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| The beginning of a wild journey |
Hello folks! Yup, this blog is not dead. It had simply gone into hibernation, and I've finally woken up this bear of a blog, hopefully for once and for all. To help me keep up with this blog, I've put less pressure on myself by committing to only one post a month. It's a drag, but this reminds me of when I was taking piano lessons. I hated practicing daily on the piano so much when I was required to by my piano teacher. Ironically, after I quit taking piano lessons, I practiced everyday because I simply enjoyed it. I'm trying to do the same with this blog. I'm such a contradiction, aren't I? =P
Recently, my husband and I went on our first backpacking trip ever. We've talked about it for years, and my husband and I had actually purchased backpacks for ourselves. Several other people in our lives have also bought backpacks, but alas, the trip never happened. I realized though, if I didn't plan the first trip, we will never do it. So, as a birthday present for his birthday this year, I organized a backpacking trip.
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| Map of one small section of Point Reyes National Seashore. As you can see in the upper left corner, there is much more to this natural park than what you see here. Source: Park Map |
So why did I choose Point Reyes? During our discussions about our first trip, we did some research and a lot of people are saying that Point Reyes is one of the best beginning backpacking parks in our area. I loved it because the distances we had to travel between campsites and our car are are shorter and because they had bathrooms and running water for their hike-in campsites.
Being a wimp, and knowing that my husband would like to do a loop, with two nights in different places, I picked the two hike-in campsites as close to each other as possible. We had a choice of the Sky Meadow Camp, the Glen Camp, and the Wildcat Camp. Since I figured I didn't like the word "Sky" in anything I will be hiking to, especially with 40-60 lbs. on my back, I quickly eliminated Sky Meadow Camp. So then, I had two camps and a place to park my car: Glen Camp, Wildcat Camp, and the Bear Valley Visitor Center. What routes should we take to get to each campsite, then back to the car? The easiest.
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| The blue line represents the trip we made out the first day, the green represents the second day, and the red represents the third day. Source: Point Reyes South District Trail Map |
As I had planned the routes, I was worried that it'd be all hiking and no views, so I threw in two different destinations to take a break at (it turned out we needed way more frequent breaks than one each day). The first day, on the way to Wildcat Camp, we went out to Arch Rock. On the second day, we went out to Allomere Falls (which added an extra 1.4 mi. section I, unfortunately, did not notice). For the third day, our destination of desire was our car. =P I will go into detail about each day and the trails we took later.
I also put a lot of energy on finding sources for our guests to read to help them keep in mind what equipment they would need, what to pack, etc. In addition to that, I also wanted to research some backpacking recipes, because I really wanted to bake either a cake or cupcakes for my hubby's birthday. Below are a few great sources I found:
http://www.wildbackpacker.com/backpacking-gear/backpacks/how-to-pack-a-backpack/
http://www.wildbackpacker.com/backpacking-gear/backpacks/how-to-pack-a-backpack/
