natjwest
Contributors
On Jan 27th, my 6.5 year old daughter and I kissed mom goodbye and headed out on our annual climbing trip to the boulders in the Bishop area. For the last few years, we've gone in our little Mazda Protege sedan, which was never very comfortable, but it was continuing a longer tradition of dirtbag climbing trips so I was used to it. But fatherhood has certainly made me expect more creature comforts. Last winter, we met some friends in Bishop who hauled their shortbed Alpenlite and I was a convert. So after that trip, I bought a used Chevy 2500 (diesel of course!) and 1991 Grandby in great shape. If you can believe it, this was our shakedown trip despite buying the camper in August.
Day 1, Portland to Lava Beds National Monument
We left Portland on I-5 and cut over to US 97 via route 58 at Eugene after slurping some biodiesel at Sequential. I've done a lot of mountain biking in the Oakridge area along route 58 so it was nice both to see it in the winter (cold and snowy) and briefly show it to my daughter.
Our next stop was in Klamath Falls, the last major town in Oregon along our route. It was getting late, but we needed batteries for the CD-walkman, and a bathroom break.
Last stop in Oregon: Klamath Falls by natjwest, on Flickr
We crossed the state line, passed Tule Lake and rolled into Lava Beds National Monument as it was getting dark, finally arriving at Indian Well Campground in full darkness after passing a jillion deer along the road. As we all know, setting up camp does not involve much outside of the camper, so we ate a quick meal and took a night walk to enjoy the stars. The white no-name water pump in the Grandby finally gave up the ghost, but I got water from the exterior tank drain for cooking and washing. We did about 340 miles that first day, not bad since we left around noon.
Day 2, Exploring Lava Beds NM, replacing the water pump, and The Bobcat Encounter
We got up early the next morning and waded through a traffic jam of deer.
Lots of deer by natjwest, on Flickr
We headed to the Visitor Center to figure out which caves were best for us and get a map of cave locations. I did some cave guiding many years ago in the limestone caves of Virginia and West Virginia, and my daughter is a real adventurer who isn't scared of much, so we opted for one of the "most challenging" caves. But first we had to visit the quick Mushpot Cave right next to the VC.
That "most challenging" cave was Hopkins Chocolate cave, which I highly recommend. The chocolate-ness comes from the brownish colored dripping look. The drips appear like that because the roof really did melt when lava was flowing through there.
I can't speak for the difficulties of the other caves rated "challenging" but Hopkins was a walk in the park, if you've ever done any caving. Unlike all the caves I've guided in the east, the caves in Lava Beds NM are pretty much straight lines. They were formed as rivers of lava, so they vary about as much as any river with an occasional side-shoot, or a brief dead end or a couple threads. The level of challenge comes mainly from the physical activity required to get through them. For Hopkins, I was on my hands and knees for a few minutes and the footing was occasionally very rough, requiring use of your hands. We each had knee pads, and headlamps taped to our bike helmets. That's all the protection you need, plus gloves if you're an adult. The pictures we got from a small tripod, no flash and keeping our headlamps and flashlights as still as we could.
After Hopkins Chocolate cave, we checked out Skull Cave because it has an ice floor at the bottom of the cave, and supposedly had a bunch of antelope skulls in it when first discovered. My daughter enjoys morbid, scary things so we had to give it a go. It's nothing like Hopkins or Mushpot or the upcoming Golden Dome as you can see in the picture. Absolutely no crawling required, it's mostly like a straight-line walk, with some metal stairs, ending in a metal gate. Not very exciting or worthwhile.
But the park redeemed itself with a visit to the spectacular Golden Dome cave, back in the Cave Loop. Much like Hopkins Chocolate cave, Golden Dome required some hands-and-knees work for me, and a little bit of routefinding since its path is a figure eight. You could theoretically get lost in it forever, going around and around in an infinite circle, but you'd have to be really unfortunate to do that. In the end of the cave is the "golden dome", a high-ceilinged room covered in what appears to be gold. We asked at the VC was it was and they said some kind of bacteria working in concert with the lichen. It's really a nice sight.
