Chapter Eight
Snow Camping
May 2, 2009—Moraga to Sequoia: After a good night’s sleep, we said goodbye to our good friends, and by “our good friends,” I’m referring to the comfortable real bed and the warm house. We shoved our stuff back into the car (picture a Japanese subway), and headed southeast to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Ominous storm clouds gathered as we approached the foothills, but the weather was fine.
Five hours later, we arrived at our secluded campsite in the Azalea campground of the King's Canyon National Park. It was wonderful in spite of the snow.
The first order of business was to pull out the laptop and update the journal.
Lena allowed me to choose this campsite only after I assured her that it wouldn't be colder to be right next to the snow.
We were 6,500 feet above sea level. The airbed inflated without problems and we had three sleeping bags for the two of us. A warm and cozy night awaited us.
OK, the laptop in the snow was the part that I made up (I did warn you that this story would only be “mostly true”). We are actually doing our picture uploading and journal writing in the posh John Muir lodge here at King's Canyon National Park (I also made up the part about going to a rave). We hiked over from the campsite carrying our laptop cases like a couple of business persons.
Let me take a moment to tell you how much I like Gunilla, our GPS device. A GPS car device was relatively new to a tightwad like me, and this was our first trip with one. I’m embarrassed that we’ve given a name to the GPS. It’s disgustingly cutesy to name a device, but a talking GPS is different. We had to name her. My laptop, Larry, agrees. Gunilla’s a little quirky at times, as you’ll see, but she gets the job done.
Note that if you do name devices, and I’m not recommending it, the rule is that the name and the device name start with the same sound. Thus, Marty the Meat Thermometer, or Cecil the Circular Saw.
After web surfing in the lodge, I considered going for a bike ride, but there were no showers around, and the shoulders of the roads were narrow. Either that or I just didn’t feel like it.
We headed back and cooked up a healthful meal of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs.
We finished off the meal with some ElderTang (that is, orange-flavored Metamucil), then sat in front of the fire inhaling smoke.