Camping With Grandsons

We loaded Luca and Vincent into the RV on Wednesday morning and left their parents at home to enjoy some quiet time, to maybe even celebrate their 17th anniversary by themselves.

Erin had made reservations for us at Fort Cobb State Park not too far from Lawton. This park has several campgrounds around Fort Cobb Lake, most of which are still closed for the winter. Its a pretty lake with a golf course, marina, fishing dock, and some hiking.

These two boys are very active! Once we got settled they wanted to go fishing, throw rocks into the lake, take a hike, play on the playground and play a game all at once! They settled for the playground, dinner, then a nice fire. Thursday we went on a 2 mile hike, picked up trash, threw rocks, explored some woods and played card games. Mom and Dad showed up in time for supper and another fire perfect for making s'mores.

On Friday we packed picnic lunches and drove to nearby Red Rock Canyon State Park where we hiked two nature trails and along the park road, logging almost 4 miles of walking. But it is a very pretty park where we enjoyed the scenery and nature and it wore the boys out!

Last night and this morning it was very windy. John and I were worn out from being blown around yesterday and today so didn’t want to do much but by this afternoon the wind had died down, the sun came out and it was a pretty afternoon made for wondering around, skipping rocks and playing games like bean bag toss and a frisbee game. We again had a roaring fire to end the day. Tomorrow we’ll head home.

Time to Head Towards MO

We had told our daughter that we would arrive in Norman, OK on Tuesday so we had a decision to make. We could drive for 6-7 hours and stop somewhere for two days and then drive 4-5 hours into Norman or we could divide the drive into three 3-4 hourdays and stay someplace different each night. I chose the latter.

We stopped in Lubbock, TX on Sunday then at the Copper Breaks State Park on Monday. Both times we stopped early enough in the day to get some exercise. In Lubbock we walked 3 miles in gale force winds trying to get to shopping areas and dinner. At the State Park we took a nice 2 mile hike though woods and a canyon. It was not quite as windy as the day before. John was worn out with driving in cross winds for three days, so it was a good thing we divided up the driving times.

Devil’s Hall

We woke to snow on the top of the foothills above our campsite and decided it was time to move! We crossed into AZ, camped in the Pinal County Campground, cruised through Las Cruces, bypassed El Paso and headed north to the Guadelupe Mountains National Park on the Texas/New Mexico border.

Even though the RV parking is just a parking lot we rather like this place. There are over 80 miles of hiking trails including one that goes to the top of Guadalupe Peak, the tallest point in Texas at 8749 ft. We did NOT take that hike!

The hike we chose is called Devil’s Hall Trail at 4.5 miles total. It was one of the most challenging hikes we have taken this year. It started out going up and along one side of a steep canyon. I thought that might be the Devil’s Hall but then we droped into a dry wash strewn with lots of boulders and rocks so I thought this might be the Devil’s Hall. It felt like we walked over a mile up and over numerouse rock piles. Then we came to this break in the canyon wall with layered rocks like a grand staircase. Surely this was it but, no, we still had more to go. But not much because we had arrived at the Devil’s Hall. It is about 75 yards long and 12 feet wide , a narrow canyon of layered slate rock. It was quite amazing.

The campground host was posting a flyer on our windshield when we got back. The wind forecast for Sunday is 40-60 mph winds with 90 mph gusts! He has seen a 45 foot motor home blown over by these winds! Since it is not suppose to get that bad until 11 am we will try to leave early enough to miss the worst of it.

Mojave National Monument

As I’m writting this blog the wind is blowing at what feels like 70 mph! Luckily it didn’t start until after we had finished our hike and Jeep ride this afternoon.

We reluctantly left Sequoia on Tuesday morning due to a forcast of rain and snow for the next 3-4 days and drove to the Mojave National Monument in hopes of out running the storm and finding warmer weather. This huge park spans an area between I-15 and I-40 and is over 140 miles from east to west on the California and Nevada border. We camped in the Hole-in-the-Wall camground. (This is not Butch Cassidy’s hangout.) It got its name from the holes found in the rock formations around here.

The Hole-in-the-Wall Rings Loop Trail is one of the most popular hikes in the park because one has to scale a very narrow crevace using permanently embedded rings to aid in the climb either up or down. We did it the hard way by going down! Then we walked out of the canyon whose walls are covered with holes and hiked 6+ miles around the mountain back to the campground.

