PCT 2014, Day One, Part 2 of 2: Our First Day

April 25th

Southern Terminus to Lake Morena

In contrast to my Looney-Toon-desert imaginings (complete with a purple roadrunner going “meep meep!”), the landscape was surprisingly green and hilly, speckled with bushes and clumps of grayish-green sagebrush. Huge power lines kept the scenery from looking overly wild or picturesque (for some reason I imagined that the whole trail would be delving through the heart of wilderness). The trail was even and well-packed sand, pleasant to walk on. 

It was almost 11:00, so the sun was strong but not overly hot, and I would become increasingly impressed, over the next several weeks, with my “magic hat”— a Sun Day Afternoon hat with a wide brim that looked dorky but magically kept me from the sunstroke that had plagued my summers ever since I was a kid. We walked steadily, Zach in front, me in the middle, Mary bringing up the rear. After we had walked for about 20 minutes, we came to a road-marker sign that said “MILE 1.” We took a dramatic picture next to it, and I giggled. This still didn’t feel real. But it didn’t feel fake, either. My life was completely different, but, as with so many life changes, my conscious mind took it all in stride. It was my body that would rebel.

After MILE 1, we stopped to get water out of a pipe near a ranch. This was marked on our maps as WR001. We stopped at the spigot. Two young men were there, wearing tan shirts and tan pants and looking very serious and experienced. I fumbled with the water handle, and made my first attempt at making cheerful trail banter.

“Nice day!” I said, entirely too loudly.

Both of them looked kind of uncomfortable. Zach got quiet, as he often does when I’m trying to rope unwilling strangers into conversation. “Where are you guys from?” I asked. This was always my go-to question when I traveled. Most people would instantly feel superior when they heard I was from Missouri, and would often be more willing to talk.

“I’m from Washington,” the taller of the two said. He had small glasses and a serious expression and pale skin. He looked like he had probably done a lot of hiking. We later learned his name was Matt. He pointed to the other guy, rosier-cheeked and a bit friendlier looking, who we’d later know as Sam. “He’s from Colorado.”

“Cool,” I said. “We’re from St. Louis, Missouri. Although he’s from Portland originally. You guys done much backpacking before?”

“A bit,” Matt said.

“I hiked the Colorado Trail,” Sam said. They quickly gathered up their backpacks. Clearly I was throwing a wrench in their hiking momentum. “See you down the trail,” Sam said, and they hit the trail again with a determined pace.

Mary is one of my few friends who can push her body to hike almost any distance, and she did this with impressive skill. We hiked at a strong, steady pace, over rolling hills. Then I noticed, with some surprise, that we were hiking up a mountain. An honest-to-goodness mountain— probably even by east coast standards. This surprised me because I didn’t think that we would hike up any mountains in the desert. We crossed some railroad tracks and plunged up a set of switchbacks, ducking in and out of sparsely-vegetated trees. 

After a few hours, we were skirting a ridge that was covered in a blanket of eight-foot-high manzanita bushes, with their twisty red limbs and dark waxy leaves. Mount Hauser rose up in the near distance, flat-topped and impressively draped in late afternoon sunshine. My feet ached and stung. We had gone about nine miles so far, and my feet felt like they were on fire! I was beginning to doubt that we would make it to our destination for the night, Lake Morena, which was still 11 miles away. But at this point we had little choice— we were dropping Mary off there, and she didn’t have the equipment to go alone. So we took a break, snacked on a Clif bar, some Fritos, some leftover Little Caesar’s pizza, and sipped some Gatorade. Then we stood up, ignored the protests of our feet, and kept walking.

The wonderful thing about the human body is that it prioritizes what’s going to feel pain. After a while, our bodies realized that we weren’t going to stop walking, so it flooded us with endorphins, and the pain in my feet faded away. By the time we started a descent into a deep valley between the mountain we were on and Hauser Mountain, I felt good as new. I felt like I could walk all day. Which was good, considering that I did have to walk all day.

