Busy as usual. Recently we’ve been doing a lot of stuff with family, friends, chillin at home, and on the road climbing. Here are a few pictures of some things we’ve been up to in the last few weeks. By the way…we might have some big sends to report in the coming weeks. April and I are very close to our summer projects. Stay tuned…
posted by pjv
April’s sister Holly is back again with us for the summer. Last weekend we took her up to the Gloria’s bouldering area in Flagstaff. She’s pullin’ down pretty good…..for a snowboarder, haha.
posted by pjv
Early evening on Saturday, May 12, 2007 a small group of family and friends gathered amidst the boulders of the Buttermilks to witness the marriage of a good friend of our’s, Linda, to her very special person, Jay. And what a fine wedding it was indeed.
Paul, Morgan and I traveled to Bishop, California this weekend for Linda and Jay’s special day. It was a long haul, yes, for such a short visit. But it was totally worth it. The wedding was absolutely picture perfect and we were psyched to have gotten to share it with them and their family and friends.
We arrived in Bishop on Friday afternoon and, you guessed it, headed straight for the boulders. We opted for the Happies, hoping to clean up a couple quick projects. Alas, no sends though – we’re blaming the lack of sleep and heat, haha. Friday evening Linda and Jay treated all the wedding guests to dinner at their favorite little mexican restaurant, Taqueria Las Palmas. Yummy. Afterwards, Paul and I headed up the incline to camp at Rock Creek, where some beautiful granite boulders awaited us and where the real fun of the weekend was about to begin:
Saturday. Wedding Day! Hooray! Paul and I have been nominated to be in charge of the wedding flowers. After a few quick peeks at the boulders we embark upon our mission. We’ve got 3 pairs of scissors and 3 bright orange Home Depot buckets of water. And I’ll admit it: we are shamelessly psyched to chop every last wildflower down in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Just for Linda and Jay.
H o w e v e r. There’s just one little teeeeeny tiiiiiny problem. NO flowers. Anywhere. We heard it had been a dry winter in Bishop, but here we stand at Rock Creek amongst the pines at 8500 feet, so there has to be SOME flowers SOMEWHERE, RIGHT?! No. None. Zip. Zilch.
Paul and I quickly slip in to slight panic mode. We try heading up to higher elevation. Nothing. So we turn around and head down, hoping that we missed the meadows of wildflowers on the dark drive up the night prior. Nope. We’re wrong. Again, nothing.
Ok, panic mode is now elevating. Time for Plan B. We start hacking down sage. We start hacking down brown, dead stuff. We start tossing giant pine cones into the van. We’re hoping, praying that this all might beautifully accent the one wildflower that we’re BOUND to find. Somewhere! Anywhere?
Nowhere.
We descend back towards town and our spirits are low. “This ain’t back East” where the daffodils grow like weeds, thick clusters out of the mucky mud. This is the no kidding high desert in a drought. Brown, brown and more brown. We pull off to the side of the road and start hacking some bushes with little tiny pale yellow flowers. These will have to do. Paul and I get back in the van and take a look at our stash, trying to picture what a hacked bush branch lying next to a beautiful homemade wedding cake might look like. Natural. Yeah, natural. Yeah, it should look ok. Yeah. RIGHT.
We’re cruising now into the outskirts of town. I point out a stream over yonder in hopes that the green lushness around it might offer some wildflowers. We skirt the stream. No. Nope. None here. DAAAAMIT we yell to the cows in the pasture. We give up. Ok, let’s head to town and drop these off. Time is starting to run short and we realize we ought to now be concerned with just getting to the wedding, let alone getting the flowers to the wedding.
“Hold up! Stop the van!” I scream while tapping frantically on the window toward a pasture full of cows. “LOOK!”
The oasis AT LAST. An entire field filled with pretty purple and white lily sort-of-things with long lush green stems. Perrrrfect for the cake flowers.
We hit the breaks and pull off to the side of the dirt road, the raging dust cloud engulfing us. Paul jumps out and sprints across the road. He hops the barbed-wire fence and bolts out into the field, dodging piles of manure and throngs of buzzing bees. The cows start moo’ing loudly. Morgie and I keep watch, stealthily, from the van, prepped for a quick getaway in case a grouchy cowboy w/ chaps and a shotgun rolls up on ma piece and starts questioning why my husband is out there crouched down amidst the manure in his field.
Well, no cowboys today and these flowers are ours. Or shall I say, Linda and Jay’s. “Woohooo!!!!!!” we yell, as we speed into town. Mission accomplished.
