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Filtering by Tag: Camping

The Southwest with Sue: Part One

May 24, 2014Whitney Lea

This episode of HerBig Idea is brought to you by the number 2!

In this post, our dusty and hungover travelers link up with two moms: Whitney's mom, Sue, and the mother of us all, Mother Nature.

Before we could escape the barren dust plains of the Southwest, we had to drive through two cities we had very little interest in: Tucson and Phoenix. On Sunday we left Casa de Sueños to drive to Tucson, and we had to go toTucson for two reasons (and only two reasons as far as I'm concerned): My mom was flying into Tucson and Sam wanted to see the Pima Air & Space museum.

We did stay in a nice B&B where we had a spectacular breakfast and we did explore downtown a bit, but there isn't much more to say beyond that. On our way out of town we headed to that Air & Space museum I mentioned. There were lots of historic planes and we got to do a tour of "the bone yard" where the US Military sends its aircrafts to kill time, get turned into drones and get shot down over the gulf for military practice, or get scrapped for parts. There were thousands of planes. Sam took pictures. See!

So then we headed to two cities smooshed into one place: Phoenix and Scottsdale. Two good things happened there: we bought a camp stove so we don't have to create fire from matches or cook with charcoal AND we did laundry.

Slow start, right? The nice part about that was that we had a chance to spend a little "normal" time all together before going into full road trip mode. Those two slow days were leading up to some big adventure for the three of us. We were headed to two legendary national parks: The Grand Canyon and Zion.

We decided to take a bit of a scenic detour on our way to the Grand Canyon to see two places that several people told us would make the drive more fun: Jerome, a historic mining town; and Sedona.

The mine, before it became an open pit mine. That's what Wiki says, anyhow.

We drove up a very windy road, saw a big old snake on the way, gained some serious elevation, and got to Jerome in time to eat a huge lunch. It's pretty difficult to imagine it was home over 10,000 people back in the boom times. Jerome is also famous because Maynard (from the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle) lives there and owns a wine shop or something. The two people that told us it was worth a visit also mentioned him, which was surprising because I don't know any Tool fans in their 50s. To be honest, I think my mom thought Tool was a place because everyone was saying "Maynard from Tool" and she asked "Where is Tool?" Sorry to "out" you, Mom! I promise she's really hip most of the time and knows all the cool bands. Sam took some nice pictures on the winding road up to Jerome, as well as of the town proper. See!

As we drove through Sedona, I saw how gorgeous it was and wished I had scheduled for us to stay a night or two there instead of in Tucson and Phoenix. But now I know in case there is a next time and you know now too. As we passed through town we saw so many great formations that we wanted to take pictures of.

We finally spotted a pull-off next to a stream. As we stood there we realized we could bushwhack a little to get down to the water and spent the better part of an hour down there watching birds, listening to the stream and enjoying a very intimate experience in nature, just the three of us. Sam even took some pictures. See!

Views: Oak Creek, Coconino National Forest, Arizona by Samuel Herbig

So at this point we realized that we were running out of daylight. We spent almost an entire day doing what should have been a 4 hour drive. Sometimes that's my favorite way to do a drive. I know my mom was a bit concerned that we wouldn't get enough time in the Grand Canyon because of it, but I think and hope she enjoyed the explorations. By this point though all the of us had been building anticipation for more than two days. It was time to get there already!

We made it in enough time to set up the tent and hightail it to the rim to watch dusk fall. My mom and Sam had both been to the canyon before. I had only seen pictures. When I walked toward the rim it was exactly as I had imagined. But then as we walked closer I realized it just kept going down. And down. And down. I could not see the bottom. It was somewhere waaay down there and I had no idea how far. It was the first time I remember looking at something and thinking it was unfathomable. It was the pictures I had in my head but much bigger and deeper than I ever could have realized. Calling it "grand" is belittling. It is huge and complicated to the point that I still can't wrap my head around one thing being so big. Mountain ranges are big like that too, but I think of them as an area or as a series of peaks, and therefore numerous places. I had always thought of the Grand Canyon as one single entity and that's what makes the enormity so unique.

The only picture we took at the Grand Canyon!