Two problems began to steadily grow as the day went on. The first was that we realized it was going to be a tight time squeeze to get to Lake Morena by 8:00, when Mary was supposed to meet a friend there. The second was that gray clouds were blowing in, and a wind was whipping up. Zach and I determined that we had to reach Lake Morena by the time allotment, or we were going to get Mary stuck in the wilderness.

Down the side of the mountain we zigzagged, blazing through the switchbacks. Fortunately the trail was well-graded and nice to walk on, without rocks. Down in the valley at the 15-mile mark, we paused at a dry stream bed near a jeep road. Somebody had dragged a hundred gallons of water to this site, leaving a cache for hikers who would run out. We had heard of such caches, but it was fun to see one in real life. To think that a stranger would invest so much time, effort and money (even tap water is expensive in California) to help out a bunch of hikers was really touching.

There was a crowd of people around the water cache, including the Union soldier/boy scout guy, Angry Bird, who was writing in a journal. Zach, Mary and I sat down for a little while for a snack, but we didn’t plan to stay long, because storm clouds were gathering.

We chatted with some of the people there, then picked up our backpacks. The group collectively gasped. It was already 6:00, a respectable time for stopping on your first day. “You’re not staying here?” someone asked.

“No,” I said, “we’ve got to get my sister to Lake Morena by 8:00.”

The person doubtfully looked at Mount Hauser. It was just dawning on me that we would have to climb that mountain. That 828-foot mountain (Buford Mountain is 640 feet). It seemed like a lot of elevation at the time, and we still had five miles to go, and it was getting dark quickly. I would have loved to stay at that cache, set up camp, sit around and chat, etc. But that just wasn’t an option. So we said goodbye to the people there and started our trek up the mountain.

I look at the elevation of Hauser Mountain now and chuckle in a nostalgic sort of way. It wasn’t much of a mountain compared to what we’d be up against next, but it was one of the hardest mountains I’d ever tackled to that point. The Ozarks, and even the Smokies, do little to prepare you for the mountains that the west coast can throw at you. The switchbacks seemed endless, and I felt my blood pumping hard, my heart throbbing as I doubled over with effort. 

Mary was our guiding light. She knew we were walking so far because of us, and she was determined to help us get to our destination. You could practically see an aura of positivity around here, and her energy flowed into me, keeping me going step after step. We flew up the mountain, zigzagging over the switchbacks. The storm clouds closed in, alarmingly close over our head. Thunder rumbled. Darkness fell.

We only had one headlamp. This had seemed like a good idea at the time of packing— save money and weight!— but it’s hard to see in the pitch dark with only one among three people. Fortunately the trail was still smooth, although it turned into slabs of sandstone. Zach led the way, calling out hazards in the path. “Step down!” “Rock in the middle!” “Uneven section!” Mary and I trailed behind, taking short, quick steps and trying not to stumble. I hadn’t expected it to get dark so fast. 

We were lost in a flurry of darkness, with only the cold glow of the headlamp to guide us through the eerie boulders and dark trees as the air got wetter and heavier with the threat of rain. 

After a while of silence, hearing both my heart and my feet thumping, I heard Mary’s calm voice behind me. “Remember that scene in The Horse and His Boy, where Aravis has to spend the night in the tombs, and the cat comes and sits with her when she feels afraid?”

I barely remembered. It had been years since I read that book of The Chronicles of Narnia. “Vaguely.”

“That’s how I feel right now.”

Something about the calmness in her voice made the whipping wind and the roiling clouds and the unseen trail seem less scary. In silence, we continued on.

We continued in this furtive way for almost an hour. Then we looked ahead and saw the one sight that would never fail to bring tears to my eyes— the lights of civilization. They were yellow, houselights in the darkness. We were almost there, and our spirits lifted. 

