Category: 2016 Travels

This place will go on my list of favorite campgrounds for sure. Located near Olema, it is nestled in a beautiful redwood forest with access to hiking, biking, or quick trips to a number of fun little towns.

The days are getting longer and we easily pulled in with lots of light to spare on Friday. It was raining on and off all day and as we were unhitching, it started to come down a bit. We’d gotten set up enough that we could pause the process and raise the roof to wait out the water. That’s a nice feature by the way. After a few minutes, it stopped and we finished stabilizing and such. Set up goes quickly when there are no hookups.

Richard had cooked a delicious Coconut Curry Chicken in the Shuttle Chef and all that remained was to boil a little water and pour it into the Thermos for rice on the side. As we were waiting, we tried really hard not to over observe the family tent camping next to us. They were clearly struggling. They had lots of things spread out on the table to make dinner and the dad was trying his best to get a fire going, only to get thwarted by another shower. The kids were getting increasingly crabby, the mom looked more and more frazzled, and everybody started snapping at each other. Just as the dad quipped, “It’ll be at least an HOUR before we start cooking!” our timer went off for the rice. We had steaming hot dinner, with ice cold beer, and frozen ice cream sandwiches for dessert. I’m not sure what the neighbors eventually had because we closed the privacy curtains when we decided we were being obnoxious by watching them. I don’t think they could see us, or some family member would have probably defected.

Any compassion I had for them disappeared the next morning. They started a very smoky fire in the morning and went off somewhere, leaving it to smolder and engulf everyone in the vicinity. Having been raised a backpacker, I have been conditioned to regard any level of smoke from a campfire as a potential hazard. You just don’t leave a fire smoking at any level. Ever. Also, they drive a Lexus and strike me as a family not that used to camping. I was offended not only as a fellow camper, but frankly, also as a Californian. Any guilt I had over their dinner frustrations has evaporated in a puff of air quality destroying smoke.

After breakfast and shower, Richard got ready for a bike ride and I went over and made sure their fire was good and out. Then I messed around, did dishes, and met him in Nicasio for lunch, like I did when we stayed in Olema several months ago. That is a beautiful drive and it is nice to see the reservoir full. When Richard returned to Dory, he cooked up a pot of thermal Chili and we went on a hike.

The Pioneer Tree Trail is gorgeous, except also kind of like an obstacle course when you factor in the Poison Oak. We are both very sensitive to the stuff and it is growing everywhere right now. There were times we had to sidestep and pick our way through the narrow trail, ducking and high stepping, in order to avoid the big oily leaves reaching for us. It was also a beautiful trail, so the conversation switched rapidly from, “Oohs” and “Ahs”, to “Acks!” and “OMGs!” all along the way.

Arriving back at Dory to hot chili waiting is awesome. I took a picture. I noted that we have now become people who take pictures of our food and Richard said, “No, YOU have become a person who takes pictures of your food.” Which led to a philosophical discussion of whether inaction is the same as being complicit (I think it is). See, this is why it’s important to spend time together as a couple.

Sitting inside, we had the Nature Channel playing out the starboard windows and Reality TV on the port side. We got immediately sucked into the reality show. Terrible at Camping Family had left and Highly Organized Family moved in. They had a fascinating array of bags and containers piled high on their picnic table. Again, we couldn’t help but watch as their dinner preparations unfolded. They had a grill and a dutch oven cooking in combination and they looked like a well oiled machine as they poured some kind of pre-prepared asian foods into the pot and onto the grill. Dad was clearly in charge and he moved around stirring and poking ceaselessly. After about an hour, the family of five was eating what looked like an impressive Chinese dinner, all using chopsticks, even the baby, while dad cracked a beer and started singing. Nicely done Highly Organized Family!

Sunday morning our neighbors prepared an equally elaborate breakfast show while we had what we thought was a pretty impressive meal of cold cereal and blueberries. Oh yeah, and espresso and lattes! Ha! Take that! We were both rather stunned that after breakfast, they started putting everything back in their car. Seriously, that was a LOT of preparation for a one nighter. Hats off to them for sure.

There is no dump station at Samuel P. Taylor, so we drove over the hill about five miles to the Olema RV Park, where we’d stayed previously. We paid $10 and waited in a very slow moving line for the dump station. Between the two campgrounds, I highly prefer Camp Taylor. But we’d have trouble pushing the battery more than two nights, so Olema is the place we’d go I guess if we wanted a longer stay. Cell service was actually far better in the state park and the Olema Campground wifi was so slow as to not be worth it.

Our drive home was blissful. The weather was gorgeous and just as we were talking about where to have lunch, an idyllic lake just appeared right in front of us. This turned out to be Stafford Lake recreation area and it came with fuzzy little balls of goslings running around as part of the package. You can’t really beat that. We gave a little tour to a park ranger, got a couple of thumbs up along the drive (which I guess means “I like Altos!”? Or it could mean, “I like how you’re driving under the speed limit.”). Home by 3, perfect weekend.

Total miles: 57.6, 15 mpg there, 16 mpg on the return (very windy); 2 hours, 9 minutes

Site: 38, which I thought was one of the best

Richard and I both have only limited memories of Death Valley from our childhood. After today, I kind of wonder if that actually was Death Valley where my dad took me camping. The first thing I most definitely do not remember is the terrifying hairpin turny, super steep decent into the valley. Now, I would have been less than ten and not driving a car towing a trailer, but I still think I would have some memory of thinking we were all going to die around at least one of those corners. And the next thing I do not have a memory of is how much it is a valley, like with mountains running along each side. It’s like the Hell version of Yosemite. All I really remember is some ghost town, stuffing fool’s gold into my pockets until it lined the inside of my jacket, and having my dad tell me to “listen for water” as we were going to sleep because we were below sea level. He was a kidder, that guy. But man, I do remember lying under the stars in my sleeping bag, not sleeping, because I was listening for sea water to rush in at any second.

