Sunday (Aug 30)
I was awakened by my iPhone at 8am. The phone reception was good enough for it to ring, but poor enough that the actual call dropped out – aaargh – a classic lose-lose. I read and wrote for an hour or so, then went back to sleep till 11:30. As often happens, all my neighbors – from the hippies in their tents to the retired CEOs in their palaces on wheels – were gone gone gone when I got up.
When I have only gone a few miles on 97 I pass an Indian casino with a few RVs in the lot. Remind myself to check out their camper policy when I get online.
Upper Klamath Lake is still scenic and beautiful, I checked out Hagelstein Park. Hard to guess if one of the ten spots would have been available last night. It’s kind of a cool spot, but it’s also kind of shabby and the people seem sketchy. Maybe next time…
Since this is Sunday, I am happy to report success on finding my 16×16 Sudoku … at the Fred Meyer! Not the Sunday Chronicle, but the Sunday Oregonian. Failure on everything else I hoped to accomplish here. Sunday seems to be a mighty slow day here in Klamath Falls. I had to u-turn twice to find my restaurant, then when I got there it was closed. I went to the wrong Mexican restaurant (no wifi), then finally went to an alleged wifi brew pub, which was dingy and dark and depressing and their wifi sucked. Finally, 20 miles south of town in the middle of nowhere (well, Merrill OR, which is close to nowhere) Yelp says there is a place with breakfast all day and wifi, with the odd name of Pappy Gander’s. Turns out there’s a duck huntung theme :) I took that chance, and hit the jackpot more or less, in that they did have wifi and breakfast, and weren’t too surly about serving it once they warmed up to you. Gosh, what a struggle. At least the wildlife refuge was calming and excellent.
WHUFU page for: South Klamath Lake NWR
ring-necked pheasant
many, many red tailed hawks, most intimate ever for me
a coyote
a noble 10-12 point mule deer buck, then later a whole herd of lesser mule deer
northern harrier
Northern Spoonbill, (I think) buffleheads and redheads
Sandhill crane (couldn’t stop to get a good look ):
tonight:
stars today were the Lesser Sandhill Cranes, hanging out in a field with the egrets.
Water levels were quite low, some ditches were dry, others were green scummy, but the ducks didn't mind.
Ditches had a lot of (I think) adolescents, chillin in the protected water till they get a little stronger.Only thing there was a lot of was Snowy Egrets, tons of those dudes, and some Blue Herons.
It was 5-ish when I left. On the oft-travelled road from here to Lava Beds I debate whether to do the Tule Lake auto tour also … nah … not compelling. I do stop at the Vis Cen just to soak up the quiet for a while. This would also be a perfect evening to do a short park hike, like up to the peak of that cinder cone (Schoen?), but I am just not feeling it, I want to park and chill.
WHUFU page for: Lava Beds Campground
Really nice place, quiet and well maintained and a beautiful situation, on the side of a high hill overlooking a huge, arid valley.
Wildlife refuges right down the hill.
tonight:
Got the inviting looking place next to where I was last time. Has (I think) the best vista view of the valley. I fear it will get direct sun in the am, we'll find out.
Loving my view spot here. I took my lawn chair to the other side of the road and had a sweeping panoramic sunset.
I am going to reiterate a long standing pet peeve here – dickwads in RVs who leave their bright porch lights on all night in remote, dark places. Leave your light on all you want at Kamperland or the Walmart, but when to are at a low key desert campground where the pure night sky is a big reason why people are here, turn your f—ing light off, because it is taking away from the quality of the night for everyone near you. Those people so far fall into two categories, clueless RV renters, and over-entitled old white dudes who literally don’t even understand that anybody else’s wishes matter. Guess which I got tonight :) The redneck dudes that just don’t give a f— are elsewhere, at the off-road vehicle campground 80 miles away.
… actually the old white dude turned the light off after his guests went back to their trailer, but I enjoyed my rant so much I’m leaving it for posterity …
Monday
Dang, people get going early here! As I feared, my parking angle, which was perfect for sunset and seeing the waning gibbous moon at bedtime, also caught the sunrise perfectly, since the sun and moon do follow very similar apparent paths, duh.
So anyway, the sun full on my face woke me up at 7:30, and every last vehicle was gone from Camping Loop A already. I existed in this situation for an hour or so, but finally started the van and 180’d myself, for a happy rest of the morning.
The road from here to Reno is very familiar. The sameness and emptiness has a kind of austere grandeur to it, but basically it’s pretty boring, with very few options to liven the monotony. It is literally over 100 miles to the first cup of coffee, much less a gas station or a restaurant. No phone bars of course…
A big find from last trip was that the ice cream/hamburger joint in Adin has wifi! So I planned my boring day around that. I had one of their gutbuster meals (pulled pork bbq and mac salad) and did all my daily internet rituals – stockpiling pages to read tonight and with my phone and laptop connected to the same router, I was even able to get most lf my photos uploaded via PhotoStream. Since it was 1:40pm and my destination is 40 minutes away, I took a lot of time.
