Road trip 4.1: Okanagan and Colville National Forests, Little Pend Oreille Reserve, Washington

After getting home from Lake Tahoe I went into the hospital to have major surgery on my left shoulder.  I had this surgery six years ago on my right shoulder, and it made the shoulder better than it had been since I was in my mid-20s.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that the recovery is a bear, with very limited use of the shoulder for several months.  

And a road trip isn't like a vacation in a 4-star Hotel.  You need both shoulders a lot. 

The MRI showed a tear in the rotator cuff.  When I awoke from the surgery, guess what?  No tear.  The MRI provided a false positive.  I had impingement syndrome that necessitated a minor surgery that would not require limiting my use of my shoulder.

Since we had already planned our schedule for a long rehabilitation, the results of the surgery meant that we had some free time.  We could sit around the house and relax, or we could HEAD TO THE HILLS!

(guess which we decided).

We went to the Okanagan and the Colville National Forests in Eastern Northern Washington.  At one of the campgrounds there we found out about the Little Pend Oreille Nature Reserve, and so went there for several days.  

We either stayed in "dispersed" sites (meaning boondocking, or dry camping), or in campgrounds that were almost empty.  Just right for us.  We like people, honest, it's just that we like them better when they are not where we are.

Our campsites:

 

 

 
We hiked a lot:

 

  (our camper is in the exact center of the above photo)

 Some of the places we try to go are pretty remote.  Narrow one-lane rocky roads that require 4-wheel drive and high clearance are not unusual.  We also sometimes are too tall for the roads.  In those instances, Vicky has to lift branches off of the top of the camper so I can drive under them.  That adds to the adventure.

Here she is standing on the bed through the top vent lifting branches off so I can drive under them:

To celebrate that I would have a usable shoulder, we bought a kayak!  We had done some kayaking in the Florida Keys, and found it to be a lot of fun.  After doing a lot of research, we realized we wanted an inflatable kayak.  However, we also discovered that to get an inflatable kayak that is more than a glorified floating inner tube, one has to shell out a few bucks.  But if there is anything more true than the adage that you get what you pay for, I don't know what it is.

The one we got is the heaviest of the inflatable kayaks.  It also has some inner skeletons that make it so it stays true when paddled.  We had planned on staying near lakes on this trip so we could try it out.  As (bad) luck would have it, though, the weather was not good enough most of the time.  We did, however, get to try it out once, and it is clearly a good purchase.  We will use it a lot in the future.

Christening the new boat with a glass of wine:

We had a blast on this installment of Roadtrip 4.  On the way home, we caught up with Owen and got to have breakfast with him.  It was great to see him.  

Candice's vision: A 200-mile race up and down mountains: The Tahoe 200

The reason we drove through the Boise National Forest and Humbolt National Forest was to get to Lake Tahoe.

And the reason we wanted to get to Lake Tahoe was to volunteer in whatever way we could to help make the Tahoe 200 a reality. 

Candice is a long-distance runner.  She's good at it, winning races of 100 miles, placing high in other races of 100 miles.

And then a year ago, she got the inspiration to design a 200-mile race around Lake Tahoe.  Now, who in their right mind would sign up for a 200-mile race up and down mountain slopes?  Well, about 200 people did.  And we met a lot of them, and we have to report that they all seem to be in their right mind.

One impressive aspect of this undertaking, something obvious right away, is the quiet competence of the people who organized the race.  It's not like Candice could just go to the start line and say:  "Run around the lake, and whoever is back first wins!"  Instead, it required massive planning.

When you run through a National Forest, you have to get permits.  We guess Candice could have rounded up a bunch of people with guns, like Cliven Bundy did, and tell law enforcement officials for public lands that if they try to manage these public lands for the greater good that they would shoot them, but we already told you that the people designing this race were not out of their minds.  So, golly gee, they tried to obey the laws and rules.  There are people who feel powerful when they can be victims and show off with their guns, and there are people who feel powerful because they are powerful.

So, there were a lot of rules and regulations to work around.

And for any long-distance race, one doesn't just point to a trail and say to runners:  "go there and come back around the lake the other way." The entire trail has to be marked, so runners won't get lost.  This required an incredible crew of hardy people who would run the entire trail and mark it every few feet.

During our hikes in the area we frequently ran across signs and markers that the race organizers provided. It was fun to see them:

 
 
 
 

 

It was a supported race, meaning that there were stations all along the route where runners could get food, drink, and sleep.  Some of those aid stations were far away from any roads, so for some the supplies had to be carried in.

There were medical personnel.  There are some physical risks of this kind of race, and every attention was paid to minimizing those risks and to how to monitor runners in case someone got into trouble.