At this point, it was nearing 1 o'clock and I had been planning to blast all the way to Bishop, so we hit the road, heading south-east out of the monument on a nicely graded high-speed gravel road to get on CA-139. I have never been on that highway. For our Bishop trips, I usually take I-5 south to Mt Shasta, then cut over to Susanville via 89 and 44, but this was a great road to take, with a little more civilization but nowhere near the high-speed annoyance of a freeway.
Before getting too far down the road, I did the mileage-math with my new TomTom iPhone GPS app (really enjoy this app) and realized we could either pull into our Bishop campground at midnight, or take another day to get there, fixing the broken potable water pump along with way. Now that we were far from home, I couldn't see the point of hurrying, so we stopped in Adin, CA for some burgers at the only restaurant in town. It's a good thing we had an American-made truck since that's all that was parked in front of the only restaurant (one of two retail establishments) in town. Our truck fit right in, even if we didn't so much.
My wife helped me find an excellent RV parts store in Susanville to buy a replacement water pump. I also put in new tubing and some adapters to get the pump to fit the tiny barbed line coming from the water tank and going to the faucet. I still need to get a proper faucet, one with a handle so I can adjust the flow, now that I have an auto-shutoff pump. I did the replacement in his parking lot, about an hour job, just as daylight was waning.
That night, we stayed in a great campground along 395 south of Carson City called Davis Creek Campground, operated by Washoe County Parks. I say it's a great campground because, relative to offerings in the area, it is great. If you are traveling along 395 in the winter (when Tahoe CGs are snow-closed) this one can't be beat. I also say it's great because we had an up-close encounter with a bobcat.
My daughter and I were eating dinner in the camper when I heard a thump on the hood. There was no one else in the camp except for what appeared to be a vacant camp host in a 5th wheel. I thought the bump could be a pinecone or a bird or something, but it was loud enough that I wanted to check. As I was getting a coat and headlamp, there was the sound of scritch-scratching on the upper canvas. At this point, I thought it was some local yokels having a bit of fun with the out-of-towners or maybe the camp host investigating. As I exited the camper, I summoned my most stern, most masculine voice and pronounced, "Hello, can I help you?" More skittering sounds and then about 20 feet away I saw a bobcat, staring back at me.
(that's not my picture, but exactly what it looked like)
I was instantly sure what it was, so I said, "Lily get out here as fast as you possibly can without making a huge racket." She appeared quickly enough to see its glowing eyes, puffy cheek fur, short tail and banded legs. We were both pretty flabbergasted. That was an amazing experience. After dinner, we took another night walk, but failed to see any prints. The heated bathroom was nice.
Day 3, Arrival in Bishop
The original impetus for purchasing a camper was to make it easier and more comfortable for both of us while on climbing trips. I don't love camping, and if I wasn't a climber, we wouldn't have a camper. But now that we have a camper, I thought it a valuable waste of time to see some sights and have some experiences beyond just climbing. Faced with the choice of spending three days driving and eating in tiny diners and and caving and meeting bobcats or blasting 780 miles in a day, from now on, I will always choose the former. But I needed to get my climbing in, so we headed on to Bishop. It was at this point that my daughter made the first of many proclamations that, "We are on a real road trip!"
That first day, we climbed at an area called the Happy Boulders, just off Chalk Bluff Rd, north of Bishop in the Volcanic Tablelands.
Bouldering at Happy by natjwest, on Flickr
I first visited there in 1997 or 1998, but it hasn't changed much over the years other than the hordes of weekend crowds. Being a Saturday, it was busy, but my daughter is very gregarious (and charming, according to most everyone she meets) so she enjoys the crowds. We climbed that day, then met up with some friends who were in town from Bellingham, WA. These were the very same friends I had met up with last year with the Alpenlite. But this year (courtesy of a big mule deer buck in November) they were driving a new truck and a brand-spanking new FWC Hawk. (No human injuries.) They had just picked it up in Woodland a few days prior and were still "moving in" a bit. We took tours of each others' rigs and I answered a few questions about their camper and we tried to find the hot water heater thermostat to no avail. Man, the Hawk is so much tighter than my Grandby!
