Tag: nature

Crater Lake National Park

At first, I tried to disperse camp for my visit to Crater Lake, but the road into the location I found online looked too dicey for my rig. Instead, with the help of employees of a state park, I found myself at the Forest Service Williamson River campground. To my delight, when I arrived, I discovered they weren’t yet charging a fee, but that changed later on in my short stay. It was a basic but nice campground.
Crater Lake was amazing. I’ve never seen water so blue. Remarkably, my visit during the first week of June was still too early for all the roads to be opened. (The yearly average snowfall is 41 feet!) One advantage of road closures was that we were able to walk on the Rim Road–and I was able to take Sadie. It was great to see so much snow but I want to go again later in the summertime so I can explore the entire park.
After my Park visit, I found another route to the dispersed camping area and moved there before proceeding to my next destination.

Smith River NRA/Panther Flat CG

I traveled north from the Redwoods intending to make it out of California sooner rather than later. It ended up that I stopped at Panther Flat Campground in extreme northern California and enjoyed views of turquoise-colored Smith River National Recreation Area along the way. (I just learned something; I thought all NRAs were a part of the National Park System, but this one is National Forest)
The camp host couple at Panther Flat was extremely kind. First, they let me park at the cg entrance for several hours on multiple days so I could get sun for my panels (most sites, including mine, were/are shaded) and then, they stopped on their way out of camp to ask if I needed anything from the store. They later returned with the milk for which I had asked and wouldn’t let me pay them. It had been 10 years since they started hosting and they were retiring right after they trained the new couple (who was camped one site over from me). I’ve met a lot of nice people on the road.
See captions for more info.
Next up: Oregon.

Redwoods SP/NP Area

Certainly, the Redwoods state and national parks and coastal areas are beautiful but unfortunately, my bad California luck continued in a big way here. The memories are still fresh several months later, so I will not choose to record those unfortunate events here since the goal is to ultimately forget what happened. Instead, I’ll only mention the good–and usual beautiful–parts and then we’ll move on. (More info in the photo captions.)

Yosemite Videos

Miscellaneous videos from my time in Yosemite National Park.

South Fork Merced River, Wawona Area

Meadow Loop Trail Water Crossing, Wawona. Sadie did great on this.

Pretty Little Stream on the Meadow Loop Trail, Wawona

Granite Walls from the Valley

Yosemite Valley

Upper Yosemite Fall (poor quality but at least you can hear this tremendous waterfall)

Valley View

Lower Yosemite Fall

Valley Panorama

Strong flowing Merced River as I exited the Park to the West

Yosemite National Park

My next destination was one of my bucket-list parks, Yosemite NP. When I first arrived, it was early in the day, so I went in the south gate, got some information, and looked around at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. I found out from the visitor center employees that I could drop my trailer at the Wawona hotel overflow parking lot whenever I made the long drive to the valley. This was extremely helpful as I did not feel my trailer would be secure where I was camping outside the south entrance. I really appreciated that.

At first, I dispersed-camped outside the south gate. ‘Had a scary experience with some aggressive locals so I later moved to another spot in the national forest. I kept trying to get a reservation down in the valley and, after a while, finally snagged one for a couple nights. (In this case, some spots had opened up because of receding flood waters!)

The first time I headed to the valley, what was supposed to be a one-hour trip turned into two because they were doing tree-work along the road. That’s a tough job for the workers with all the traffic.

The valley was just stunning. There’s a one-way perimeter road through the valley to accommodate all the humanity. I found parking pretty easily despite all the people. It was amazing to be in a place I had wanted to see my whole life.

Bodega Head and Stump Beach, CA

I had forgotten to pull images from my phone, so I’ve included a few more here from Bodega Head, but the majority are from a really nice hike in the Stump Beach area. I highly recommend a visit here–especially in April of the year. Although I didn’t include many photos of them (long story), the wildflowers here were amazing.

I decided to try something different for this post and make a video instead of creating a regular gallery. I’m interested in feedback on video vs still photos. Thanks!

One NV stop / three CA stops on the way to Bodega Bay & Point Reyes NS

I went to meet a friend in California to travel to Bodega Bay. These are sights and adventures along the way (as always, more info in photo captions). (EDIT: forgot I made a short video of what I think were brittlebush blooms. It is at the bottom of this post, below the gallery).

A broader, but brief, view of the superbloom
***

Stewart’s Point, Lake Mead, NV

Lake Mead, Nevada, and the surrounding areas are beautiful and provide many dispersed camping opportunities. Unfortunately, some of those camping spots have recently been closed because of mis-use. Those who have “disperse-camped” or “boondocked” for any length of time have, unfortunately, seen these problems time and time again – mostly in the form of (1) permanent residency instead of abiding by stay limits and, (2) sadly, a lot of garbage. At least the rest of us can easily do something about the second problem by cleaning up other people’s trash each time we camp and participating in organized clean-ups.

One Lake Mead area that remains open is a favorite of mine, “Stewart’s Point”. On this occasion, I met some friends here, and, while we endured some high winds and a little rain, we had mostly beautiful weather and exceptional scenery–especially after we snagged a waterside camping spot.