Written on July 28, 2016
We are now in route to Arcata, California, with primary mission of seeing, touching, smelling, hearing and well, hell…tasting the redwoods. As I write this, we’ve traveled over 2300 miles over the last five days and we’ll wrap up our adventure around Friday, August 12. At that point, we’ll have been through 12 states, if you include the one we live in, Missouri.
As of today we’ve spent approximately 45% of our budget and realize we need to slow down a bit on frivolous spending. So, no hand-made soaps from Cali and we may have to replace a few lunches with PB and J’s if we want to enjoy a local brewery in nearly every state we pass through. We had to skip Utah and Nevada. We drove straight through Utah at night and spent our extra cash on a casino hotel in Reno to recharge our batteries.
It’s possible that the full magnitude of this trip hasn’t set in until today. Normally, if on a normal Claybaker family vacation, the have-to-go-home soon blues would be beginning to set in and we’d be heading home in two days to get back into routine. Today, we’re technically beginning again and I couldn’t be more excited.
Time. It flies. It’s also only today that I fully understand why my daddy told me so many times as a youngster that time is way more important than money. It truly is and this is a concept that those who haven’t invested a lot of time on earth cannot comprehend, including me….and Nyah. She’s excited about this long adventure, but she probably won’t ‘get it’ until she’s staring 40 in the face like I am this year.
My parents always wanted to take me around the US to see our beautiful nation, but they never had the time to do it. Nyah turning 13 in September, Curtis and I celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary, my 40th birthday in November and Curtis’ recent unemployment for the first time in nearly 18 years this fall….a perfect storm for a decision to ‘get the hell out of town for three weeks while you can’. After acquiring final approval to take unpaid leave from work only two days before we actually left, we lined up someone to stay in our house and love on our pups for three weeks (thank goodness!). Then, we packed up all of our camping gear, clothes for all climates and food for the road and left.
Our first stop was Idaho Springs, CO. Our friends Merrie and Sean were awesome hosts. They live in a small cabin near St. Mary’s Glacier which is a little over 10,000 feet on a beautiful snowmelt lake with a resident moose they’ve endearingly named Stumpo. He finally came out to meet us only to find we had already left earlier that morning. Merrie was nice enough to text us a few pics of him enjoying the lake.
We spent three nights in the one-bedroom cabin they share with their two four-legged kids Nali and Drea. We hiked up to St. Mary’s Glacier the first day we were there. It was Nyah’s first time hiking on a real mountain. Don’t get me wrong, the Ozark Mountains are gorgeous, but let’s face it they don’t have snow on the top to cool off after a warm summer hike! Nyah did awesome. She learned a lot about elevation and how important it is to take it slow and focus on her breath. The carrot at the end of the hike was the snow. At one point, she considered giving up. Being mindful of helping her to take it slow, Merrie had offered to walk back to the cabin early if she needed to. I was so thrilled she decided to push through and so was she when we made it to the lake that was being fed by the melting snow. Thankfully, this experience was an incredible lesson in perseverance and reward.
Later that day, we four-wheeled up another mountain nearby. A storm blew in as we were headed up and by the time we made it to the top, the sun peaked out and made the temperature more bearable. The next day, we visited Indian Hot Spring. It was a historic site that pumped hot spring water into a sizable pool where patrons could relax and swim under a covered building filled with ferns, palm and banana trees and other green foliage that made us feel as if we were outside.We began our day there, ate a nice lunch at Two Brothers Deli and then made our way to Red Rocks to hike around and check out the music museum near the amphitheater. After dinner, we finished up the night with another dip in the hot spring before heading to bed early to prepare for an early start on the road to continue our journey.
On the fourth day of our journey to the west, we headed began to head out of Colorado. One our way out, we decided to take Nyah to Mt. Elbert, which happens to be the highest point in CO and the place where Curtis proposed to me back in 1999. While we couldn’t get to THE spot, we opted to have a picnic lunch at a pretty place in the clearing while overlooking the mountain. This, of course, was after Siri brought us to the wrong side of the mountain [albeit, we didn’t do better research to give her better instructions] and we fell a couple hours behind. It was for a good cause, however, and the alternate route took us through some beautiful scenic byways, including getting to see Independence Pass and the Continental Divide.