We burst out of a clearing of trees onto a lawn of city grass at about 7:30, and street lamps glared in our faces. To our left we saw a park where the Annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick-Off (ADZPCTKO) was being held, and a sign told us to check into site #18 and pay at the front ranger station. We headed instead to the general store, where Mary’s friend would be meeting her. It was a half-mile walk, but a half mile suddenly seemed like a long way. When we got there, I sort of melted into the booth. Zach ordered us ice cream cones and a pizza. I sat under the harsh glare of the florescent lights, feeling every muscle and tendon in my body calcify. Now that I wasn’t pumping endorphins into myself, my body was letting me know, loud and clear, that it was not happy about the 22.5 miles I had just walked.

Mary’s friend arrived and sat at the booth with us. I found myself utterly exhausted, incapable of conversation. A guy walked into the store and loudly asked if we had heard about “that kid who died here yesterday.” We said we had not. He was grave but eager to tell us about it: a 19-year old had started on the PCT from the border the day before with only a liter of water. He got almost all the way to Lake Morena, then dropped dead of dehydration. I stared numbly ahead, feeling vaguely sorry, but also mad at the kid. He could have asked for water from anyone on the trail that day. He could have gotten some at the cache. But then I thought, why am I mad at him? One stupid mistake cost him his life. God knows that if all our stupid mistakes had such consequences, we’d all be dead.

I said goodbye to Mary, giving her a hug. I felt too tired and sick to feel any emotion. Right after she left, I ducked into the bathroom and felt like I was going to throw up. I couldn’t vomit, and that made me feel worse. I stumbled outside and told Zach we should probably find a place to camp.

By the time we stepped outside, my body was shaking uncontrollably, like a severe shiver that wouldn’t go away. I could barely walk I was shaking so hard. I wished I could throw up and get it over with. Zach put his arm around me and we limped to the campground. A couple guys were standing there, laughing and drinking. They told us that, this particular weekend, we could camp anywhere we pleased. As if by magic, my muscles loosened up. I was still sore, but I didn’t feel like I was dying anymore. 