So we went back to the campsite, feeling the cool of the night turn to real cold. We fired up the new camp stove and excitedly cooked dinner faster that we ever had on this trip and inhaled the food faster too. We tucked in for the night — Sam and I in the tent, Mom cuddled up in the back seat of the Omimobile — and all three of us woke up very very cold. Just days earlier we had been sweating in the El Paso sun and now we were wearing longjohns, hats and coats. We ate a quick breakfast and took the shuttle to the Bright Angel (wiki!) trailhead.

Views: Coconino County, AZ by Samuel Herbig

[If you click into the 360º panoramas above and pan around, you should be able to click through to the other two I took — Sam]

It started to snow as we began our decent. Not heavily and nothing stuck, but it was a little surprising nonetheless. We carefully strolled downhill as we greeted tired hikers making their way up from Phantom Ranch. It was overcast which gave the canyon a pastel color palette and the low contrast made for nice photos of the trail. See!

We hiked down to the first waypoint a mile and a half into the trail and decided we would try to make it to hut number two — three miles in — knowing that the hike down is the easy part. The weather was so perfect (in the high 50s I'd guess with little sun) we made it there easily. We took a small break and then Sam took a photo break. See!

We've been holding this post back, just so we could add this picture! — We've been holding this post back, *just* so we could add this picture!

So now we faced the hike back up. We knew we could do it (or that we had to do it, whichever). In our way up the sun peeked out, the weather got warmer, but we were cooled with small pockets of light rain. Our energy was good and it was nice to look into the canyon at parts of the trail we had already finished.

After five hours and thirty minutes we were back at the trailhead, exhausted but feeling quite proud if our six mile hike. We got on the shuttle to look at other parts of the canyon. See!

Then we had to check out the Kolb studio, a photo studio built into the canyon. It's now a museum that talks about the Kolb brothers and their daring exploits to make money as photographers when the canyon was initially being settled by pioneers.

After all of that we decided we had all earned drinks, so we got two cocktails and a ginger beer at the lodge and sipped then on a mezzanine while trying not to pass out.

We woke each other up and hobbled to the shuttle only to hop off to make a run to the store for campfire wood. That's not the interesting part. The two elk we came across on the way there were. We were maybe 50 feet from them so Sam took pictures. See!

We made another great meal with our fancy dancy stove (roasted potatoes, sausage, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes, and cheese. Yum!) and then sat by our first real campfire of the trip to tell my mom all about our travels so far.

The next morning we stopped by the visitors center to stamp our National Parks Passport and got a few planning tips from a ranger there. We made sure to swing by The Watchtower on our way out of the park. See!

The rest of the story happens in part two!

categories Hike
tags Hike, Bright Angel, Arizona, Grand Canyon, Sue, Pima, Airplanes, National Park, Camping

Big Bend NP

May 18, 2014Samuel Herbig

You guessed it, we did make it to Big Bend National Park!

A big motivator was that Marfa really didn't have much to offer to keep us occupied. To be perfectly frank, Marfa was a disappointment plus dust. So we were happy to pack our stuff back up, grab two free cups of coffee from the office and head out on to our next adventure.

Once again we passed through Alpine gassed up and continued until we found route 385 which was going to take us South (past a Border Patrol check point) to the entrance of Big Bend.

Whitney wasn't feeling well. The second night in Marfa had given her sinuses what seemed like the final blow, so when we got to the park entrance flying dust was of particular concern.

So we asked the ranger.

The answers he gave us weren't exactly what we were looking for. He said things like, "oh yeah there's been a lot of dust there in the past days . . . but maybe it was smoke" and "sure, it's always windy up there".

Unimpressed, we pressed on.

Driving towards Big Bend is a wholly uneventful affair. The landscape is a series of low rolling hills, with the occasional rift covered in grass, low shrubs and an occasional cactus. The only animals we saw were a few birds. Part of Big Bend National Park's allure, is how remote it is. In the brochure we read that it is one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. It doesn't come as a particular surprise then that I counted about 5 cars in the last 2 hours of our drive.

About the extent of our interaction with anything on the way to Chisos Basin

When we reached Panther Junction both of us wanted to get out to stretch our legs, ask a few more questions regarding a few hikes we had our eyes on and to get our super awesome National Parks Passport stamped (some people have suggested that the passport is somehow lame and something for kids, but those people lack both imagination, spirit, and display a worrisome case of seriousness).

