Day 5 - Whales, Strings and The Most Beautiful Waterfall Ever

The day started out with one of Kolton's guitar strings breaking. Dang it!  We have thoroughly enjoyed him serenading us by firelight, so leaving this problem unresolved for the rest of the trip made us sad.   Kirk Creek Campground is pretty remote and we knew the best shot of getting new strings was in Carmel or Monterey.  So, back onto Highway 1, we went.

We were able to find a place that could replace his strings in Monterey.  (Thanks Kurt Heisig Music!) We dropped off his guitar and went to get something to eat in Cannery Row.  We briefly thought of going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but the hubster hates zoos and aquariums.  Once in a while, he will go to appease me, but since we had already been to the aquarium a few years back, it wasn't worth the appeasement for him. He's learned to pick his battles. (On a side note - while I love Monterey Bay Aquarium, my favorite is the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park).

We grabbed some more ice (couldn't get enough of that stuff), a new camp chair (to replace the one that biffed it), and other yummy stuff that makes camping worth it and headed back down Highway 1.  Just outside of Carmel, we notice a few people with their cameras pointed to the ocean. We figured that the ocean itself couldn't elicit that much excitement. Sure enough, there was a pod of whales just off the coast.  YAY! Bucket list item checked!

Next stop was Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.  If you think that there are a lot of things named 'Pfeiffer' around here - you would be right.  It was a little tricky for us newbies to get things straight but we got there in the end.  That has to be one of the most gorgeous places I've been.  Wow!

Kolton reading while overlooking the ocean.

Love this picture...Aren't they cute?

I have to say that I look reasonably decent for several days of camping

If that wasn't enough loveliness, we went to watch the sunset at Sand Dollar Beach, just south of Kirk Creek.  It was a peaceful beach, with hardly anyone there.  We took our books and snacks and just read, played in the water and watched the surfers.  The trail down to the beach was fine but with a lot of steps - 99, I think.

stairs down to Sand Dollar Beach

There was one lone seal beached on the sand.  I don't know enough about seals to know if he was alright or not. He was breathing - so at least he had that going for him.  One of the surfers came over and petted him and didn't look too concerned, so I chose to think that he was just enjoying the sun.

\

We had read about the raccoons at Kirk Creek Campground but we hadn't had any problems.  Until the third night, that is. We were sitting around the campfire, listening to Kolton play on his brand new strings, when we heard rustling in our food container.  We hadn't put it away because we had just finished dinner.  Thinking it was one of the squirrels that had been wandering around, we rushed over there to scare it away.  Nope,  No squirrel.  One great big FAT raccoon.  Obviously, our food container wasn't the only one he had been raiding.  He grabbed a bag of Vege Straws and high tailed it to the poison oak.  He was no dummy, he knew we wouldn't come into the poison oak to get him.

Note: poison oak was fairly rampant, but the campground had cleared it fairly well around the campsites.  My kids are older, though.  I would be a little worried if I had small kids.

poison oak 

He sat back and chowed down on our Vege Straws.  If he could have, he would have given us the middle finger, as well.  We put our remaining food back into the trailer, so he was out of luck for anything else.  So, he, then, wandered over to our neighbors where he stole their entire bag of marshmellows.  They had a huge Great Dane over there with them, but apparently, that was no deterrent.  We watched as the raccoon streaked across our campsite with our neighbor screaming after him. The raccoons were pretty brazen.  Once they figured out that we had food hidden somewhere, they (three of them) just kept wandering around. It unnerved us (especially Kolton, who was sleeping in a tent) but they didn't try anything else for the rest of the night.  Except chew the top of our water container.  All those snacks gave them the thirst, I guess.

Amazing, right? Perfection!

Day 4 - Big Sur and Beyond

What a view to greet me in the morning.  It was Heaven.  Big cleansing sigh.

 Taken while lying in my bed inside the Tiny Turquoise Trailer

We drove into Big Sur to have breakfast at the yummy Big Sur Bakery.  Just so you know...it isn't cheap. But, it was a lovely experience.

Afterwards, we journeyed to Point Lobos.  We had been to Monterey and Carmel before, but we had never journeyed to Point Lobos.  We parked along Highway 1 and walked in because we are cheap like that.  There was lots to see and it was nice to get out and walk after being cooped up in the car for so many days.  The weather was perfect, which I know is a crap shoot along the coast, but we were really lucky.  There are several nice hiking trails which take you right along the coastline.

After lunch, we went to the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.  We hiked the Valley View Trail to the Pfeiffer Falls.  Being August, it was a little more than a trickle, but, still, it was a nice hike through some of the redwoods. Very pretty.  The hike itself wasn't very hard but it was challenging in a few spots.

 Pfeiffer Beach. Sigh...  It was our next stop.  It is a bit tricky to get to.  We had a rough idea but, then, just ended up asking someone that was working at the Pfeiffer State Park gift shop.  It is a couple of miles south of Big Sur, turning down a narrow winding road on the right (if you are headed south).  There are no signs, so you need to pay attention.  After you drive for a couple of miles, you will get to a parking lot where you get the privilege of paying $10 cash.  It wasn't crowded at all on the day we went, but it was during the week, so maybe that had something to do with it.  I've heard that it is 'one car in/one car out' which would make for a long wait if it would have been busier.

