Redwoods at Butano

Among the attractions at California's Butano State Park are groves of towering coastal redwoods. I didn't have much time to do long hikes during the weekend we were there, so I didn't see a lot of the park beyond the campground. But it was in the middle of one of those groves, and I thought it was beautiful.

Ben Ries campground, Butano State Park, California, USA. August 2002.

I took these photos with one of Ken's earlier digital cameras, a Kodak DC4800. I was still taking color slides at that point and was just beginning to learn about digital photography. The technology has come a long way since then, but Ken still talks about some of those early cameras and how good the pictures are. I stopped taking slides not long after this trip and used Ken's cameras for a while until I got my first digital in 2006.

California camping [4]

This will be the last installment of this mini series from October 2002. We left Death Valley and headed even further south, through the Mojave Desert and on to Salton City and Borrego Springs. We had a campsite reserved in the Anza-Borrego State Park. Again, there were very few campers around and we had a great choice of site.

The rustic shade shelter and stone picnic table at our site, with the Jeep and Collette, of course.

Some of the sites available included beautiful stone shelters with log roofs for shade. Inside each shelter was a picnic table and a stone fireplace built into one of the corners. We chose a site with a view out over the valley to our east. By the way, our dog Collette loved riding in the car and sleeping in the tent. And, although having a dog along restricted what we could do, we wouldn't have had it any other way.

In addition to the fireplace inside the shelter, we had a steel fire pit surrounded by a circle of boulders on the oustside.

We pitched the tent at the edge of the site. There was nothing but desert to our north and east and it almost felt like we were the only people there. On our walks around the campground loop with Collette, we could see bighorn sheep up on the rocky slopes of the mountains that bordered the campground on the south and west.

Our shelter and tent on the edge of the campground.

After a few days in Borrego, visiting our friend CHM (who lived nearby), and even taking a ride up the aerial tramway in Palm Springs (we left the dog in the care of a friend for the afternoon), it was time to head back north toward San Francisco. We drove out through Los Angeles and headed up to Santa Barbara where we had a reservation at a beach campground for one night. The next day we crossed the mountains back into the Central Valley, visited a winery there, then drove home.

There are lots of old photos from this trip; the images I posted here are just a few. Ken's shots are digital, and I have slides packed away. It was a lot of fun to look through them again.Thanks for coming along!

California camping [3]

After our chilly night in the tent, we spent the next night in a motel. That next day we visited the ghost town of Bodie, then saw Mono Lake, but not for the first time. I can't remember if we spent a second night in the motel, but we might have.

The good ol' Jeep at our Furnace Creek campsite in Death Valley, California, 2002.

Our next destination was the Furnace Creek campground in Death Valley. We had been there once before and wanted to go back. We had no problems with cold there. It was hot, and we didn't need the rain tarp on the tent. It was nice to feel warm again.

Our semi-organized table, with camp stove, Brawny paper towels, and a bag of charcoal briquettes, among other things.

I've forgotten how many days we spent, but we did some riding around to see the sights. Behind the campground was a golf course. I thought it was strange to wake up to the sound of sprinklers watering the greens in the middle of Death Valley. We saw a few coyotes nearby while walking Collette. She was interested, but we had to keep her on the leash. Coyotes are dangerous where domestic dogs are concerned.

Another view of the site. That's our little Smokey Joe grill on the left. We still have it! We also still have the tent and those chairs.

After Death Valley, we headed south again. We were going to see our good friend CHM, who spent time in the Southern California desert back then. More tomorrow.

California camping [2]

Just a few more shots of our first day out on this trip back in 2002. The car is my 1992 Jeep Cherokee Sport. It was a great vehicle. I was commuting in it at first, but after I got the job in the city I used the subway to go back and forth to work. The car became our weekend errand and recreational vehicle.

The '92 Jeep with its roof rack and "basket case."

I fitted the Jeep with a roof rack for bikes, then I got an attachment for the rack called "the basket case," or something funny like that. We could load the basket with camping gear and tie it all down to the roof. That left us a lot of room inside for other stuff, including our dog, Collette.

Ken and Collette taking a break from setting up camp before dinner. Notice the wine bottle on the table. Priorities.

The following year, as part of our move to France, I had a trailer hitch installed on the Jeep and we pulled a U-Haul trailer across the country from San Francisco to North Carolina. We planned to spend a month in Carolina where I put the car up for sale. Shipping a ten-year old American car to France was not a practical option.

We had a nice fire that evening before bed time. Then it got colder. And colder.

It wasn't until just a few days before we were scheduled to fly out that someone bought the Jeep. Ken's mother saw it around town a time or two after that, but then we all lost track of it. I'm sure it's no longer on the road as it would be about 27 years old now!

California camping [1]

Set the WABAC machine to October 2002. Ken and I took a camping trip through eastern California. We left San Francisco and headed up and over the Sierra Nevada mountains to our first destination on the eastern side, a campground near Twin Lakes. At some point, we stopped for lunch. Then, as we climbed up over the Sonora Pass, it started to snow. Not a great beginning, but it wasn't a big storm and we made it through.

It started snowing as we drove over the mountains. This is a car on the road in front of us.

We had made reservations for the campground on line, but only for the purpose of payment. If I remember correctly, we registered on arrival by filling out a form and dropping it into a box. There were no staff, no rangers, and very few other campers.

The Sonora Pass, pretty high up. A little more than 2,900 meters.

We set up our tent and built a fire. We had a good dinner, then settled in for the night. It got cold, and it may have snowed a little. Our little dog Collette slept between us in the tent, but she started shivering so much that we took turns keeping her inside our sleeping bags. We all survived the night.

Setting up our campsite. There weren't very many other people there. That's me in the photo.

The next morning, everything was covered in ice. The first thing we did was to drive around for a while to take advantage of the car's heater. Then we went to the nearest town for a hot breakfast. Once thawed, we decided that we could not possibly spend another frigid night in the tent. So we packed up and drove south toward Mono Lake and found a motel that would let us have the dog in the room. Thank goodness!

By the way, these are Ken's photos. I was driving and he took pictures out the window. This was around the time that he was discovering digital photography. I was still taking color slides back then, but I started using one of Ken's digital cameras to see how I liked it. I'll post some of my digital shots tomorrow.