Camping trip #2: Horseshoe Meadows

So we decided it was time to do another camping trip. When we were in the Bay Area over 4th of July we managed to score a family-sized tent on Craig's List for $55 and we wanted to try it out. Of course we hadn't addressed any of the other issues that came up on our first family camping trip, like how uncomfortable Rocket Boy and I were sleeping on the ground, but what the heck, we thought maybe our first campground had just had really hard ground.

We argued about where to go up until the morning of the trip (Saturday). I wanted to go to the charcoal kilns campsite in Death Valley, but Rocket Boy thought that sounded hot. He wanted to go back to Chimney Creek, but I thought that sounded hot. (It's very hot out here right now, could you guess?) His other suggestion was the campgrounds at Horseshoe Meadows, where we drove once and just looked around -- we can't remember when, either in the spring or last fall. It's basically straight up from Lone Pine, way high up, at 10,000 feet. And that sounded cool (in both senses) to both of us. So finally we agreed to go there.

We left after lunch on Saturday, around 1:30 pm, and drove to the visitor center at Lone Pine. The ranger Rocket Boy talked to didn't know whether the campgrounds at Horseshoe Meadows would be crowded or not, but we decided to take the chance. After all, the one time we went up there, there was absolutely no one around.

Lone Pine is at 3700 feet, so to get to 10,000 feet we had to drive 6300 feet up -- and it takes MAYBE half an hour to drive those 6300 feet. That's a lot of altitude really fast! Once you get high up, everything is so beautiful.

It was a nice drive, although at one point when Rocket Boy was negotiating a hairpin turn, Baby A shouted at me, "Mom! How do they make people?" (This is a concern of his right now. I gave him my current standard answer: "Babies grow in their mom's bellies.") We saw only a couple of cars on our way up the mountain -- and then we got to Horseshoe Meadows. And it was like a little city had popped up out of nowhere. The parking lots were full of cars, the campsites were full of tents. We stopped at the Cottonwood Lakes/Golden Trout campground and walked through it (the campsites are walk-in) -- but we didn't find a single empty one. So then we drove over to the Cottonwood Pass campground -- same thing.

We weren't panicking, you understand -- I mean, heck, it's about two hours from our house to this area -- we could have just gone home. But we wanted to camp! So then we looked at the Equestrian campground, right next door to the other two. The Equestrian campground is supposed to be for people with horses. Each campsite has a horse pen. But it was 4:30 pm, and there were about 5 empty campsites. Surely people with horses would plan ahead and not show up so late expecting to find sites. And the sign said "Priority is given to campers with horses." Not "You can't camp here unless you have a horse." So we picked out a site, paid the fee ($12), and settled in. It was a nice campground, with clean bathrooms and water spigots scattered here and there. Not much wildlife except little ground squirrels running everywhere, but the trees were lovely and it was so beautifully cool.

First we had to put up the new tent. The campsites had these nice little "tent pads," so we would be sleeping on slightly softer ground, and very level.

It took quite a bit of effort, even though we had practiced at home, but finally we got it up ("we" meaning Rocket Boy, with a little help from me).

The twins helped too, but mostly they helped by not helping. Fortunately they had a nice chair to sit in this time.

And once the tent was put up, they had a lot of fun playing in it. Of course Ducky was there too (you can see his yellow legs in the back of the tent).

Then we had dinner: veggie burgers grilled over a charcoal fire, hamburger buns, a can of baked beans, and grapes. Dessert was of course roasted marshmallows. We had been eating chips and grapes before dinner, so no one had a huge appetite, and pretty soon we were ready for bed, even though it was only about 7 pm. In retrospect, I suspect that altitude sickness was setting in -- nausea, fatigue... The campground is in a very beary area, so all the campsites have these great bear cupboards next to the picnic tables, with handles that bears can't open.

So convenient! We just stashed all our food and dirty dishes and garbage bag and everything in there and got it all out again in the morning.