Days 4, 5 and 6, Climbing in Bishop, Viewing the Petroglyphs
For the next three days, we had a regular schedule. Wake up around 7, take a long time getting breakfasted, take a long time packing up, head to a climbing area in the Tablelands, climb and hang out and explore for five or six hours, then mosey back to camp where we'd slowly make dinner, then watch a movie on the laptop and read before going to sleep around 9 or 10.
Sometimes we'd go into the town of Bishop before or after climbing for more supplies or a treat at Eric Schat's bakery. I got the driver's side mirror replaced (it had been mostly smashed for a few weeks) and my daughter bought a book at Spellbinder and I bought a new headlamp at Wilson's Eastside Sports. The nights were cold - a low of 14 F for a few nights, so we ran the furnace all night. I didn't like doing that because at its lowest setting, 50 degrees, it was quite warm in the camper. Also, because we were only driving a few miles each day, the camper batteries weren't getting a full charge. Sure enough on the morning of our last day in Bishop, the batteries were so low that my inverter wouldn't turn on due to "lo-pwr". I thought I could get away with just charging off the alternator, but now I realize that on climbing trips, I don't put on enough miles to charge the batteries. I need a big solar panel and a Wave 3.
Hiking up to Happy Boulders by natjwest, on Flickr
While climbing with a local friend, she pointed out a few faint petroglyphs. We saw some last year, and I was a bit underwhelmed. But she gave me directions to the amazing Chidago site which she promised would wow us. And wow us it did.
The whole site is about 50 feet tall, a big jumble of rocks. Some of the rocks are very heavily marked, and others next door are unmarked. The predominant designs are circles with stuff inside and a checkerboard-type pattern. Why did they only mark some rocks and not others? Who were these people? How many people drew on the rocks? What do these symbols mean? We've been unable to find solid answers to any of these questions in our cursory research online.
It really is an amazing site. I highly recommend you check it out if you're in the area.
Day 1, Portland to Lava Beds National Monument
We left Portland on I-5 and cut over to US 97 via route 58 at Eugene after slurping some biodiesel at Sequential. I've done a lot of mountain biking in the Oakridge area along route 58 so it was nice both to see it in the winter (cold and snowy) and briefly show it to my daughter.
Our next stop was in Klamath Falls, the last major town in Oregon along our route. It was getting late, but we needed batteries for the CD-walkman, and a bathroom break.
Last stop in Oregon: Klamath Falls by natjwest, on Flickr
We crossed the state line, passed Tule Lake and rolled into Lava Beds National Monument as it was getting dark, finally arriving at Indian Well Campground in full darkness after passing a jillion deer along the road. As we all know, setting up camp does not involve much outside of the camper, so we ate a quick meal and took a night walk to enjoy the stars. The white no-name water pump in the Grandby finally gave up the ghost, but I got water from the exterior tank drain for cooking and washing. We did about 340 miles that first day, not bad since we left around noon.
Day 2, Exploring Lava Beds NM, replacing the water pump, and The Bobcat Encounter
We got up early the next morning and waded through a traffic jam of deer.
Lots of deer by natjwest, on Flickr
We headed to the Visitor Center to figure out which caves were best for us and get a map of cave locations. I did some cave guiding many years ago in the limestone caves of Virginia and West Virginia, and my daughter is a real adventurer who isn't scared of much, so we opted for one of the "most challenging" caves. But first we had to visit the quick Mushpot Cave right next to the VC.
That "most challenging" cave was Hopkins Chocolate cave, which I highly recommend. The chocolate-ness comes from the brownish colored dripping look. The drips appear like that because the roof really did melt when lava was flowing through there.
