With one of Hanna's bridesmaid's, Alex, already on her way to med school in New Orleans, her other bridesmaid Danielle was shortly behind her for the big move to D.C. We spent Sunday hanging out with Danielle with a few rounds of bowling at Strike's in Rocklin to finish off the night. We will miss having Danielle and Alex in town.
I took the next day off work, Monday July 29, to hang out with my friend Bob from Oklahoma. He
flew to California to visit with family and backpack the Lost Coast with his wife. His request for the day was to go mountain biking on the Foresthill Divide Loop Trail, and to also squeeze in a paddle down the lower American River. After his kayak arrangements fell through we focused on the biking and got in a good ride just as the heat was setting in. We drove down to the inlet of Clementine Reservoir for a quick cooling off in the water and came back to the 4Runner to find that the park ranger's truck completely stuck next to mine. He was attempting to check and see if I paid my entrance fees, but his heavy full sized truck sank to the axles before he could get out. He was happy to see us, and even happier to see I carried a tow strap. After yanking him out of the gravel we set on our way. I was telling Bob about our previous evening of bowling and he had the sudden urge to go, so off we went for a second evening of bowling. Those two nights of bowling practice didn't amount to much, I still barely broke a 100. :)
Hanna and I took the day off on Friday August 2nd and headed up the coast for a weekend of camping. I am pretty familiar with the section of coast north of San Francisco between the Marin headlands and Salt Point State park, but my travels north of that area past Gualala, Manchester Beach, Navarro Redwoods and MacKerricher are much more limited. And actually, there's a good reason for it. Ever since State Parks went to the Reserve America reservation system at about my mid-point in college, I've never been able to get a coastal campsite. Most of the coastal campgrounds are reserved far in advance. (Availability mid-week is pretty good, but weekends are not.) I checked each of these campgrounds before we left just to see and sure enough, all full. We decided to do some scoping of the campgrounds both on the way north as well as on our way home, to pick out the best campgrounds and campsites for future camping. While doing-so we checked to see if there were any first-come, first-serve sights available and the rangers basically laughed at us. I knew this would be the case, which is why I packed pretty much assuming we would be dry-camping at the Lost Coast in the Sinkyone Wilderness on the north coast.
The Lost Coast is the only area of California where Highway 1 leaves the coast, it's simply too rugged to make for a reliable roadway. We turned off of Highway 1 at Usal Road and hit the dirt, traveling 5.7 miles to Usal Beach where we spent the night. The area is beautiful, black sand beaches, sea stacks, rugged mountains, usually early morning fog in the summer, and the meadow between the primitive campground and the beach has had elk every time I've visited. We ate dinner, watched the sunset from the beach and spent the remainder of the evening enjoying the campfire.
The next morning we had breakfast and set out for a mountain bike trail that repeatedly graces the "Top 50 most epic rides in the U.S." list, the Paradise Royale Mountain Bike Trail. We knew it was going to be a workout at 14 miles in length, 2800 ft of climbing, all singletrack. As it turns out it was not a good choice for us. The climbs were not horrible but more than half of the trail had a giant cliff on the side, one with absolutely no room for error. I've had my cliff diving experiences, so the trail was a little unnerving for both of us. We got through it though and got some great exercise. We headed back down King's Peak Road, crossed the paved road to Shelter Cove, and continued another 20 miles down the dirt Usal Road back to our camp, a total of 50 miles on the dirt (plus the bike ride) for today. Following another nice dinner and campfire, we went to bed.
Sunday morning we woke up, had coffee and a quick breakfast and broke down camp and were back at the pavement at Highway 1 by around 9:30. We checked out Westport Union Landing campground (great for RVs but not so good for tent camping as it's right on the coastal cliff), MacKerricher (fairly good camping), and Russian Gulch, where we stopped for a two hour hike in the redwoods back to a 36' waterfall. I remember camping here when I was a kid (we would come here at exactly this time of year for the opening of abalone season) and generally have great memories in this campground. I had researched mountain bike trails in the area and the Manly Gulch and Caspar trails sound worthy of future exploration. I want to do some future exploring at Gualala and also at Big River, both locations look like a great place to paddle.
We continued south on Highway 1 and turned inland at Jenner, following the Russian River and Highway 116 through Sebastopol and back to US 101. We elected to jump back on Highway 116/12 (Carneros Highway) to I-80 rather than Highway 37, the route we used on Friday. We had a great time and targeted some areas we would like to explore again in the near future.
Following an uneventful week at work we spent our next Saturday August 10th in the Tahoe-Donner area hiking with Rose and Stuart. We had breakfast at a new restaurant (strangely enough called Peg's Glorified Eggs and Ham, which was delicious, btw), drove up to Donner Pass and dropped our car off at Rose and Stuart's cabin, then took one car to the top of Grouse Ridge where we began our hike. We did the Glacier Lake Trail, 7 miles total, with some great views looking across multiple lake-dotted basins and meadows. We headed home after stopping first at the Soda Springs Lodge for burgers and drinks.
Sunday was much less exciting. Some overdue weed pulling and yard work, replaced a Moen cartridge shower valve that failed for the sole reason we never use that shower (common issue with unused cartridge style valves), followed by our typical Sunday night routine of yearning for another day off.