Studying the camping app one more time I had a brainstorm, namely to drive another 40 minutes to the fancier south end of Eagle Lake. It’ll be an extra $6 ($12 for you kids :), but a nicer, shadier place. That was a great idea!
WHUFU page for: Merrill Campground
huge-ass campground on ever-diminishing Eagle Lake. Full of giant RVs with hookups and run by a concessionaire, so it is much more bureaucratic and rule-bound that most.
Site 159 is pretty sweet, unobstructed lake view (150 yds away), open, but the tall pine behind (south of) me give it pretty good afternoon shade.
tonight:
huge-ass campground on ever-diminishing Eagle Lake. Full of giant RVs with hookups and run by a concessionaire, so it is much more bureaucratic and rule-bound that most.
Site 159 is pretty sweet, unobstructed lake view (150 yds away), open, but the tall pine behind (south of) me give it pretty good afternoon shade.
So here I am, a card-carrying senior, still having problems with authority :) I got dinged by the Camp Host for not filling in enough of the twenty or so fields on the receipt clipped to my site post. Any sane operation serializes the payment envelopes, so you can make an easy and infallible correspondence between the envelope with the payment and the receipt at your campsite. Not these bozos, so their idea is that you must print your full address, phone, drivers license # and Senior Pass number on BOTH. aaarrrgggh.
Notwithstanding its bureaucracy, this place turns out to be pretty cool. I will come more often in the future. Where I am is very close to the beach parking area, so I trundle down there three times:
- 6-ish, a bit of a swim. very shallow, but nice water.
- 7:40-ish sunset.
- 9-ish, moonrise, over a little angle of the lake so I get the sweet reflection!
I was surprised to have the moon rise where it did. It was spectacular, but as noted last night, that means the sun will come up at about the same spot, so I am f—ked for tomorrow morning. Oh well…
Tuesday
Sure enough, 7:30 I awake to the sun in my face. My thermostat thinks it needs to keep pumping out heat, but as a sentient being rather than a mechanical regulator, I know better. So I streeeeetch over to click off the heat. I notice my stylish neighbors across the road packing up their stylish little Airstream, getting ready to vacate their well-shaded spot. I an too inert to hop over there right now, and it’s a good thing, since Herr Kommandant Camp Host swung by on his electric cart to collect all those information-rich receipts and make sure all is in order.
9:30-ish I do swing across the street to enjoy three more hours of delicious shade. I get away with it, I feel like such a rebel!
Today’s path is sooo familiar. But I do make some discoveries. The Susanville Starbucks sucks today because they charged me for a refill and were actively rude. The Primo Deli will get my business next time. They have coffee, sandos, goodies and wifi, and they are not a corporate behemoth manned by hipster assholes. There was a long line at the Safeway deli (next to the Starbucks). Standing in the deli I had time to Yelp and decide that the Primo Deli would actually get my business. It was okay, kind of dumpy and disorganized, but the sando was good.
The f—ing long road repair stoppage on 395 was still going on, and was still f–ing long. Twenty miles later I decided I would indeed go to the hot springs instead of home. So after a lovely meal at Los Dos Hermanos, here I am sitting in the pine needles and volcanic dust at the SHS camping area – “campground” is too elevated a term for our little new age slum :)
WHUFU page for: Sierra Hot Springs
Camping is just the edge of the forest behind the lodge. Next to a very pretty cow pasture at the edge of the huge Sierra Valley.
Nice lodge to hang out in, wifi and kitchen, free to campers.
The Hot Springs has also taken over the hotel in town. There is also a breakfast place and aMexican restaurant in town, both pricy but good!
tonight:
My usual spot has two RVs on it, so I am forced back into the trees. It's pretty nice here! Better shade, still got a really nice panoramic view of the valley.
Again had Dos Hermanos on the way in. That place has good food. This is Burning Man week, but things seem pretty calm here.
A feature of where I am parked over my usual spot across the road is that the dust raised by the endless stream of efficient little yuppie-mobiles driving past to the Meditation Pool blows onto them instead of me.
The check-in dude said it’s quiet today, but it sure seems pretty f—ing busy to me.
Had a nice moment tonight. About 10:30 I looked for my lovely orange towel and realized I left it hanging on a hook at the pools. After stewing for a while, I decided to simply walk back and retrieve it right now. Thus doing a thing I always think about doing, returning to the pools for a late night soak when they are finally not crowded.
Wednesday – Thursday
The greasy spoon at the big intersection in Sierraville has reopened as a more elevated greasy spoon. New tables and chairs – they REALLY needed that – and some fancy choices on the menu, to wit: venison for breakfast – really tasty, well seasoned and well cooked!
Now I’m back at the lodge enjoying the big, wide, pretty green valley from the porch as I always look forward to doing.
Driving back to the lodge I followed a slow-moving truck pulling six porta-potties. Turns out the big event that requires them is the end of Burning Man. Makes sense. Before B-Man (right now!), everyone is in a dither, getting their shade structures and art projects perfected, no time or inclination for a relaxing side trip. But after B-Man, the idea of soaking away a week’s worth of playa dust in the hot pool would be really, really compelling.