Once past Panther Junction, the landscape started to change dramatically. The air was filled with fine dust (or maybe smoke? let's just call it haze) so driving up the into the Chisos Basin was a little spooky, even though it was the middle of the day. Slowly one by one the mountains stepped forward out of obscurity. The last half hour we were flanked on both sides by huge 7,000 foot (and taller) mountains. Along a narrow and very windy road we made it up to the basin where our campground was located.

Purely based on it's location, this campground was easily the most spectacular we'd been to. After oohing and ahhing for a bit, we set up our tent and then swung by the lodge to score some free Wi-Fi access to hopefully hear from our friends at Happy Mac in Austin. We didn't get an update and so we cooked dinner back at the campsite, decided to try to hike the Lost Mine Trail (tripadvisor!) in the morning, and then went to sleep.

Views: Brewster County, TX by Samuel Herbig

Hang on, there was one more thing: Before heading into the tent to sleep, I took some night sky pictures. I've been trying to polish my skills a bit in that department and I think they're getting better. Still, I admit there's a lot of room for improvement. I'm open for tips, by the way!

Whitney messing around in the tent, or somthin'

Then we went to sleep.

In the morning we both agreed that we had slept much better and that there was no additional dust in the tent. The haze had cleared out of the atmosphere for the most part, too. Suddenly, we could clearly see all the mountains surrounding us in the basin. Bathed in the warm morning sunlight it was a sight to behold.

While making breakfast, the high winds and extreme wild fire danger were worrying me. I literally covered the open side of the grill with my hoodie to prevent sparks from flying. I really didn't get a big enough bed of coals going. Additionally, I think the strong wind caused the coals to burn through much faster, so that in the end we didn't have hot enough coals for long enough to make eggs and coffee.

After both of us were done stewing, we decided that enough was enough: we're gonna get a campstove.

Encouraged by our own ability to face the music and move on we, uhm . . . moved on to break camp and head to the the Lost Mine trailhead.

The trail starts out easy enough: it is wide enough for two people to comfortably walk next to each other and well maintained. This was our first long hike of the road trip, so that suited us just fine. Aside from it's remoteness, Big Bend is also know for it's many native varieties of cacti, which bloom in the spring in fall. So we got to see a lot of different kinds, some of which were still in bloom.

The trail really showed off once we reached the Juniper Canyon Overlook. Ahead of us, we could see deep into the Juniper Canyon and looking back over our shoulder we saw the trailhead and Chisos Basin with the campground and lodge. As we continued our ascent along and up the northeast wall of Juniper Canyon the views just grew more and more spectacular. Each switchback provided a new vantage point. Across from us we could see the majestic Casa Grande (which, coincidentally was also behind our tent site) and other peaks.

We finally reached the end of the trail after about an hour and a half. However, the end of the trail in this case wasn't a peak, a singular point. Instead it was a drawn out ridge, the length of which we could walk from little peak to little peak. We could see into three different valleys and at least a handful of peaks and points rising around us. To top it off, we'd seen about a dozen or so people or so on the trail. In short, this was easily one of the most impressive views I've had and we both agreed that the ratio of visual pay-off to effort was steeply stacked in our favor.

We sat there for a while, us and the desert mountains, and I thought about how wildly different nature out here was. How different it looked from the places in the Alps I used to hike growing up, or even the Appalachian range on the East Coast.

Views: Brewster County, TX by Samuel Herbig

Deeply satisfied, we began to descend. Not before long we were united again with the Omimobile and on our way towards El Paso, Texas. That's not technically correct: really we were headed for Santa Teresa, New Mexico since that's where Princess and a Kostya were getting married in only two short days! I was particularly excited to see those two get hitched, because Kostya is my oldest friend in the United States and he stood with me at our wedding. Now it was my time to stand with him at his.

Whitney was so greasy, she wouldn't let me take a picture of her. The steak on the other hand...

I should mention one more thing:

On our way there we stopped at Cattleman's Ranch, a short drive outside of Fabens, Texas for steak dinner. The steak was out of this world. I mean really, it was amazing. Peter L. (you know who you are), if you're reading this, you should take note.

As always, if you want to see a few more pictures, head on over to the Flickr page!

categories Hike
tags Hike, Chisos Basin, Big Bend, National Park, Camping, Lost Mine Trail, Steak, Cattleman's Ranch

Firsts & Transitions

April 21, 2014Samuel Herbig

Our drive into Florida was quick, but in that short time we realized one very hard reality that has plagued us since: Gas in Florida is expensive.

