Posts tagged ‘Lilly’

May 15

The Joy of Dumb Luck

For the past few days, Kelly and I have been relaxing in a national forest just outside the small town of Mt Shasta, which is located in far northern California. The town sits in the shadows of its namesake – Mt Shasta volcano (elevation 14,197 ft).

Looking east towards Mt Shasta

Having driven past the mountain many times, we’ve often admired it from the car, but have never stopped until this week. The mountain happens to sit in the midst of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the largest forest system in California. Combined the mountain and the high elevation forest seemed like a combination we felt would make for a nice resting place for a couple of days.

It was me who picked Fowlers Campground as our landing spot. And I didn’t have much time to complete a lot of advance research … so if the place sucked, it would be me to blame. As luck would have it , the past couple days here have been fantastic.

Sometimes a guy is just lucky.

Wednesday, we arrived to a mostly empty campground … it’s primitive, has two loops with roughly 18-20 spacious sites per. Not sure what the crowds would be like through the weekend, we opted for a site off to itself and with the added bonus of a spacious grassy area opening up to a hillside.

Now, having seen the entire campground now in more detail, I think we have the best location … and Kelly deserves all the credit, as I was thinking about another one elsewhere. As an added bonus, our spot is proving to be a great point of entry for deer and other forest critters … which has provided plenty of excitement for Lilly.

Our site

Lilly keeping an eye on things

There is nice river with three waterfalls near the campground. Conveniently, our site is adjacent to a connector trail which links all three. We’ve seen two waterfalls thus far, and plan to view the third before leaving in a couple days. The trails here are nice and since this is a national forest, dogs are welcome on-leash – not so in California State or National Parks.

Once the trailer was set-up, we went out to find the “Middle Falls”, the closest of the three to our location.

The trail to Middle Falls

The trail to Middle Falls

Middle Falls below…

Stopping to admire Middle Falls

This morning (Thursday) we went looking for Lower Falls, which made for a great morning hike – this one following the river.

The river is a local favorite for fly fishing, and provides plenty of access points to the water. Lilly wasn’t interested in the fish, but could not get enough of the rocks – climbing all over them (and only slipping into the water a few times).

Eventually, we arrived to Lower Falls (above). While this particular falls is not much of an attraction per se, the general area is gorgeous. It’s so nice to be back at high elevation and in amongst the trees.

Eventually, we began making our way back to camp.

Along the way, I wanted to grab some firewood and decided to split this felled tree with my knee.

Upon arrival back to camp, it was time for lunch. The remainder of the day was spent … lazy.

Apr 6

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Arastradero Preserve

As our Airstream home on wheels has been grounded of late, Kelly and I have been focused on uncovering local attractions in and around our home base here in HMB. More specifically, those destinations which welcome not only us, but our pooch Lilly as well.

A few weeks ago we stumbled across a location with good potential and have since been there twice.

Situated an easy 30-minute drive from our place, sits Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve. Located just outside the city of Palo Alto, the 622-acre preserve offers sweeping views of the south bay, and is also a great overlook to Stanford University’s impressive campus.

Like many of the grassland foothills in this area of the peninsula, Arastradero Preserve offers any visitor – human or canine – numerous trails to explore. Overall, the preserve is great option for us. Sure, I wish it was closer to where we live, but visiting the preserve in the morning creates an easy excuse to venture into Palo Alto afterwards and visit great restaurants for lunch, before returning home. A win-win…

And best of all, Lilly loves this place. I’m sure we’ll be back again soon.

Beautiful start to a hike

A few sections of tree overgrowth

sweeping views of the valley

A selfie gone bad

Banana slug on its way

Arastradero Lake

Big Tree & little tree

Wild flowers blooming

Orange

Lilly in the mix of purple and yellow

Heads down into something

Frolicking in the grass, under the warmth of beautiful sunny skies

Dec 25

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Pre-Christmas in Arizona

Friday morning (Dec-20th) we began the long drive to Kelly’s mom’s house. We’ve traveled this stretch of road before and knew to expect a mostly uninspiring experience. Suffice it to say, 834 miles later we arrived to Marana, our destination just north of Tucson.

Kelly drove exactly zero miles.

The sun sets along Interstate-10

While visiting Kelly’s mom, we stayed at Valley of the Sun RV park near her home. As we live in an RV park when not traveling, I wasn’t thrilled to be staying in yet another park, especially with all the beautiful boon-docking in the area. But we are here to spend time with family and this location is only a few minutes walk to Kelly’s mom’s home.

This particular park is typical of many – lots of big rigs in close proximity to one another, a cuckoo-bird park manager who seemingly is barely competent, and lots of overly friendly retirees, most with an uncanny ability to talk for extended periods of times, yet fail to articulate anything interesting.

The long row of RVs

Boring chit-chadder with the locals aside, the visit was great. We had a few quality days with Kelly’s mom and her husband. And while I’d love to tell you we did all sorts of wonderful and exciting things, I’d be a liar if I gave any impression of the sort. The truth is we were quite lazy … and it was perfect.