Our adult experience has been memorable indeed. I had the benefit of looking at a relief map in the Visitors’ Center in Lone Pine before starting the day’s drive. I saw what looked like a windy, steep decent, but what it did not fully capture, was the way the whole world just disappears from view every so often and you have to trust that the metal railing would somehow catch you if you ever needed it. I went so slow that I’m sure any sorry people behind me now have a bad impression of Altos. In actuality, there weren’t that many people who ended up behind me. And I took any turn out that was extremely well marked, paved, and wide. I’m not kidding, I think my average speed down that thing was 25 mph. And there were two passes to go up and down before falling into Mordor. Have I mentioned engine braking before? I think I have, but it bears repeating that engine breaking is a good thing. So are Acura MDXs with towing packages and transmission coolers. I love Bruce so much.

Once we were down onto the valley floor, we stopped at Stovepipe Wells for lunch, a gift shop, and a chance for me to unclench my hands. At this point, it was around 97º outside. We gathered information on campgrounds in the park. Our plan A was to get a site with hookups, but we knew this to be unlikely given our spontaneity and lack of reservations. Our plan B was to get a site that was not a parking lot and see if we could survive without air conditioning. Plan C was to drive back to Lone Pine at the end of the day and use that as our jumping off point. After the drive down, I was only looking at plans A&B. So we did try to find a site with hookups and the first campground guy was nice about not laughing at us. We heard multiple reports that the weather was going to be “much cooler” the next day, rain likely, so we decided to tough out one warm night and hope for cooler weather.

We grabbed a site with a great view at Texas Springs campground and went to the Furnace Creek Visitors’ Center. It was air conditioned and had movies narrated by Donald Sutherland about Death Valley. And it was air conditioned. Crazily, after watching the movie, I was greeted by a school colleague who had seen my Facebook post and came to find me. That was fun! Then we headed off to the lowest point in North America in Badwater, at 282 feet below sea level.

Can you find this Sea Level sign in the picture to the right?

The highlight of the day came after that, when we took a drive on a one way, winding little road through something called “Artist’s Drive”. This is amazing. It is exactly like a Disneyland ride and I would totally wait two hours in line to do it again. The road curves through narrow cut out passages and goes up and down dips until suddenly it opens up to a spectacular, other worldly view of these multicolored mountain faces. The most impressive is called “Artist’s Palette”. There are geological explanations for why there are so many different colors here, and surprisingly, none of them include copper. I would have thought the greens came from copper, but no. Instead it comes from something called Green Chlorite and Red Hematite. Pictures don’t capture it. But you’ll notice I took a lot.

Last outing of the day was to go to a place called Salt Creek where there are little pupfish who somehow manage to survive in very little, and very salty, water. Here we took about a mile of unpaved road to get to a boardwalk interpretive trail along the water. Sure enough, hundreds of tiny fish dart around in shallow streams, surviving against all odds.

Tips for hot nights: the Fantastic Fan works great unless there is so much gusting wind you are worried the cover might blow off. Next tip: have a 12v portable fan as a backup. Clip the privacy curtains up to allow for a breeze.

Friday we woke up to a battery at 50%. The Trimetric alarm even went on like it’s supposed to. We did run the fan all night because it was so crazy hot, but the draw was all the fridge. There has been extensive discussion on the Altoistes site, but I believe once you get over a certain temperature outside, you’re not going to be able to keep ice cream and ice cubes frozen without depleting your battery pretty significantly. We turned the fridge down to its lowest setting and hoped some solar would come through the clouds to boost it back up during the day.

The weather could not have been nicer on Friday and we even got “rain”. I put that in quotes because it was more like a preponderance of tiny droplets appearing every now and then; somewhere between a misting and a sprinkle. Still, the clouds overhead were wonderful and the 70s are far more pleasant for hiking.

We first went up to a place called Zabriskie Point, named after Charles Zabriskie, a borax magnate. Again, pictures let alone words do not capture the unique beauty of the geology in this area, but that won’t stop me from trying. Our hike took us mostly down a gulch, like the one where Jawas ambushed R2D2. Then, suddenly, this red mountain appeared in the background, aptly named Red Cathedral. You can tell all of the rock formations are made from delicate, erodible sandstone like material, so there are these striated layers, some paper thin, forming the walls of the gulch.

The hike definitely did me good. I didn’t sleep well Thursday night and felt very anxious most of the morning. It was weird. As we walked, I tried to analyze it and I think the combination of the scary drive, the heat, lack of hookups, and generally oppressive and humbling environment, all combined to make me feel very small and rather trapped. They say exercise is good for anxiety and it definitely worked. After the 3 mile hike, I was back to feeling relaxed and having fun and we visited Dory for Richard’s midday espresso. The solar still was struggling to keep up, but we figured even if we draw down the battery past its happy point, we’re only talking about reducing its long term efficiency. In other words, it’s not like it blows up when it hits 49%.

We took the fun Disneyland E Ticket ride again, but this time Richard biked it and I sagged him. So fun. Man, that has got to be one of the most beautiful places you can go in a car. I took pictures again just to see if it really did change colors depending on the weather. It seemed like it to me.

Last hike of the day was through the other side of the gulch we had come down from the North. That was also very nice and other worldly, like most of this park. It “rained” again while we were walking and we discussed how that was probably a quarter of the annual rainfall and we should try to squeeze any acquired droplets from our clothes onto the ground.

When we got back to Dory, the campground we had mostly to ourselves on Thursday, was almost completely full. Big rigs surrounded us and the place was hopping with families and groups from all over. We saw a Cricket trailer and a funny jacked-up teardrop with huge off roading wheels. And lots and lots of those RV rental units.

As for the battery, it had only recharged to 61% over the course of the day. So we decided to turn the fridge off for the night since it was reasonably cool. We still needed some power to run the water pump, cause no way are we giving up showers, but the little LED candles are a lovely way to light the inside of Dory with no impact on the power.