I have little memory of setting up our first night, packed in between hundreds of other tents in the city park. Our camping set-up was a bit ridiculous, and involved blowing up veritable air mattresses and stuffing them into a special pocket on the underside of our sleeping bag. I just remember lying in the tent, feeling the sensation of plastic— plastic cloth in the sleeping bag, synthetic clothing, the plastic over our heads— and listening to the first few raindrops fall. Then I was out, lost in a sleep that had never felt so good.

~~~

PCT 2014, Day One, Part 1 of 2: The First Steps

(This entry was so incredibly long that I decided to break it into two. They get shorter after this, I promise.)

DAY ONE

April 25th

Southern Terminus to Lake Morena

Our plan, in its most rudimentary form, was simple:

1. Go to the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, at the border of Mexico and California.

2. Walk.

3. Stop walking when we get to Canada.

But of course, things are never as easy as they seem.

This was going to be the trip of our lifetime, probably the biggest thing either of us had ever tackled, and certainly the biggest challenge we had ever faced together in our brief three years of knowing each other. We were husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Zachary Strader, newlywed, 23 and 24 years of age, respectively. We had no kids, no college debt, and no mortgage payment: a rare window of our lives where we could reasonably take six months off work to go walking on a 2,668-mile trail. 

We had our reasons for tackling this adventure, of course. Very few people do a hike like this on a whim. We wanted a challenge. We wanted to see what we could do. We wanted to walk 20 miles a day for five months straight and see where it got us. There was no one big reason. But somehow, a curly-headed eighteen-year old boy from Oregon saw a sign for the Pacific Crest Trail— or PCT as I will be calling it ever after— and realized it was something he wanted to do. That thought simmered on the back-burners of his mind, and it wasn’t until he met a crazy cornfed girl from Missouri that the dream became a reality. That girl was me.

Now we were on a bus— breezy and hot— taking a ride from San Diego. My sister had lived there for the past couple years, and she had hosted us and was coming to hike the first day with us. She couldn’t wait to get out of St. Louis, with the sedentary people and the ethnic non-diversity and the cornfields and the lack of beach. She was working as an actress/promotional model/whatever-heck-else-she-could-find-to-do, trying to pay the sky-high California rent, and happy as could be. 

I, on the other hand, was happy with my life in Missouri. Zach and I had a nice little two-bedroom townhouse that we rented for $500 a month. I had put up pictures on the wall, unpacked our book collection (three sets of The Lord of the Rings included), and I even had houseplants for a while. Now we were leaving all that. We had packed up our stuff and scattered it to friends’ houses throughout the St. Louis area. Zach got a leave of absence from his customer service job at Wal-Mart, and I took the summer and half a semester off from my online writing coaching job. All the material possessions we would use for the next five months were packed up into two backpacks. REI brand and Deuter, orange-gray and blue. Mine had an artificial yellow flower on the outside.

Mary was asleep at my side, slumped across her daypack. I cradled my bulky backpack, taller than my torso, between my knees on the jostling bus. Zach sat next to me, still and silent, staring with great focus at nothing. He’s good at that look. 

The bus was crowded with civilians from the San Diego area, and the backpackers were banished to the caboose. I looked nervously around at them, feeling insecure. Most of them looked very confident. A middle-aged couple who had hiked the Appalachian Trail looked very relaxed. Next to them sat a young man of some Asian origin (I later learned he was Japanese). He looked a little nervous but also excited. Next to him, a man about my age stared stonily ahead: he had a red beard, a shirt buttoned all the way up, an Appalachian Trail patch, gauged ears, and a hat that made him look like either a Union soldier or a boy scout. Someone on the bus asked him if he had a trail name. Most everyone who hikes a long-distance trail gets a trail name. He responded politely, but stiffly: his name was Angry Bird because in Maine he’d been dive-bombed by a goshawk. He had a clear air of having everything together. He seemed like a bit of a snob. Later on, I learned that he was just shy. That’s the problem with shy people— they always come off as snobs.

Two years before, when I heard that the first 700 miles of the PCT were desert, I was horrified. I grew up in a place where you have to dog-paddle through the humidity all summer, and when I spent a week in Tucson visiting cousins, I felt desperately thirsty all the time, I had a constant nosebleed, and I was picking microfibers of cactus out of my skin for weeks afterward. But this desert, just judging by the view out the window, was going to be more interesting than I thought. The landscape rose up in tumbled piles of boulders, interspersed with greenery. It was still spring, and things still grew here. It quieted the fearful memories of the beautiful but terrifyingly desolate Sonora National Forest, which was a plain of rocks and saguaro. The air blustering through the bus windows was hot, but it didn’t seem rife with cactus needles. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

