Category Archives: family camping

Camping With Dane

Monday morning, Dane and I and our faithful Vizsla Penny launched for the long trip to Sequoia National Park.

Several months ago I went online to look for possibilities for campsites and wanted the mountains because I feared the temperatures elsewhere. I grabbed the only site available out of several hundred and as it turned out, it was probably the best campsite there.

The trip up was tough. We had to go through LA on I-5 (the five) and there were several serious backups. I’m not sure if it helps or not to have Google Maps tell you that “there’s a 25 minute delay ahead of you in five miles. You are on the fastest route.”

The temperatures were about 108 on the steep climbs north of LA and I watched the temperature gauge get higher and higher. Then I took a shortcut which looked good on the map but was as twisty and narrow a road I’ve seen. We entered King’s National Park and drove about an hour to our campground in Sequoia. Here’s Dane and Penny just below our site.

The campground was full with nearly every site having a campfire. The daytime temperature was in the low eighties -at 6700′ – and the nighttime temps were in the forties.

The first morning I was up early to walk the dog and met this young buck, whose antlers were in velvet, about 20 feet from the van. (I saw him and his brother/cousin each morning.)

One of the problems with National Parks is that they are not dog-friendly. You can not take them on any trails. I knew this but it’s still a pain. We took a drive down to the big redwoods Tuesday morning. Left Penny in the rig with hopes she’d not tear it up, and walked with dozens of others down to see the General Sherman tree – the largest tree by volume in the world. Going down was easy but still it was nice to rest.

Here is Dane in front of the tree and a shot of one of the many other stately trees.

The following day, we drove about a half hour over to the national forest where dogs are allowed. We cloned up an old logging trail where only elk and horse prints were visible, bushwhacked up to a mountaintop, and Dane tried, without success, to find a cell signal.

He took this photo of Penny and me before we headed back toward the van, with a slight pause for getting “unlost.”

The trip back Thursday was brutal. There was more traffic (getting a jump on the long weekend) and four or five major backups that went for five or ten miles at a time. Too many people for the 8 lane roads – and the thrill of having young Marines on motorcycles threading there way between the slow-moving cars and trucks, dodging wide mirrors, driving way too fast.

The outing was great. We got some exercise, ate well, slept well, and only got lost in the woods for about ten minutes. The Airstream worked well – I used the solar a few times to supplement the batteries, and Wednesday for lunch, we ordered pizza from the campground store. Now that is glamping.

Easter Weekend at a Texas State Park

*Things started to change around Thursday as the vacant sites on our tree-lined park road started to fill up and the voices, energy, and comradarie of Hispanic families brought a new vitality to the neighborhood. Pickups full of camping gear, kayaks, bikes, and coolers rolled in and soon we could hear salsa music and the yells of bike-riding kids.

I know that Texas State Parks promote holiday use of their campgrounds but we have never been here before on Easter. A park friend of mine told me, "It’s especially big in areas with lots of Hispanic families – Laredo gets more than any." A Falcon park staffer told me that they get thousands and it can be an hour wait just getting into the park.

Lots of families tent camp and cluster in family/friend groups wherever there is room.

I see lots of chunky kids but few are looking at electronics: soccer games in the road, lots of volleyball practice, tree-climbing, bike riding with very little "organized (or monitored) by adults. Adults, with exceptions, tend to relax and let the kids romp.

Speaking of romping, I was out on a bird walk this morning when suddenly this girl comes racing down the path followed by a boy on a bike and a portly dad biking along. "Can’t keep up with her," he said as he rode by. I didn’t think about it until a few minutes later, when the same girl came flying by on the oyster shell trail followed by her family cyclists. Now, I was impressed. Later, back on the main park road, up they came and she stopped, bent over for a moment to recover, and began walking. I immediately asked her whether she ran in school, complimenting her as her dad answered for her.

He told me that she runs for a club, had just broken a world record, and come in second in a national race. I got her name, wished her well, and told them that I would follow her successes down the road. And off she jogged. It was a chance encounter with a young woman who may, some day, be an Olympian. Here’s part of a writeup in February by Rachel Cole for a Corpus Christi TV station:

*CORPUS CHRISTI –
Corpus Christi is the home of a brand new world record holder. Ciara Martinez, 12, is proud to have crushed the standing record in a 15K race.

Her coach, Edward Ortiz with Elite Feet of Corpus Christi says, 15K is 9.3 miles and she did it in an hour and six minutes, just about a seven minute mile pace.

Martinez set the new world record over the weekend in Dallas. Her time clocked in at four minutes faster than the previous record.

"We went to go race the 5K that I’ve been training for 6 months to break the world record, I came up short but I got first overall out of like 4-thousand women," she said….

This campground will be a ghost town Sunday night as all the local visitors return home. It will be nice to have some peace and quiet just before we head out – but we’ll miss the chaos of kids at play. It is a reminder of our grandkids and how much we miss them. Feliz Pascua.