A Sierra Nevada Summer

After finishing biking around Japan with Claire back in May, we started our planning for what adventure could come next. Working with teacher time makes it often pretty simple to plan trips together, and the grandest of all for the teaching profession is the long summer break of almost two months. For this year, I got five weeks of Claire’s time, four of which we used to string together an American camping road trip together. The end result was an epic journey into the Sierra Nevada, a very belated to visit region for me, and an epic natural journey for us to strive through.

We came up with the idea of the road trip together based on Claire’s moderately convoluted travel plans after scratching some ideas like venturing into Europe, bicycling California or visiting Japan in Summer. We ended up with her visiting me for a short jaunt in New York while I was catching up with old friends, splitting up there between the UK for her to see family and back home to Tucson for me, with her to rejoin me again in Tucson. We’d then trip out from there and she’d fly home to Tokyo from LAX. We figured out our general itinerary within that limit day to day. The multiple flights, my locking in my return travel from New York early, made this the timing we had to work with each other. Once your bounds are understood though, you can really fill your days to their maximums.

Before we embarked, we spent a couple days in the Tucson summer. People so rarely visit my adopted home in summer, understandably as “it be hot”, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its unique gems. I was proud, or ‘chuffed’ to borrow British slang, just driving Claire around, who hadn’t spent much time in the desert, and having her gleefully taking in the mountains and cacti, especially our storied Saguaros. We drove to the top of Mount Lemmon so she could experience the thirty degree difference in temperature between valley and summit, and we concluded our tour with a stop at the Campbell Ave bridge in town where migratory Mexican free-tailed bats live in summer over the Rillito River and emerge reliably every sunset in a glorious torrent. We didn’t get stormed on due to the chaotic nature of the monsoon, but while we were atop the peak, it rained below, so we returned to curiously wet streets. She’ll return again in winter to a more relaxed and ideal climate for all outdoor activity.

Onto the journey!

We had an exciting deadline to make at the start of the trip that put us on rails for the first week. My dear friends, the Hartmans, fellow adventuring teachers from the Appalachian Trail, were out with their kids on their annual summer road trip and had made reservations in Yosemite National Park’s fiercely contested campgrounds. I discovered this while staying with them back in May as I ventured along the east coast, and was welcomed to join them in summer; I considered this a coup as these campgrounds require reservation when they go on the market six months in advance. From when Claire arrived we’d have 3 days to make it for their schedule. With stop offs to see old friends in Phoenix, Palm Springs and Riverside, it was two full days of driving, but a successful journey.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the trip started with car issues. My Hyundai Veloster threw a rod in its engine back in February and I only just got it back from a full engine repair on Hyundai’s dime, as a goodwill effort on the car manufacturer’s part after several class-actions involving the vehicle. Lucky me, but it took almost five months to get the vehicle back, and then some sort of issue with misfiring was occurring while we were westbound. A stop at a second dealership in Palm Springs, where I thought I’d get some sort of warranty care on it, was near useless, they just charged me an armload to clear the code, say it was mostly safe to drive and send me on my way. Predictably, it immediately continued misfiring. Thankfully, it was a minor headache and I’d fix it a couple weeks later at a local mechanic, after buying my own replacement ignition coil and spark plug. I understand better the skepticism about involving dealerships in car repairs now, but it was a “hail mary” pass that delivered having the engine replaced at little cost to me for sure.

We arrived at Yosemite at dusk after hauling ass on the highways through and north of LA for a day. Californians interpret speed limits pretty liberally, so the driving was wild, as I just follow the ‘when in Rome’ approach in life. Anyway, Yosemite is so popular these days that they quota day use during the summer, so it was ideal to be arriving late as we hadn’t procured one. The fading light was just enough to get the tent setup at the Hartmans’ spot with a view of Half Dome’s glow, and then we got to work on cooking the first of many dinners using my friend Wendy’s camping stove she loaned me for the trip (along with a spare backpack for Claire!). After all that work, with the Hartmans kids buzzing around us, curious about Claire and our setup, we spent the first of many nights appreciating the spectacle of truly starry night skies above.

Our Yosemite activities began the next morning with a hike up to a viewpoint of Vernal Falls with the Hartmans. This trail coincides with the John Muir Trail briefly, a highly sought after backpacking trail that overlaps with the Pacific Crest for most of its route outside the park. A simple uphill trek with the kids late in the morning, unfortunately gave me the rude reminder of hiking national park trails at peak times, as it was an absolute circus. We parted ways at the viewpoint to go up the Mist Trail, aptly named for the waterfall spray that cools one hiking up. I got a lesson in patience as altitude caught up with Claire here, and the difficulty of the hike scaled a bit higher than expected with versus what we started with the kids earlier. On the way back, as the afternoon waned and after the first of many arctic dips up top, we found a modicum of peace on the quieter return trails and marveled at the comparative serenity at the once busy origin of the trail. For those venturing into the premier hikes of our parks during peak season, I really recommended to start early or very late, to avoid those throngs.