The bus didn’t actually go to the PCT’s southern terminus. It dropped us off at a convenience store in Campo, 1.5 miles from the border. The sun was beating down, but it still wasn’t too hot. We poked around the c-store for a few minutes. They let us top off our water bottles. Then it was time to strap on our packs. 

My pack, fully loaded with food and water, was about 37 pounds. My scrawny arm strained to lift it, and I had to get some momentum to be able to sling it onto my back. For a second it felt horribly heavy. Then I leaned forward and began tightening the straps, carefully obeying the order that Foster at REI had taught me: hip belt first, as tight as you can go. Shoulder straps next. Chest strap next, to keep the shoulder straps from pulling apart sideways. Finally, the load lifters, a couple of straps attached to your shoulder straps. For a few seconds I fine-tuned the straps, tightening here, loosening there. Then my pack felt solid, like part of my own body. I still felt its weight, but it seemed more like we were coexisting in a space together, rather than feeling like it was heavy. I thought, Maybe I can do this hike after all.

I have a tendency to rush into things headlong, without knowing whether or not I can do them. This trip was no exception. Zach and I had never been backpacking before. One time I had walked for three days on the hiking/biking Katy Trail near my house, but it’s a perfectly flat trail and I only camped one night. Another time Zach and I had backpacked on Buford Mountain, a beautiful tree-clad hill that holds the prestigious title of Third Highest Mountain in Missouri. Talk about bragging rights! We had talked about trying to do something beforehand to prepare— a week on the Appalachian Trail, maybe, or even just a few days on the budding Ozark Trail in Missouri. But since Zach works a retail job where it’s very rare to get even two days off in a row, it didn’t happen through the summer and fall. The next thing we knew, we were caught up in the most freezing, snow-buried winter I had ever seen, and our chance was lost. At this point, the PCT was the next trail we could do.

There’s a very narrow window for hiking the PCT. You have to start in the desert before it gets too hot, but you can’t get to the High Sierra too early because it will be buried in snow. Once you’re past the Sierra, you have to book it through northern California and Oregon, because you want to finish the trail before the cold weather blows in. 2014 was a low snow year, so our time budget wasn’t as tight, which proved to be a good thing.

We started walking down the dusty gravel road, eager to get the unnecessary 1.5 miles out of the way. We got a little lost; a man in a pickup truck pointed us in the correct direction. We climbed a small, round hill and found ourselves at the southern terminus. An ugly corrugated metal fence, further fenced off by a tangle of barbed wire, marked the Mexican/American border. A clump of square posts, emblazoned with the PCT badge, stood unassuming there. Four or five other people were hanging around, signing the leather-bound trail register, taking their photos, adjusting straps, saying nervous goodbyes. Zach and I waited our turn. I felt shy. Usually when I traveled I put all my extroverted tendencies to work in a frenzy of friendly harassment of my fellow travelers, but now, I felt like a child again, barely saying a word, listening to the grown-ups talk about how lucky my parents were to have such a sweet, quiet little girl. Everyone else seemed so experienced. Everyone else knew what they were doing. Everyone else had trekking poles. We had never used trekking poles when we hiked before, so we hadn’t brought any. But I noticed that everyone— even the people with backpacks half as large as ours, indicating expensive gear and packing skill— had brought trekking poles. I hoped it wouldn’t be too much of a problem not to have them. After all, we had no extra money for such things.

It was our turn. Mary snapped our picture in front of the monument. I tried to look confident for the camera. Then Zach and I took a picture of us kissing. Someone yelled from the sidelines, “If you’re still doing that at the end of the trail, you’re good!”

At that point, the end of the trail seemed a thousand miles away. No, check that, it seemed 2,668 miles away. The trail feels exactly as long as it sounds.

Without much ado, we began hiking. This was disappointing. I had dreamed of this moment for weeks— years. I had dreamed of standing at the terminus, looking over a flat, rocky landscaped spotted with saguaro (no, not saguaro, they don’t grow in this region. But maybe just a bunch of prickly pear), standing next to Zach with determined looks on our faces. I imagined a grilling, searing, dry heat that robbed me of all the moisture in my mouth. I would stare at that barren landscape, and then I would start walking. And it would hit me. It would hit me that we were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and that we would be hiking this trail for the next five months. 

I kept waiting for it to hit me.

I’m still waiting.

