Monthly Archives: August 2017
Back to the workplace in the redwoods
Tom and Judy standing by the sign at the entrance to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.
By Tom Nichols
After almost 2½ years of shirking, I went back to work as a volunteer.
The terms: Twenty hours of work each week, split with Judy, in exchange for a campsite with electricity, water and sewer. After two years of freestyle travel, we committed to spend March, April and May as information center volunteers at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, a U.N. World Heritage site about 40 miles north of Eureka, California. To upgrade our campsite from the maintenance area to a beautiful spot on Prairie Creek, we agreed to cabin hosting, which meant light housekeeping for four utilitarian units with bunk beds and living space but without kitchens or bathrooms.
Yellow Pine’s eclipse: Champagne, doughnuts, and inappropriate card games
Umi's homemade doughnuts were a sweet start to the eclipse in Yellow Pine, Idaho.
We ambled back from the Grand Tetons to Yellow Pine to watch the eclipse without crowds, and were rewarded with a perfect day.
Revisited: Mexican Hat Soup in the Redwoods
Corbin in his amazing lightweight camper.
Editor’s note: Corbin, our son Nate’s college roommate and now a dear friend of ours, is the guest blogger today, discussing the amazing soup he made us when he visited. He also roasted coffee and made me a cup every morning (heaven). And he invented the famous campfire-toasted peeps, which shall live in infamy. Enjoy!
By Corbin
Back in April, I had the great pleasure of dropping in to the redwood forest to see Tom and Judy, a.k.a. the New American Nomads, for a 10-day stay. I brought my little Runaway camper and set up in the “front yard” of their spacious campsite to weather the mists and rain with a couple of my favorite people in one of the most amazing places on Earth.
As Judy has already written about on this site, we had some fantastic dinners by the campfire, reminisced about life over excellent beer, and generally had a grand time in the Epic Van and around the North Coast.
Tom, ever the mobile gourmet, prepared a number of astoundingly delicious and complex meals in the small kitchen of the Roadtrek, much to my amazement. We also had bratwurst and grilled veggies from the campfire, along with the now famous Roasted Peeps with Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.
As the amount of hospitality shown to me by the Nichols grew and grew, I wanted to offer a small token of appreciation in return, and it came to me instantly: my great grandmother’s Mexican Hat Soup.
Yellow Pine: Now you know about it, forget it
The beautiful view on the road into Yellow Pine, Idaho.
I’m going to tell you about a place I love, and then I’m going to tell you to forget about it. Well, maybe not altogether, but mostly. Because, like Boo Radley, exposing it to too many people might kill it.
Yellow Pine, Idaho, population about 40, sits on the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River, at the end of a 32-mile, one-lane, paved road, then about 15 miles of unpaved road.
Today’s hike: Taggart Lake-Beaver Creek loop
Taggart Lake is a pristine glacial lake in Grand Teton National Park.
Today, we hiked to Taggart Lake, one of the pristine glacial lakes in Grand Teton National Park.
The lake, at 6,902 feet, was formed by a glacier that flowed out of Avalanche Canyon, scooping out the basin and forming lateral moraines, or piles of rock and soil, along its sides. When the glacier retreated, water was trapped within the moraines.
From the trailhead, the path climbs next to a creek, through sagebrush flats and a recently burned area, for about two miles to reach the lake.