Our last big traveling day was Saturday and I knew I was going to have to climb at least one of the big peaks we went over coming down. Coming from Lone Pine on Thursday, the first of the peaks was where I was really having a hard time staying calm. That was the route with miles of twisty turns and plummets of death right beside you. The other one was less twisty and more of just a really long climb and/or descent with grades of 8-9% over 20 miles. There was an alternate way out that did not involve going over the steepest peak and the only downside was that perhaps part of the road was missing. No problem. We talked to several people who said yeah, there was a 2 mile gravel part, but it was “high quality gravel”. Awesome.

This route, Highway 178, was in fact preferable to me by about 5000%. The gravel section was no big deal and the climb out at the end of the long Panamint Valley was short and gentle. As a bonus, we got to pass a turn-off for Nadeau Road and that got me all excited. The Nadeaus are the family who make Altos and founded Safari Condo. So I had fun getting a picture of Dory in the shot with a sign for the Nadeau National Recreation Trail.

Once out of that valley, we continued on 178 through the lower end of the Sequoia National Forest and past Lake Isabelle. That road was lovely. It did become quite narrow, windy and a little bit deathy for the last 20 miles, but for some reason, I wasn’t as nervous about it. This road follows the Kern River as it heads out of the Sierras into the Central Valley. And boy, when you leave the mountains, it is like passing through an “all done with mountains now” portal. The mountains part one last time and suddenly open onto Bakersfield. The rest of the drive was predictably straight and flat and fairly boring.

Saturday night we stayed along the road in the Visalia KOA. You know what? We like KOAs! I know they’re cheesy, but they have hookups, laundry, and ice cream all in once place. So we ran the hell out of all the electrical appliances and opened the refrigerator more than necessary on our last night out. Tomorrow is home. Sigh.

Some overall takeaways from this trip:

• Do not go to National Parks on the weekends
• Pre-chopped onions, no matter how well stored, make everything smell like onions
• Even when panicked, follow the checklist when hitching or unhitching
• If it’s hot and we are boondocking, try turning the fridge to 1
• If we’re worried about the battery, turn the fridge off at night
• We are able to be flexible (to a certain extent) and still be ok

Casualties of the trip:

• One blue latte cup
• One package moldy flour tortillas (fridge storage would have been a better choice perhaps)
• Jockey wheels – except that Safari Condo totally kicks ass on customer service and we had a replacement set waiting for us before we even got home!

California never ceases to amaze me. I’m a native Californian and while I may have seen my fair share of its natural beauty over the course of my lifetime, there are certainly a lot of places I appear to have missed. One of those places is Joshua Tree National Park, so we set this as our Spring Break destination. Having done a bit of research on the camping options, we quickly learned that most of the campgrounds in the park operate on a first come, first served basis. That sounded appealing to me; just hitch up and go, no plans, no hurries.

We’d spent the past several camping trips sort of practicing in terms of being self contained for a week at a time with few or no services. Much of the thermal cooking experiments were roughly aimed at preparing for this week. Meal planning has been highly entertaining and we came up with the following menu to cover us for eight dinners: Grilled Pizza x2, Fajitas x2, Chicken Curry, Chicken Teriyaki, and Chili. We also packed enough for breakfast, snacks, lunches, and (for me) sufficient alcohol to last the entire time. (Note: it included a six-pack of wine bottles stashed in the car, plus beer and instant margaritas) It turns out there is actually civilization out here, and we could have gotten by with less shopping, but that is hardly the point.

Saturday we pulled out around 10 and just started heading south. We stayed on 99 rather than 5 and that was at least somewhat more scenic. I must say, we were pretty giddy with the feeling of freedom and mused that we could have been happy just camping out in the parking lot of the first rest stop we hit (Enoch Christoffersen for those keeping score). But we moved on.

We made it as far as Barstow, where there was a decent KOA and a short shot to the park for the next day. Yeah, it was by the highway, and yeah, it was a tightly packed stopover, but it was plenty pleasant enough and I saw a roadrunner in the morning! That was super exciting. It looked exactly like the cartoon. And it was literally running. How fun is that? So I took an extremely blurry picture.

Definitely a roadrunner

Sunday we drove about 90 miles to Joshua Tree National Park. We’d heard that all of the sites can and do fill up in March and April, especially on the weekends. But, as we were arriving on a Sunday, we remained hopeful. We stopped briefly at the visitor center before entering the park and an ominous display board had all the campgrounds listed as “Full”. We fended off despair and asked the ranger at the counter. He said we should “scoot on in” through the North entrance and that around noon on Sundays, many people pull out. We counted trailers going the opposite direction as we drove and tried not to have expectations. This kind of thing is perfectly suited for people who are loosey goosey, come what may, live in the moment, chill kind of people. We are not these people. We were super tense.

By the time we started searching for sites in the Jumbo Rocks campground, we were in a tizzy and ready to pounce on the first empty site, but also super anxious about how to fit into the weirdly oriented spaces. The campground is kind of like the “Cars” ride at Disneyland; lots of narrow, winding, unrealistically scenic little meandering roads. But also dotted continuously with back-in sites or sort of park-along-side-it sites. I think technically, if you factor in the lengths of both Dory and Bruce, we do not fit any of these. So we’d see places where I wasn’t totally sure I could fit, but I also saw them being scooped up by other arriving campers. So we got into a bit of frenzy and just decided to grab a spot. I backed Dory in quite well, thank you very much, but had to totally block any possible entry or exit along the road as I was doing so. Luckily, no one was waiting impatiently on me, but it was just a matter of time.

So… in our unhitching procedure, we got flustered. We removed the tongue wheels and started to attach them to Dory and then realized we needed to pull forward onto our Anderson Leveler to raise the starboard side. Richard set the wheels on the ground and re-hitched to Bruce. And then I drove Bruce over the top of the wheels as I was backing up. I mean, not completely over the top of them, I would have heard that. I just mean the bottom of the sway bars pinned the tongue wheels and totally bent them out of shape. I noticed this when I got out of the car, but also noticed people were coming. So we just pushed forward. I was also aware that it was a barely legal squeeze to get both Dory and Bruce in the site, but what were we going to do? Leave that site to look for better and then have them all taken? Oy. Stressful.

