The First Night is the Worst (And other camp stories)

I found that as wonderful as bacon is, it is even better, if bacon can actually be improved, when cooked and eaten at a campsite.

That first night sleeping on a camping trip is always the worst.  Sealed in a mummy bag, you can’t sprawl, rolling over is a chore and at some point the zipper invariably jams when you're too hot or too cold forcing you to turn on the flashlight fix the zipper and entertain the other campers with your cursing.  When you're finally settled you lay awake dreading the notion that you’ll have to get up at 2 in the morning to pee.  A pee in the wee hours is always made more daunting by the possibility of a midnight rendezvous with a marauding bear. And then there’s the better than even odds that your made in China air mattress will be deflated by the time you get up to take that pee which begs the question, why oh why God do we do business with a nation that pumps out worthless junk?  (Never mind, I know the answer to that question and that's for another post.).  When this happens the only alternatives left are gut it out on the hard ground or collect as many coats and articles of clothing as possible and fashion a sleeping pad of sorts.

It’s been 15 years since our last visit to Calaveras Big Trees State Park and probably 50 since my first visit with my parents when I was a child.  Located in the foothills of the Sierras the park is, logically enough, known for its trees, particularly the giant sequoia which, as the park brochure explains, get as tall as 300 feet and up to 33 feet in diameter.  The park is largely as I remember it from the many childhood trips.

The stump of a giant sequoia

Getting There

Heading east from San Francisco, highway 4 passes through the Sacramento Valley, past seemingly endless miles of cornfields, followed by groves of nut trees.  By now you've lost the urban radio stations and the dial is largely made up of country or Spanish radio.  And why not; much of the population is made up of Hispanic farmworkers (You know, those folks who are allegedly stealing jobs from “real” Americans because everybody knows that “real” Americans yearn to pick crops in the 100 degree heat of the valley).  The little town of Farmington is like the many countless dots on the map of the Central Valley, a general store, a filling station and a cross roads that leads to other general stores and filling stations; all populated by old timers, bored teens, ranch hands and farmworkers. Farmington marks the end of the valley floor; a transition from farmland to ranchland and the slow steady rise into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. 

Downtown Farmington

Highway 4 twists, turns and rolls like a roller coaster past cattle ranches and horse ranches until out of nowhere the town of Angels Camp suddenly appears.  This is an area as rich in history as it was once rich in gold.  It’s the California Gold Country.  Angels Camp is mostly famous for Mark Twain’s first major work, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.  The story is Twain’s adaptation of a yarn written by “Lying Jim” Townsend and published in the nearby Sonora Harold about a frog that was entered in a jumping contest and then secretly fed shot to weigh it down.  Twain heard the story in early 1865 at the Angels Camp Hotel Bar adapted it to a short story that appeared the following November in The Saturday Press and Twain cashed in.  The story launched Twain out of obscurity and Angels Camp has cashed in ever since; selling everything from frog emblazoned t-shirts to rubber frogs made in (where else) China to the annual Frog Jump Jubilee highlighted by an international frog jumping contest (The record is held by a frog named Rosie the Ribeter at 21’ 5 ¾”).  Everything Angels Camp is frog including the Bullfrog mascot of the local local high school, Bret Harte High, name after Twain's contemporary.  Twain was not at all averse to turning a buck and I imagine he would be proud of what he, err, jump started.  Angels Camp has changed since we drove through town when I was a kid.  While it maintains some Gold Country charm, over the years it’s sprawled and become an unattractive conglomeration of strip malls.  A town I would like to have stopped in years ago, I’m perfectly happy to pass it by now. 

About 10 miles from Big Trees is Murphy's, another of the many small burgs spawned by the Gold Rush.  In its early days of the mid-1800s it was known as Murphy's Camp and Murphy's Diggins and when we drove past when I was a kid it was one of those, if you blink you’ll miss it, little towns.  It had a few little curio shops, the historic hotel and saloon and a fascinating little rock shop.

Recently the town has struck a new mother lode; wine.  Not that wine making is new to the area. It started during the Gold Rush days, went through various booms and busts and has recently become the area’s major industry.  We stopped at Murphy's to grab some lunch before getting to the park to find that Murphy's has turned into the Napa Valley with a small hint of Gold Country; a frou frou little boutique town.  Sadly the rock shop is gone now and the town sports a cluster of tasting rooms, wine shops,hifalutin emporiums and trendy restaurants that cater to pretentious foodies.  It seems that Murphy's has grown a snooty wine sniffing nose that looks down at its 49er miner heritage.  It's lost its dirty, rough and tumble, ruggedness to a trendy, chic softness.  Murphy's even has a stoplight now.  Progress?  It's all a downgrade in my mind.

Historic Murphy's 

Happily Nelson’s Candy Store hasn’t closed and I carried on my tradition of buying a stash of hard to find goodies; black licorice and hard candies in flavors like sassafras, clove and horehound.  The name horehound is the real eyebrow raiser among the prurient whose minds conjure up visions of butt swishing, canines walking a seedy street wearing gaudy platform shoes.  Horehound drops are actually made from a plant called Marrubium vulgare.  My mom bought the sweet, slightly bitter hard candies at Nelson’s many, many years ago and that was when I developed a taste for them.  My nephew put one in his mouth long enough to determine that it has a slight medicinal taste (horehound is actually used for medicinal purposes) before spitting it out in disgust.  The great thing about these candies, besides being delicious is the fact that nobody else thinks they are.  And so, nobody steals them. 