Thinking about this makes me glad to be here now instead of later. The Dome Pool (the super-hot one in the geodesic dome) was crowded enough these two days (7 (8?) people in that little tub!). I would hate to see if next week full of burnt out burners.
I follow my routine – hang out at the lodge till 1-2 hours till time to go, then hit the pools. This gets me on the road 4:45-ish and home 5-ish. Facebook tells me that there is good (very good!) jazz at the Se7en tonight, but I foolishly take a bit of a nap and sleep through it.
Thursday
Since I am home for only one day and two nights before heading back into the hinterlands, I will continue to blog this as if “home” is just another stop on my Nor Cal adventure.
WHUFU page for: home
nice kitchen, good heat and a/c, satellite tv, comfortable sofa and nice coffeehouse nearby. Why do I ever leave?
Home has a shower and many other amenities. A shocking personal development is that I am sitting in the living room without a compelling desire to turn the TV on. It would be cool if I can keep that up.
I do my usual thing, Java Jungle in the late AM, home for the afternoon. Five-ish walk down the river to check the progress in the new Virginia Street Bridge on my way to the Nevada Museum of Art for the First Thursday party. One beer at the Jungle bar, home by ten. Not an epic evening, but very pleasant.
Friday – Sunday
Java Jungle in the late AM again, home again. I call my buddy Jeff in Chester so he can talk me into going up there today for the weekend. I’m easy to convince, so I carry back down the van all the stuff I carried up to my condo two nights ago. By about 4 I am on the road to Butt Lake. Our campsite is spectacular!
WHUFU page for: Ponderosa Flat
Here three days, for a Labor Day party with friends.
Sites 7 and 9 are the PERFECT sites, roomy and shaded, and adjoining the lake. Everybody else has to walk around the edges of us to get to the lake.
Pretty excellent place to hang out for the three day weekend.
The only drag for me is that $25 is pretty steep for little ole me to hang out in the van. For me and six of my friends, whole different story!
tonight:
Here three days, for a Labor Day party with friends.
Sites 7 and 9 are the PERFECT sites, roomy and shaded, and adjoining the lake. Everybody else has to walk around the edges of us to get to the lake.
Pretty excellent place to hang out for the three day weekend.
The only drag for me is that $25 is pretty steep for little ole me to hang out in the van. For me and six of my friends, whole different story!
Hang out all Friday evening, up and at ’em in Chester by midday Saturday, more friends come. Mid afternoon we all paddle around the lake for a while in their kayaks for a while. Big party Saturday night! Sorry neighbors … On Sunday everybody is too hungover to even go into Chester and open the store, so we hang out all day. I miss my first Sunday Chronicle for a while – this means a trip to the Eureka Public Library copying machine.
Monday
Monday we decamp. We all go into Chester, Jeff to close the store for the season, the rest of us to grab some free food that is his leftover stock. I get a half of a pecan pie and loads of fruit – bananas, apricots, peaches, apples – awesome! Everyone but me goes back to their workaday lives, I do one more night on road, because I can.
Chester is very close to Lassen National Park, so I drive over the pass there on Route 89. I thought I might stop at the Summit Campgrounds high up in the mountains in the park, but when I got there I wasn’t feeling it. It’s very hot today, it’s pretty early in the afternoon, and I jsut didn’t think it would be all that pleasant. Hanging in the shade at Hat Creek seemed much more enticing. So I continued on down the north side of the mountain to good old Cave Campground.
WHUFU page for: Cave Campground
Smack on the way from Reno to Eureka, where CA 44 meets CA 89.
A geologically interesting valley. A giant, recent lava flow that feels like the recovering disaster area it is. The Lava Cave is a short walk across the highway.
The Forest Service keeps one campground open all winter, and it is this one.
A deep blanket of pine needles makes it quiet except for the occasional truck on 89.
First time I've been here in season, so first time I've stayed in the Big Boys Loop. It's always been closed for the winter.
So this is the first time I've experienced the bathrooms - they are nice! Porcelain sinks, actual knobs for the water - old school.
A couple of areas are still taped off for storm damage, but most of it is open, and surprisingly crowded for the first day of off-season.
This is Monday, effing night, don't you people have to be at work somewhere tomorrow?
Now that it is dark, I find that each bathroom has a super bright light, which is a problem if you value the dark like I do and happen to have pointed yourself in the wrong direction.
It’s still very hot here, and much more crowded than I expected, so I did not get a really shady spot. I thought that after Labor Day the place would be deserted, but not so. There were quite a few folks that were staying one more day. Around 5:30 it’s started cooling off and getting civilized.
I love Hat Creek. The people in my campground tonight I do not love nearly as much. There is a large ground of partying old dudes a few sites away. They seem like nice fellows, if a little loud. I guess they are my karmic payback for our group being the loud assholes the last three days, But there were two different sets of folks that seemed gloweringly angry for no good reason. Weird vibe. Maybe they were cranky about having to go back to work tomorrow.
Tuesday
The angry people were gone when I got up – good riddance. I communed with Hat Creek till about noon, then took the familiar road to Susanville and then home.