of the entry gate or sign will give a solid clue to the experience that awaits within.
Terms in guidebooks like “big rig friendly,” “laundry, store, and pool,” and “all pull-throughs” are hints that the campground will offer convenience but probably not natural settings. It’s up to you to decide what you want that night. We vacillate between seeking convenience and connectivity (cell phone, Internet), and solitude and natural beauty. In some cases we can find both, but more often a compromise has to be made. My general rule of thumb is that desirability of a spot is inversely proportional to the likelihood of getting online. When we do find a place that offers it all, we stay longer.
There are other clues as well. For example, campgrounds that participate heavily in deep-discount membership programs are generally not in highly desirable locations, but there are exceptions. Most often we find they are at the edge of town or a bit run down. Still, if you’re a member of Passport America, Happy Camper, or other similar programs, the discount often makes up for the minor deficiencies of the campground.
State parks are almost always pleasant but you need to understand each state to know what to expect. In Florida, for example, all state parks with camping have 30-amp electric. In Vermont, none do. Older state parks built during the CCC era (1930s) generally have narrower roads and smaller sites, but nicer settings, so an abundance of CCC-type architecture (stone walls for example) is a clue.
Campgrounds that are predominantly mobile home parks are almost always best avoided. While the sign may say “RV’s welcome”, we’ve never seen one that we’d want to spend money to stay in. However, a lot of RV parks have a small area of fixed or mobile homes off to the side, and those are usually fine.
“55+” is a glaring clue. Since we aren’t over 55 years old, and we travel with a child, we regard “55+” as a sign that the park is filled with stodgy people who have lost their appreciation of children. I appreciate the warning. We’ll go somewhere else. (It’s a shame that these discriminatory “55+” parks are such a plague in Arizona and Florida, however.)
National Forest Service campgrounds, Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, and Corps of Engineers campgrounds can be found in some really spectacular natural areas, and they’re usually cheap. They tend to be in the boondocks. Finding one near where you want to be can be tricky, but if there’s one nearby, they are often pleasantly surprising.
If you’re the sort of person who likes to eat at chain restaurants everywhere you go because you know what to expect, you’ll love big camping chains like KOA. But if you’re the adventuresome type that likes to try the local food wherever you go, you’ll soon learn the subtle cues that lead you to the type of stay you want.
Tonight we are parked at Rob & Sadie’s house in the tiny gold-mining town of Amador City CA. Since we’ll be here two nights, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.
November 3, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed under Uncategorized
One of the best things about traveling by RV is that you can drive to the season you want. Most RV travelers naturally gravitate from north to south in winter, but we have chosen this year to enjoy an extended fall season by traveling to the northwest. I’m glad we did, since the northwest was full of interesting places and living things. But having done that, and endured inches of rain and many chilly nights, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to summer.
This morning was a good motivator to get moving. Our heat pump froze up around 4 a.m. This is the first time we’ve encountered this issue. When the temperature gets down into the 30s and there is high relative humidity, ice can form on the outside coils and prevent the heat pump from working. We’ve been having heavy dew each morning, but not until today did the magic combination occur that would cause the heat pump to stop producing heat. The cold air on my ears woke me up and I found it was 47 degrees inside the trailer. I flipped on the furnace and went back to bed, thinking it was time to head south and downward in elevation.
We said goodbye to the McDills, who are also heading south, and promised we’d all meet again on Tuesday in California. Partially because of our influence they are modifying their travel plans to include Yosemite. I think (after a holiday break) they’ll end up being on the road much longer than they originally thought. This lifestyle suits them well.
Because we had the wheels off the trailer (again), our drive down I-5 was periodically interrupted by my obsessive lug nut checks. Losing a wheel will do that to you. The road climbs up to the Siskiyou Pass (around 4,000 feet) where the weather can be dicey, and then descends slowly, first past Mount Shasta and the gorgeous Trinity area, then into the Sacramento Valley. Suddenly the temperatures soared to 80 degrees, the air smelled of growing plants, and we were back in summer.
Our goal today was the home of Doug and Sandy Keister in Chico. Doug is a photographer and author who has written several definitive books on travel trailers and motorhomes, and occasionally contributes an article or photo to Airstream Life. Sandy is a superior court judge. Doug and I been acquaintances for about three years, running into each other at Tin Can Tourist events and exchanging email, but have never had the chance to really sit down over dinner and get to know each other. So that’s what we did last night.
Doug and Sandy have a vintage “Safari” canned-ham type trailer that they hardly ever get to use. Being a prolific author (about 36 books so far), Doug is constantly traveling around the world and so he seems to live mostly on airplanes. At some point they plan to settle down more and travel in the trailer, but not any time soon.
Our stop here on the street in front of their house is necessarily short. It’s a quiet suburban cul-de-sac, but we aren’t really supposed to be here. We’ll move on in the morning and continue warming up in the glorious sun of the Sacramento Valley for a couple more days.
November 2, 2007 at 11:42 pm · Filed under Maintenance
The bleeding has stopped, momentarily. With Robert’s help I managed to finally bleed air out of the brakes to the point that they are responding much better than before.
As with all things, it was much easier once we had the proper tools and proper procedure. First thing this morning, Robert and I went to Grants Pass to fetch the correct sized wrench (1/4″) and then focused on the task itself. We had a few false starts and at times I was tempted to give up and call in the pros, but having moral support from Robert I soldiered on.
It turns out that the bleed valves on the front axle are virtually inaccessible without removing the front wheels, but once that is done (one at a time) the rest of the bleeding procedure is fairly simple. Of course the learning process involved some semi-humorous moments, including a time when I managed to get sprayed in the hair with brake fluid. (Note: brake fluid works a bit like hair gell.)
By about 11 a.m. we had it under control and had road-tested the trailer on the state park roads. Now that I know what to do, I plan to do the brake bleeding again in the next few days just for fun. No, not really. In fact, we need more brake fluid and a better place to work than in the state park, if we are to get the brakes back to the performance they originally had. We’ll be courtesy parking in the next few days, so I am hoping for a suitable spot to do the work.
Emma and Allison have had a marvelous day, chasing each other around, playing all kinds of made-up games, eating blackberries off the bushes around the park, playing “spy” with the walkie-talkies, and generally being two very active little girls. We want to give them more time together, and do some hikes as a group, so we are hoping to rendezvous later this week.
The adults have done fairly well together too. We’ve discovered that Robert likes to cook breakfast, and one of his breakfasts lasts all day. The last time I had a breakfast like that was courtesy of my friend Rick at the Region 1 Rally in Woodstock. We didn’t need to eat again today until Robert made a fire (above) and started cooking up bratwurst (with bean soup, and corn bread).
It has been beautiful here at Valley of the Rogue. I could easily stay a few more days, but the clock is ticking against us if we want to get into Yosemite. Right now they are getting upper 60s and sunshine in Yosemite Valley, and the forecast for next week looks good too.
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