I need to start taking data on this, but it seems that we require about four hours to process and come down off stressful moments like these. We set up in our site, drove around to get a lay of the land, and then went to the visitor center outside the park just so we could get cell service and we could contact our BFF Randy as well as post to Altoistes to ask for advice. During this time, Richard felt bad about setting the wheels on the ground, and I felt worried about how we were going to eventually get up our driveway the next weekend.

Both Randy and the Altoistes once again exceeded my expectations. Within a half hour, we had assurance that there is “a guy who totally knows how to fix this kind of thing” as well as links to local RV repair centers who might have backup jockey wheels we could use in a pinch. Seriously amazing. By the time we drove back to camp, we were fine. Super stressed around 2, fine and “no worries” by 6. It really helps to have an excellent community.

Grilled pizza under the stars, plus a glass or two of wine for me, put us in a perfect mood to start exploring the park for real.

Our first full day in Joshua Tree was excellent. We started the day with a gorgeous little hike from our campground to a place called Skull Rock. You know the movie “Galaxy Quest”? And you know the alien monster named Gorignak who was completely made out of boulders? This is where he comes from. We saw lots of Gorignak formations all over the place. Plus, there were desert wildflowers and blooming cacti. The geology in this area is unreal.

After the hike, Richard got ready for a bike ride up to a place called Keys View. I gave him a head start, gave an Alto tour to a camper, and met him there. From the peak, you get to enjoy a spectacular view of the valley to the south of Joshua Tree. You can even see Palm Springs. I sagged him on the way back to camp and took pictures.

Dinner that night was a delicious Shuttle Chef Teriyaki Chicken and Minute Rice. Richard cooked up some onions and garlic in oil with some ginger. Then he put in some boneless chicken thighs, a little water, and added veggies and Teriyaki sauce. He boiled it for ten minutes, then into the thermal cooker for about three hours. It came out at 178º and perfectly cooked. For the rice, he put ½ cup each of brown and white rice in a Thermos, boiled 1 cup of water, poured it in, and timed 30 minutes. Fabulous.

Tuesday we went on a “challenging” hike up to the top of Ryan Mountain. Richard kind of talked me into this one. The description sounded like a mile and a half straight up hill and that was pretty much accurate. Luckily, the scenery made it worth it and it wasn’t too hot. There were lots of warning signs at the trailhead about carrying enough water and I’m sure it’s very easy to get serious dehydration. There is no shade the entire way up and much of the climb is literally staircases made out of rocks. But, at the top, we were rewarded not only with a glorious view, but 4G cell service. Amazing. We may be here at just the right time of year, but man, the flowers were stunning. Whoever is the gardener out here should be very proud.

We got down and back to Dory around 3 and I passed out for a nap inside. Richard napped later and I followed a Jack Rabbit around the campground. We were treated to a beautiful sunset and I took more pictures than necessary to capture it. I like the progression of colors though, so I can’t pare them down any further without being sad. We had a thermal dinner of chicken curry with rice as we watched the beauty unfold. Perfect.

The site next to us has been empty since the first night. The person who was there Sunday did not remove her reservation slip, and it does not seem like there were any park rangers on duty Monday. We were unsure whether we should take it down to let others know the space was free, but actually, after Sunday, there were many spaces free, so we passive aggressively got the whole area to ourselves. If you go to Joshua Tree, I advise you to look at the dates on the little orange reservation tickets clipped to the site markers, because it is entirely possible they are out of date and the rangers just haven’t gotten around to taking them down.

On a solar note, we have been very pleased with how well the solar panels have been keeping up with the fridge. We’ve gotten the battery down to 74% overnight and it’s bounced right back up to 94% by the end of the next day. The fridge keeps meat frozen, freezes ice, and keeps the rest of the contents plenty nice and cold. When there’s no shade blocking the panels, we get up to 9 amps in per hour, plenty to over cover any usage, and we’ve been charging laptops too. As far as that goes, we could stay out here a good long time with no worries as far as battery power. We over prepared in the way of water too. We brought along our portable grey water dump tank, but since discovering the Aquabot, we seem to be good for at least four days without needing to dump either tank (yes, we’re still taking two showers daily). We filled a blue “Jerry” can with extra water, but I don’t think we’re going to need it. Still, there is no water anywhere in our campground, so better to be safe on that. And if we needed to, we could fully empty the grey tank. Thing is, we’d need to lift the portable tank into the car and bring it with us to the dump station many miles away. Not an appealing idea really.

Wednesday we did some regrouping. First though, we had to drive over to another campsite on the West side of the park to dump our tanks when we met another Alto owner. How crazy is it to have someone from Maryland come talk to you at a dump station in Joshua Tree and start chatting about Denis, Danielle, and Frederic?? He had also heard of the Facebook group and was surprised when I told him I was the one who started it. 15 minutes of fame through a trailer enthusiasts group? I’ll take it. Nice way to connect with fun outdoorsy people.

Our tentative plan beyond Joshua Tree was to maybe head up Highway 395 through Mammoth and Devil’s Postpile, then over the Sierras via Highway 80. As soon as we left the park and got service, we started doing things like check weather over the pass. It looked as though snow might be on the way, not a lot, but enough to make us go hmm. Then we did some more checking and discovered that Devil’s Postpile is not actually open until after Memorial Day. More hmm. So we shifted some thinking and stopped to have coffee and look at maps in a lovely Barstow Shell station. There we came up with a Plan B of visiting Death Valley instead. Makes more sense to visit deserts in April than the mountains, we decided. See? We can be flexible.

So we drove 260 miles (total from Joshua Tree) to Lone Pine and found a nice Good Sam campground with hookups and a fun campground store. Lone Pine is apparently the portal town to Mt. Whitney and we sure could see Mt. Whitney from “downtown”. It’s a very cute little location and should be a nice jumping off point for Death Valley tomorrow. In the meantime, we are charging the coffee machine battery, bluetooth speaker, laptops, and are basking in all the internet connectedness.