~~~

PCT Questions: When a Thru-Hike Is Your First Hike

Reader question: Your Facebook page said you had never backpacked before. Is that true? If so, what inspired you to start by thru-hiking?

Yes, it’s true. Before the PCT, Zach and I had only “backpacked” once, and that consisted of hiking three miles into the Buford Mountain Conservation Area the first night, then climbing to the top of the third-highest peak in Missouri (oh, the bragging rights!) and going home the next day. Other than that, we’d only been car camping.

We knew, from pretty early on in our relationship, that we wanted to hike the PCT together. We talked about trying to do some backpacking before then— a week on the Appalachian Trail, perhaps, or at least a few days on the Ozark Trail. But we quickly ran into a problem: we do not make much money. My husband works at Walmart; I have a tutoring job that is roughly half his salary. And we were trying to save up enough money to take six months off work— not to mention all the expensive gear we had to buy! 

In the end, we didn’t even have all our gear until a couple weeks before the trail, and we never had a good opportunity to take time off work. We were trapped in the harshest winter I had ever seen, and by the time the weather thawed, it was practically time to leave for the trip. It was “Hike the PCT without experience” or “Don’t hike at all.” There was nothing in between.

I’d like to emphasize that although we were inexperienced, we were not unprepared. We had researched and studied as much as we could in books and on the web. (Tomorrow, I’ll talk about some steps we took to prepare that really helped us.) Everything turned out all right. We were unsure of ourselves at first, but we soon realized that we were reasonably well-prepared, and we learned everything we needed along the way. In the end, we got to Canada in one piece!

2012, Buford Mountain, Missouri.

2014, Goat Rocks, Washington.

FAQ about the PCT, Part Two

If you don’t know what the PCT is, or even if you do, you should check out FAQ about the PCT, Part One! I’ll wait.

There. Did you enjoy it? Do you think I’m crazy? You’re in good company. There’s no way I would undertake something like this on my own, but I would follow my husband to the ends of the earth, and if the ends of the earth include an awesome hiking trail that winds through 2,600 miles of breathtaking wilderness, that ain’t too bad.

Now, without further ado, here’s another round of questions that I often get…

Q: When are you leaving and when will you come back?

A: We have a flight booked for April 19th, but we’re going to spend Easter and a couple days with my sister in San Diego before hitting the trail. We’re hoping to attend the official kick-off date on April 25th. We should finish the trail in mid to late September, and then we’ll find our way to Portland and stay for a few weeks, leaving our return to land somewhere in mid to late October.

Q: What will you be eating and how will you carry it?

A: We will be eating mostly meals that we’ve dehydrated and packaged ourselves, which (hopefully) will include pasta, mashed potatoes, chili, rice, hummus, chicken, and beef, supplemented with lots of olive oil, peanut butter, parmesan cheese, and Snickers bars. We’re currently working on packing our resupply boxes, which we will leave with my parents, who will send them to general delivery at post offices along the trail as we go. This way we’ll always have a supply of staple food, plus whatever we want to buy when we’re in town.

Q: Will you be able to keep your townhouse?

Buford Mountain, MO— I wish we could hike here more often.

A: Sadly, no. There’s no possible way we could afford to pay rent on a house we aren’t living in. We’ll be moving out pretty soon.

Q: Are you quitting your jobs?

A: Nope, but neither of us will be working during that time. Zach just got approved for a leave of absence, and I will be able to jump right back into my editing job when we get home.

Q: What are you doing to train for this?

A: We walk a lot, although we should walk more. We’ve been carrying our backpacks lately. However, there aren’t any big hills or rugged terrain in our town (or anywhere close), so there’s no a whole lot we can do. Our best shot is to keep our bodies in shape and prepare our minds for dealing with the pain and soreness of hiking day in and day out.

Q: Is the trail safe?

A: Well, that depends on your definition of “safe.” I wasn’t able to find info about casualties on the PCT, but I know there have been some— a couple times caused by hikers getting caught unprepared in unexpected weather, but mostly from hikers getting hit by cars when they try to cross a road. To my knowledge, no one has died of crime or animal attacks on the PCT. We will be in constant danger of blisters, shin splints, turned ankles, rabid mosquitoes, and scrapes and bumps— but all in all, it’s not much more dangerous than going for a walk where you cross busy streets, as Zach and I do every day. 

Q: You’re going to take a bunch of photos, right?

A: We’ll try! We have a camera that isn’t terribly good, but it’s waterproof and shock-proof and Zach already owned it, so we’re gonna call it good enough.

