Back in June when we started our cross-country full-time RV adventure, I had big plans for all the national parks we were going to see on our travels. There was a total of 29 of them, and we weren’t going to settle in for the winter until January in Florida. There was a full year of planning and research that went into that, but after four months of pulling stakes more than weekly, we tired of all that effort.
So now we have settled in Yuma AZ, where Ray has a work camp gig doing maintenance at Sun Vista resort two days a week. He doesn’t get a wage, but it pays for our site. So the $1500 or so we were paying monthly for campground fees is a thing of the past. And the $1600 or so in gas was only $275 or so for October. All around a good financial decision.
But I’m missing the wild spaces and long hikes through beautiful places. Instead now I’m choosing between so many fun activities the resort offers. So far I’ve tried pickleball lessons, aqua aerobics, step aerobics, weekly potlucks, daily swims, choir and a Halloween dance. There is so much to do on the resort it’s ridiculous! I plan to join the quilting group and take some day tours from here next month.
And Yuma has much to recommend it. This week is their hot air balloon festival, and last weekend was the howling at the moon festival. Yesterday we ventured up to a ghost mining town and toured their museum.
So this nomad is doing less wandering and for the next 6 months we’ll be taking in all the fun we can here, in the sunniest place in the US. Really, it is!
Ghost mining town we visited with a cool museum. The mine tour looked interesting- they have the most phosphorescent rocks in different colors – but it was more than $50 each for the admission so we passed on that. We won 1st prize at the costume competition for our flash mob entrance to “Monster Mash”Howling at the Moon is a Yuma event for 2 days at each full moon – food vendors, music and a rousing howl from the crowd when the moon rises from between the peaksConfined at Yuma Territorial Prison- which at one point was used as a high school. I had wondered why the local football team is called the “criminals” even to this dayTacos and Tunes event in downtown Yuma
Another first for me was visiting Joshua Tree NP. We stayed an hour away from the park at an RV resort in Desert Hot Springs, that had a great pool and mineral springs hot tub. While there we enjoyed checking out Palm Springs and their Thursday night street fair, and great restaurants.
Joshua Tree was something special. The weather was crazy-hot (desert much?) so we didn’t do much in the way of hiking but more of a motor tour. It was strikingly beautiful- the thousands of acres of these tree-like yuccas, each one unique and reminiscent of the human form with stretching arms. We visited an oasis within the park and also drove to the highest peak, where one can view two deserts coming together in a stunning valley.
Although my plans included visiting more national parks until we winter in Florida this year, the excessive gas costs and campground fees made us rethink whether it might not be a good idea to try out work camping, where you work for a few hours a week in exchange for a camping spot. Ray was a bit tired of the idle life, and he was offered a work camp job in Yuma at a huge 55+ RV park with a ton of amenities and activities.
So that ends my national park journeys for now… I’ll keep you posted on our nomad life as we adjust to staying in one spot for awhile!
Joshua TreeSkull Rock – one of the cool formations at Joshua TreeCool lizard in the hot desert. Joshua Trees make for some interesting shadows. Mara OasisMarilyn- larger than life!
Pinnacles NP turned out to be Ray’s favorite so far. We camped inside the park at a campground that had electric hookup, so we didn’t have to worry about air conditioning, which was good because the temps were in the 80s. Our first night there we went for a bike ride at dusk and encountered a tarantula crossing the road. (Why did the tarantula cross the road? So Ray could film it of course!)
We found the park to be so accessible- it was small enough to hike from one side to the other and it was not terribly busy. There was a school group of teens on the trails and in the campground when we were there and it was cool to see them on the trails and trying out rock climbing.
We had fun on the trails and exploring the 2 cave systems in the park, and seeing condors soaring on the thermals was an experience not to be missed.
Pinnacles was an unexpected treasure.
Yup, that’s a tarantula!The trails were loaded with interesting views around every corner.The talus caves were challenging to navigate, requiring crawling at several points. Talus caves are formed by large boulders. Inside the cave – you have to use headlamps but I was surprised to find I had left my sunglasses on when I emerged into the sunlight. No wonder it was so dark in there!At this reservoir I saw red dragonflies. But I didn’t get to see the red legged frogs indigenous to the area. A viewpoint from high up on a trail. California condors riding the thermals. It’s hard to distinguish them from the turkey buzzards at a distance. There are binoculars set up at several viewing sites in the park. Trail sights reminiscent of a fairy glen. So happy our travels brought us to Pinnacles!
Sequoia and Kings Canyon are adjoined National Parks whose claim to fame includes the largest trees in the world (by volume). I didn’t really have them at the top of my bucket list, especially after seeing the redwoods, which are the tallest trees. But walking among these giants was a truly spiritual experience and I’m so glad that I did it.