As for MPG, we’ve been averaging 17-18 overall, even factoring in the climbs.

Our site in Joshua Tree was #24 in Jumbo Rocks campground. There are no services there, no water, and only pit toilets. Very beautiful and unusual campground!

Man, there is nothing like reconnecting with a good buddy. This weekend was a “double date” camping trip in beautiful Napa Valley. Right in the heart of some of the most famous wineries and restaurants in the world, and what did I do? Talked and napped. Didn’t leave the campground. That’s it. Heaven.

Friday, we went to a memorial gathering for Richard’s dad. It was a nice family event with great food and funny stories. We stayed as long as we could before having to head back home where Dory was all packed up and ready to roll. It was about a two hour drive to the campground and we got unhitched and indoors around 9:30. Dory sure is a quick set up. I should time us some time, but it seemed like no more than 15 min from finding the site to lighting the LED candles and settling in.

We officially like our wool bedding. We have ordered a 1″ piece of foam to go underneath, but we’re both sleeping soundly with no cricks and no overheating.

Saturday, I went over to my buddy’s trailer before I’d even finished my morning coffee and we just started talking. It was awesome. Just that really easy kind of talk where you understand each other immediately. This is the same person whose driveway we camped in a while back and it was just as fun to couples camp. I’m not sure our husbands agreed, but I’m ok with that.

The site was fantastic, right by a river, so you could hear the sound of rushing water in the background all the time. The only downsides were the copious amounts of poison oak all over the place and, so we heard, numerous ticks waiting to jump on you if you went hiking.

I understand this park can get very hot and attract yellow jackets during the summer, so Spring is the time to go. The sites were nicely spaced and offered good privacy and screening from each other in the way of bushes and trees. No hookups and not much solar because of the trees. It was also mostly overcast and actually started raining Saturday night.

We tried turning off our fridge at night and that did seem to help. The battery got down to 65% by the time we pulled out Sunday, and some solar was going in during the day, but that’s pretty good. As long as it’s not too close to 50%, I’m comfortable with it. I think we could have pushed it to another night and would have been fine. We also seem to have the water thing figured out since we’ve been using the Aquabot. Weekends are all dialed in I believe. Pushing boon docking stays to longer than weekends would perhaps take some more planning but we’re good through three nights with our current set up.

Saturday was really all about chatting, but I did work in some margarita time as well. I got a nifty pre-mixed margarita bottle that just goes right over ice. That will definitely be my go to plan for future cocktail time. That way, I don’t have to carry separate bottles of tequila, triple sec, and mixer. It’s called “Laughing Glass” and I give it a thumbs up. We did a little walk in the campground and saw a T@DA, the big brother of the T@B, and that was cool. Those are rare to spot and very cute. There was also a Subaru Outback next to us with some kind of roof mounted tent system that was pretty clever. All in all, we were very glad not to have any canvas on any part of our set up, given the rainy departure on Sunday. Richard spent the day Saturday on a spectacular bike ride around the hilly areas outside Calistoga. He was a happy camper.

For dinner, we had thermally cooked Teriyaki chicken and minute rice . The Shuttle Chef managed the marinated chicken thighs and mixed stir fry veggies quite nicely. We also got some semi dried fresh ginger to try and that provided the fresh taste without the messy cleanup. The garlic was fresh and the teriyaki sauce bottled. All went into the inner pot, simmered about ten minutes, and into the outer pot for two hours. The minute rice is easy peasy. You boil a cup of water, put a cup of rice in a thermos, pour in water, close, wait 30 min. We got a steaming hot meal with minimal stove time and easy clean up. We also invested in a fancy digital thermometer so we can have dinner AND data. Pinch me! *note: Teriyaki chicken read 185º after 2 hours in the cooker. For future rice meals, we’re going to try a half brown, half white, Minute Rice layered effect. We tried it at home and it actually works and that way we can each have our own preferred rice. Our latest motto has become: “I’m almost 50, I don’t like ________.” Fill in the blank; goat cheese, jazz, brown rice, whatever it is we’re tired of trying to like anymore.

Sunday was a rainy hitch up and a bit of a drive to the Napa Valley Fairgrounds to use their dump site. The campground does not have a dump, but it’s $15 and a short distance to the RV park, so no big deal there. We passed many famous wineries on our way out of town but this was not a drinking trip. That comes next weekend for me as I celebrate the twentieth anniversary of my thirtieth birthday. Couple of crazy girl friends and a full day in wine country should be good for some stories. Private stories. Stories that will not be appearing on this blog.

Total miles: 66.4, Engine time: 1 hour, 56 min, 17.8 mpg

Site: 11 – very nice. We didn’t do the tour of the campground thing this time, but our friends’ site, #10, was also very nice. We were right by the bathroom, but also next to the river. Lots of space, and enough cell service for bouts of email and Facebook.

Subtitle: Not a Hotel Room

We took our son up to Chico this weekend and decided that an up and back makes for a long day. We also are pretty much done with hotel rooms. So camping!

As it turned out, this weekend was the second in a row of quite a bit of rain for poor, parched California. We didn’t care. We bailed last weekend on a trip to Doran Beach because of severe weather alerts and high surf warnings. I think that one was a good call actually. But this weekend was just regular old rain. No problem.

After depositing him in his extremely young guys with instruments and questionable cleanliness standards pad, we headed to Lake Oroville State Recreation Area. I’d made reservations, but the place was all but empty. Except the site I had reserved. Someone was there, looking quite at home when we pulled in around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. We decided to let them be and we pulled into another site. A nicer one actually.

We are not used to being wet.

It’s a good thing I’m ok at backing the Alto now, but even with a fairly quick unhitching process, we were both, let’s say, anxious, to get inside out of the rain. I also didn’t like the idea that someone else might show up demanding the site that we had unreservedly pulled into. (That was a ridiculous worry)  So we kicked back with the heater on and music playing while I wrote a report and listened to the steady sound of rain for the rest of the evening.

