Camping: Portola Redwoods State Park

OK, now that we have that nastiness with the minivan out of the way (“Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how’d you like the play?”), I can post about the nice part of our weekend: our annual camping trip to Portola Redwoods State Park.

I had to work on Friday so we did most of our packing on Thursday night.  Fortunately, Frido, the neighborhood “helper”, was around to make our lives easier.

It was a gorgeous 28-mile ride to Portola Redwoods on Friday evening — we took Cañada Road to Highway 84 to Skyline to Alpine Road to the park.  The weather was gorgeous and there was very little traffic.

I’m really starting to get comfortable on the Ninjette.  I won’t be breaking any land speed records anytime soon, and my back still cramps up occasionally while riding, but the nice 30-50mph sweepers are really starting to feel good.  I had very little pain on my ride to the park.

Zooom!

We arrived at the park, checked in, and bought some firewood.

I think this photo looks like I have a flagpole growing out of my head but Peter insists it’s more of a unicorn horn.  With flags on it.

I am the only human on earth who cannot flatfoot a Ninja 250, even while wearing boots with a rise in the sole.  😉

I’d reserved campsite #39 about six months ago.  We’d seen the campsite on a hike during a previous visit and it looked really secluded and beautiful.  Fortunately our memories were correct; it’s definitely a site worth reserving.  A bit far from the bathroom, but the quiet and darkness was worth it.  Mostly.

It’s not a motocamping trip without glamour shots of the bikes!

Dinner was our favorite recipe from TrailCooking.com: a pasta dish with olives, cashews, and honey mustard.  We add chicken to make it a little heartier; yum!  I really recommend TrailCooking.com for all your, well, trail cooking needs — the recipes are tasty and are easily made while motocamping with just a JetBoil.

We had arrived fairly late in the evening, so by the time dinner was over, it was nearly dark.  We amused ourselves with the campfire and the ubiquitous game of Carcassonne (Peter won by 7 points — *shakes fist at sky*).

The only downside to site #39 is that it’s a ways from the bathroom and the walk back to the site is at a fairly steep incline.  That’s probably not an issue if you haven’t been sedentary with back problems for 2 years, but if by chance you have, caveat emptor.

The seclusion of the campsite meant we slept in past 8am! Unheard of while camping in a state park.  I’m happy to report that my back did well again with the Exped 9 mat and I woke up without any cramping or pain.  In fact, I had way less pain then than I do now while sitting and typing this. 😉

#39 really is a beautiful campsite.  There’s a bit of foot traffic nearby as it’s just off of a popular trailhead (which we’ve walked in the past but not on this trip) but it’s the sort of park where everyone waves hello and says good morning.  We saw a few families start their hikes while we were cooking breakfast and there were smiling faces all around.

Jesse bags make a remarkably good refrigerator.  All of the frozen food stayed cold and even the icepacks were still frozen the next morning.  I think it’d be a pain to bring more than a couple of meals at a time, but for dinner and breakfast this worked out perfectly.

There’s a large clearing behind campsite #39, so instead of doing an official hike (it was late morning by this point), we wandered around the clearing looking at trees and banana slugs.

By this point it was just about noon and the friendly ranger was figuratively knocking on our door and reminding us of check-out time, so we packed up our stuff and headed towards Alice’s for lunch.

As you undoubtedly read, the lunch plans didn’t go exactly as planned.

Once the paperwork and everything was done, we walked over to Alice’s to have that burger after all.  Peter asked the waitress for some ice to put on his wrist; when he explained, she said, “that was YOU that was hit out there??”  I get the impression that most of the riders who have accidents at Alice’s don’t then immediately walk into the restaurant for a buffalo burger.

The ride home was thankfully uneventful; Peter was sore but he was able to ride the V-Strom home, where it now sits and awaits the insurance assessor.

I liked this picture of Peter crossing under Highway 280 on Cañada Road:

And that was our motocamping trip.  54 miles total (50% more miles than my last motocamping trip!) and really, zero back pain on my end.  Very very very encouraging.

Hopefully everyone will heal up enough to do another motocamping trip this summer, perhaps next time without the vehicular assault.   Dare to dream!

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