hiking – Page 7 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

We found the sunshine on the Spring Equinox

There is a certain color of green in the California coastal range that comes after the winter rains. Sometimes when the sunlight pours over the hills, that green can be so intense it feels as though it expands your vision into something psychedelic. The timing has to be just right, and this year is a dry year so that neon green is a bit less dramatic, but still there if you look at just the right moment.

Our moment was during a late afternoon hike to the Coyote Ridge Trail in Coyote Lake County Park, high above the hills of the Santa Clara Valley. After waking to rain in Garberville, driving through rain as far south as Santa Rosa, negotiating huge lines of cars buying gas for 4.15 a gallon at Costco, and transiting the Bay Area freeways, we were happy to find our little park in the hills just a bit north of Gilroy off Highway 101.

We found this one using Streets and Trips, researched it a bit, and made the decision that it would be a good overnight stop on our way to Pinnacles. Just a few miles east of the freeway, the park could be in another world entirely. Rising from the valley, we drove a very narrow, winding road to the park entrance, and then after a couple of serious switchbacks, dropped down to the broad but small valley that is the home to Coyote Lake.

The campground is lovely at this time of year. I can imagine that the summer heat might be daunting, but right now the temperatures were a perfect 70 degrees when we arrived in late afternoon. A large herd of resident deer wanders around the lush grassy site, and even now after dark I can hear the turkeys gobbling.

I know it is mid week, but this park was completely empty when we arrived, and later this evening, one lone camper slipped in to a spot across the field from us. There are 18 sites with hookups, not cheap at $30 per night, but that includes a fee for the dump station we passed on the way in.

The strangest thing about this park is the strict rule regarding NO swimming in the lake. You can water ski, use jet skis, kayaks, motorboats, but you can’t swim. Makes no sense to me at all. Abby saw the water and got all excited so it was sad that we couldn’t take her down to the lake for a dip.

The best thing about this park are the trails. There are 28.5 miles of very nice trails, and we only managed to get out on 3 miles or so of the Coyote Ridge and Valley oak trail. All are dog friendly, with leashes required of course, but with no one else in the park, it seemed fine to let Abby run free. I did get a bit paranoid about the poison oak, but it wasn’t right on the trail in too many places, and hopefully we managed to keep Abby out of it.

We found amazing sunshine, and warm temperatures. All the driving, all the rain, all behind us. Sunshine ahead and I am sitting here after dark in capris and a tee shirt. Great way to celebrate the beautiful balance of light and dark that this Equinox day brings.

PS: As we packed up this morning, I learned some new things about the park. On summer weekends it is packed. During the week, however, there is almost always at least half of the hookup spaces available. In summer it is hot and dry and brown. The lake is kept at 55 percent of maximum because it is on the Calaveras Fault and they figure that the Anderson reservoir below Coyote Lake and above the Santa Clara Valley floodplain could hold the overflow in the event of dam breakage. There are only a couple of mountain lions about, covering 100 square miles each, not enough to keep down the deer population.

I had no bars for Verizon MiFi and no bars for the ATT cell phone and no television signals. I suppose someone with satellite would have had good open sky. I am now posting from Highway 101 as we head for Pinnacles, another place with no bars. We’ll be back in blogworld on Saturday. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the prediction for today is in the 70’s. Yes!

Day Tripping in the Desert

The sunshine has been a welcome gift here in the desert. The days have been in the 80’s, but I have never felt uncomfortably warm. Long lazy afternoons are spent relaxing in our lounge chairs in the shade of the MoHo with a book or some knitting and sporadic conversation now and then. Our plans for this day were simple. We wanted to go on a nice hike early enough to avoid the mid day heat. The Gabby Hayes trail was Paulette’s favorite so we decided to give it a try.

The route to Palm Desert is familiar to us now, and once again we trundled off west on Dillon Road to turn south to cross the interstate to the more populated side of the Coachella Valley. The City of Palm Desert has an extensive trail system, and the Gabby Hayes trail is one section that is dog friendly.

