Winter Camping
Winter is a funny time to camp. Honestly, this was the time we were most worried about before the trip. The days are short, the weather erratic, and the destinations extremely limited, at least if you are as averse to cold as Alanna.
Interestingly, while winter has meant a change of pace and a bit more time confined to the Minnie, we’ve bad a blast. We have books and loads of games to entertain us in bad weather, and we have spent as much time as possible at hot springs. Alanna has also been working on a quilt, but mostly we are enjoying all the slow, quiet time together.
Winter also means sleep, and lots of it! The long dark nights, with limited artificial light, mean that we have been getting immense amounts of sleep, sometimes eleven hours or more. Once it gets dark out, and cold, we usually head indoors. That sometimes means that by 5pm, or earlier, we are in for the night. We don’t turn on many lights in the Minnie, so that we don’t run down the coach battery, so by 8pm we are usually sound asleep.
The weather, what it is doing now and what it may do next, play a big part in our decision-making conversations regarding where to camp and whether or not we can or should drive to a new spot. In making plans, we think about rain/snow, elevation, wind, and the terrain we may camp on. We obsessively check the weather, though I found out the hard way that the NOAA app sucks up a lot of data—it may be fun to watch the weather radar for the entire country but it’s just not wise given our data package!
So where have we been this winter? After our second stay at the Fountain of Youth, we spent a week camping with with some SF friends, Heather and Jesse. Jesse is a geologist and was doing field work at the Mission Creek Preserve, north of Palm Springs. Our first few days were sunny and glorious and we did some great hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail, which wound through the mountains behind the preserve. Then we hunkered down for a few days as a series of storms battered Southern California.
A much hoped for break in the weather allowed the dirt road into the preserve to dry out enough for us to make our escape, but the winds were too high for us to travel very far, so we ended up fifteen miles up the road in Joshua Tree National Park. The roads to the campground, through the town of Yucca Valley, were coated with sand and standing water, remnants of the flash floods caused by the storms. At 4000 feet, Joshua Tree is cold this time of year but we were grateful to be on paved roads again. Incidentally, Jesse let us know the next week that if we hadn’t left when we did, we would have been stuck for nearly a week since the road washed out when the next set of storms rolled through.
After a very cold night in Joshua Tree, during which we learned what sleet sounds like on the RV roof, we awoke to the news that several more storms and high winds were due. A quick assessment led us to get on the road at 6:30am bound for the lower elevations of Tecopa Hot Springs. It rained throughout drive, but we made it safely and boy were we glad we left when we did. Several cold, wet and windy days in Tecopa followed, but the hot springs were a great diversion.
After Tecopa, we headed back to Death Valley National Park, curious about winter in this beautiful place. It had only been seven weeks since we were last there, so we questioned such a quick return. Turns out, we really do love this park and were glad we went back for a week. It’s different in winter too: the watery blue winter light softens the stark hard edges of the mountains and badlands. The high peaks are capped with snow while the Badwater salt flats, so dry when we were here in November, now hold a shallow lake.
The weather finally took a turn for the better, with temperatures climbing into the 70s, so we took full advantage, going out for long hikes each day. Death Valley has only handful of developed trails, most of which we explored back in November, but so long as you have supplies and experience, you are welcome to wander anywhere in the backcountry. We did just that, walking deep into beautiful side canyons, and climbing the massive alluvial fans to the base of the mountains of the Amargosa Range. It felt good to be pushing our bodies again, and it was great to see new parts of this stunning park.
Despite our desire to hang out in DVNP for the foreseeable future, the Minnie had an appointment to keep in Las Vegas. Her warranty expires in April, so off to Camping World she went to get a few things checked out. We’ve stayed in Las Vegas a couple extra days with our friends, Katie and David and their adorable children, who are always so welcoming. But DVNP beckons again, with its stillness and darkness and stars, so we will hit the road early Monday morning for one more week in this national treasure.