Dinner that night was quite elegant. Richard prepared Coq au Vin and we brought some French bread and a ready to server Caesar salad. It worked beautifully in the Shuttle Chef, even after 8 hours of thermally sitting by itself in Dory while we drove. I’m not 100% sure I liked the vin part of it, but it may have been either too much for the amount of food, or the wrong kind of wine. Are you supposed to use Cabernet for this dish? I’m not gonna complain about a hot fancy meal while camping though, and it was plenty yummy enough. I’m just not sure we’ll try that exact recipe again.

We were bummed that the CO alarm went off after showering and we couldn’t get it to stop without taking out the fuse. We were using the Caframo fan on high speed to try to keep condensation down, but it got overpowered by the moisture in the air combined with the steam from the hot water. We turned on the heat pump for a while and that seemed to help. In general though, the alarm is excellent at alerting us to ambient moisture. I’m not sure if it has actually ever alerted us to Carbon Monoxide. To be safe, we left the fan running and the windows cracked and woke up alive in the morning.

Sadly, my Vudu iPad app seems to like refreshing via wifi periodically and it would not play any of our downloaded “Breaking Bad” episodes. Bah. Technology.

Last thing to report is that the wool mattress topper with a sub layer of thin foam is a big success and we woke up with iPhones reporting it was 11am. Now, Daylight Savings Time had just kicked in, so it was “really” 10. But, a very sound night’s sleep was a good thing.

We would both be interested in visiting this campground again, not in the rain. It looked like the lake was very close by and there seemed to be some nice bike rides around there. For this trip, it was far better than a hotel room, and life is always good in Dory. Back to one in the nest, and we will certainly miss the semi launched one. Life goes on….

Total miles to Chico: 165.5, 19.7 mpg (it was reading over 20 all the way North because we had a huge tail wind), 3 hours, 38 minutes (including time being lost because offspring does not know his address)

Total miles home from Lake Oroville: 139.7, 13.7 (tail wind turned into a headwind), 3 hours, 14 minutes

Site: 28, which was nicer than the reserved 27 anyway. 26 would be nice too. Very little cell service, but enough to receive texts.

Nice to find another close by location that’s pretty. This is a little gem tucked away in the hills just south of Livermore. It’s a go-to destination if you have a boat, apparently, and it has lots of day use picnic areas. I reserved this quite a while ago and I’ll bet it gets crowded in the summer. The sites are nicely spaced apart and there are hookups on some of them. Our site was pretty good, nice privacy, though the picnic table was sort of off to the side.

We had a couple of experiments to try out this weekend. First off, we’ve been wondering about the foam mattress. Richard hasn’t been sleeping well and on the last trip out I thought it was really hot. I had heard that the heat issue was a possibility with memory foam, but I don’t remember noticing it last summer. As an incentive to try something different, there was a 65% off sale going at the Futon Shop so we ultimately decided to take a risk and get a queen size 2” wool topper.

The measurements are not right on paper for this and I wasn’t sure if we were going to have problems with it being too wide to fit. I knew it would be short, but to get something that would run the full length of the long side of the bed area, we’d have to get a king size and then cut out a weirdly shaped corner. That would have been much more expensive. Not worth it, given we weren’t sure we’d like it anyway. In the end, it fits just fine, though short on Richard’s side. He doesn’t seem to mind and he slept. I feel it might be a little too firm, but I’m going to give it some time before doing something, like adding thin foam underneath. I like the feel of the wool very much and now that the foam is out, I can tell it had a mild smell to it. Not bad, just something I notice now that it’s out.

The other experiment was trying a new recipe in the Shuttle Chef and having Richard cook it around noon on Friday so it would be ready by dinnertime. Huge success there! I got the recipe, Lemon Pepper Chicken and Creamy Rice, from one of those quick Facebook videos and thought it might work well in a thermal cooker. We altered the ingredients slightly and Richard made sure to cook the chicken pretty well before closing it up. It simply sat in its little spot in Dory as we drove and it was steaming hot and ready for dinner around 6. Oh man, this was really good and definitely a keeper! The rice was fully cooked and very much like a risotto. The chicken was tender and perfectly cooked. It wasn’t browned and crispy like in the picture, but it was still excellent. We had a perfect dinner with enough left over for lunch the next day (but not more than that). Proof of concept is established here and we will definitely look for thermal cooker recipes for Fridays.

I can also report that Yoga in Dory is proceeding as planned. A new (blue) yoga mat has been purchased and cut to size and I’m getting the choreography down. I am determined here because that foot injury thing really sucked.

Saturday Richard went on a nice bike ride in perfect weather while I screwed around doing some Dory cleaning and toodling around the campground on my pretty blue bike. Poor bike has seen some miles and weather while barreling down the highway on Dory. Despite the spots of missing paint and rusting screws, it works like a champ for exploring.

In the afternoon, we had nappy time and then walked over to the lake and identified birds, sort of, well, there were definitely woodpeckers, geese, and quail, and I heard turkeys. Then it was back to Dory for report writing and, eventually, dinner. I was going to grill outside, but I’m a weather wimp and it was slightly chilly. So we cooked up fajitas on the stove inside. Super yum. Crank up the tunes, have a beer or two, and you’ve got yourself a perfect day there.

On Saturday afternoon, Richard started to worry about the espresso machine battery and realized he had not charged it up before we left. He was able to pull 2 1/2 espressos Sunday morning and then went to Plan B. He took the Techimpex outside and hooked it up to Dory’s battery. He was all excited about that because he got to see the indirect effect on the battery through the Trimetric. Since the Techimpex was drawing from the battery directly, he could only see the Amp impact from how much the converter was putting back in. It read 20 Amps when the machine was heating up, which sounds about right. Coffee machine battery recharging was a top priority when we got home. I also forgot to restock wine before we left, so we have some things to add to our getting ready check list.

And the last bit of weekend news is that I will definitely need to explore some kind of sub wool topper layer for softer sleeping. I still like the wool, but it didn’t offer enough cushioning for sound sleep and I woke up Sunday rather tired and a bit cranky. Another Altoiste found that putting an egg crate foam layer under a wool topper was perfect. We shall try that.