But let's rewind for a second. We got to Florida and it's really the first time either of us have been in the sunshine state (at least in the past ten years). They say a lot of things about judging books by their cover but when you're faced with something the first time you don't think in those terms. You're just jotting down your first impressions.

What I thought about walking towards the Florida Welcome Center off I-95 was: there are a lot of overweight people, kids behaving poorly and big trucks here. I realized that's very judgmental of me of course, so every time I've felt that way in the past I thought: You're missing something here. Look more closely and you'll find that there's more to what you think you're seeing here.

In the case of Florida, and I think I'm speaking for both Whitney and myself here, that moment didn't come until Miami; I'm getting ahead of myself though.

We got our complimentary orange and grapefruit juice and sat back down in the Omimobile to finish our day's trip to St. Augustine.

It's interesting in retrospect that I didn't even think about the historical aspect of St. Augustine on the way there. I mean I know that it's the oldest Spanish settlement in North America, but to us it didn't amount to more than a waypoint on our travels south. That's in no way meant as a slight towards Florida or St. Augustine. It's just the way things worked out.

The really cool thing about our campground in Anastasia State Park was that it was near the beach. For the first time we had the opportunity to go out and swim in the ocean. The whole idea of going swimming in the Atlantic was a sort of gateway into the "summer" part of our road trip.

We didn't much exceed sticking our toes in the water that night, but to me it was the beginning of water, sunscreen, sunglasses and pavement that's too hot to walk on barefoot.

To feed ourselves in the evening we sought out a local supermarket by the roadside, just outside the Anastasia. We got fresh vegetables, a piece of fresh tuna, coals and a bag of ice. Back at the campsite we split the tasks: Whitney prepared (chopped, peeled, seasoned) the vegetables and fish while I built the fire.

Seared Tuna! Fingerling potatoes! Roasted veggies!

Now, everyone has a different idea of what "camping" is. In our mind, it involves a tent and making your own food, I guess. We're not roughing it by any means and it's certainly not about digging a scat hole and making fire with a flint. We wanted to make it manageable for us considering we would be driving for several hours on many of our camping nights. We wanted to get a great night’s sleep so we got a pretty big tent and cots instead of foam sleep pads. We have a mini kitchen in the back of our car.

Anyway, by now we had the essentials down pat: As you can see we got the tent set up and the cots put together. The whole "let's get a fire going" is something I'm still getting used to, though.

Views: St Augustine, FL by Samuel Herbig

In the end, dinner was delicious and we went to sleep under the stars (we left the rainfly off), to a live soundtrack of Dierks Bentley playing my new favorite (no joke) “How Am I Doin’”. We tweeted at him but no response :-(.

We broke camp early next morning. Our next stop was the Pelican Inn on Key Largo, so we didn't want to waste time getting there. The drive down I-95 was awfully boring though. I'm serious, it's the most dreary part of the interstate we'd encountered.

PLOT TWIST!: Julia's in Miami and she's reading our tweets. That meant a spontaneous re-routing through unchartered territory. Did we plan on going through Miami? No. Was I-95 jammed up and did we have any idea that the there are Florida State toll roads? Also, no. So we set off on a happy-go-lucky chase through Miami to meet up with Julia.

Now, remember how I said that the part I'd been missing didn't come until Miami? Well, here it is: driving through town we found ourselves so excited at seeing the colors of the buildings. We saw pink houses and blue houses. Bright green cars with outrageous rims. I swear, Miami has the corner market on custom green paint jobs. Suddenly we were in this weird land of palm trees, bright colors and bad-ass cars!

Back to the story: Julia was in town to work on a commercial and we rolled in, just as they were finishing their day to say "hello".

Aside form an enthusiastic greeting we got so much more though. You see, the woman who ran craft services on this job, Nina, was a culinary goddess. Craft Services, or Crafty, are the stay-at-home mom’s of the film industry. That sounds derogatory, but hear me out! Every stay-at-home mom I ever knew made sure there was tasty food at a moments notice so kids would be able to do homework with full brain power as well as hang out with friends after school without getting hangry (or HALT as we call it — Hungry Angry Lonely Tired).

