CAMPING WITH DAVE & JULIE, JULY 2008 - A PICTURE STORY
CAMPING WITH DAVE & JULIE, JULY 2008 - A PICTURE STORY
Saturday morning our alarm went off at 6:00am. We dragged ourselves out of bed and slowly started functioning. Everything we needed was gathered and packed and at the top of our staircase, ready to be loaded into the car. All we had to do was pack it up and run to the store for some last minute items. We had told Dave and Julie we'd be leaving our house around 7:00am, so they knew when to expect us. There was no cell service where we were headed - we had to do it the old school way. By 6:45 we were out the door and on our way to the grocery store where we picked up everything we needed. But we had to head back home (not too far away) because we both needed a last-call potty stop and we had forgotten the radio!
Then it was off! We were on our way north-east of Eureka to go camping with our good friends, Dave and Julie! Julie's family has a gold claim in the Trinity Mountains that has been passed down through the generations and she and her husband spend a good amount of their summers there. We were honoured to be invited! We had our atlas, printed out directions, and an internet print-out of our route. We were set!
It's important to mention my thoughts on camping. And one of the best ways for you to understand is to read what my mother texted me upon our return when I had texted her to say we just got back from camping. Her message read as so:
"It just dawned on me, camping? What the hell do u mean camping? U dont camp, what hotel did you stay in?"
Yeah - I'm not a camper. The last time I camped was in grade school whilst a member of the Girl Scouts and I never wanted to go again. But Julie had begged us to come out to the claim, and we truly love spending time with her and Dave, not to mention that I know Justin is an outdoors man and would really enjoy it. I don't like being the bum that ruins the fun, so I put on my sporting face and agreed to it! My biggest fears were the bugs (that eat me alive, five times worse than anyone else) and using the woods as my toilet. In fact, I specifically remember the last time I peed outdoors - it was canoing with my family when I was a teenager. My bare ass got eaten alive by mosquitoes and I somehow managed to pee on my jeans. I've never even attempted #2 outdoors! But I digress from my story...
We needed breakfast. So we stopped at Jack In The Box drive-thru. Hey... it can't all be glitz and glamour. And not every trip starts out mega-exciting. But breakfast is the most important meal of the day!
We headed out on Highway 299 and it looked like it might shape up to be a beautiful day in our area.
However, there have been wildfires east of here blazing for about a month now. At one point, many of the roads we would be traveling on were closed - we really didn't know what we'd come across, but we were hoping we'd be able to make it to the claim. As we neared the mountains, the air started to get smoky.
We popped in Bob Seger's Greatest Hits, as it seemed like very appropriate mountain-driving, road trip music. Still, the air got thicker with smoke and it made us a little somber.
We began to see a lot of firefighters along the roadside or coming and going on the highway. I had recently been thinking about how awesome it is that men and women are coming from everywhere to fight these fires, risking their own lives, living in tents in the middle of nowhere. So I made a sign with a marker and a napkin to hold up in the windows as we drove by them.
And still... it just got worse as we drove. It was a very eerie, unsettling colour to the world we know. This is right when we were in the worst of it. The whole car was filled with the smell of acrid woodsmoke. Our sinuses were complete messed up - Justin was snorting, I had a splitting ache around the bridge of my nose and my eye sockets. Visibility was awful - maybe as little as 40-50 yards in front of us at some points. Neither of us had ever been so near to a wildfire before.
You can see here how the smoke just made the sun look weird and distant. I felt like we were in some post-apocalyptic world.
Then we started to see the damage along the road. This picture here looks like an ordinary fall photo... except that it's mid-July! These trees obviously didn't get touched by fire, but you can see that the heat was so close to them, that it just browned them. It must have been some serious heat coming off the hillside!
A little further up the road and we could see whole hillsides burned up, right up to the road, sometimes it went across the road.
It's all a part of nature... nature's way of cleaning up all the debris. It's just that man got in the way, and so all these firefighters are risking their lives to save others' material possessions. It left us with conflicted emotions.
This area, behind the trees, used to be a lake. We're assuming it's mostly dried up from fighting the fires - surely the trucks and tankers were using the lake water.
Once we were past the areas of Big Bar and Del Loma and headed further into the mountains, the air started to clear up a little. There was still a haze over everything, but we were out of most of the fire areas.
About four and a half hours later, we finally came to where the paved road stops and the gravel begins. This is where Julie said she'd meet us and take us the rest of the way in. Sure enough, there she sat! We got out, exchanged hugs, and she said, "Follow me!" So we did!
As we were coming down the little road towards the claim, we passed the remants of an old, abandoned ice house. The woods were very pretty. Kind of serene and quiet.
We parked over a hill off the road, hidden from anyone that might come down the road (though I imagine traffic is fairly sparse out there; we were truly in the middle of nowhere.) Then we transferred all our gear into the back of Julie's truck and she took us the rest of the way into camp. My first stop - the bathroom. Dave and Julie so sweet! They had a little camping toilet that they set up in a make-shift outhouse for me! It was perfect! I can't believe they went so far out of their way just for me... as weird as it may be (since it was a toilet), it really touched me.
Julie even put some hand sanitizer and papertowels in there!
This is the view as I made my way back from the outhouse. Their little trailer is perfect for them - a fridge, a little pantry, a sink, a small oven, and a sleeping area.
Justin was bringing some of our stuff over to the camp. You can see one of the benches Dave had made - it looks just like Lincoln Logs! While we were there, he started making the bottom logs look like wheels... as Julie said, it's going to look like a Flintstones car!
They gave us a tour of their little campsite. Up the river a short walk is where they had their mining equipment. I don't know what the name of this machine is, but it's for sifting through the rocks and mud.
The dogs were enjoying the new people at the camp. Apparently this is the first year that Lola has willingly gone swimming in the river! Right here she's swimming in a little hole where Dave and Julie built a bit of a dam so the dogs could still play when the river was higher and faster a few weeks ago.
We headed back to camp where Julie started fixing lunch - antipasto salad. It was delicious!
She refused to let us help her, so Justin, Dave and I sat around the camp coffee table, catching up and taking in nature.
After lunch, we walked to the river (a little down-river from the mining site) to where the swimming hole was. Petey fetched stick in the river while his cheerleaders, Lola and Joe, just barked and barked, cheering him on. Beautiful place for a swimming hole!
The men walked a little ways ahead. I like how I caught Joe shaking the water off with his head all cocked funny and his ears flapping!
Then we walked back, past camp, and back out to the road for a little stroll.
There used to be a couple of cabins and an outhouse that were on the land, but the government decided there could be no permanent dwellings on the claims and so Dave and Julie had to take them down. :(
Then it was back to the camp for the evening, where we relaxed. Joe decided a good spot for him was with his chin on my feet. I love Joe... he and I are good buddies.
Evening started to fall and Julie made us a fantastic dinner of zucchini, bacon-wrapped filet mignon, camp onions, and watermelon! We couldn't have a fire out there, as it's extremely dry and they're already fighting off so many wildfires, so everything was made on the stove top! Even the camp fire onions! We just hollowed them out, stuffed them with beef bullion and butter, wrapped them in foil, and Julie had the good idea of putting them in a dutch oven with a little water to cook. They came out perfect! We just wound down around the camp with the dogs, talking into the night. Dave also made a little table on their "patio" out of a few round pieces of wood. We were told that we had to carve each other's initials into it, so I did Justin's first (JT) and then he did mine (JM) with an '08 under it - the the '08 didn't come out as well as he'd hoped.
Dave and Julie had also done each other's previously, along with a few cute little drawings.