Total miles: 41.1, Engine Time: 1 hour 32 min, MPG: 16.5

Site: 6; Nice site with full hookups. All of the sites seemed to have a nice amount of space. We’d go for this one again, or the one next to us, but any of them would be fine actually. No cell service for either of us.

This was one fantastic find! We had a four-day weekend for Presidents’ Day and took advantage of the time and weather by heading down south. Knowing we’d have three nights, I searched for places with hookups and happened upon this private campground. Great place, but I’m making a note to always try to get site #10. None of the other sites offer as much privacy or view.

We headed out with no great rush on Friday and enjoyed gorgeous ocean views as we drove down. We’d heard tell of several sporting events, but as we are both pretty sports illiterate, the terms “Mavericks” and “Pebble Beach Pro Am” had to be looked up. We prepared for terrible traffic, but really, found no more than the usual cruising on Highway 1.

Our site sat right by the Big Sur River and had lots of room to spread out, with full privacy on the riverside. Very nice. When we pulled in, there was a larger trailer fairly close in the site next to us, so I decided to put up the awning as a privacy screen for that side. That works extremely well. No need for the front wall, so I took it off to maximize the view out the windows. The primo view though was obtained while sitting in a chair above the river. I may have to put serious thought into one of those zero gravity chairs…

After setting up, we cooked up a pot of chili in the Shuttle Chef and went for a stroll to a nearby pub while it simmered. There I indulged in an IPA on tap and we checked in with the online world (no services in the campground). We returned to steaming hot chili in the perfect proportions for the two of us. I think if we’d cooked everything and packed it in the thermal cooker at home, it would have been even better. The Shuttle Chef should be able to hold a good high temperature for eight hours, so it would be super sweet to have a hot meal on the night we pull into a campground without having to cook right after set up.

Saturday morning we spent a fair bit of anxious time trying to locate my hearing aides. Everything we own has a specific spot where it should be, so it is very unnerving when things are not in their designated locations. Somehow the silver, Alto-colored, case they go in must have gotten flicked out of the pocket reserved specifically for it, and landed under the metal cover for the propane heater. Now THAT was hard to figure out! For a while it seemed they had been carried away on some gravitational wave and had entered another dimension of space-time. There are simply not that many places something could be inside an Alto. We put everything back that we had removed and disassembled during the hunt and eventually got out for a hike to Pfeiffer Falls.

This was my first real outing post ankle injury, so I was being extra specially cautious. It must have looked like I was going for a record on Slowest Hiker Ever, and though I’m not sure I took the title, I’m pretty confident I at least won a place on the podium. The falls were nice and the highlight of the day was that I felt ok and didn’t re-injure anything.

We came back to Dory for coffee, naps, ice-cold lemon water, and a long, lovely do nothing, stare at the river, afternoon. Pizza was on the menu for dinner Saturday and I got to try out grilling a pizza in an actual camping situation. I had practiced a few times at home, just to see if was really a thing. I can attest, it is totally a thing and you should definitely try it. We got pre-made dough in a bag, so that made things easier. Basically, you just spread out the dough onto oiled parchment paper, oil the top, and put it on the grill for two minutes on medium heat. Flip it, decorate it, three minutes with cover down, YUM.

This weekend was also a determined experiment in doing Yoga inside a 90 sq. ft. space. I had slacked on my daily stretches as things got stressful at work, and that was when I got hurt. So no more of that. I have to do it every damn day, no matter what, no excuses. Even rain or bugs. That suggested trying to find a way to do it indoors. When I thought about this before the maiden voyage, I got lots of feedback stating it could not be done in an Alto, so I invested in the awning with the front wall as well as a standalone tent as a backup plan. And then I ended up just not doing it because setting up was inconvenient and sometimes it was cold. In order to make this happen, there needs to be no room for weaseling. This weekend I established concept feasibility. Some standing poses are not that hard and in fact lend themselves to tight spaces. Some however, well… it will have to become a highly choreographed routine as I figure out exactly where I can plant my feet and not bonk into anything.

Sunday was Valentine’s Day and we headed to one of the most photographed spots in California. Richard set out on his bike and I sagged him with Bruce down Highway 1. That stretch of the coast is, honestly, too beautiful. It is overkill; unnecessarily picturesque and perfect and spectacular. The real money shot is at the lookout to McWay falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park where a Neverlandesque waterfall spills down to the rocky beach below. Lots of people had the same idea and I was lucky to find a place to park along the road. I kept kind of close to Richard during the drive, passing him and periodically waiting up ahead in pullouts. We met up where I parked and he changed and put his bike in the back of Bruce so we could walk the little tourist trail to the scenic viewpoint. The coast and wildflowers and monarchs flying around made the scene crazy beautiful, I won’t even try to capture it. I spotted little brown bobbing heads in the water below which quite possibly could have been otters. They could have been seals too, but I’m going with otters and it’s not an unreasonable belief. We headed back to Dory and made croissants and had some staring at the river time, followed by some nappy time.

Dinner for Valentine’s Day could have been rib eye steaks and veggies on the grill, except we went back to the pub for a beer and wifi and sadly discovered that Richard’s father had passed away. This was not at all unexpected, but emotional nonetheless. We decided to stay and have dinner there while listening to live bluegrass over a couple of beers. Life is weird. Sometimes I just don’t get it at all. One thing we both know is that having each other and having times together with Dory is about all we can say for sure we understand.

Sad news on an otherwise spectacular weekend.

Future projects include investigating mattress toppers. While I’ve been ok with the 2” memory foam, Richard is having trouble sleeping and is wondering if that’s part of the problem. We sleep on a futon at home so we might look into some kind of very thin futonish solution for the bed. It will have to be able to roll up, be firm enough for him, and squishy enough for me. Should keep us busy.