All told, the race involved well over 100 volunteers to make it happen.

So, what could two 60-somethings do, given so much of the preparation required more physical skills than we had and, because we had never run a race like this, more knowledge than we had?

Easy.  We did what we have done for years.  We made food and sold things!  Wore us out.  :)


 

We stayed in our camper outside the house Candice rented that served as HQ.  During the day, everyone would split to go do their jobs, and so we hiked in the hills.  Had some nice hikes.  Then, in the afternoons, we would make food for everyone for when they returned.

In the evenings, the group met around the dining room table and planned,  and emailed, and texted.  We couldn't imagine how a race like this could be planned and executed without the internet.  Was it really all that long ago that everything was done with postal service and telephones?

 
 
 


 

It was fun.  We enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversations, and learning about how something like this was executed.

One thing we learned about was the attention given to the "sweepers."  These are the volunteers who basically run the race behind the actual runners and clean up everything.  They pick up all of the trail markers and signs, plus any debris the runners accidentally leave behind.  The goal is to leave the trail at least as good as it was before the race.  

Then, the day before the race, we assisted with registration and handled sales of the "merch" (racing term for merchandise).  Got to meet a lot of the folks running in the race.  Boy were they ever pumped up!

 

 
  

(see the flags?  One representing each country represented in the race.  People came from all around the globe)

 

 

Then, the next day was the big one.  People lined up and, at 10:00 a.m. sharp, headed out.  Quite exciting.  We both sort of wished we were heading out with them, talking a lot about whether we could have done something like this before age and arthritis caught up with us.  We'll never know, but we do know we were envious as we saw the runners starting out.  We wanted them all to finish.

Candice at the start line:

 
There they go!!!



Unfortunately for us, we could not stay to watch any of them finish.  Dan had to get back home to have his shoulder surgery.  We wanted to be there to see the runners' joy at crossing the finish line.

200 miles.  Inconceivable, isn't it?

And, of course, being Candice's mom, Vicky was glowing with pride the entire time.  Why shouldn't she be?

Hinkey Summit: Camping and hiking in the Humboldt National Forest

After we left the Boise National Forest we headed to Nevada.  We entered the Humboldt National Forest from the north, drove up the steep, one lane road to the summit, and camped on Hinkey Peak.  It was beautiful:

 
It was a very interesting spot, both good and bad.

First, the bad:  CATTLE!  And, of course, lots of cattle poop.  See it?  It was everywhere.

I don't understand why our natural areas are leased, for pennies on the dollar of what they are worth, to a few individuals who run cattle on them, trampling the natural grasses, and leaving cattle dung that doesn't go away for many years.

It's not like we need these cattle.  Cattle raised on our public lands accounts for only 2% of all cattle raised.

Those who raise cattle and have to provide their own land pay more for raising the cattle than those who raise them on public lands, putting them at an unfair advantage.

But of more importance, the cattle are very destructive.  And the eventual result is going to be that this destruction will encourage the introduction of invasive species of plants.  Cattle eat the natural vegetation which leaves the ground ripe for exploitation by invasive species.

The Department of the Interior needs to put a stop to this.  When I've talked about it at Ranger Stations, the response has sometimes been that it isn't fair to the people who have leased this land for many years to now disallow grazing.  True, perhaps, although it is also unfair to the other 300 million of us who own this land to continue to allow it to be destroyed.

And, yes, it will result in a change for a very few ranchers, but that doesn't make it unfair to them. Give ranchers one final 10-year lease and expect them to adapt just as every other profession has had to adapt in the past 10 years.  That seems very fair. We saw from the Cliven Bundy situation that many ranchers feel that having these public lands is an entitlement instead of a gift from all of the rest of us. 

OK, that's the bad.

The good.

After our first day there, we discovered a cabin that had a sign on it that said:  Hinkey Summit 4H. We found that anyone can stay there, for free.  But nothing indicating which 4H club provides it or maintains it. 

 It took us another day to discover that there was a pit toilet there, too!  That's like finding buried treasure or a winning lottery ticket.

So, thank you Hinkey Summit 4H, whoever you are.

What was also great about this spot was the opportunity for hiking.  We had incredible views of the surrounding areas:

 

(that's our camper way down below)

 When we got to the top of the steep hill next to where we camped (see the second photo on this blog post), looking down the other side Vicky sighted a herd of wild goats or sheep:

 

We weren't sure what they were.  They have a look of goats.  However, what we discovered when we did more research was that they are a herd of juvenile Mountain Sheep.  They are too young for their horns to have developed the characteristic round horns of Mountain Sheep.

But, how exciting!

This very wild area was a place we are glad we discovered.  We will be back some year, and will have more time to explore even more of it.