The trail was marked well at the beginning, but not so clearly on the trail, so I was glad that I paid attention to the general route since the several forks are not marked and lead into areas where dogs aren’t allowed. We hoped for a three mile hike but I don’t think that the loop we did was quite that far, maybe two miles or so. It was a nice trail, however, with view of the valley below and a well worn path with comfortable switchbacks.

By the time we reached the Engstrom Point shelter, Abby was ready for the cool bubbling water just at perfect doggie height. Sitting in the shade of the palapa we enjoyed the view of the city below us. There are a LOT of palm trees in Palm Desert, and they are not the native palms at all. We could see a road leading south into the mountains, and our friendly local, also sitting in the shade, told us it was Highway 74. Ding! Both of us suddenly remembered that the Pines to Palms Scenic Byway was on our list of things to do when we were here last year; a plan that was completely thwarted by the heavy rains and snows in the mountains that closed the road.

There was no such problem this year, and in minutes we were traveling south to the infamously curvy, steep road. I didn’t bring any maps, but we had the phone, and the garmin was tucked away under the seat from the last local outing. I was really glad that we weren’t trying to go up that road in the MoHo! It was seriously steep and narrow, breathtaking views of the Coachella Valley below and even on a Wednesday morning, the traffic was fairly heavy.

We really had no idea where the road led, except I thought I remembered something about Idyllwild. Sure enough, we went right through the tiny mountain town. As a kid in the 50’s I would come to church camp at Idyllwild and as we passed through town I saw the old sign for Idyllwild Pines Camp and Mo pulled in.

There were the old bunkhouses, and the main hall where we ate meals and did crafts. I think I was ten the first time I camped here. It seemed so exotic and remote, so wild and mountainous to me then. Actually, where I live now in Rocky Point is much more wild and remote. 56 years ago, though, I had no clue what life was going to bring my way, I just knew I wanted to get out of LA, somehow, anyhow, I knew that even at ten years old.

Our route led us in a big circle, and we stopped at the overlook toward the south and west to see San Diego in the distance and then marveled at the south facing cliffs of Mt San Jacinto, the same beautiful mountain that we see from our spot in Desert Hot Springs. The ride down the hill toward Banning was also breathtaking, with a drop of a few thousand feet in just a few miles and some more narrow, winding highway.

We reached the Palm Springs exit in late afternoon, hungry of course since the trip was unplanned, and decided it was time to try out Rick’s recommended Palm Springs Deli, Sherman’s. The sun was still hot and we couldn’t leave Abby in the car so I planned to pick up something to go. Instead, the patio on the shady side of the restaurant was dog friendly, and we settled in to a nice table with a great view. Of course, the view wasn’t of mountains or valleys, but of local colorful folks having a late lunch/early supper right along with us. Palm Springs is definitely a great place for watching people.

Sherman’s was delightful as well, with New York style pastrami and corned beef, but I only had the free pickles and a small scoop of potato salad so I could try one of the mile high cakes. The desserts at this place are huge, and the carrot cake was quite delicious, although I think there was more frosting than cake! I will say I took home a berry cobbler for breakfast that was a pretty big disappointment, so don’t expect all those desserts to be as good as they look. However, the pickles are the best I ever ate, bar none, so don’t miss them.

Back on the road crossing the valley, we tried a different route. Somehow, for reasons known to no one, the overpasses of I-10 have been under construction for a very long time. Last year when we were here, it took forever to get back and forth between the two sides of the valley. We attributed it to the weather. This year, all the main roads across the highway are STILL under construction. Ah well. We aren’t in any hurry to get anywhere at all.

That’s how it goes in the desert sometimes. Start off on a morning walk and who knows where you might end up.

August 30 Tuesday Fellow bloggers are FUN

I follow a lot of RV bloggers, and have learned so much from many of them. Of course I have favorites, but I certainly don’t plan to publish a list! Most bloggers have something wonderful to say and interesting to report at one time or another, and in spite of my personal favorites, many of them could be a favorite for a day at least. Donna K and Russ just happen to be pretty high on that list, and are favorites almost every day. With their location just north of us in Eugene, I knew that we would eventually get to meet each other.