Washington, 2010: this is how I looked after working eight
hours a day on a farm and not showering for two weeks.
It's really not as bad as you think.

Q: How will you afford to stay in hotels along the way?

A: This is generally asked by people who don’t seem to grasp the concept of a backpacking trail. Yes, we will be stopping by towns here and there, and I’m hoping we’ll have enough money to get a hotel once in a while (though that is a dim hope at this point), but we are going to be sleeping in our tent every night. 

Q: How will you shower?

A: We won’t.

Q: Ew! How can you go without a shower for that long?

A: Because we’re expecting not to. I’ve heard that you can count the hot showers on the PCT on one hand. We’ll wash up once in a while, but we will have to be at peace with our level of griminess. I’ve done this short-term while working on a farm. Once your standard of cleanliness goes down, you hardly miss the shower!

Did I forget any? Is there anything else you’d like to know?

~~~

Where to Go: Elephant Rocks State Park, Missouri

Eons ago (1500 million years, if Wikipedia is to be trusted)— there stood a giant dome of hardened magma, laid bare to the wind and weather. The wind blew, the weather wore, and many eons later, there remained only a round granite tor, covered with gargantuan boulders looking like pebbles a giant had dropped. In the 1800s, a granite quarry appeared on the site, and miners left their graffiti in the rock. Today, that hillside is a Elephant Rocks State Park, one of the most impressive and best-loved parks in Missouri.

My husband, brother and I visited Elephant Rocks a few weeks ago, and spent a couple hours hiking the trails, climbing the boulders, and eating a picnic. We wandered up the handicap-accessible, braille-guided trail to the edge of the barren stretch of stone, then hopped over deep ridges, scrambled between round boulders, scaled steep inclines of granite, and kept on yelling, “Take my picture! Take my picture!” You could easily spend a full day exploring this park, even though it’s small. 

Why you should go: This area is a great outdoorsy destination, and is great for an easy stroll or some fun amateur rock-climbing. The view from the top of the tor is incredible, and with autumn colors just around the corner, I’m hoping to go back for another visit soon.

How to get there: You’ll have to wind through some “Missoura” back roads to get there, but it’s worth it. You can find driving directions on the park’s site.

What to bring: Wear hiking clothes, and shoes with good grips if you plan on doing any climbing. There are picnic tables and grills, so it’s a great place to bring a picnic supper. And don’t forget your camera!

What else you need to know: The park closes around dark, so be sure to get there before evening. If you have some spare time in the area, check out Johnson’s Shut-Ins or Buford Mountain Conservation Area. This trio would make a great weekend trip!

If you have hot guys to accompany you on your hike, that's even better.

Advice for Aspiring Birdwatchers

Whenever I talk about hiking or camping, I often find myself describing the birds— from sighting a summer tanager for the first time, listening to whip-poor-wills, figuring out what kind of owl was hooting “Who cooks for you?”, or simply discovering a swift trapped in my laundry room. Birds are second only to insects as the most common animals you’ll see out in nature. They are captivating, delicate, and fleeting. I love to watch them fly and forage, seeing how each bird, from the Canada goose to the black-and-white warbler, behaves in a unique but distinctly bird-like way. 

People have asked me more than once how I know so much about birds. The first answer to that question is that I’ve always loved them, and I always wanted to know what kind of birds were alighting on my parents’ feeders. A field guide soon answered my questions: black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, Carolina wren, grackle, starling, northern cardinal. The more I studied, and the more I familiarized myself with the different groups of birds, the more excited I was when I’d see a bird I hadn’t seen before.

As a kid, I used a photo guide that sorted the birds by basic shape, and then by color. This helped me learn about the different groups. As a grown-up, I love the more precise guide that my grandma-in-law got me for Christmas: The Sibley Field Guide to Birds. These entries are sorted by family, so it’s helpful to know if what you saw was in the crow, finch, or swallow family. Its illustrations are superb, and the text points out “field marks” (distinctive features that help you identify the bird) and describes each bird’s song.

So, if you’re interested in learning more about birds, try these three things:

1. Buy a field guide (or check one out from the library), making sure it’s specific to your region. Spend some time looking through it and identifying the most common birds you’ve seen.

2. Find a good place to watch birds. (If you live in the St. Louis area, I highly suggest Powder Valley Nature Center, which has a huge indoor bird-watching area. For a more natural setting, Buford Mountain Conservation Area is full of birds.) Most state park websites have a note of good places to bird-watch.

3. Take notes, draw pictures, look through binoculars, and enjoy these marvelous works of creation!