I can't speak for the difficulties of the other caves rated "challenging" but Hopkins was a walk in the park, if you've ever done any caving. Unlike all the caves I've guided in the east, the caves in Lava Beds NM are pretty much straight lines. They were formed as rivers of lava, so they vary about as much as any river with an occasional side-shoot, or a brief dead end or a couple threads. The level of challenge comes mainly from the physical activity required to get through them. For Hopkins, I was on my hands and knees for a few minutes and the footing was occasionally very rough, requiring use of your hands. We each had knee pads, and headlamps taped to our bike helmets. That's all the protection you need, plus gloves if you're an adult. The pictures we got from a small tripod, no flash and keeping our headlamps and flashlights as still as we could.
After Hopkins Chocolate cave, we checked out Skull Cave because it has an ice floor at the bottom of the cave, and supposedly had a bunch of antelope skulls in it when first discovered. My daughter enjoys morbid, scary things so we had to give it a go. It's nothing like Hopkins or Mushpot or the upcoming Golden Dome as you can see in the picture. Absolutely no crawling required, it's mostly like a straight-line walk, with some metal stairs, ending in a metal gate. Not very exciting or worthwhile.
But the park redeemed itself with a visit to the spectacular Golden Dome cave, back in the Cave Loop. Much like Hopkins Chocolate cave, Golden Dome required some hands-and-knees work for me, and a little bit of routefinding since its path is a figure eight. You could theoretically get lost in it forever, going around and around in an infinite circle, but you'd have to be really unfortunate to do that. In the end of the cave is the "golden dome", a high-ceilinged room covered in what appears to be gold. We asked at the VC was it was and they said some kind of bacteria working in concert with the lichen. It's really a nice sight.
At this point, it was nearing 1 o'clock and I had been planning to blast all the way to Bishop, so we hit the road, heading south-east out of the monument on a nicely graded high-speed gravel road to get on CA-139. I have never been on that highway. For our Bishop trips, I usually take I-5 south to Mt Shasta, then cut over to Susanville via 89 and 44, but this was a great road to take, with a little more civilization but nowhere near the high-speed annoyance of a freeway.
Before getting too far down the road, I did the mileage-math with my new TomTom iPhone GPS app (really enjoy this app) and realized we could either pull into our Bishop campground at midnight, or take another day to get there, fixing the broken potable water pump along with way. Now that we were far from home, I couldn't see the point of hurrying, so we stopped in Adin, CA for some burgers at the only restaurant in town. It's a good thing we had an American-made truck since that's all that was parked in front of the only restaurant (one of two retail establishments) in town. Our truck fit right in, even if we didn't so much.
My wife helped me find an excellent RV parts store in Susanville to buy a replacement water pump. I also put in new tubing and some adapters to get the pump to fit the tiny barbed line coming from the water tank and going to the faucet. I still need to get a proper faucet, one with a handle so I can adjust the flow, now that I have an auto-shutoff pump. I did the replacement in his parking lot, about an hour job, just as daylight was waning.
That night, we stayed in a great campground along 395 south of Carson City called Davis Creek Campground, operated by Washoe County Parks. I say it's a great campground because, relative to offerings in the area, it is great. If you are traveling along 395 in the winter (when Tahoe CGs are snow-closed) this one can't be beat. I also say it's great because we had an up-close encounter with a bobcat.
My daughter and I were eating dinner in the camper when I heard a thump on the hood. There was no one else in the camp except for what appeared to be a vacant camp host in a 5th wheel. I thought the bump could be a pinecone or a bird or something, but it was loud enough that I wanted to check. As I was getting a coat and headlamp, there was the sound of scritch-scratching on the upper canvas. At this point, I thought it was some local yokels having a bit of fun with the out-of-towners or maybe the camp host investigating. As I exited the camper, I summoned my most stern, most masculine voice and pronounced, "Hello, can I help you?" More skittering sounds and then about 20 feet away I saw a bobcat, staring back at me.