The 2 largest of the trees, nestled in the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, are the General Sherman and General Grant trees. There are easy hikes to each of them, but the roads to get there from our campground were long. The General Sherman tree is in Sequoia NP, more than 20 miles from the park entrance gate. That road was so full of hairpin turns that it made both of us a bit queezy and nauseous. Seeing General Sherman was amazing though – it is the world’s largest tree and 275 feet tall.
A few days later, after we sufficiently recovered from our queeziness from the drive to General Sherman, we took another 2 hour drive to enter Kings Canyon from the western entrance. There we were able to drive a less winding route to Grant Village and see the General Grant tree. Interestingly, this section of the park was the 3rd national park and had been named Grant national park. It was later included in Kings Canyon.
The road to the inner section of Kings Canyon, where the actual canyon is, was closed when we were there. Apparently the road was completely washed out from heavy rainfall and it will take major construction and several years for it to reopen.
The General Grant tree was estimated to be around 2200 years old. It was a profoundly spiritual experience to be in its presence and think about that passage of time. It should have left me feeling that I was in the presence of an immortal living thing, but instead it made me wonder how climate change will impact it and whether it will still be alive by the time I die.
In the 1800’s several of these giant trees were cut down before it was realized their lumber was too brittle for furniture making or other uses. One was also chopped down, hollowed out and taken to the east coast to put on display but people didn’t believe they were real even after seeing it.
I can only hope these giants will somehow survive us and our abuse of the planet. I feel privileged to have seen them in my lifetime.
General Sherman tree – notice how small we humans are in comparison!General Sherman is the largest of the towering sequoias in the grove. The park has kept this sign for historical significance, even while acknowledging the image of the Native American is that of a plains Indian rather then a tribe indigenous to this area. Our campground was full of this plant – sacred datura- which is a poisonous hallucinogen. We warned several other campers away from it and asked that the office post a warning. Our campground also had bears that visited the dumpsters in the middle of the night, leaving lots of trash for the maintenance crew in the morning. This is the early stage of a spined turban gall moth. (I was able to identify it with the Seek app.) Looks cool, doesn’t it?There’s a hollowed out log of a felled sequoia in Kings Canyon that has been here for 100 years – it housed the CCC crews who worked on the park during the depression. The General Grant tree – absolutely massive!
We were not able to camp in the park so we chose to save a bit of money and camp at a national forest campground at Bass Lake, which was about 20 miles away. That campground was another boondocking site, and the weather was quite warm even at that elevation in the Sierras. The site was large and private and Bass Lake had lots of day use sites near the campground. It was a nice lake for kayaking and nearby Oakhurst had a delicious Indian restaurant and bakery cafe that we enjoyed too.
We did a one day driving tour of Yosemite that showed us amazing views. Finally I was able to see those iconic NP sites – El Capitan, half dome, Yosemite Falls and Bridalveil Falls. Since we had Olive with us, there were no long hikes to be had. Yosemite is a good place to car tour though, and the view from Glacier Peak showed the whole beautiful valley.
View from Glacier PeakBridalveil fallsClimbers can take two weeks or more to go up El Capitan, sleeping on the side of the mountain. There are more than 100 defined routes to the top.
We started off on this adventure 6/2 and yesterday marked the three month anniversary of that notable date. Since then we…
Traveled 6,000+ miles
Crossed into or through 11 states (MI, WI, MN, ND, SD, WY, ID, MT, WA, OR, CA)
Spent $4042 in gas ($1538 in August) with a range between $3.64 a gallon and $5.70 a gallon – yikes! Seems the further west you go the more it costs.
Visited 11 national parks and Mt St Helen’s national monument
Had a cool hike in a lava tube cave (literally cool, that is)
Camped in 2 state parks, 3 county parks and 5 national parks with a total of 24 different campgrounds
Survived a week long stay in a fire emergency zone in a county-wide power outage
Read 10 audiobooks (finished Peter Ash series and now on to Clive Cussler) 10 paperbacks that I mostly pick up at free book exchanges at various campgrounds and 25 e-books
Paid $4200 in campground fees ($1412 in August) – double-yikes!
Learned to boondock at sites without electricity, water hookups but learned that a whole week of boondocking in hot weather isn’t fun, since our generators won’t handle the A/C
Hiked to 11 waterfalls
Picked 3 quarts of wild blackberries for our pancakes and occasional thimbleberries
5 kayak trips
Enjoyed Numerous bike rides and trail hikes
Survived one crazy hailstorm and some days of 90 degree heat
Met some very cool and interesting people
Enjoyed local smoked fish and fresh salmon
Enjoyed the freedom of the road!
Life as a nomad has its perks!Love the Oregon coast!Enjoying mountain magic!
Lassen is one of the less visited national parks, and it was on my bucket list to visit because I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know that much about it.
