View from the Top

 It's been over a year since I've been camping and I finally got the chance to lost in the woods again. It was a true Forbes' family-style break with 28 hours filled with camping, hiking, hammocking, cooking, soaking in the sights, mountain biking and lake swimming. We do like to cram it all in and squeeze every last drop of reinvigoration out of every moment of free time. So this is me, relaxing...

I drove down to Lake New Melones near Angels Camp, where I first stayed when I moved to California for what (at the time) I was certain was going to be a short visit. I had ridden my first bike (before we broke up) there and really fell in love with how beautiful this place is. It was the beginning of my love affair with Norcal.

It was so great to come back to the first place I rode single track and see it again with fresh, clearer eyes (horrendous allergies notwithstanding). As soon as I pulled up and scouted a campsite that was empty and had hammockable trees, I got to the busy work of unloading my poor, rugged, overloaded and perpetually dirty Mazda6. First thing to set up was the hammock so that I could have precisely 23 minutes of relaxation before the restlessness sets back in...

Ah brief moments of pure joy...and then, mountain biking!!!

So after swaying gently in the breeze for a surprisingly relaxing 23 minutes...I hopped on the bike and took her for a spin through some of the overgrown singletrack running around the lake. 

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed tooling around the edge of the lake. The first ride was a leisurely one that was more about exploration and photos than adventure and speed. I will add that no matter how leisurely the ride was there were large sections that were overgrown and my poor legs took quite the beating after running gauntlets of thistles encroaching over the singletrack.

After biking there was my second favorite activity...eating. I had joined some old friends and new ones and we whipped up some good eats, a roaring (ish) campfire and the finishing touch... s'mores + hot chocolate!

 

Then as the fire faded and the deep darkness of nighttime outside the city limits set in, we headed off to bed. I had managed to adjust my rain fly to account for everything but a chilly southwestern wind that landed directly on my one exposed shoulder. I then had to employ tactful biting to adjust the covers and give my shoulder some warmth and solace from the cold...I could've used my hands, but they were nestled by my sides wrapped in a pullover, sleeping bag liner, and mummy bag all balanced precariously at a gentle diagonal on an inflatable sleeping pad in the hammock...this made moving rather difficult and potentially disastrous as I discovered at four in the morning. 

I had just awoken to my frosty shoulder, which had again become disrobed and abused by the winds, so I went about the tricky work of adjusting myself in the hammock. I made what I thought was a well-calculated roll onto my side, but in reality was some sort of fish-out-of-water death roll, resulting in me being inverted so my face was wedged against the fly net while I gazed in surprise at the ground. the sleeping bag sort of ended up like a rung out washcloth and the sleeping pad somehow ended up on the left side of my face. I was tired, so I contemplated my next move very carefully, and then unzipped the mosquito net causing me to rocket face-first toward the earth with my arms wedged tightly by my sides. 

Thankfully, I landed on my frozen shoulder, wriggled out of the mummy bag and slowly began trying to put all the pieces back together so that I could climb back into the hammock because 4am is way to fucking early to start your day...especially on vacation. 

Despite capsizing the hammock, I slept relatively well and woke up around 6am and was finally able to get out of the hammock to start making coffee by 6:30a, this had less to do with wanting to more sleep and more to do with the fact that I couldn't get out of the hammock any faster. 

I sipped my coffee and watched the sun come up from my little camping chair and that really was the perfect way to start my day...all bundled up in my chair sipping blazing hot coffee out of poorly insulated cookware...which I got to enjoy with this hawk..

Then there was breakfast. One of my compatriots had brought a bag of spinach and I had stashed some scrambled egg and cheese mix in a thermos, so we cooked spinach ogre omelets for the crew...

After breakfast and more coffee I decided to check out the Tower Trail, which was the most challenging on the grounds and turned out to be some fun, fast(ish) downhill singletrack with some technical hairpins. The trailhead takes you from one of the higher points by the road and zigzags you down the side of the hill toward the water I ended up connecting with the easier trail that I rode the day before...

Then there was the climb out and back to the car, but that gave me the chance to pause for a photo op and not out of fear of imminent death...to take this picture...



After all the climbing and mostly not dying...I made it back to the car. I loaded the bike and started heading back to camp, when I saw it...a lone sign beckoning me to the swimming beach...Now I am from Louisiana and am not usually accustomed to cold water, but I have been practicing taking cold showers for several months because I saw it on the internet and am extremely gullible. Poor decision-making skills notwithstanding my cold showers actually turned out to be the perfect training for jumping into a lake that had no one else swimming in it for miles. I saw one guy pull a fish out of the water and then quickly dry his hands. Needing no more signs that what I was about to do was probably stupid, I jumped in the damn lake. It was cold...and not in a I just turned the hot water nozzle down a bit in the shower cold, but I screamed underwater so loudly that I scared fish out of the water, cold. True story.

 I squished my way back up to the car and took the above picture as proof because no one was there and I was oddly proud of myself for jumping into moderately cold water with no adult supervision.

So that was the tale of my 28 hours in the woods...I returned to my job, a little tired, a lot fried and totally alive, albeit still somehow highly allergic to every-fucking thing in this whole damned state. I gotta say it was a relaxing time and well worth the quick turnaround for another chance to get lost in the woods.