Total miles: 147.9, Engine time: 3 hours, 32 min, MPG: 18.6

Site: 10 (best one); could do 12, 99 and possibly 92 but it wouldn’t be great. Site 83 would be a no go. This campground was really smoky, but the Caframo fan worked well to keep it mostly out of the Alto. We also banged on the AC for a few minutes to clear it out.

Footnote: Richard wants to mention that there is no wifi (as advertised) at the Henry Miller Library. Apparently anyone who works there has to explain that over and over again.

Well, it has been quite a long time since we’ve been away. We forgot how to do absolutely everything towing related (good thing there’s an app for that). But on the upside, we were extra specially excited to get out there again. The last time we were camping was six weeks ago and this was the next available opportunity to try out some of our xmas projects. It was also an adventure in camping with injuries, more on that later.

We had a very nice site reserved for last weekend at New Brighton Beach near Santa Cruz, scenic rating “10”, but life just didn’t work out to make that realistic. Sadly, we lost our 15 year old puppy, Blaster, last Friday during the night. I can’t say it was unexpected, but it is still pretty hard to accept as reality. He’s been with us during our whole “kid” phase in life and we’re trying to get used to the lack of his presence and twice daily pill alarms. You were the best doggie, Blaster. You made it through two more Christmases than we thought you would, plus the whole summer while we were on our road trip. I’m glad we were home when it was time, but…*sigh*

Also, I messed up my ankle pretty good last Friday. I’d love to say it was the result of doing some kind of exciting, daredevil, triple black diamond ski maneuver or something, but that wouldn’t be very believable. Let’s just say there are rules against running at school for a reason. The reason in my case: ligaments are not to be taken for granted. It turns out they are rather handy and super painful when they snap like little internal rubber bands.

So I was out, like OUT, for the whole week. I hardly moved at all Saturday and Sunday and learned that we really should have put in a walk-in shower rather than a tub when we redid the bathroom. It occurred to me many times that Dory would actually be the ideal place to recover from a foot injury because everything is incredibly close (no long treks to the bathroom), the shower situation is far safer, and there are hand holds everywhere for support. It’s a shame we can’t open the roof in our garage because that is totally where I would have preferred to be. I will say it has healed very quickly and by the end of the week, I was able to walk around in a boot using only one crutch for light support. Right now, I’m back in shoes and it’s feeling a little sore, but way better. So a-camping we went!

This time we went to wine country, Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, just outside of Kenwood. This was on the Sonoma side of the valley and we passed many well known wineries on the way. It had been raining (yay California!) pretty hard the past week and the campground was all but empty. Our site was right by a lovely little river, which may or may not run when not in rainy weather, and it had lots of room and privacy. There was no cell service of any kind, but that was about the only downside, if you consider that a downside. We were in the upper loop and the bathrooms there were “primitive”, but there are nice ones on the lower loop.

One of the things we were excited about trying out was our little 1.5L Shuttle Chef thermal cooker. We had gotten a Billy Boil, but something we have discovered is that, in order for the thermal cooking part to work well, you really have to fill the pots. We tried chili in the Billy Boil, and filled it about a third. After letting it cook 5 hours, the temperature was just under 120 degrees, which is somewhat questionable in terms of food safety. Really you want temps above 140 when you have meat. So for us to reach those temperatures, we’d have one heck of a lot of chili. And then we’d have to put the leftovers somewhere, which the fridge would have to cool down, and then we’d need to heat it back up. Part of the whole idea for thermal cookers is to reduce energy use, so we’re thinking the larger size will probably only get used for group gatherings or rally pot lucks.

So we got this little guy. I had my doubts about whether you could actually cook in there, seeing as how it’s so small, but it is very solid and we browned a bunch of sirloin for beef stew with no problem. We added some Penzey’s spices (part of the winter projects), chopped up some carrots and potatoes, poured in beef broth, simmered ten minutes, then into the Shuttle Chef it went! About three hours later we were ready for dinner and Richard cooked up instant rice in our even teenier thermal pot just by pouring in hot water and letting it sit. Yummo! The stew was blazing hot, too hot, and really good. There was still just a little too much food, but we didn’t actually need rice to go with this. Next time we want to try putting in a little less and maybe not making rice.

We tucked in with freshly laundered sheets and a new mounting bracket for my iPad with which to watch “Finding Nemo”. We mused about the appropriateness of Dory’s namesake and what good advice “Just keep swimming” really is. Also continued our “Breaking Bad” watching streak, which is really quite a different feel from Pixar, as we drifted happily off to sleep.

Our other experiment this weekend had to do with ventilation. It has bugged us that, in order to keep the condensation down, and also keep the CO alarm from going off, it works best to run the overhead fan continuously. Thing is, if you are also running the heater, are you not just sucking warm air out of the trailer as soon as you put it in? Also, if it is raining, the automatic rain sensor shuts the fan down, which is great, unless you wanted the ventilation. So we got another tip from the Boat Galley on a good 12v portable fan. We placed this Caframo fan on the front table and kept the window in the door open and the privacy curtain clipped back. Success. We had minimal condensation in the morning and actually found ourselves way too hot at night. In fact, we need to turn that heater way down in the future.

We also need to remember to turn the fridge off overnight. When we woke up, the battery was at 51%, which was lower than we were expecting, but likely a result of over running the heater, and having the fridge and fan running all night. The solar panels started kicking in first thing and were putting in up to 6 amps/hour. We replenished nicely, just while we were sitting there, but may not have gotten back to full by the end of the day if we were staying another night. Since this was a single nighter, we weren’t worried about it, but it was a reminder to be careful about these things for longer boon docking.

This park did not have a dump station on site so we had to take a little detour on our way home by way of a KOA in Petaluma. It was an efficient stop where we got to top up the propane as well. Home before dark, around 5, no rain. Nice weekend. Great to be back in Dory! Everything is great when we’re out with her.

Total miles: 66.6, Engine time: 2 hours, 5 min, 15.9 mpg (but it was 17.1 before we started the impressive climb up to the campground.

Site 28 is the best, 27 would be nice also but not as much sun for solar. No cell or wifi, but there is wifi at the visitor’s center by the campground entrance.