Birthday glamping trip, pt I

So I have just returned from my almost week-long “glamping” trip, and what am I doing? Watching a TV show about surviving in the wild (Alone, on Hulu). Wilderness survival shows have become a bit of an obsession for me - as have vintage teardrop trailers, as has camping and outdoorsmanship in general. Right now there’s just something about all this free time, the existential dread of the current pandemic bringing an end to life as we know it, and the inability to safely do much of anything else, that is fueling my obsession. My only obstacles to spending even more time in the outdoors is the impending school year, and money. Oh, speaking of which, LAUSD has announced no return to in-person school next month. Thank god they are doing the right thing and the decision to keep the kids home has been made for me. Now, on to our trip:

On Monday we took the long drive up to Monterey area (technically Aromas) where we spent two nights in a yurt. The yurt itself was great - power and warm and comfortable, and as always I enjoyed the outdoor shower and cooking. But the entire setup left a lot to be desired - we had to park at the bottom of a steep slope where a repulsive stinking port-a-potty was our bathroom; halfway up from that was an unshaded picnic table, which meant leaving all our food and kitchen stuff in the car, which meant a lot of trudging back and forth up hills with all our food and cooking materials, which was such a huge pain that we ended up only cooking breakfast each day. The restaurant situation in that area was a nightmare - lots of places that said they were open but weren’t, and some of the worst Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life. I started to get annoyed that I was spending a small fortune on horrible expensive restaurant food twice a day when we had brought so much to cook. We had one very unpleasant day of driving down Big Sur from Monterey which should have only taken a couple of hours but ended up taking about six, with Theo falling asleep and peeing his pants and us almost running out of gas in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception. Yeah...that was not a good day. 

After two nights, we packed up and headed to Paso Robles to a much glitzier glamping site with real bathrooms, power, and running water. Here it was warmer and sunny and the vistas from the “ranch” we stayed on were stunningly beautiful. And for me as kitchen manager, the freedom to cook with all my tools and food just a few feet away made a huge difference. We finally started making the lunches and dinners we’d planned. The first night we went to a super sketchy local hot springs, which I thought was fine - the BF couldn’t get over how run down it was and how weird it was swimming in dark muddy hot water. I don’t know if it’s an East-West thing or what, but in my experience people in CA have much higher expectations for cleanliness and convenience than people I knew on the East coast; the whole time I was thinking, “are you kidding me? I swam at Coney Island in the 80s; it was like that scene in the trash compactor from Star Wars!” while the BF told me he couldn’t think of anyone he’s dated who would have been into swimming there (except one ex-wife who, wait for it, was from NY state).

We went to Cambria where I snuck off to an antique mall and delighted myself with buying some vintage cards and an archaic weaving tool called a “weave it” (can’t wait to take a deep dive into using this in the fall when my love of fiber arts always returns).

Then on my birthday we packed up and headed to the most questionable of my camping choices, the water tank in the Cuyama Badlands. We got there late because I knew it was going to be wicked hot - and only stayed one night because I thought that plan could be a big mistake. Boy was I wrong! Continue to part two next!