So beautiful and relaxing!  We just sat back and soaked it all in. Viewing the sunset there was an amazing and memorable experience. Sigh....

 It's a dog friendly beach and it was so fun to watch the dogs play

Day 3 - Lovely Kirk Creek Campground

Up and outta there...
We didn't suppress the urge to be quiet while loading up. I know. We are shameless. We, however, didn't blast our horn like I wanted to.  Rick is the only one who didn't hear the nighttime entertainment, so he still had scruples. Kolton and I compared notes.  Yes, we both did indeed hear our neighbors singing "Piano Man".  At 2:00 am.  Awesome.

We stopped in Truckee to buy stuff.  One thing about having a vintage trailer with vintage appliances - the ice in the icebox will quickly melt, so planning on long term refrigeration is fruitless.  I liked Truckee and would have liked to hang around a bit longer but we had another long haul in front of us so on we went.

We listened to the podcast of "Things You Should Know" about the Donner Party while we were ascending and descending Donner's Summit.  Made us wish that we weren't eating breakfast in the car. Yuck.  My brother used to tell me, when I was like 11 or 12, that I had Donner Party Legs.  This meant that the Donner Party could have lived weeks off of my legs.  Apparently, I didn't have bird legs like he did.  I remembered all of this while listening to the podcast.  It just made me mad at him all over again. Stupidhead.  It's this type of thing that makes me never want to return his tools...

We were a bit worried about descending Donners Summit.  Our Tiny Turquoise Trailer doesn't have any trailer brakes, but our sweet little Murano was great and we didn't have any problems. Another whew!

The journey through California and down the coast was uneventful but busy and long. Finally.. Finally...FINALLY!  we started down Highway 1. That was terrifying.  I had the unfortunate position to be on the sheer drop off side.  In my defense, it was the pulling of the trailer that made me nervous.  That and the fact that the hubby was tired and I was worried about him.

Bixby Bridge

 The 'not too scary' part of Highway 1

Oh, but the gloriousity that awaited our arrival!

This pic is shot from our picnic table.  What an amazing view.

Amazing is not going to cut it...it was magnificent.  Our campsite was (in my humble opinion) the best one in the campground.  There, actually, wasn't a bad campsite but ours was fantastic...well worth the anxiety it took to get it.

So, big sigh of relief!  We made it and now we can settle in for a few wonderful, beautiful days on the California coast.

Side note: Kirk Creek has no water. None. So, bring your own or you will have a very sad and expensive day. We freeze jugs of water to use in our icebox.  You can use that as drinking water as they melt.  We also use a 3 gallon spillproof jug as a backup.  Bathrooms and overall campground were really clean.

See the speck of blue?  That is our trailer and tent!

The Camping Gods

I've been gone for a while.  Actually, like, a year and a half. Trying to catch this blog completely up to date sounds like torture and, since I am not a masochist, I am just going to leap ahead and blog about what I really want to blog about...OUR WONDERFUL, EPIC, COMPLETELY INSANE ADVENTURE!

So, after a few experimental trips (I'll blog about those later-don't worry!), we decided that it was time to put our big kid panties on and take this tiny turquoise trailer on a real road trip.  We had read amazing things about the Kirk Creek Campground in Big Sur, California, so that's where we set our sights.  Now, be warned, trying to get a campsite in Kirk Creek takes major planning.    Recreation.gov is pure unadulterated madness.  Only seriously insane people hope for these much coveted campsites.  I qualified for the being insane part, so I sat anxiously huddled over my cell phone on February 3rd, hoping for an August 3rd campsite.  I'm not going to tell you exactly how you score these campsites (because I have my own tricks and, honestly, I might be up against YOU for my next campsite), all I am going to say is have an account and a good wifi connection, wait for the witching hour when the sites go online and pray to the Camping Gods that they will smile on you.  I scored my dream site at Kirk Creek - #17 - and when  I went back (less than two minutes later) to see if any sites were still available...there wasn't any.  All gone! So, at least I had the Camping Gods smiling down on me for that one minute of my life. Whew!

Luckily, I got to do that several more times for each of the campgrounds that we stayed in.  Insane. That's what it is. It gave me the shakes for a week.

Our itinerary was to spend: (starting in Utah, because that's where we live, ya'll) one night in Elko, Nevada; one night in Truckee, California; three nights in Big Sur; one night in the Sierra Nevadas; two nights in Yosemite; and one night on the return trip through Nevada.

Ambitious.  I was more than slightly worried to take this little 50 year old trailer on such a extensive trip.  The hubster was hoping that we wouldn't come back hauling a pile of kindling that used to be my lovely trailer.  He is such a naysayer...but I was worried about the same thing.  I just wouldn't say it out loud.  Saying it out loud sounds like inviting the Camping Gods to have a good belly laugh at my expense.

Oh yeah, and I repainted the bottom.  This was just a better color.