We got in our pajamas, read stories while it was still light outside, and settled down to sleep by 8 pm. The boos always like to ask me questions right before they go to bed, Baby A especially, and last night was no exception. "How do they make sleeping bags?" he asked me, as we were snuggling into ours.

"In a factory," I said. I've gotten quite adept at thinking of easy answers to his questions.

"And how do they make tents?"

"In a tent factory. They sew them up. It's very complicated."

"And how do they make flies?"

(Rocket Boy and I snort with laughter.) Getting a hold of myself, I answered, "The mommy fly lays eggs and the baby flies hatch out of them."

Baby A was quiet for a while. But then, just as we were all dropping off, here came another question. "Mom! Do mailmans camp?!"

(Boos are very interested in our mailman, and often discuss what he does in his off hours.) Through more snorts of laughter, I said, "Yes, mailmen could go camping, but they wouldn't wear their mailman clothes while they were doing it."

The tent was very open, with the back wall mostly mesh, and I wanted to lie in bed and look at the stars. But to do that, I needed to keep my glasses on, and really I just wanted to go to sleep, so I put the glasses in a tent pocket and rolled over to go to sleep. Little did I know I would see plenty of stars later that night.

So, I slept a little while, and then I woke up. And so did Rocket Boy. And we continued to do so all night long. Which, since we'd gone to bed at 8 pm, went on just absolutely forever. We were on opposite sides of the tent, with boos in the middle, but since they're pretty sound sleepers, we could have whispered conversations over them. At one point I woke up and RB said "It's 2:30. When do you want to get up?"

"Well," I said in horror, "whenever it's light. Maybe at 6?" Thinking: three and a half hours? I have to survive three and a half more hours of this?

The problem again was that the ground was too hard. But I think something else may have been involved. After all, I didn't wake up twenty times at the Chimney Creek campground. When we got home today I researched altitude sickness online and read about Cheyne-Stokes respirations, which supposedly many people do while they're sleeping above 10,000 feet. It involves waking up a lot (among other things -- you can google it). It was a fairly quiet campground, despite being so full, but the horse at the campground next to ours neighed occasionally during the night, and of course that woke me up too. Also, as it got closer to morning, it also got FREEZING, and that woke me up too. Oh, a lovely night it was not.

Finally 6 am came, then 6:30, and Rocket Boy and I got up. Baby A woke up too -- I swear he's going to be a morning person -- and I got him dressed and we went out to have breakfast (cereal, rice milk, blueberries, and a package of apple rugalah from the grocery store -- not as good as homemade cinnamon rolls, but oh well). Baby B slept on and on, until finally I went back in the tent and made him get up. We were all jealous of how well he slept!

It was chilly in the morning, with the warm sun peeping in and out of clouds. We kept putting on and taking off our coats. We were all impressed to see that our horse neighbor was wearing a blanket (he hadn't had that on when we went to bed at 8)!

Then with great effort we took down the tent and packed up all our junk -- what seemed like thousands of sleeping bags and pads and extra blankets and suitcases and bags of food and miscellany -- and stuffed it into the car -- and drove back down the mountain. On the way down, we saw these hang-gliders preparing to go off the cliff:

This is the cliff they were going to go over:

Within a few minutes we were nearing Lone Pine and suddenly it was hot! We drove the 20 miles to Olancha and had a second breakfast there (with lots and lots of coffee, very important after that awful night), and it was so hot -- and steamy, lots of clouds in the sky. Drove on back to Ridgecrest and it was 107 degrees, just pukey hot. We really missed the campground.

So I don't know. We've decided that our next camping purchase will be REI inflatable camp beds, or something similar, to help with the hard ground problem. And the next purchase after that will be some sort of rooftop carrier, since our gear just isn't fitting in our little cars. But I think maybe, despite the coolness factor, we also ought to think about camping below 10,000 feet!