We had a leisurely morning at camp, and were especially glad that we had packed up all the outdoor chairs and rugs the night before since the morning was once again damp and misty. The RV dump at Silver Falls is at the far north end of the park, a few miles from the campground, so we hooked up the baby car and traveled that winding road one more time to dump, and then one last time to travel back south toward Salem and I-5.

I called Donna to confirm our ETA and we continued south on the 5 toward Eugene. It was an uneventful journey, and I had both a printed map from google and the iPhone tracking where we were and where we were going. We had agreed to meet at a pizza parlor on 126. Business 126. The exit east toward Highway 126 is actually on the freeway. I kept looking at the map wondering why in the world it was navigating us so far south and told Mo, “What the heck, take the 126 east to Springfield.” Less than a minute after the turn I saw my mistake, and the phone rang at the same time. It was Russ. “Hey, we just saw the MoHo turning off on 126 and that is the wrong turn!” I lost a bunch of points as main navigator in that moment and we laughed together on the phone while Russ told us how to cross Springfield from our new location and get back to the pizza parlor.

I think it is really amazing how well you can know someone you have never met from their blog and their comments on other blogs. Russ and Donna were exactly as I imagined them, fun, kind, friendly, honest, and lovely people. And funny! We laughed a lot together as we talked RVing, blogging, Oregon, and our families. Thank you for the pizza, guys, and the wonderful visit! I am looking forward to all of us getting together again when Russ and Donna head toward our part of the world. Russ was actually raised in Klamath Falls, and I found out that Donna and I grew up at about the same time within miles of each other in the Southern California world. In fact, I keep wondering if Donna maybe went to the same church camp I went to in Idyllwild, California.

Another fun little resource for me happens to be Facebook and now Google Plus. Laurie (Semi-True Tales) and I are Facebook friends, and even though she hadn’t yet blogged about her travels along the McKenzie River, she had posted a photo on Facebook of the lovely falls. Mo already had suggested that she wanted us to take a different route home over 126 to Sisters. I got out the Gazetteer map for Oregon and perused the route looking for waterfalls, and sure enough there was a trailhead with two waterfalls right near the road.

The drive was beautiful, with a stop at another small donated state park along the river for a walk before we passed through small towns and tiny communities. Not long after the road starting rising to the pass we came to the parking area for the falls, and with an amazing coincidence, the lone space for an RV was empty, even though there were many people parked in the lot. We took it, turned on the fan for the cat and were thrilled that we could hike with Abby on a leash.

By the time we arrived, it was mid-afternoon, and we did want to get home before dark, so we opted for the shorter hike on the east side of the falls. Laurie’s photos of the falls are from the longer west side hike and she has some very interesting information about the formation of the falls and the McKenzie River on her blog. Check it out here. I kept looking at Laurie’s lone photo thinking this had to be the same waterfall. Sure enough, when I arrived home later Laurie had posted her wonderful account of their hike and it was the same place. Thanks, Laurie, I might not have known that the stop was worth finding if I hadn’t seen that photo.

When I got out of the rig, I could immediately smell the huge falls. So much water! The forest was damp and dark, and the elevation was high enough that I didn’t see a speck of poison oak, bane of the western slope of the Cascades as well as the Sierras. The trail was excellent, with lots of steps, some roots and rocks along the way, but only a mile and a half to the lower of the two falls. I would love to return sometime and do the entire hike. It was lovely.

We continued north over the pass and entered into the area decimated by the huge B&B Complex fire in 2003. There are now fire interpretive signs at several turnouts along the way that explain the biology of fire in the western forests. We pulled into one just over the pass to see smoke south of us in the Sisters Wilderness near Mt Washington. As we continued east, the smoke darkened the skies over Bend from the huge complex of fires ignited in Central Oregon from lightning the previous week.

