We slept OK and Daisy seemed more energetic this morning, although she didn’t eat all of her breakfast. We had a couple scones from the Forestville bakery for breakfast: one taco and one vanilla malt. They were both good, although the taco one fell into the “weird but good” category.
We packed and cleaned and said our farewells to Denise and her parents, who sent us with a bunch of food. We got on the road at 10:30.
We stopped at Andy’s Market, a high-end produce and grocery that Denise’s father suggested Julie would like. It had a lot of neat stuff, but expensive prices. Julie got us a Yerba Mate drink and some sparkling water for the drive.
The rest of the drive was mostly hot, windy, and a lot of traffic. Once we reached the central valley it had a blanket of dust and maybe smog, but with the wind as it was, it was probably mostly dust. We should have stopped in a larger town as we spent some time wandering around the small town of Earlimart trying to find a grocery store. We needed to pick up a few things because our campground in the Sierras would be remote.
We arrived at the Redwood Meadows Campground around six. We saw as we got closer that a lot of the surrounding woods had burned recently. We thought Daisy would be hungry for dinner but unfortunately it seemed like she was back to having digestive problems. We were hungry and we quickly put together some veggie burgers and some vegetable dip. We opened a Moshin 2013 Merlot to go with dinner - very nice.
After dinner we strolled one of the two loop trails in the Trail of 100 Giants. I’d had my doubts about the “Giants” before we arrived, but they really are huge and impressive.
It was quite brisk and breezy by the time we went to bed.
Daisy had to get up at four in the morning with diarrhea. 💩
Most of the campground was very quiet when Julie got up at 6:30. She took Daisy out and walked some of the 100 Giants loop. I slept in until seven and still none of our neighbors were stirring. We took our scones and some tea and coffee and walked over to one of the benches on the 100 Giants loop and ate our breakfast there. We learned from the tree identification sign on the trail that our campground is surrounded by incense cedars with a few other varieties.
The bench was near the closed section of the trail - a couple of the giants had fallen after the fire, and clearing the trail was more challenging than most cases of “tree falls across trail.”
We drove north to the road which goes to the Needles Trail. The road was closed to vehicles, but there was a sign that said something about open to hiking. Unfortunately, it must have been an old sign because when we ran into the logging operation, they told us the road was definitely closed, and too dangerous for us to be on. We turned around and then stopped at a shady spot a ways off the road to eat half of our lunch.
Back at the truck I checked my new offline map app (OsmAndMaps) and saw the Summit National Recreation Trail was nearby. We drove half a mile up a side road and parked, then walked half a mile up a jeep road and got on the trail.
We walked a couple miles south on the trail. We climbed a ridge and crossed a little creek that must come from a spring nearly at the top of the ridge. Then the trail goes over a saddle and heads east. We walked a bit further before stopping for the rest of our lunch and turning back.
We went almost six miles with the round trip and jeep road. A big variety of wildflowers were blooming. It was a really nice trail.
We drove back to camp and opened a Kriek from Alesong - full of cherry flavor but sour enough to make for slow drinking.
We grilled a couple more veggie burger patties and broke them up to go with pasta and spaghetti sauce. We finished the Moshin Merlot with dinner - even more flavorful than yesterday.
Once again we strolled over to the 100 Giants trail after dinner. I spent a lot of the walk thinking about how these trees, organisms that have been found in fossil records from the dinosaurs, are able to live for at least two thousand years. Many (if not most) of them suffer significant damage over the centuries: fires, lightning strikes, wind storms, and other trees competing and/or falling and hitting them. Many trees die from such damage, yet many somehow adapt and continue to grow. Maybe missing limbs or their top, maybe having a side of their trunk burned, but somehow their life systems adapt and continue.
Can we build systems that can survive like that? I know several science fiction novels that take place where aliens or earlier humans have built technology that survives and functions (sometimes only partially) millennia after their builder’s extinction or absence. Will anything we have created still be useful in two thousand years?
We got up at 6:30 and made instant oatmeal for breakfast. We got a fairly early start and headed back up the hill towards the trail we had hiked the day before.
We stopped at the Quaking Aspen Campground. It’s much larger than our Redwood Meadow Campground and it has water unlike ours. We had run out of drinking water after filling our water bottles for the hike so we were able to refill our water there. We were surprised to see that the yurts cost $106/night. We thought hotels with plumbing and electricity are still available in out-of-the-way locations for less. The camp sites are $34, just like ours.
After leaving the campground we saw a sign for the Freeman Creek trailhead so we decided to drive up and take a look. We met a really talkative bicyclist there and got some useful information – he apparently spends a lot of time biking in the area.
We walked down the Freeman Creek trail. There are a lot of small creek crossings where Daisy could drink, and Giant Sequoia begin appearing after only a mile or so. Most of the area the trail goes through was burned, and it is really clear that the Sequoia survive fires much more successfully than other trees. At the lower trailhead there is a loop trail and a George Bush Giant Sequoia. This area has a lot of burn damage, but it looks like successful efforts were made to protect the George Bush tree.
Other than going down from the start (and thus requiring an uphill climb to return) this was a really pleasant trail. It felt hot in the sun, but the breeze helped and there were stretches of shade. We stopped partway up to eat lunch in a shady spot with a nice view of some Sequoias.
After the hike we tried driving a ways up the road towards Camp Nelson in search of cell signal. The road was really curvy and badly damaged by the fire so we gave up after ten miles or so.
Because we’d gotten a bit of signal the day before near the hamlet of Ponderosa, we tried cruising through the little town but never got a signal.
We returned to our camp and took a break with some Dos Equis Lime & Salt Zeroes. We’d never tried them before, but they definitely quench your thirst despite tasting truly salty.
Our new neighbors were friendly, and they had a tent trailer that they pulled up with a Rivian R1. She is in education and he does software. Unfortunately it seems like the R1 is really limiting how much they can drive around while based at the campground even though their last charge was only sixty miles away - the steep and winding road up to the campground used about 40% of the battery. This is why I want a plug-in hybrid truck.
Julie made a big pot of a curry cauliflower soup for dinner, with leftovers for our next camp spot in Arizona. After dinner we walked over to the 100 Giants trail again. We stopped and sat on a bench but unfortunately the mosquitos made it unpleasant to sit.
We returned to the trailer and packed up as much as possible in order to get an early start in the morning.