I was instantly sure what it was, so I said, "Lily get out here as fast as you possibly can without making a huge racket." She appeared quickly enough to see its glowing eyes, puffy cheek fur, short tail and banded legs. We were both pretty flabbergasted. That was an amazing experience. After dinner, we took another night walk, but failed to see any prints. The heated bathroom was nice.
Day 3, Arrival in Bishop
The original impetus for purchasing a camper was to make it easier and more comfortable for both of us while on climbing trips. I don't love camping, and if I wasn't a climber, we wouldn't have a camper. But now that we have a camper, I thought it a valuable waste of time to see some sights and have some experiences beyond just climbing. Faced with the choice of spending three days driving and eating in tiny diners and and caving and meeting bobcats or blasting 780 miles in a day, from now on, I will always choose the former. But I needed to get my climbing in, so we headed on to Bishop. It was at this point that my daughter made the first of many proclamations that, "We are on a real road trip!"
That first day, we climbed at an area called the Happy Boulders, just off Chalk Bluff Rd, north of Bishop in the Volcanic Tablelands.
Bouldering at Happy by natjwest, on Flickr
I first visited there in 1997 or 1998, but it hasn't changed much over the years other than the hordes of weekend crowds. Being a Saturday, it was busy, but my daughter is very gregarious (and charming, according to most everyone she meets) so she enjoys the crowds. We climbed that day, then met up with some friends who were in town from Bellingham, WA. These were the very same friends I had met up with last year with the Alpenlite. But this year (courtesy of a big mule deer buck in November) they were driving a new truck and a brand-spanking new FWC Hawk. (No human injuries.) They had just picked it up in Woodland a few days prior and were still "moving in" a bit. We took tours of each others' rigs and I answered a few questions about their camper and we tried to find the hot water heater thermostat to no avail. Man, the Hawk is so much tighter than my Grandby!
Days 4, 5 and 6, Climbing in Bishop, Viewing the Petroglyphs
For the next three days, we had a regular schedule. Wake up around 7, take a long time getting breakfasted, take a long time packing up, head to a climbing area in the Tablelands, climb and hang out and explore for five or six hours, then mosey back to camp where we'd slowly make dinner, then watch a movie on the laptop and read before going to sleep around 9 or 10.
Sometimes we'd go into the town of Bishop before or after climbing for more supplies or a treat at Eric Schat's bakery. I got the driver's side mirror replaced (it had been mostly smashed for a few weeks) and my daughter bought a book at Spellbinder and I bought a new headlamp at Wilson's Eastside Sports. The nights were cold - a low of 14 F for a few nights, so we ran the furnace all night. I didn't like doing that because at its lowest setting, 50 degrees, it was quite warm in the camper. Also, because we were only driving a few miles each day, the camper batteries weren't getting a full charge. Sure enough on the morning of our last day in Bishop, the batteries were so low that my inverter wouldn't turn on due to "lo-pwr". I thought I could get away with just charging off the alternator, but now I realize that on climbing trips, I don't put on enough miles to charge the batteries. I need a big solar panel and a Wave 3.
Hiking up to Happy Boulders by natjwest, on Flickr
While climbing with a local friend, she pointed out a few faint petroglyphs. We saw some last year, and I was a bit underwhelmed. But she gave me directions to the amazing Chidago site which she promised would wow us. And wow us it did.
The whole site is about 50 feet tall, a big jumble of rocks. Some of the rocks are very heavily marked, and others next door are unmarked. The predominant designs are circles with stuff inside and a checkerboard-type pattern. Why did they only mark some rocks and not others? Who were these people? How many people drew on the rocks? What do these symbols mean? We've been unable to find solid answers to any of these questions in our cursory research online.
It really is an amazing site. I highly recommend you check it out if you're in the area.
I couldn't believe that none of the mechanics who've had their head under the hood failed to notice that. Using the help of some online voltage drop calculators, as well as a tech support email to Surepower to determine the expected voltage drop across the isolator (0.8 to 1.0) I confirmed that the wiring was the problem. But it was late, and we were tired, so we read some more of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass and went to sleep.
