sunset at our campground
I haven't posted anything in a while. We've had a busy summer so far. I'm working, my brother's off in Europe, my dad is in Montreal, and my mom, sister and I spent most of June and part of July preparing our house to be sold. In between all the work, my mom and I managed to fit in a (very) short camping trip. My sister spent a week at Two Rivers Soccer camp near the Feather River, and we had to drive to pick her and a few of her friends up. Since it's a fairly long drive, (almost 4 hours), we decided to drive up, camp one night, pick them up in the morning, then drive back. We've done this before, as both my brother and I attended the same camp, and had our favorite camping spot at Gold Lake picked out to spend the afternoon/night and a favorite sandwich place in Graeagle where we planned to stop for a quick lunch on the way back. We had it all planned out, but, as often happens, things did not go according to our plan...
I'm watching our friends' dog, so we brought along too.
First of all, our 4 hour drive turned into a 7 hour drive due to crazy Bay Area traffic. We drove up in the Desert Wolf (my dad's Volkswagen bus) which has no air conditioning, and in the stop and go traffic between Fairfield and Auburn, it was about a hundred degrees. We roasted up in that car, and were especially worried for Clancy, who was panting crazily in the back. We stopped at a Starbucks in Auburn to cool off, then continued on. We had left the house at around 12:30, and it was getting close to 5 as we left Auburn and continued along the highway. We finally decided that, unless we wanted to set up camp in the dark, we would have to find a new spot closer than our traditional Gold Lake spot. So, we pulled off the freeway onto a nice and not-very-crowded campground - the Little Truckee River Campground - just off the road. The campground was right by the river. Perfect, we thought, we can cool off in the river before dinner. Bolstered by the refreshing thoughts of cool water, we confidently backed the bus into a camp site...and straight onto a rock. We had run over a fairly big rock, and were trapped between that one under the bus and another, even larger, right against the rear wheel. All efforts to move resulted in revving engine, flying dirt, and zero forward momentum. Great...Another deviation from our planned afternoon of fun on the river. By now it was evening, anyway - about 7pm. We stood for a second staring dazedly at the bus, neither of us sure what to do. This bus is my dad's pride and joy, and we were worried that not only might we have to be towed out of the spot, thoroughly ruining our one night of camping, but we may also have damaged the bus. The rock underneath was just barely below the bus, only a few centimeters away from touching the undercarriage, and we weren't sure if it had touched on the way over. After being boiled in the bus for half a day, we both reacted rather alarmingly to this potential disaster; I laughed hysterically and couldn't seem to stop, while my mom bent over, hands over her mouth, whispering "no, no, no"... Clancy the dog flitted between us, seeming to ask, "what's wrong, what's wrong?" It was in this state that our neighboring camper found us. My mom told him we had some blocks, used generally to level out the bus on uneven ground. Without further ado, he had my mom back to bus lightly onto the blocks, pulled out the boulder under the bus, and had us out of there and into the camp site in no time. Our hero! We quickly set up camp and ran to get some peace at the river. (After thoroughly checking the underneath of the bus, we found to our (profound) relief that there was absolutely no damage, and the rock had in fact not even touched the under-bus).
Our camping place and the trail to the river.
The faces of relief.
Clancy was overjoyed to be out of the hot car and into the cool river. We were too!
Enjoying the evening sun
Our little stretch of the river
The rest of the night passed happily and uneventfully, except that temperatures unexpectedly dropped and, instead of roasting in the bus, we were freezing in the bus. I actually had a dream that I was putting on my biggest jacket and hat. The next morning, we enjoyed a quick breakfast, drove the hour to pick up Dill and her friends from camp, and headed to Graeagle for a quick sandwich lunch.
Flat farmlands around Graeagle.
Not so...it turns out that that Saturday was the one day of the Great American Crafts Fair taking place in the usually tiny and uncrowded town of Graeagle, and there was a 35 minute wait for them to take our order. Oh well...we got the sandwiches in the end and drove home in 4 hours. Even though it wasn't quite the weekend we had planned, it was still a fun and (very) memorable trip!