I did some computer repairs for Kelly’s mom, ate lots of unhealthy food, completed a bit of trailer maintenance, washed the truck, etc. Mainly, little things that aren’t really interesting except to those directly involved. That said, in our desire to avoid being the target of local RV park gossip, we did complete a local hike and sit for a proper Christmas-Eve dinner. That is to say – we city slickers in the shiny Airstream, tried to fit in amongst the army of otherwise nosey snow-birds.

First up was a nice hike.

Not far from where we were staying is Picacho Peak State Park. Following a quick 15 minute drive, we arrived to the visitor center, paid our $7 park entry, chatted with the ranger (yes, more chit-chat), and began our ascent to the park’s namesake. During the hike we were disappointed to see that Lilly is not capable of using the cable handrails anchored into the rocks to assist herself as needed. It turns out that her ability to scramble incredibly steep and sometimes loose rock faces are not akin to those of a mountain goat … and despite her best efforts, couldn’t quite push onward to the peak (but we came damn close).

Notwithstanding our failings, we did had a nice three hours on the trails, most of which involved some amount of scrambling and navigating over rocks or other boulders. Lilly was in heaven.

Lilly leading the way

Scrambling one of the steeper sections

Trail on the backside of the mountain, overlooking ranch and farmlands

The park is quite nice – on the smaller side, but a very nice state park. Campsites are primitive, but fairly spacious and appeared to be well maintained. Adjacent to the state park are amenities to compliment any family during their stay – tours of an ostrich farm, a Dairy Queen, an automotive repair shop & gas station, and obviously … an adult sex toy store.

Christmas-Eve was relatively subdued. We ate a nice meal prepared by Kelly and her mom, exchanged a few gifts, engaged in a bit of conversation banter, and watched an old episode of The Unit. The evening was quite nice, but sadly our last in before moving on.

My new stocking cap – totally diggin’ the pom-pom

Kelly & Barb making final touches to dinner

On Christmas Day morning, Kelly and I said our goodbyes, thanked our hosts for a wonderful couple of days and drove about 90 miles to Sun City West – home of Kelly’s father and his wife.

** Note, the following contains nerdy details related to hitch maintenance

I make a habit of checking hitch bolts connected to the trailer before every tow, however, I’ve never checked the bolts attaching the hitch receiver to the frame of the truck. Having towed about 12,000 miles, I suppose it’s only logical that the bolts will loosen, but to my surprise, torque was nowhere near the installation specifications of 110 ft lbs.

If you have not checked your hitch receiver, you should. For my 2012 Ford F-150, the process was quite simple. Ten bolts (5 per side) tightened … a really quick inspection. More, since I was already under the truck, I took a good look at the entire hitch receiver to ensure there are no cracks or other potentially dangerous issues lurking.

5 bolts per side

I also made a point to inspect the (Equalizer) hitch assembly and tighten all bolts to torque specifications, something I’ve done a few times in the past.

May 26

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On the Road Again

Once again Kelly and I are on the road; our second trip in as many weekends. Following a quick work week in Half Moon Bay, last night after dinner we hitched-up Mabel and began venturing northeast, driving about 90 miles, enough to be fully beyond the reaches San Francisco metro traffic. We’re headed towards southern Oregon where we will be meeting-up with friends in a few days, but not before we partake in a bit of dry camping on BLM land.

We awoke this morning, not knowing were we would land for the weekend. This being the case, Kelly commenced a bit of internet research while I was driving and fairly quickly decided that Pit River Campground would be our ideal location for two nights.

Welcoming us to the campground

Like most BLM sites, this campground is low on amenities, but flush with nature and is very peaceful – just what we wanted. There are only seven sites in the campground, each secured on a first-come, first-serve basis. We chose a site with full sun then quickly got ourselves situated.

Our site

Interestingly, even on this long holiday weekend not all sites are taken. A major State park offering 128 campsites is located about 20 miles away and I suspect most of the crowds chose to park themselves there, which is fine with Kelly and me. Btw, the fee here is $8 per night. Our friends 20 miles down the road are paying four times that, plus online booking fees.

Our site from above

Following a quick lunch, we took Lilly for a walk which also served as reconnoissance of the immediate area. Unless you are keen to fly fish, there’s not too much to do or see within the campground. That said, the water is quite nice and left me yearning for a canoe – although in this section of the river a kayak is probably a better option. When the day comes that we hit the road as full-timers, I will be lobbying hard for a canoe.

Banks of the Pit River

Pit River from above

WiFi connectivity is fabulous here. Tethering my iPhone, I pull five bars (-69db) of AT&T at 3G speeds when using my Wilson Sleek (three bars without amplification). Sadly, the Verizon signal is just ok, which is too bad because 4G LTE speeds would be a luxury. Regardless, I’ve been streaming music all afternoon and evening with no problems and these blog pictures are uploading quickly enough. I will definitely keep this location in mind the next time Kelly and I decide to work remotely for a few days.

Speaking of the quick internet connectivity, I spent a bit of time online after dinner and found a few places to explore tomorrow, ensuring we’ll have plenty to keep us busy. Uninterested in my web browsing, Lilly was instead infatuated with all the critters outside. I think she would have willingly jumped through the window if not for the screens.

Lilly, watching squirrels

At one point, Lilly moved to the bedroom windows, allowing me to make a play for the couch. She was not pleased to lose her place and as evidenced within the image below, was determined to minimize my enjoyment of any relaxing.