Hard Candy Drops at Nelson's

Nelson's handmade lollipops

The Great Outdoors

Campsites are by reservation now; have been for a long time.  But just because you have a site doesn’t mean you know where to pitch your tent.  Once you get to the site there’s a ritual to finding just the right spot for the tent.  It’s sort of like picking out the right tile for the bathroom or where to put the couch in the family room.  You pace around the site looking for a spot that has all the prerequisites; relatively flat, far enough from other tents to offer a measure of privacy and as far back from the road as possible.  And then you have a small argument.  “How ‘bout this spot?”  “Naw, too slanted.”  “What about here?”  “Are you kidding?  Look at that root sticking out.”  After walking around the site, kicking rocks out of the way and scratching our heads over it we found our spot and within the hour our little homestead was established. 

We got to the park well prepared for all the mosquitoes that weren't.  They must have all been eaten by the wasps which were there in abundance.  Locals call them “meat bees,” which doesn't do the little bastards proper justice because they hardly confine themselves to meat.  We found that they’ll go after chili, eggs, sweets, fruits, vegetables, beer, juice, water, tequila, Margarita mix, garbage, fish, fish guts, fish bait, the fish stringer, the fishing tackle box, the dog, dirty dishes, clean dishes, clothing with any type of scent and human flesh, as I got stung 3 times and my wife and granddaughter once each.  I went to the nearby town of Arnold with credit card in hand and the mission of buying a canopy with mosquito netting to put over our picnic table but none could be found.  An enterprising fellow could make a small fortune buying a hundred or more of those canopies in June and spending the summer touring the campground selling them at twice their market value.  We had some limited success with wasp traps. Limited because these traps apparently attract only simple minded wasps.  Those with any intelligence or sophistication fly straight for where the people are because invariably that's where the food is. 

I had pitched this trip to Cora as a nice relaxing trip for her.  I wouldn't insist on any long hikes and I would take on all of the cooking and camp chores.  As unexciting as it seems a highlight of the trip just might have been sitting on the “front porch” of our tent with Cora and the dog in the pleasant shade of a Friday afternoon, before other campers had arrived for the weekend.  We read, we talked, played checkers and just sat and enjoyed the quiet of the forest.

Rainey our dog guards the "front porch."

There is something that never, ever changes about camping - dirt.  It's everywhere and it took the grandchildren about 10 seconds to get dirty.  And then they stayed dirty for three days.  They ran through the campsites kicking up dust, sat in the dirt, rolled in the dirt and poofed up little dust clouds when they moved like Peanuts' Pig Pen.   At 5 years old, my oldest granddaughter had some appreciation for the brilliant dome of stars visible in the woods, for the huge sequoias and for the beauty of the Stanislaus River.  The little ones appreciated the dirt and the water tap.  They all appreciated their first ever s'mores, that classic camp dessert of graham crackers, chocolate and campfire roasted marshmallows. On the cusp of my 60th year I had my first ever s'more on this trip and yes they're as good as advertised.  

One thing that has changed over the years is campground etiquette.  There apparently is none.  There have always been quiet hours in campgrounds and in my younger days I recall that people talked in hushed tones once the clock struck 10.  Happily I found that my children took the example to heart and well before 10 were talking just above a whisper.  Not so the many campers who bring their urban ignorance with them; whooping, hollering and horse laughing, and the rest of the campers be damned.  I can’t fathom taking the trouble to pack, travel and set up all that gear to commune with nature and then treat that beautiful natural setting with such irreverence.  Sad. Very sad.

And so I don’t feel so bad when I get up at 5:30 in the morning and start the car to go fishing at the river.  Yes, I hope I woke you up and I hope you have a brain slamming hangover.  We fished well that weekend.  I caught fish, my son caught fish and my nephew caught his first fish which created some comic moments as he had to figure out how to take it off the hook and later clean it.  We offered advice and showed him how but you learn by doing and In the end, he did well. 

On Friday morning I was fishing the North Fork of the Stanislaus.  A couple hours in, as the chill early morning turned to dawn I looked over my shoulder to see the first rays of the sun light up the rapids upstream and it struck me that, over the years, I had seen that very same picture time and again as if it had been hanging in some timeless museum; a half century ago with my dad, two decades ago with my son and now, again.  I’m sure the river has changed but it could only be in minuscule ways that I could never notice.  The river is constant; the people come and go for awhile and then - gone forever.  My dad who caught fish from the very boulder I was sitting on is gone and I’m 50 years older.  My son caught fish from that boulder when he was little and now he’s a 30 year old dad.  I wonder, will his now 5 year old daughter one day be sitting on that boulder with her child and realize that her great-grandfather fished from that very spot?

Stanislaus River

And finally what would a fishing trip be without a fish story.  On Sunday morning we were overcrowding the boulder; my son, my son-in-law, my nephew and me.  I got the first bite of the morning and started to reel the fish in.  I noticed the rod bent more than usual and, what’s this, the fish was actually taking line from the reel.  I tightened the drag and continued to reel the fish in.  An instant before I saw the fish, my son-in-law called out, “No way!”  My thoughts exactly as I saw a huge brown trout come towards the surface.  On that section of river there is no bending over to land the fish in a net.  You’re fishing from a big boulder and the surface is a good 4 to 6 feet from where you’re standing.  And so I mentally did a sign of the cross and hoisted the fish out of the water and swung it towards me only to watch it drop back into the river leaving on the hook the small rainbow trout that it was in the process of dining on.

We're already planning for next year's trip which gives Cora a year or so to try to talk us out of the woods and into a 5 star hotel.