Mo’s brother Roger lives south of Bend in LaPine and we just couldn’t go by without stopping in for a visit. When I called Nancy, it was close to suppertime, but she said, oh yes, come on right now! We didn’t want to eat, so we all sat around and talked about RV’s and travel and good beer. Roger and Nancy just returned from a big RV trip to eastern Oregon and their stories of the nightmare of driving their big, older, wide-body Class A were scary. They actually lost brakes on a steep hill and ended up leaving the rig in Enterprise and sleeping with their kids and grandkids in their trailer.

They spent quite a bit of time in the MoHo with us, asking questions and checking out our smaller rig, making lots of noises about how it was time to downsize. The next day we got a note from Roger saying they bought a new rig in Bend, about the same size as our MoHo. I am so happy for them, especially for Nancy who was the one having to ride in the scary passenger position with all that glass overlooking the cliffs and seeing that back wheel go over the white line on the right side of the road. I hate that! Things should be easier for them now.

When we finally arrived home in Rocky Point after our long meandering day, it was 9 pm and dark out. Driving down highway 97 in the dark from Chemult is one of my least favorite rides, there are deer everywhere. We were spared any big scares, however I was sure glad when we finally turned into Easy Street.

The rest of the photos are linked here

Another gorgeous sunny day on the Oregon Coast May 4

Still have no good internet access, so am sitting in the Mojo Café in Brookings. Managed to upload three days of blog fun but the photo upload is crawling along and I am going to give it up and head back to camp. The rest of the photo links will be posted sometime when access is a bit better. (Photos are all posted now both on Picasa and Smugmug with a link at the bottom of the post for this day!) Good a time as any to catch up on a very few of the 200 plus blog posts in my reader list accumulated since we left Monday morning. Gee, you are all so prolific!!

I woke up as the sky was barely lightening to see a shroud of fog hovering over the ocean, but by the time we got up at 6:30 it was completely gone. There was barely a breeze and the skies were completely clear. We planned to kayak again today, this time on the Pistol River and estuary about 17 miles north, but first we decided to begin our day with a hike down to the beach.

This time we took the South Beach Trail, another well maintained route down the cliffs to the ocean. South Beach Trail takes off just a couple of sites east of ours and meanders through deep green forest before approaching the view parking lot and cliffs to the beach. The path down the cliffs is steep, but not too much so to manage easily back up without stopping. It is even paved with asphalt, so no slipping and sliding on loose rock and gravel makes it really enjoyable.

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Once on the beach, the sun was so warm Mo had to take off her jacket and we walked as far south as the incoming tide allowed, throwing the ball for Abby and enjoying the warm, windless morning. I haven’t experienced the beaches of Oregon without wind very many times, so I thought it was wonderful. Abby even wore out after much fetching, and once even stopped to rinse her sandy ball in a tidepool before picking it up again and bringing it to Mo. Did she do that on purpose?? It seems so, but who knows. Abby IS incredibly smart.

We are unhooked from internet and telephones, but still have the morning news with the cable here at the park. It’s amazing how one thing after the other gets all the focus. The killing of Bin Laden and the decision about whether or not to release his death photos have completely superseded the tragedies in the south. I don’t understand why news can’t actually be news of what is going on everywhere, instead of what happens to be the “big story” of the moment. The flooding and tornado damage in our country is more important to me that all the political posturing about the Osama thing.

We spent a bit of time relaxing in the morning sunlight before taking the baby car north on 101 about 17 miles to our planned launch site on the Pistol River. Once we passed through the beautiful forest and started the descent to the ocean, the difference in wind speed was intense. Parking first at the north side launch, then at the southern approach, we walked out to the river to asses the situation. I think the winds were close to 40 mph and the tide incoming. We thought it would have been ok going upstream, but were a bit worried about getting back downriver. Driving upriver to some other listed launch sites didn’t yield anything more promising, so we once more traveled back to the Pistol River State Park day use area and saw that even with the incoming tide, the connection between the river and the south arm estuary was completely dry. It was cold and the wind was intense, so we looked at each other and said, “Maybe not”. Time for Plan B.

