A Trip Story in Miniature
or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Weekend
(Note: this story has fewer pictures than the others, because I was busy doing other things and we didn't have much time. Those who like pictures will therefore find less to like in this story. Those who dislike my pictures of "random hills" will no doubt welcome this change.)
If you recall from our last exciting adventure, two of my cousins were absent: Scott was sick, and Ethan was at home in Oregon. We knew that this situation would have to be remedied when Ethan came down during the summer. Timing, however, was still difficult. Ethan was staying with the Shaver cousins (Scott, Mark, and Matt) for a while, and they were doing stuff, and when Ethan was staying with us, we were doing stuff. It really came down to the wire where we had less than a week with Ethan still down. So I called Mark on Friday.
"Mark," I said, "thou knowest how shorte our span on this Earth doth run. We merry few must needs embarke on a progress, forsooth!"
"Sup, G," he replied, "yalls gonna have to get movin, know what I'm sayin, yo?"
"wH3n r W3 g01Ng t0 g0 0N a tR1p, d00Dz? w3 d0nt h4v3 m|_|ch TiM3."
"You old veck, you. We must viddy what can be done, oh my brothers. Would not tomorrow be very nice?"
"Hmm," I said, with tremendous gravity. This did not strike me as a very good idea. For one thing, Dave and I had a meeting the next day that would last until about 10:30. We would be leaving very late, and in June, which is not the way to avoid the heat. Also, it would be a Saturday, and all the tourists would be out (we, of course, are not "tourists"; we are "adventurers"). But, after discussing the matter, we determined that Saturday was our only option. That night, Dave and I went snack shopping. We bought a bunch of strange candy bars, intending to have a candy bar tasting contest.
The next day, we went to our meeting. First good stroke: the meeting got out early! We quickly called the cousins and told them that we were done. About half an hour later, they arrived at our house.
"OK, " I said, "are we all ready to go? We don't want to wait for it to get hot."
"Well, we're not quite ready," said Ethan. "I forgot to charge up the video camera. The batteries are dead."
"WHAT! Ethan! This happened last year!"
So we went inside to see how quickly or slowly the camera batteries could charge up. The camera has a little indicator on it with five lights, telling you how "full" the batteries are. Zero lights means no batteries, five lights means full batteries. It also has a little display that tells you how many minutes of filming you would have with the current charge.
We plugged in the camera. The first of the five lights began to blink, while the recording time display showed "--:--:--".
The light blinked. We stared at the display as the minutes ticked by. Nothing changed.
"I'm going to watch Lord of the Rings," said Mark.
We started to watch the movie. Five minutes passed, then ten. Finally, the recording time display showed a number! "00:02:00" Two minutes of recording time. We did some quick math; "If it takes ten minutes to get two minutes of recording time, and we need at least twenty minutes, then we'll have to wait... an hour and a half. Gosh."
We waited a little longer. The recording time increased, very slowly. "00:07:00" ... "00:12:00" ... "00:14:00". Finally, we decided to leave at noon, regardless of how much time was in the camera. A second good stroke! At five minutes to noon, the display jumped to "00:27:00", then, suddenly, it jumped to "03:00:00" while all five lights were lit! Full batteries! Elated, we piled into the car and sped off in a cloud of dust.
I had decided to try something a little different. We were going up into the hills to the East, but into the Sequoia National Forest, rather than Sierra. (All our previous adventures at Pine Flat had been in Sierra NF.) This is a bit harder to do, because it's more "popular", and it's harder to find places to explore. You can't just pull off to the side of Highway 180, after all. I had a plan, however. We would drive until we got into the National Forest, then we would take the first road off 180 that led into the bush. As it happened, this road (Millwood Rd., I think) is where we would have ended up if we had kept driving this this adventure. The road that follows the Kings river on the south side turns south, away from the river, and eventually gets down to 180.