The end of this wedding day found the bride and groom beaming bursting smiles among loving family and friends. Flowers or no flowers, nothing was going to spoil this day. Even so though, weddings always seem to have that special little magical way of working out just perfectly. Thank you, Linda and Jay, for letting us be part of the fun. 🙂
Ahhh. I have to say it feels nice to hang out at home for an entire weekend. Recently we’ve been a little crazy with all the travels but it has been a lot of fun. Now, our focus is to get our porch roof complete before the heat of the desert summer. So far it looks like we are making great progress. Check it out…
Our first weekend back after the France trip and we have another friend in town. Our friend Marcus (also from Germany, ahh! they’re following us!) and his friend Brian from Alaska are here on a month long roadtrip in the States. We all linked up at Hueco together for a day. Our friend Linda came along too – her first time at Hueco. Here are a few good photos Brian snapped:
Well, as Paul predicted, it’s been awhile since our last post. Trust me though, we really do have a sweet excuse. We’ve been out of the country for the last couple of weeks, bouldering in Fontainebleau, France. Sorry for no live updates straight from the cozy, hip, European internet cafes. We didn’t really spend much time in them this trip. In fact, we didn’t really spend much time doing any sort of non-climbing hanging-out-type activities. Why? Cause we were too busy out there in the forest squeezin’ *juice* out of the boulders baby! That’s why!!! Fontainebleau was sunny from the day we stepped off the plane until the day we went home (very rare in rainy springtime France). And wow did we take full advantage of every last sun-filled drop – bouldering 10 out of 13 days.
Our bouldering buds on this trip included Courtney (came along with us from the States), Grit and Manu (our dear friends from Germany), Lutz, Chris, Gerald and ‘lil 5 year old Fritz (friends of Grit and Manu – also Germans), and Alex and Lisa (more Germans!). All that time commuting in my car listening to ‘Drive Time French’ prior to this trip….sheesh! I should have been learning to speak German!
So I was debating on whether or not to give a long day-by-day, blow-by-blow rundown for this trip report. And I decided not. Reason being, because every single day of our trip pretty much went kinda sorta like this:
Wake up late morning, 9 or 10am, in our comfy cozy gite. Nominate someone for bakery duty. Said nominee jumps into cutesy little euro roller-skate car and heads down to the bakery in the nearby village, practicing his/her “bakery French” along the way. Baguette, croissants, pastries, cheese, jams, yogurt, fruit, coffee and tea for breakfast. Or seeing as it’s nearing 11am, shall we call this “brunch”? Who cares – Mmmm.
Hit the boulders around noon. Climb, climb, and climb some more. Watch old French men cruise your projects with ease, cheesegrate down the slabs and vote on who has the most banged-up knees for the day, eat baguette like it’s the next generation power-bar, and blurt out Alle! Alle! during every sketchy sloper no-holds topout you see. Continue this ‘till about 7 or 8pm, when the baguette supply runs low.
Back at the gite, it’s now time to bust into some bottles of wine. Someone has volunteered to be chef for the evening and is cooking up his/her special dish for the full house. In traditional French style, dinner lasts around 2-3 hours. More wine, a few bars of chocolate for dessert, stories (both in German and in English), laughs (at the Americans trying to speak German and the Germans trying to speak English), more wine, more stories, a few more laughs to work off the last full chocolate bar each of us just chowed down, one last sip of wine to polish off the bottle, and finally the tired climbers hit the hay around midnight or so.
Sleep like a baby.
Wake up the following morning. Same time. Same blissfull place.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
(more pics on the way)
posted by arr
If you don’t hear from us for awhile, we have a good reason…
Here are the rest of our pictures from our J-Tree and Yosemite trip. Thank you Dale for taking such rad pics with your sweet digital camera/fisheye lens.
Desert driving, climbing boulders, hiking rock, fireside ghost stories, joshua tree forests, gushing waterfalls, El Cap awe, sore legs, big smiles…..the list goes on and on. This is *the* official trip report for our first Sportsmobile camper van adventure, with special guests, Dale and Tans from New Zealand.
The first destination on our roadtrip tick list is Joshua Tree National Park, California. We leave Sunday late afternoon from Tucson, Arizona and gave Dale and Tans their first taste in desert highway driving – a long thread of cars stretching out before us, as far as the eye can see. The Sportsmobile is purring like a kitten (Paul says ‘lion’). We’re riding in style with legroom to spare. This is the life! 🙂 We pull into Joshua Tree pretty late and are worried about not finding a campsite. The month of March is considered the busy season, but we’re already feelin’ lucky on this trip and miraculously land a sweet site.
The following morning we have ourselves a nice cup of coffee and breakfast and then hit The Ouback for some bouldering. This is Tans’ first outdoor climbing experience and she does awesome – sending the layback crack Trout Chow (v0) and flashing the stellar West Face of Dino’s Egg (.9). Woo! We all finish off the day having fun jumping around on the Flintlock Dyno (v0) on the Chuckawalla Boulder and then back to the campsite to celebrate with yummy food and beer.
Next destination on the tick list is Yosemite National Park, California. We’ve picked a great day for driving because it’s cloudy and lightly raining on almost the whole journey up north. We arrive at Yosemite Valley at dusk, but alas, because of the rain (snow, at the higher elevations), the massive monolith El Capitan is unwilling to show its sheer face. Here in the high country, March is the off-season and we practically have the entire place to ourselves (relatively speaking – if you’ve ever visited the Valley). We celebrate our arrival with homemade pizza.