In some of the literature we gathered for the area while driving about town, Mo found information about a little known historical site. In the Brookings area, you can hike to the only spot in the continental US where enemy bombs were dropped during WWII. Nobuo Fujita, a young Japanese warrant officer, flew his small pontoon plan off a Japanese sub on the Oregon coast near Cape Blanco on September 9 1942. His assignment was to drop incendiary bombs into the forest, start a huge fire and panic the nation. Only one bomb out of five detonated, and it ignited the woods up in the hills near Mount Emily. Due to wet conditions and the fact that the bomb only partially detonated, the fire only spread 75 feet. It was quickly put out by four forest service workers.

Twenty years after he dropped his bombs the Brookings Jaycees invited Fujita to visit during the Azalea Festival. He came to ask forgiveness, and presented his sword to Brookings. You can read more detail about this amazing little piece of history here.

We drove several miles east along the Chetco River before turning off on the dirt and gravel road to Mount Emily and the bomb site. The trip reminded me of the many years I spent driving remote forest roads like this one exploring wild areas. The nice part about this trip is that I was only going to hike on trails and I didn’t have to climb these steep slopes with a shovel and a pack through thick brush. In this area, the conifer forests have been burned, and the canopy is often dominated by second growth alder. While a coniferous forest is often lovely, they are also very thick and dark, and a bit forbidding. I really enjoyed the fluorescent lime green light filtering through all the leaves of the springtime alders.

After almost 14 miles of winding road, without seeing another single car coming or going, we found the trail head. The hike was perfect, some ups, some downs, about a mile each way through beautiful forest to the bomb site. The signs were wonderful, telling the story with photographs of the Japanese sub, the pontoon airplane, Fujitsu and his son, and the people responsible for putting out the fire. As usual, the hike back to the trailhead seemed to go much more quickly than the hike out, and the ride back to town also seemed to pass much more quickly. We again passed our special stops found on the way in, the lovely little campsite along the creek, and the amazing very tall waterfall hidden among the alders.

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On the way back down the road, we were discussing how little wildlife we had seen. In the bomb site brochure, it was mentioned that the remoteness of the road often allowed for seeing a bear or two scampering across the road. Literally minutes after we had this discussion, we suddenly saw two bear cubs scamper across the road. It was much too fast for us to truly catch anything with the camera, but then one cub ran up a tree right next to the road, and obligingly waiting for us to take his photo. Once again I am reminded of how much I want a real SLR with a real telephoto lens when I go to Alaska! The baby bear was sure cute, and Mom and sibling were no where to be seen down the incredibly steep slope.

Back in Brookings, we decided it was time for some coastal fish and chips. Funny thing, being a harbor town, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of fish places around. We both remembered a place south of town where we once had a great dinner with friends, but couldn’t find it. Finally found it with the help of the phone and the place was closed up tight. We then drove back through the 101 strip, but nothing appeared, and we decided to go down to the Harbor to see what was there. I had heard about the Oceanside, and after much dinking around, we finally found it. It was also closed up tight!

By this time we were both pretty tired and hungry and grumpy, but neither of us was quite ready to give up and go home and eat soup. We passed a funky little restaurant called the Chetco Seafood Company, with a blinking beer sign in the window, and a couple of people leaving with go bags in their hands. Tired won out, and we parked Abby where her barking wouldn’t get attention and went in. First sign of a good choice was the decent glass of chardonnay for 3 bucks. We ordered fish and chips, and kept asking each other, “Is this really this good or are we just hungry?” I decided it really WAS that good. The fish was light and incredibly fresh, the breading thin and light and delicately spiced and not the least bit greasy. The fries were perfect and the cole slaw perfect as well. We shared a cup of chowder filled with fresh pink? clams to start and it was perfect as well. Maybe we were just hungry, but it may have been the best fish and chips I have ever eaten.

More photos of our day are located here.

Kayaks on our lake at last

The weather has been so changeable lately, but the change that hasn’t yet happened is warm sunny days. Often we have our kayaks in the water as early as March, but this year has been long and cold. We even hauled the new boats to California in February, hoping for some good estuary kayaking, but it was not to be. The boats got lots of miles on top the Tracker, but not a single dip into the water thanks to high winds and low tides.