We drove. We passed through Squaw Valley (not the skiing place), and began the climb. Oak gave way to Pine. We passed Snowline Lodge. The turnoff we were looking for was right after this. There's a sign that says, "Armenian Church Camp, Delilah Fire Lookout". We pulled off on the right side, waited for traffic to clear, and then pulled left across into the wilderness.
We weren't actually there, yet. You have to find a good spot. So we kept driving. Millwood is a rather narrow, windy, but paved road. We passed a fork in the road; I think we went left. I think we passed another fork, going right this time, with the road turning to dirt. At any rate, we didn't end up at the Armenian Church Camp (we saw it from a distance; they have a pond). We came to something like a plateau. The road split again; part headed up, on top of the plateau. The other part went down, over and around the edge. (There was another road that was gated off and which looked very rough.) We decided to stop here and walk down the lower fork to see what we could see.
Here's a view from the road, looking north. In the distance, you can actually see the Patterson Bluffs, mentioned in a previous story. I think we were at a higher elevation than the Pine Flat region, as the land noticeably slopes down in that direction.
Here's a zoomed-in view. Off to the left, outside the frame, in the distance at the end of a ridgeline is the Delilah Fire Lookout.
We walked down the road. The trees below us, off the road were burned. We would occasionally try to throw gravel from the road at trees. We were trying to miss. We found a culvert running under the road. Although it was much smaller than the last culvert we encountered, Dave still decided to crawl through it. We never miss an opportunity to get spiders in our hair. Where the culvert opened on the other side of the road, we found a large "patch" of wild raspberries. We ate some, although not many were ripe. (We also found huckleberries which are inedible unless you have a way to clean off the spines.) Mark and I walked ahead. Looking down into the valley below, we could see the road curving around a flat meadow with some large rocks in it. (Good spots always have large rocks for climbing.) We told everyone else that this looked like a good spot.
"We should go back and get the car and drive down there," I said.
"Why don't you go back and get the car and pick us up? That way we won't have to walk all the way back up there." Lazy bums.
Scott and I started walking back up the road. We passed the huckleberries. We passed the wild raspberries and the culvert. We passed the burned trees. After much walking, we reached the car. We decided to rest a bit and eat some snacks.
"They can wait," we said.
We finished our snacks, fired up the car, and drove down the road. We picked up the rest of the whiners, and followed the road down to the meadow.
We parked the car off the road and got out to explore. This was indeed a Good Spot. It had a small creek, nearly dry by this time of year, lined with wild roses. It had a good view of the surrounding hills. It had large boulders, piled around in crazy shapes. And it had a few clusters of trees for shade.
Here's a picture. Unfortunately, it doesn't show any of the good features of our Spot. The creek was over in the distance on the left, where that greenery is in the picture.
Here's another view, in the opposite direction. You can see our car, with the road behind it. Not visible is the fence blocking off the other side of the road. The figure on the left is my brother, Dave, wearing a spotted kimono. On the right is my cousin Matt, wearing a graduation gown.
Here's the final picture, closer to the creek. The creek is the line of green behind the trees.
We stayed here, and filmed some more of "The 17-and-a-half Really Tall Things." Only after we stopped did we notice all the poison oak. This is why you should wear pants. Our movie is still unfinished, with the massive Helm's Deep battle yet to be filmed.
I attempted to convince the cousins to try the candy bars we bought. They refused. Some had allergies to nuts. Eventually, I was reduced to offering them money to try the candy. None of the weird candy bars turned out to be good, and some were downright awful. So much for discovering a new and rare gem of flavor. Give me the old standbys: Reese's FastBreaks, and Butterfingers.
It never did get hot. This was the third good stroke. Maybe we just got lucky with the weather, or maybe it was because we were at a higher elevation.
I wish I had more pictures, but I don't. I wish we had had more time to explore (in addition to filming) but we started late, and had to go home as soon as we finished. I also wish we had visited this place in the spring, when all the little creeks are running at full steam. Still, considering how bad I expected things to be, this trip was a very pleasant surprise. Maybe next year...
(To be continued in our next issue! Maybe! Unless I find a better place to visit! Or something else happens!)