Our next and last day in Yosemite Valley, we strove for a more ambitious hike up Yosemite Falls. I feared the worst again, but the prohibitive difficulty of ascending 3,000 feet was enough to ward off crowds. Yosemite Falls is actually North America’s tallest waterfall, but most are content to view it from the valley floor. The trail here was long and hot on a cloudless day, but fortunately offered decent tree cover for most the length. Up top, we had another dip in the comparatively slow flowing inlet to the falls, Yosemite Creek. The water was less harshly cold here as it flows for quite a long time up on the high Sierra plateaus before this massive drop to the valley. We took all day for this hike, but felt pretty good together accomplishing it and scoring great panoramic views from on high.

The next day we broke camp after the Hartmans, swimming in the frosty Merced River that drops out of Vernal Falls and bisects the campground in the morning before departure. River swims can suffice in lieu of showers on adventure as long as you’ve got something clean to change into! We grouped up again in Tuolomne Meadows, after driving almost two hours through the park’s thru road. Bucolic views awaited us from a spot that again is storied in PCT for resupply and rest. Readers and friends may remember I attempted this long trail in 2021 from Canada to Mexico before fires interrupted me, so this trip to the Sierras was a sort of deliverance for me to finally see these mountains. We made camp that evening on the east side of the park at a simple National Forest campground.

Our final day together was a drive to see some of the sights along the east Sierras. Mono Lake, with its limestone tufa formations, and jumbling piles of volcanic pumice, was where we exited, gazed and strode upon most intensely. I floated in its intensely salty, alkaline waters which rival the famed Dead Sea, though it comes with a chemical coating that encourages an immediate rinse. We also did a loop of the aptly named June Lake, though accessing the beach was a pain. Our time closed at Benson Hot Springs near the Nevada border, with an American onsen experience.

The Hartmans plan well, with a little bit of improvisation allowed too, and it was great, as always, to align with them. Nearly yearly, I align with them while someone’s on a trip, so this is far from the first story with them in it. They are truly inspiring adventurers to me, figuring out a cross-country road trip with their young family annually. I hope they pull off their full family Appalachian Trail dreams soon!

We split up in Benson, as they drove east into Nevada and we went south to Bishop and the Inyo National Forest. After working on figuring out my car repairs, we did some grocery and gear shopping (the thrift scene in Bishop is real) and, of course, laundry. On adventure, it’s always important to get good use out of any town. Lastly, we got wilderness permits and ventured into the mountains for Claire’s first backpacking trip!

That trip involved two nights trekking over Bishop Pass into an area of Kings Canyon National Park known as Dusy Basin. We saw our only day of rain this trip on the venture up, hiding under a boulder for a bit before our butts were sore, then pressing on during a lull only to face a biting rain at 12,000 feet on the pass. Claire would say here, “Shouganai!”, which is a Japanese colloquialism which literally means “there is no ginger”, but is an analogue of “so be it”. I was sure she was freezing hiking up in shorts, but she kept up a pretty brave face. The rain let up soon after reaching the pass, and we had clear skies the rest of the way.

The actual hike was quite scenic, worthy of the demands of a permit, with walks by glacial lakes, flowery meadows, and jagged peak views. On our second day, we did a trek down the other side of the pass to touch briefly upon the PCT again, with camp left setup, so we were able to trek fairly lightly. Let’s say I ‘overly optimized’ our food rations, so we had some minor panic if we were going to finish hungry, fortunately Claire’s big bag of imported Aldi granola got us back alive.

Returning to Bishop, we got the car fixed, finally. That left us in good shape to venture into Death Valley, not the sort of place you want to enter with any sort of warning lights. Before our trip there, we’d drive up into the Bristlecone Ancient Pine Forest, this time to Bishop’s east. There, we’d find the world’s oldest trees! It’s incredible that some of these ancients have existed for thousands of years, and are just another amazing specimen of biodiversity in the mountains and deserts we’d see this month. The forest exists here on these mountains as the rain shadow effect from the Sierras leaves the mountains nearly uninhabitable, but for the hardiest survivors and specialists.

