Category Archives: Camping

1,000 Sunsets and 1,000 Sunrises

Camping

Joyce and I just surpassed our 1,000th night of camping together

This wasn’t a goal or even something I was closely tracking. We started camping as a couple just before we were married in 2002. Considering the fact that we both have full time jobs, getting out nearly 100 nights per year really wasn’t that difficult; although for most people it would be impossible to do because they are to busy dealing with life, instead of living life. I wrote about this in Managing Your Recreation Inventory.

For us, camping isn’t about sitting around a campsite, but about spending time together in the wilderness, which includes hiking, fishing, boating, stargazing, and even generally doing nothing but talking and listening to one another.

We have enjoyed the lowest and highest deserts, the heights of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, and the deepest canyons. We have seen wildlife of all kinds. We have experienced extreme heat, freezing cold, snow, rain, and balmy weather.

A few pictures from the past…

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A Birthday Camping Trip @ Guajome

Camping,

A SPECIAL DAY

2014-04-06-6

Yesterday was Joyce’s xx-something birthday. Seems many women don’t like their age disclosed when they hit “milestone” birthdays. Not sure if Joyce minds age disclosure, so I won’t tell you how young she is.

In celebration of her birthday we could have done many things, but Joyce decided she wanted to do a special camping trip. After 13 consecutive camping trips in the desert, she wanted to go somewhere that had lots of green trees and plants, and cool moisture laden air — translation: near the ocean. More than that, she wanted to go to Guajome. This actually surprised me; not her wanting to go to Guajome, but that she wanted to go camping. I had visions of her wanting to do a weekend getaway to a 5 Star resort and/or dinner at an upscale restaurant.

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Backpacking/Camping Decision Tree

Backpacking, Camping, General Talk,

JT 2014-03-27

It appears that my wife has a “Bucket List” and a To Do List.

I have neither.

Her To Do List includes fixing a leak in the roof, which is required before the interior remodel can be completed. The remodel started in 2000; the roof leak appeared a few years later.

So this week I put the roof issue on my own To Do List, which was completely empty – actually I had to create a list. However it was too windy outside this week.

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Springtime Camping Celebration

Camping

JT-2014-03-21-1-9a

We just got back from a few days of camping, which happened to be the official start of Spring. It really didn’t matter that it was spring, we would have been out anyway — but it makes a nice headline for the post.

Springtime in the desert usually means wind, and some years it means lots of colorful flowers. With little rainfall this year, there won’t be the fabulous spring flowers. However the wind is here.

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Rock Camping

Camping

JT Feb 2014-1-14A couple weeks ago I wrote about a backpacking trip that didn’t happen. I don’t particularly care for cold weather, especially since I have easy access to warm weather hiking in the desert. If I am going to take a trip in cold weather with the obligatory warm (and heavier gear), then I figure I might as well do it in the snow. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much snow in California the past couple of years. Last year I even headed up to the Sierras for snow, since the local mountains didn’t have much, and I struck out on that trip too.

After spending two weeks this month in sub-freezing weather (a week in Panama City, Florida and a week in Columbia, South Carolina) I decided to finally spend a few days in some really nice weather with Joyce and Corky. Daytime highs in the 70’s and nighttime lows in the high 40’s (F).

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