Now keep in mind that the standard day on a film set is twelve hours with one meal break in the middle and you see why Crafty is so important. Film work is manual labor! Nina was there for her crew all day that Sunday and as they finished their day she offered up her culinary wonders to us, the weary travelers, just because we were Julia’s friends. Now there are two phenomena we could pin this on: Julia’s ability to befriend any person she has ever met; or Nina’s charisma, kindness, and culinary skill. We were so grateful we want to credit both.

Nina with Proud owner of Nina iced coffee

Here’s to the best iced coffee we have ever had—hands down, the fantastic flan Nina sent with us for our dessert in Key Largo, and her tasty cookies that got us through a few hangry moments as we drove through Florida.

Strengthened and encouraged, we set out on the road again. At this point the Keys were within our grasp and we didn't want to waste any more time on the road. That however, we'll cover in the next post!

categories Drive
tags Camping, Florida, Atlantic, Swimming, Ocean

The long and winding road to the Smokies

April 06, 2014Whitney Lea

Holy cow! The past few days have been a jam-packed whirlwind and we have a lot of catching up to do on here.

On April 3, after blogging about Asheville for hours at a little coffee shop on the edge of town, we loaded into the car and set out with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park as our final destination. We hadn't given too much thought to this park or this drive but after consulting the roadtrip binder we decided to head straight for Clingman's Dome and then on to Elkmont camp ground to stay the night.

The road heading to the park was initially populated by various motels, activities and souvenir shops for families who take their summer vacations down there. It was a little odd to see welcoming signs and bright flowers with empty lots until we saw a sign that said "season start: April 5" and realized that we were driving through two days too early. Shucks!

Realizing we were in "local tourist" country, I told Sam to keep an eye out for signs for boiled peanuts. Not thirty seconds after I said that, we saw The Peanut King and the parking lot was full! We were going to get a chance to try boiled peanuts!

...but they were boiling them right there in front of our hungry eyes...

After we parked we hopped out and asked the people at the stand for some boiled peanuts only to discover they too wouldn't be open until Saturday.

We got back on the road and what a road it was. We had entered a Cherokee reservation and I was driving blind switchbacks down a narrow road on a mountain for twenty minutes with two cars tailgating (I'm sure they were just interested in seeing the twitter handle on our wheel cover...) because I was mostly observing the 30mph speed limit signs.

My only solace was a little wooden canoe-shaped sign that appeared every quarter mile or so, listing such lovely things as "homemade pork rinds", "jam", " Indian crafts", and most importantly "boiled peanuts". I knew once we got to Bearmeats Indian Den I would have my boiled peanuts and Sam would have the wheel back in his hands.

Sam drove the rest of the way to Clingman's Dome because I think my brain would have melted if I attempted to drive on the winding hairpin turns for so long. He stopped once to take some gorgeous pictures of a creek that ran along the road as well as the street signs in both English and Cherokee.

Once we entered the actual park we stopped by the visitor's center to get a stamp for our national park passport as well as a park map.

Clingman's Dome was about an hour into the park with increasingly amazing views around every curve. At some point the radio lost all signal and we switched to AM which worked out just fine. We got to the parking lot and hiked the steep but easy sidewalk to the lookout tower. I am so glad it was a clear day. It felt like we could see nearly 100 miles in every direction and it definitely felt very far from anything I knew on the east coast.

We snagged postcards on the way back down, I managed to lose my sunglasses, and we hightailed it to Elkmont so we could make camp and a fire before dark.

After an easy tent pitch, a flaky fire, and a not very tasty dinner thrown together by yours truly we debated going straight to bed. We knew we would need to wake up and take the tent down before morning light in order to get to Nashville in time on Friday. But then we started stargazing and I said, "we're going to have to get some really good long exposures done on this trip." Sam, being the man of action that he is, stood up and dug the tripod out of the trunk and started messing with settings.

After a bunch of shots where the silhouettes of the trees were soft because of the gentle breeze I thought out loud, "wouldn't it be cool to do live-action dodging and burning with a flashlight?" And as I tried to explain I got carried away with excitement and showed Sam what I meant. I completely forgot that the shutter was open!

Luckily, the result was really neat and we started a whole series of photos where we played with our flashlights.

Although it was a long day there were lots of nice creative moments which always help both of us to re-energize. And this time they lead to a good night's sleep with the wind moving through the trees in the Smokies.

categories Drive
tags National Park, North Carolina, Tennesse, Camping, Boiled Peanuts

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