Epiphany at Trinity

George Rebane

It was our first solo trip with our ‘new’ trailer.  Jo Ann and I got back from Trinity Lake yesterday afternoon after spending a few days under the trees at Pinewood Cove RV Park.  We are lifelong dirt campers, so talking us into upgrading to a starter trailer wasn’t all that difficult.  It only took Russ and Ellen Steele about five years to help us switch from a ripstop tent to an aluminum box on wheels.  Memories of weeds poking into our undercarriage were a definite goad to less surprising twilight head calls.

So there we were, practically lakeside and under a thick canopy of tall pineys with our little toyless toy hauler all properly hooked up and canopy deployed.   The RV park grounds sit on, what else, scoured red dirt.  You know, the kind we have right here in Nevada County.  Our little  camping chairs and tables were all set up in the stuff.  Our puppy took no never mind to it, and, rejecting her nice clean bed, stretched herself out on the dustiest parts, being careful to change sides regularly so as to apply an even coating.

Meals were fun because Jo Ann could use the kitchen to prepare some really special vittles for eating around the campfire.  We brought along our own firewood - cured digger pine which makes and maintains a beautifully tight flame mass for hours (contrary to popular local myths, I have yet to burn a bad piece of madrone or digger pine).

The pictured idyllic little scene was made possible following a six hour drive that involved some very curvy roads after we headed west from Redding on State 299.  While there, the major entertainment consisted of driving down to Weaverville to celebrate our 49th, and watching RVs occupy neighboring sites.  From this educational spectator sport one learns a little bit each time as vacationers of various skill levels maneuver their rigs into place and go through the set-up chores – the Germans also call this shadenfreude.  It’s especially relaxing after you are already comfortably ensconced with martooni in hand, and covered with red dirt beyond caring.

Pinewood Cove also offered another bane or benefit, depending on your perspective.  It is a complete black hole as far as connectivity is concerned.  Forget about the outside world, because up there it is inaccessible and therefore simply ceases to exist.  Jo Ann and I are mildly afflicted connectivity junkies; not that we’re always on line, but in that we could be if we wanted to.  Reading a book or writing something has become so much better knowing that you could periodically check your email, news, blogs, look up stuff, … .  Yes indeed, Pinewood Cove took us right back to yesteryear.

Friday morning we got up promptly because it was ‘travel day’, time to break camp, secure everything for a bumpy ride, and see if we could pull out of our slot and through some very tight roadways without leaving some aluminum sheeting on a camouflaged pine tree.  Another sigh and thankful prayer heavenward as we turned on to State Hwy 3 for the ride down to civilization.  Trailer brakes and our truck’s ‘smart transmission’ definitely made the stately procession we led down the mountain enjoyable.

After Redding it was I-5 and clear sailing.  And it was time to reflect on our little sojourn in the mountains.  We looked at each other and asked, ‘now what was that all about?’  Don’t get me wrong, we have taken all sorts of two and four-wheel drive vehicles into deserts and mountains where they were never intended (and sometimes even permitted) to go.  We are not strangers to wild country and camping in wild weather.  But why keep doing it at this time in our lives, towing a rig with a hundred things that could fail (and some did) with great inconvenience that is compounded by the asinine location to which you hauled the damn thing.

We live on a Nevada County ridge that is beautifully forested, with appropriate vistas that even include the coastal range in the winter.  That is why we moved here from the People’s Republic of Los Angeles County.  We no longer wanted to drive a day to get to the big pineys, today we own our little patch of forest with paths and benches, and walk there in a moment with an appropriate adult beverage in hand – no packing or preparation or set up or take down or … required.  And with all this, we were stupid enough to take two days to pack up a trailer and haul it six hours into another mountain range to sit under trees that take a distant second place to the ones on our land that I see out of my windows right now.

All this wisdom flooded the cab of our pick-up as we turned off Woodruff on to Hwy 20 and home.  Our takeaway from this deep thinking was summed up, as it often has in the past, by the motto of the Jewish Defense League – “Never Again!”

From now on our trailering will be to RV parks that are civilized (read ‘flat pull throughs with wide access and full hookups’) and located near points of cultural interest that cannot be duplicated by an hour spent in our own little forest.  Another little nostrum that I’m having a harder time fitting into this tale is the familiar ‘taking coals to Newcastle’.  I’m still working on that one.

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

I like Embassy Suites and their buffet breakfasts. No camping for me, I too look out from my home and back deck and see the forest and the trees. Lovely.

[Russ Steele]

George,

Good report and thanks for sharing. As you know I am perhaps more adicted to connectivity than most RVers and have equiped our RV with some extra coverage tools, high gain antenna with an amplifier. I also have found this Cellphone Digest site to useful in vetting camp ground coverage before we depart

http://www.cellphonedigest.net/cingular%20coverage%20map.htm

As you discovered there was not AT&T coverage, but Verizon has broadband coverage at your camp site.

[Greg Goodknight]

The Trinity Alps are lovely.

[Douglas Keachie]

When they shut down camping at Tenaya Lake in Yosemite, and we had to switch to Tuolumne Meadows and make franticky phone calls in on the first and only day sites were available in Feb to get reservations, that's when we bought up here. I really do want to windsurf Tenaya one more time, but still haven't muscled up the moxie for the still 5 hour drive to get there. 8 minutes to either the Middle or South Fork swimming holes is just really hard to ignore, especially with gas where it is.

[RL Crabb]

Any Bigfoot sightings?

[George Rebane]

No, but I did think about that famous fuzzy film clip that shows a Bigfoot or someone dressed like one ambling through the forest. I understand that the EPA is thinking of making the whole northwest corner of the state off limits to humans since Bigfoot is so endangered that they aren't sure that it really exists. After all, we must consider our priorities.

[Teine Rebane Kenney]

How fun to read this. Having been raised by you doing REAL high sierra camping, I have a special fondness for tent camping in the dirt and can forgo the aluminum box luxury. Have you noticed an added perk to your last couple of decades camping "ohne kinder": waking up to dry shoe laces? (Yours were usually the only shoes next to the zippered opening of our big, blue, tent. More than once I ended up venturing out into nature to answer its call and... peeing on your shoe laces in the middle of the night.) Sorry about that.

[George Rebane]

Aha! And all along I thought it was the early morning mountain dew. Now after all these years the truth comes out that it was really my own little dew dropper. Fun times, and ours forever.

[bill tozer]

What a wonderful trip, Dr. Rebane. I am soooo jealous. Still am puzzled why you spent all that money for a truck that didn't come will hubcaps, hahaha. They say traveling is broadening. Better walk it off.

[Sini Fernandez]

Giggling at this post and Teine's comment. Still amazed that you like RVing enough to purchase a trailer, though driving a truck and pulling a trailer must be oh so much better than driving Class C RV like we did a few summers ago. Those Steeles must make a very powerful argument. :)