The July Adventure Begins

July 18, 2021

The Trinity Alps camping/hiking trip is around the corner. The plan was for my friend Nick to leave tomorrow and for me to meet him somewhere up there the day after. Late this afternoon we exchanged texts about logistics. He wrote:

I plan on leaving around 8 am to be there about 12:30………I’ll scout the sites and let you know where I am. You could come up later tomorrow too??

That possibility hadn’t occurred to me, but the second he mentioned it I thought, Why not? I’m pretty much ready to go anyway so why wait another day? Anyhow, all I’d be doing tomorrow would be obsessively checking the California wildfire reports and getting anxious. So I immediately schlepped most of my stuff out to the car, arranging everything strategically for maximum load. 

July 19, 2021

After taking my last shower for four days and packing groceries and valuables into the car, I headed north, listening to an English mystery audiobook for most of the four-plus-hour drive. Evidence of drought abounds, in burned-out forests …

… and dried-up rivers and lakes.

The remote Rush Creek Campground is about an hour of gently snaking two-lane highways from Highway 5 in Redding. Aforementioned creek is hardly rushing, though you can see that it used to in better times.

My Impreza and I bumped along the one-mile dirt road from the highway into the campground and checked out the eight camping spaces before returning to the pair of adjoining sites I’d come to on the way in. Nick drove up just as I started to get out of my car. After giving the surroundings a once-over, we decided this was the spot for us, but just in case, he suggested we pop into his car and explore half an hour further up the road to evaluate Bridge Camp. After more dirt roads and a careful analysis, Rush Creek emerged as the winner. We wended our way back to Sites 1 and 3 where it took me close to two hours to set up camp because of all the junk I brought.

The rest of the day was uneventful: dinner, route-planning for tomorrow’s hike, and backgammon. After I badly lost the first game, Nick taught me a radically new way to play, which thoroughly confused me. I kept moving my pieces backwards, away from my home. Not only that: I kept insisting that he was playing backwards too. This strategy did nothing for my win/loss score, or my friendship.

It‘s nice to have this place to ourselves. The only other camper is a quarter of a mile down the dirt road through the woods where the stinky pit toilets are. 

Darkness fell and soon we retired to our respective hideaways where the soft burble of what’s left of Rush Creek, just feet away from each tent, is not only soothing, but an effective cover for the likely intrusion of my snoring, or perhaps my nightmare-induced squawks. Here’s the setting of my palace.

The first (and only) item on our agenda for tomorrow: a hike to a lake.