We broke camp early (by our standards) the next morning to get down into and through Death Valley as quickly as possible, arriving at about 8 AM. The hottest surface temperatures on Earth are generally recorded here, so no need to linger around into the afternoon, if possible. Visiting here was Claire’s idea more due to the enduring mystique such an ominously named place holds internationally, but I won’t deny it was something I was curious to see, and waiting around until ideal winter temperatures isn’t always feasible. Temperatures crept up to 120 by the time we were leaving, but we did get to traipse across its sand dunes before the heat soared, and then upon Badwater’s salt flats, which sit at the lowest elevation in the US, during high noon just to add a little stimulation to our lives.

Leaving Death Valley, and entering Nevada, we got a little weirder flavor to our trip. That started with stopping at the “Area 51 Alien Center” for (discount) gas, seeing gambling dens at grocery stores, or bizarre art projects, like the International Car Forest, which featured tastefully displayed vehicle wrecks, in Goldfield, NV. I had driven down this corridor in 2020, so I was familiar with what reprieves from the road awaited us, notably the Alkali Flats Hot Spring, which was a free natural spring, configured with a primitive tub for humans and a mud pit for wild animals to recharge at that one can spy from a safe distance.

Claire finally worked up the will to try driving after leaving Alkali Flats, where we had hours of empty roads taking the back way up to Lake Tahoe. I got a lesson in patience, something I’m just not too good at. It was her first time driving in 12 years; I remember the fear that settled in me after I took nearly the same length of time off the road in my NYC era. I wound up overcoming it by necessity when I settled on driving cross-country to do my move to Arizona five years ago. After gaining a bit of confidence, we got up to speed and I got some help for the long days with quieter roads. Claire, for good reason, wouldn’t touch the manic driving near Los Angeles that I outlined earlier though.

Our next stop was Lake Tahoe, this stop more of my idea, as our itinerary wove into an S-shaped loop. Tahoe, I guess I chose because it’s got a cool vibe, and is one of our grandest lakes after our midwestern quintet. I visited it in my infancy, I think, and wanted to see it for myself. Well, driving up to see it was a worthy spectacle, not just for the gorgeous water and mountain rim views, but again because of the mass of humanity, and resort-style prices and offerings that surrounded this beacon of nature. We still managed to scrounge free camping and beach access for our two days here, which did include an overly disappointing stop in at its nude beach. Picked partly for the novelty and partly for the hopes of avoiding crowds, sounds and children, it still let us down because only a fraction of the people, not including us, were unclothed. An approaching forest fire smoke near Chico initially provoked my anxiety before it settled into ‘latent campfire smell’ and didn’t worsen.

After Tahoe, we had only one stop left before our stay in Los Angeles, which were a couple nights at the Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Parks, colloquially known as SEKI. This time it was the biggest trees in the world, the giant sequoias, that tower mightily hundreds of feet into the air we came to witness. This area also gets to be a high traffic mad-house, but our timing had us see the General Grant tree at sunset with few other observers, and then find camping in the dark, thankfully. Our second day in the park was a one night backpack only, as Claire made plans to see an old friend in LA with limited time available. The park gets fairly quiet away from the namesake trees. so it was a good journey to Emerald Lake, where I faced my irrational fear of dark waters to swim across it in the late afternoon after we secured camp. We setup ‘cowboy’ this time, no shelter, so we could stargaze on the eve of the Perseid Meteor Shower. I was distracted reading NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, and fell asleep quickly, but Claire who is also a bit of an insomniac told me she saw some seven shooting stars.

Our stay in Los Angeles was using a killer app Claire uncovered, HomeExchange that got us a nice homestay in Santa Monica. She’s leveraged it both there and in NYC, putting her home up on the exchange in Tokyo, and getting us stays at a pretty great rate. Although we espouse and love thrifty living, LA was our time to ball on delicious vegan food. Pizza, cannolis and fine dining were on the menu, with a special highlight for Claire’s first dig-in of Ethiopian fare at Berbere.

We saw some dear friends, putzed around on the beach, and leveraged LA’s anemic transit system as best we could as I needed a break driving. It was a relaxing finale to the trip before I’d drop Claire off for a redeye flight home from LAX, and then venture off myself eastwards back to Tucson alone. It wound up being a pretty epic trip together, fortunately my experience doing this once before paid dividends to make my simple car/tenting setup work with a willing partner and a tight budget. Farewells were pretty basic, as we’d be catching up again in less than a month back in Japan for a long period of domestic vibes in Tokyo.

This trip turned out to be a big success. Obviously, we saw a lot of wonderful stuff, but Claire put a lot of effort to make it out here and I was happy fate arranged itself that I was able to do a decent job shepherding us around for a new itinerary through nature. My experience doing this once solo made paid off. At least for my travel plans, I’ve done well this year in terms of using my time wisely. The next challenge is to figure out where I go from here, both in Japan and back in Arizona. Can I maximize this free time I still have to reach grand, new heights in metaphor as easily as I can in the physical realm?