In the midst of soaking rains and occasional snow flurries, we had a day of brilliant sunshine, with temps maxing out at 50 F. At first I thought about trying to get out on the water around 11, good time for a lunch break from the home office for me, but a short step outside indicated that 40 degrees and a 10 mph wind wasn’t exactly conducive to being on the water. I finished my day of work, and by 4pm, while the sun was fading into the clouds of a coming storm, the winds had died to practically nothing.

Home for us is just south of Rocky Point in the forest.

For the first time since we got our new kayaks, we loaded them up in my truck and drove the long 1/4 mile to the boat launch at Rocky Point Resort just down the road. When we got the new boats, we also bought new lightweight Werner paddles, and during the first few minutes on the water, they took a bit of getting used to. It felt like there was nothing to hold onto as I paddled, but after a couple of hours out on the water, it was wonderful. The new Swift Adirondacks are a foot longer and maybe a couple of inches wider than our old Perception Acadias, but they are 15 pounds lighter. We did manage to launch them last fall right after they arrived, but this was the first launch on our home territory, and my first launch of the replacement boat delivered by Swift in January. I wrote about why I needed a replacement boat back here in November.

Ahhh. I can’t explain that feeling of gliding silently, and rhythmically along still water, surrounded by mountains only accompanied by the water birds. The sandhill cranes are hollering in the marsh along with blue herons. The Canada geese are everywhere, and many types of ducks. My little camera isn’t so great at the long bird shots, and as I slid along yesterday, I really looked forward to my coming ‘DSLR with a telephoto’ days. We spotted an eagle not far from shore, and some ospreys were fishing for their evening meal.

This time, instead of traveling north along Recreation Creek to the springs, we took a southern route into Pelican Bay along the western edge of Upper Klamath Lake. It has been a great water year, and the lake is higher than I have seen it in many years. We kayak here often, but everything looked completely different with the high water. The snow on Mt McLaughlin was thick and deep, and looking up, I remembered the hot August day that Mo and I hiked to the top of that mountain.

Even though McLaughlin is only 9450 feet tall, it stands majestically above the surrounding Cascade Mountains and is visible from Medford, from Klamath Falls, and even from California along Highway 97 north of Weed. It’s the remnant of an old volcano, glaciated to it’s current shape, and most of the time, has a snow-capped summit.

Back in 2003, Mo and I had only known each other a few months when we decided it was time to climb that mountain. My sister just laughed out loud when I asked her to join us. “I’m not crazy enough to even THINK about trying to climb that mountain”. That summer Mo and I were of course just young things, of course, and we were up for anything. At 63 years old, Mo was younger than I am now! It was a long day, and a gorgeous climb. Many people say they have climbed McLaughlin, but often they only go to the last landing before the steep rocky summit to the peak. From the landing, there is no trail, only huge boulders with faint arrows painted here and there. The forest service tries to remove those arrows since McLaughlin is in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area, and they don’t help much anyway.

It was a daunting climb, and about 200 feet from the top, I got sick and weak, and gave out. Mo climbed on ahead of me to the peak while I tried to recuperate. A couple of climbers came along, one of them saying, “You should go down now, because you will only get sicker if you go higher and altitude sickness lasts for hours”. Another one said, “You should go to the top, because you will hate yourself if you don’t”, and gave me some Gatorade. I decided that I was going to do it, no matter what, and just about that time Mo returned from the summit and said, “Sure, I’ll go up with you.” You gotta remember, Mo is almost 6 years older than me, and even though I worked outdoors in the field for most of my career, she was a PE teacher, so often is in the lead on these kinds of excursions!

So we hiked over the huge, room sized boulders to the summit, where I crawled out across the dizzying space to sit with Mo for our summit photo. The 360 degree view was amazing in all directions. The mountain is visible from the road very near our house, and often we look up at the sharp summit and say, “Gee, I’m glad we did that and don’t have to do it again.” It took us 12 hours round trip, and our knees didn’t much like the down part on the return trip.

Yesterday as we kayaked across the bay with McLaughlin towering over the landscape, we thought again, “Gee, I’m glad we already did that!”