The waterfalls are absolutely gushing this time of year and we’re eager to check them out. Our first hiking pick is Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls. Because of the snow at the higher elevation and rockfall danger, the Mist Trail is closed (a direct link between Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls along the water’s edge), thus forcing us on a long, roundabout hike to get to the top of the amazing Nevada Falls, with which we are rewarded with stellar views of Liberty Cap, Mount Broderick, and Half Dome along the way. There is no such thing as a bad hike in Yosemite. Nine miles later we’re back at camp, munchin’ on spaghetti and garlic bread and sippin’ on wine, celebrating Tan’s Birthday! (the celebration just never ends on this trip).
Rise and shine campers! Today is the El Cap day! Our goal: To hike to the top of El Cap; about 3000 feet elevation gain; about 18 miles of walking. It’s early, we’ve got our daypacks ready, and we’re rearin’ to go. We start off toward Camp 4, where the Yosemite Falls trailhead awaits. Slow and steady, we burn our way up the never ending switchbacks up to the top of Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in the U.S., the 5th tallest in the world. It’s gushing full force with the springtime melt. Breathtaking. The next photo snapper we see is a BOBCAT!!! No kidding – right on the trail – just chillin’ – well, kinda not – he’s pretty pissed to see us we think so we keep our distance. He heads downhill and we head up. We’re chugging along again, up, up up. Just around the next switchback, just around the next switchback, and finally we reach the top. We all chill for a bit and refuel with some PB&J sandwiches. We’re feeling pretty darn good and looking forward to the next part of the hike: a straightforward 5 mile, rolling walk through a wooded forest, gaining only about 500 more feet of elevation, which will gently place us on the top of the massive El Capitan. Sounds easy, huh? Well, not quite. We start off into the woods and immediately begin walking over patches of hardpacked snow. A little snow – no big deal – we’re well equipped. We tromp on. The little patches start turning into bigger patches, and then bigger patches, until we’re eventually walking through neverending 3-4 foot deep hardpacked snow. Throw in an occasional post hole here and there, leaving us knee (or sometimes thigh) deep in the icy whiteness, and you’ve got a few bummed looks of despair that we may not be able to make it to El Cap. After about 45 minutes of this we get to a signpost almost buried in the snow. El Cap this way…4.1 miles. Uh oh, wait a sec. We’ve been hiking for almost an hour and have only traveled about 1 mile! Oh no, we’ll *never* make El Cap at this pace. The snow is slowing us down way too much. And to top it all off, the old footprints we’d been following through the snow…keeping us on trail…now turn off down another trail at this point. We look into the dark, snow-filled woods at where the path to El Cap should lead, but is invisible due to the snow. Consensus everyone: “No Thanks.” We turn back. El Capitan has shut us down.
We quickly turn our despair around with deciding to go check out Yosemite Point. As I said, there is no such thing as a bad hike in Yosemite. We reach the precarious vantage point and are blown away with the breathtaking birds-eye view of the entire Valley floor. I can only sum it up with one word: Wow. All smiles, we cruise back down to the valley floor and fill our bellies with some great food at the Yosemite Lodge.
Our remaining stay in the Valley is quite relaxing. We tool around the valley floor shops, shower!, sip on drinks at the Ahwahnee Hotel, check out some boulder problems, stare in awe at a bivy tent on the El Cap face, and rest and recuperate with good food, good stories, and good company.
It is now time to turn this roadtrip back toward home. We decide to pass through Joshua Tree again on the way back and *totally* luck out with finding a campsite. It is our final night on the road and we celebrate the good times had with a nice fire and a slideshow with all the pics we’ve taken on the trip.
We get up early in the morning and hit the road again, eager to get to Tucson at a reasonable hour so we can have time for some evening chillin’ at the house. This roadtrip might be coming to a close but the fun is not. We’re all still buzzing from the amazing sights we’ve seen over the last week and discussing our favorite parts, dreaming of when we can return and/or what adventure we will embark upon next. The more places one sees, the more one wants to see. A healthy greed, we all agree.
posted by arr
…and we have a couple stowaways along for the ride. Our friends Dale & Tans from New Zealand are here in Tucson right now, packing their climbing gear and hiking boots into the Sportsmobile, getting psyched for a week of road trippin’ with us.
But before I go there – how about an update as to what we’ve already managed to pack into these two kiwi’s first visit to the southwest. They arrived Friday evening, and in perfect Tucson host style, we greeted them with margaritas, fahitas, and some classic chillin’ out back by the pool in pleasant 80 degree temps. Paul’s father, Regis, was here too – winding down and relaxing after the long Sportsmobile “Maiden Voyage” with Paul.
Saturday morning, unfortunately, Regis had to return home to Pittsburgh. Dale and Tans started the day off with an icy morning swim (the pool is still quite cold!). And Paul and I fixed up some smoothies and coffee for everyone. After some more relaxing by the pool, next on the agenda was a short little morning hike on the Agua Caliente trail.
That was fun, what next? Let’s head to Mexico!! Our friends Jeff and Gina came along too.
And to finish off the night – more margaritas, beer, and chillin’ at our adobe.
So now, here we are packing our gear for the roadtrip. Joshua Tree, Yosemite, maybe a couple of other sightseeing stops along the way….!! We’ll be cruisin’ in style….Sportsmobile-style. 🙂
