I spent January planning a trip in February. Now, the February First Thursday party has come and gone so it’s time to get in gear and head out. Monday I grocery shop, cycle library books, make working-hours calls and all the other little things to get ready, so that I can leave tomorrow.
Tuesday (Feb 10)
After lolling in bed for too long deciding whether to go to the hot springs today or go straight to Eagle Lake, I do get up and get cracking. I was pretty efficient about getting my stuff together, ordering my food from the deli, and such. Started the van about 1:35, and actually hit the freeway about 2:15, after picking up my sandos and chillin with my Bibo americano for a few minutes. As always, it’s hard to leave my comfy little nest, but feels so good when I’m finally out on the road.
I decide to take the I-80 to 89 route instead of 395 – 70, since I will be seeing some of that tomorrow (or so I thought). Sierra Hot Springs is pretty quiet – I am registered at 3:20pm. But the familiar registering dude decides to slip me a bonus, and puts me in for two days – turns out the 2 for 1 deal applies to camping also!?! Wish I’d known that for the last five years! Anyway, I happen to be on a very open ended schedule, so I will stay 48 hours rather than a mere 24 hours – woo!
The same storm that gave us 1.5-2″ of rain this weekend in Reno (more than 1/4 of a total year’s rain), also pounded Sierraville, along with very high winds – the deli/carpenter shop in town was replacing its roof. So the streams are full, and more to the point, the campground is a quagmire where I could easily get stuck.
I nestle into my usual spot. After I get settled and look around I realize that all the backing and forthing I did to get myself at just the right angle to view the pretty valley has really churned up the gravel (actually mud now) right outside my van door. Oh well.
WHUFU page for: Sierra Hot Springs
Camping is just the edge of the forest behind the lodge. Next to a very pretty cow pasture at the edge of the huge Sierra Valley.
Nice lodge to hang out in, wifi and kitchen, free to campers.
The Hot Springs has also taken over the hotel in town. There is also a breakfast place and aMexican restaurant in town, both pricy but good!
tonight:
Stayed on my usual spot, did not get stuck in the muck, although the muck did make walking around a pain. Lucked into a two days for one special, and I fortunately have the time to make use of it!
Very mild (50's) in the daytime, very cold (20's) at night. There was a big rain and wind storm last weekend. Lucky for my trip (but sad for the area) it wasn't 10 degrees colder, because it woulda been two feet of snow!
So I do the things I usually do without stepping outside until I am completely ready for the walk to the Meditation Pool – every little thing I might want out of every cabinet is brought down to where I may reach while standing outside. The pool was deserted and it’s usual oasis of serenity, but after feeling really warm when I got in, it wasn’t quite warm enough to sustain a long soak, so back to mudville.
There was one very odd thing, a dude sitting his car by himself at the parking area, there when I arrived, there when I left. Another dude reading in the gazebo, did not appear to move the whole time I was there. then finally a couple standing outside an idling SUV when I returned. Since I am still in mud-mode, I am hanging around outside the van, not stepping inside, and every time I go to the back of the van, the SUV and the other car are still there, still idling. At some point they both leave together – very odd. It is chilly, so if you were going to just hang at your vehicle you might leave the engine on for heat, but still altogether odd.
Walk to the pools – the theme tonight seems to be Russians and gay dudes – not necessarily gay Russians though! Everyone was nice and their conversations did not suck or were in Russian – sucky conversations can really bring down the pool experience. I got quality time at the hot water inlet for the big pool, my favorite spot, so it was a good night for me.
Walk back, where I finally could take off my very muddy boots and enter the van and aaahhhh, turn on the heat!
Wednesday
I slept poorly – seems like there were at least ten times when I woke up enough to notice that I was awake and that it wasn’t sunrise yet. Then on the eleventh time it WAS sunrise, so I put on my glasses and stared at the beauty of it for a while. Fiddled on the iPad, then went back to sleep until a little after noon. I got the van shipshape (NOT stepping outside into the muck :), then headed off to my usual breakfast at the Roundup. No grown-ups today, just the two Polynesian(?) girls who usually work the kitchen and their girlfriend.
Since I will be back tomorrow, today’s the day that I do a walking tour of downtown Sierraville (maybe 300 yards round trip) to scope out my other two options for dining.
- The Mexican place – Los Tres Hermanos – has a sign that says they serve breakfast, but the dude inside had never heard of such a thing. But after some back and forth he agreed that if I showed up tomorrow they would cook me chorizo con huevos.
- The other place – Smithneck Farms (says my receipt) – is new over the last year or so, or at least they have seriously raised their profile in that time. They have a meat cooker out front and advertise espresso. Inside they have tasty looking cookies and such and the lady seems pretty cool – she’s back at the stove and in answer to my “what’s their deal?” question forks a huge hunk of meat and waves it around and says “this is what we do!”.
Back to the lodge for a day of hanging with the spa people – always an odd bunch. Around 4:30 make myself a cuppa tea then head off to the pools. The very hot pool was crowded today.
I forgot to bring my flashlight. We are under the new moon right now, so it seemed like the smart play to head down the hill by last light. Last light is my favorite time anyway, so win-win again. Thence to the Lodge to watch the last W’s game before the All Star break, against Minn on wifi. The wifi wasn’t quite good enough for the task, but I got little snippets and was able to follow the ebb and flow of it, and the frequent freezes gave me plenty of time to follow the play-by-play scroll on Yahoo. A game they totally could have lost … but they didn’t!
The van is parked here at the lodge still, so I pull myself together to drive it the 300 yards to the camping area and to park it without getting stuck. Not my favorite thing, picking a camping spot in the dark surrounded by mud hazards. In the interest on not f—ing up, I parked close to the road, so I got more engine noise than usual from folks driving to the Meditation Pool, but no big deal.
Thursday
Catching up with my blogging here in the van, before embarking on a new breakfast experience in downtown Sierraville – will it be Mexican, or will it be meat?
Meat won, as we knew it would. It was quite a stimulative, if expensive experience. It’s a small place, two tables and a little counter, with a coupla more tables outside. When I got there were a couple of locals talking to a cute ski bunny. The addition of little ole me made the room suddenly crowded, so they moved it outside, where it turns out there was a Mr ski bunny also. Anyway, that sort of set the tone, people in and out, everyone orders either the super burrito or the tri-tip sandwich, and everybody yaks for a while, with the owners, or me, or whomever else is handy. Small town folksiness exemplified!
I ordered:
- coffee – duh
- a brownie to nibble on till food arrives
- eggs and sausage and potatoes (which arrived so soon I’d only had three bites of brownie)
- a tri-tip sando to go.
total, a daunting $24.50 – yikes! Everything else was reasonable except the sando, which was $11. It was a mighty good sando though…
Back to the lodge for Day 2 of serious relaxing. I was so into the relaxing groove that I almost ran out of time. I know this will be the last chance for a shower, … for that matter my last hot water for the next four nights, so I wish to shave and clean up real good right before I go. I cut off fun time and hustle up the hill and do my thing, with a little bonus of 10 minutes in the really hot tub, then I’m off, a mere 13 minutes past my cutoff time! Unlike the Harbin nazis, these folks don’t give tickets for bad behavior, and I don’t they’re paying that close attention anyway. Also, I will note that shaving little patches to trim up a beard is waaaay easier than a full shave, so at times like this I’m happy I grew a beard.