Our next stop was Sand Harbor, Lake Tahoe near Incline Village. The best part of flying by the seat of your pants is feeling empowered to stop wherever you decide. Just after our journey began, I noticed a friend shared a beautiful short video on Facebook and when I looked at where the video was filmed, it just happened to be in our path. So, after grabbing a cheap pizza pizza dinner in Rifle, CO, I took the wheel, getting us into Utah.
Just before making it into Salt Lake City to stop for gas, we had our first [and hopefully our last] close call. A driver of a blue truck in the oncoming lane decided to make a left turn in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and swerved to miss him just as a semi-truck pulling a double tank trailer narrowly missed us. Our protective angels/spirits/God, however you choose to refer to that ‘mysterious entity’ that’s much bigger than we are who was definitely working overtime that night.
Curtis took the wheel just after midnight and brought us all the way through Nevada and we watched the sunrise from Mt. Rose and over Lake Tahoe. Wow. It was breathtaking. After the sunrise, we drove around and attempted to find a place to go ahead and set up camp before heading back to Sand Harbor State Park which didn’t open until 8AM. We came up empty handed and decided to go ahead and find our place in the car line that had already nearly blocked traffic at the entrance of the park at 7:45AM. We were very glad we did, too. Not only were we the first ones on the sandy beach spot we chose, but we managed to get some great photos before the area completely filled with people. The water was very cool and incredibly clear, so clear you could open your eyes under water and see for several feet as if you were in a pool with no chlorine! The heat of the sun made the water super refreshing and the mountainous backdrop was an incredible view while relaxing on the beach. 
Curtis left shortly after noon to go get some ice to keep our food cold, but wasn’t able to get back in the gate because they close the state park temporarily mid-day to control overpopulation. This would have been nice to know before he left; keep this in mind if you ever travel here. Roughly an hour after he left I called him because my intuition was sounding an alarm. Spotty service finally connected us and he explained the circumstance. By that point, we were sun-kissed and needed to find a place to stay for the night anyway so Nyah and I packed up and met him in the parking lot after he was allowed in once the park reopened.
While at the lake, I had called around to several campgrounds recommended by a local and they were all full with the exception of one place where we would have been packed in like sardines in the middle of RV-land. So, after a quick browse on Priceline, I found that for $20 more, we could stay in a casino hotel in Reno. Despite our disinterest in gambling or the city life while on this trip, we agreed that a good night’s rest was definitely worth it. And, well…Nyah enjoyed playing games in the arcade at Circus Circus after dinner, too.
This brings us to the present moment of my journal entry. We awoke this morning at the Silver Legacy Hotel and Casino, I hit the gym to walk/run on the treadmill and do some yoga on the pool deck, figuring I might as well utilize some of the amenities that came with the room fee before getting back on the road again. We took advantage of the shower, packed up and got back to the road by 11AM.
The drive from Reno to Arcata has been lovely! We started seeing large trees not too long after making it into California. Curtis taught Nyah how to tell the difference between Ponderosa Pines and Redwoods and we had fun tree-spotting while laughing at the many signs to beware of ‘free range cows’.
Just after Redding, we began to cross a gorgeous body of water named Whiskeytown Lake. We went to the visitor center to see how much a daily pass was so we could go have lunch by the lake. Once we found out they don’t offer daily passes, we opted to go ahead and purchase the US National Parks’ America the Beautiful annual pass for $80. Considering the fact that it would have costed us $10 to picnic by the lake and we still have at least three major national parks to visit over the next two weeks, this was the only logical answer and will ultimately save us money.
Before taking a quick dip in the lake, Curtis and I gobbled our chicken salad sandwiches (thanks, Merrie and Sean!). Since Nyah said she couldn’t stomach another sandwich for lunch today and wanted chicken noodle soup, we had to get crafty. Gypsy living tip: we used the sun that was beating down on our backs to heat up the soup. Curtis placed the can of condensed soup and a bottle with the right about of water on the front of our truck while we swam. The heat was so penetrating that by the time we were finished and ready to go, the soup was heated and perfect for her! It made for a funny memory.
We stopped to put our toes in the Trinity River, wishing we had time to paddle it, but are now closing in on Arcata, California. We’ll be in northern California for a few days before heading to the Portland, Oregon, and Washington. I’m excited to land for more than two nights in one place and get grounded for a bit. We are super grateful for more friends helping us keep our expenses low. This time, we’re intending to camp in friend’s sister’s backyard. This should be an adventure!
Stay tuned for links to photo albums from the trip, too. 🙂
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