We were able to get a site at a campground within the park, at Manzanita Lake and our campsite didn’t have any hookups so we were boondocking all 4 days we were there.
We were pleasantly surprised that the smoke cleared in this high altitude park, and the skies were the clearest, brightest blue that only seems to happen at high altitude.
We had some great hikes, one to the top of Lassen Peak and one to a geothermal area weirdly named Bumpass Hell. The drives through the rising switchbacks in the park were also spectacular.
After having a week without power in Crescent City then spending 4 nights at Lassen Volcanic Park without power and without cell service or internet, we realized just how dependent we are on those technologies. Even wayfinding without GPS mapping is a special challenge, and I grew up as the triptych map reader in the family on our summer vacation trips.
We invested in a TravelFi router that finds cell signals from multiple carriers, which is less expensive than buying a satellite system. But the remote places we’ve been to have had NO cell service from any carrier, so it hasn’t worked that well for us.
Our next week includes staying closer to civilization in parks where we expect electricity and water, and hopefully even cell and internet service. And we’re researching an upgrade to our A/C that will allow us to run it using our gas generator. That will be a step forward at least!
Manzanita Lake at Lassen Volcanic Views along the NP road in Lassen – you can see all the smoke in the distance in the lower elevations Very strenuous hike to Lassen Peak – above the tree line and see the parking lot way below in the distance! Geothermal features in Bumpass Hell Bumpass was the name of the white claim owner who planned to mine the minerals in this area before it was part of a national park. His plans went awry when he fell through a thin crust while taking people on a tour there, and badly burned his leg. His plans never materialized to mine those minerals and the area now bears his name. Lake Helen, one of several lakes at Lassen. Interesting how most areas are named after white explorers. Features named after women seem to bear their first names, like Lake Helen, while those named after male explorers bear their last names. Is that a sign of lesser respect for the women? Seems like it to me…
Our trip from Crater Lake NP to Redwoods State and National Park started off with us having to go a hundred miles out of our way because the Redwood Highway was shut down due to major fires. When we arrived at the Ramblin Redwoods campground in Crescent City CA, we learned that electricity had been shut off to the whole county because two fires were converging on the power lines. There was no estimated time for turning it back on, and the campground office just shut down since there was no phone or internet service.
We tried to make the best of it, but there was a gloomy feel to the town and even the park visitor center was closed. We spent one day driving further down the coast to another visitor center and at least we got to see some really big redwoods. One was estimated to be over 1500 years old.
We did enjoy a few parks along the coast and foraged a few quarts of wild blackberries which were amazing for pancake breakfasts.
At the end of the week we were happy to leave Crescent City and head toward Lassen Volcanic NP. I hope the rest of the month coming up in California is better than this first week in Cali!
Redwoods are unbelievably huge!Truly beautiful coastline!
Crater Lake NP was one of the places that I was most looking forward to visiting again. We were here 15 years ago when we did Rhian’s birthday trip camping our way to the west coast, and I was so stunned by the beauty of the lake that I cried. This time was somewhat different, as the views of the lake were obscured by smoke from the Oregon wildfires. But we made the most of it anyway.
The first day we walked along the rim and had a nice bike ride along forest roads. The smoke was thick that day so the views of the lake were limited. On day 2 we hiked to the highest point on the rim, Watchman Tower, and we also hiked down to the lake which was the lowest point in the park. I got to check off a bucket list item there – and I actually swam in the lake. I hadn’t been prepared to do that, so I’m grateful for sports bras and quick dry shorts. The trail down was a mile of very steep slopes and between the two hikes that day I really got my exercise!
Crater Lake is a place that we both enjoyed so much. I can see spending a season here as a camp host and exploring all it has to offer.
The view from the top of Watchman trail – a heck of a long way down!Crater Lake is stunning, but we were sad about all the wildfires plaguing Oregon. Oh yes I did! It was a chilly 59 degrees. And I even filled my filtered water bottle from the lake – delicious!It’s just that beautiful.
Between our national parks visits, we spent a week along the Oregon coast near Tillamook, at a place called Netarts Bay. The private campground had some limitations, like sites that were way too small, but the surrounding area was so awesome to explore. The bay was only a block from us so we were able to bike there and watch the folks going out crabbing every day. We did get a shellfish license for OR, but spent a day driving down the coast to find the best place to harvest mussels and missed the low tide. But highway 101 has beautiful pullouts and interesting things to see like the octopus tree, and the 3 capes along our route with very cool rock formations.
I could definitely spend a season at the Oregon coast and not run out of cool things to see and do.
Crab boats in Netarts Bay, and also crabbing from the shore with a pole. Oregon coastal beach – beautiful!This tree had 8 major trunks – hence octopus tree!Beach fun!
Nomad Adventures 