After needed naps we drove a couple of the dirt roads, one of which was the Mojave Road that was an original route to California. This part of the park has the largest concentration of Joshua Trees in the world. We also came across a White Cross memorial that honor all our veterans.

Sequoia National Park

It’s still winter in the Sierra Mountains while in the foothills spring has come. What this means for us is that we we can wear shorts in our campgound but plan on tromping in snow if we want to see the giant trees.

We pulled into the Potwisha Campground around 1:30 but it was after 3:30 before we got settled into a camp spot. Its a National park campground so it has very short, narrow, unlevel sites. Needless to say we did some stupid stuff and got too picky so it took us a long while to park.

We quickly drove to Hospital Rock where we hiked down a road to Buckeye campground then along the Paradise Creek Trail. We estimate it was a 4 mile hike. Such beautiful country!

Monday dawned bright and sunny, a good day to view the mountains and giant trees. The road into the park is only open up to The Waksachi Lodge and Lodgepole Visitors Center which includes the General Sherman Tree. This is the largest tree by volume in the forest. There are others that are taller and have a bigger diameter and are older (up to 3,000 years old) but Sherman is considered the biggest. It is over 2200 years old and its biggest branch is 7 ft in diameter.

Before we saw Sherman, we stopped at the Giant Forest Museum then hiked in the snow up to the Tunnel Log. We were smart and used our hiking poles so we didn’t slip and fall.

The scenery along the way was stunning. We are glad we did this today as the forcast for the rest of the week is rain & snow every day. We’d like to stay longer but not in rain and snow. Time to move on.

Paso, Pickleball, & Pinot

We had a pleasant drive up the coast to Paso Robles where we are staying a full week so that we can fully enjoy all the wines this area has to offer. In order to do that we need to burn off some calories each day therefore we located the local pickleball courts and have been trying to play for at least an hour and a half each day or taking long walks.

As for the Pinot, there is that and oh so many more wines to taste! Paso claims to have over 300 vineyards/wineries in this area. We cannot do more than 3 in one afternoon as the old taste buds get clogged and all the wine tastes wonderful!

Sculpterra not only had nice wines but the metal art surrounding the tasting room, patio and out into the vineyard were amazing. Cass and Still Waters wineries were just down the road. Tuesday we had an appointment at Law Estates Winery for a private tasting and met some very interesting people, two of which work at another winery (we’ll be visiting it later this week). We followed them down the hill to “dilecta”. We enjoyed their blends but they also had a very nice 100% Syrah. Most of the wines we have tried come from Rhone varietals such as Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, & Chardonnay plus Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet, and Zinfandel.

Today we explored the coastline around Cambria about 25 miles west of Paso since we had overdone the exercise and the wine. It was an enjoyable drive along the coast watching Elephant Seals and spotting whale spouts out in the bay. We also had a delightful lunch and enjoyed walking around the town. Its starting to warm up a little - the sun was wonderful!

Santa Ynez Valley

Six towns are considered part of the Santa Ynez Valley and we have visited each one over the past 3 days. The closest one to Lake Cachuma, the recreation area where we are camped, is Santa Ynez. Even though we have visited this area before we had never stopped here. It is a quaint town with one main street crowded with boutiques, breweries, wine tasting rooms and several small restaurants and a couple of B&B’s. Next is Ballard, a very small community with a great big canyon surrounding it full of vineyards. Solvang and Buellton are good sized cities with a Dutch heritage and archetecture. We arrived in Solvang on Wednesday in time for their farmers market! I love markets like this! Buellton is more the fastfood and lodging town for the valley. Los Olivos is almost all wine tasting shops with a few diners, art and gift shops sprinkled among them. And last is Los Alamos which is two blocks of tasting rooms, an antique store and a couple of lunch cafes.

Today was cloudy, rainy, cold and dreary so we drove to Lompoc which is outside of the Santa Ynez Valley and in the Santa Rita Valley. After lunch we found a cluster of wine tasting rooms with wines from this valley. They have some very nice Pinot Noirs but not as good as in Oregon. It will be cold and rainy for the next two days so I’m thinking we’ll be exploring these towns again. Maybe even going to actual vineyards as apposed to tasting rooms.

By the way, Lake Cachuma is suffering from lack of rain and has shrunk considerably. We are also on the edge of where some of the wildfires were in December. One lady said that 3 different fire surrounded this valley but did not burn much of it. Smoke was the biggest problem.