~~~

Camping, Giant City State Park, Illinois

On Wednesday after lunch, Zach and I decided that we did not just want to sit around all day. He had Wednesday and Thursday off, and our original plans to hike on the Katy Trail were thwarted by flooding and the threat of thunderstorms. We poked around on the Internet, and finally decided to throw our camping gear into the car and head out for Giant City State Park in southern Illinois. It has a 12-mile loop trail called the Red Cedar Trail that we were eager to check out.

The drive took us about three hours with traffic, during which we listened to Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits. I never remember how much I love the plain cornfields and tiny run-down towns of Illinois until I see them again: they are more familiar to me than most of Missouri because of our frequent trips through them when I was a kid. This drive was particularly beautiful because threatening dark blue clouds gathered in the sky, but a strong evening light fell on the wheat fields, turning them a vivid yellow-white.

It rained a bit on our car, but by the time we reached the park, it let up, leaving behind a cool breeze and a lovely rain-washed night. We checked in with the campground host, a woman in her 50s with a voice reduced to ash by cigarettes. As we petted her fluffy longhaired terrier, she told us about the area. 

We told her we were planning on hiking the Red Cedar Trail. She looked at us sharply over her glasses and said, “I do not recommend that trail. The maintenance guys haven’t gotten out to clear it, so it’s overgrown and hard to follow. And there are lots of ticks.”

Zach and I looked at each other, and we silently agreed we’d be trying the trail anyway. The longest trail besides that was a two-mile stroll.

For eight bucks, we got a nice little campsite with a fire ring and a picnic table underneath some fir trees. As we were setting up our tent, our neighbors from the next site over asked if wanted some brats. My mommy taught me to never turn down free food, so we gladly accepted. 

Soon we were seated at their picnic table underneath a tarp in case of rain, with fragrant citronella candles burning. The guy’s name was Dave and the girl’s name was Carol. They were both special-ed teachers from the Chicago area. We chatted with them over bratwursts and sautéed peppers about their plans to take a cross-country trip and our plans to hike the PCT. As we talked, the forest around us grew dark and the flicker of the candles grew brighter and brighter. After a great conversation, we bid them goodnight and retreated to the tent.

It was sticky and warm in the tent because of the humidity, and I slept on top rather than under our sleeping bag. I slept decently that night, drifting in and out of sleep to hear rain pattering on our tent— and later to hear Zach waking up with a pinched nerve that gave him severe pain in his arm. After that I listened to him slip into a shallow sleep. 

I listened to his breathing for a while, then turned my attention to the outside noises. In the distance, two owls hooted back and forth to each other. I tried to think of how to explain the rhythm of their hoots. I came up with “hip hip hooray” and “stop, drop and roll” before I remembered that the barred owl is said to call, “Who cooks for you?” That was it.

I listened to a whip-poor-will joining the nighttime chorus. The whip-poor-will calls at Buford Mountain were soft and a bit haunting; this one sounded like he was cussing out the owls. 

After a while, I heard the strangest owl call: it was loud and droning. I listened to it, trying to figure out what kind of owl this might be. After a full minute, I abruptly realized it wasn’t an owl— it was a mourning dove. Morning had come. 

A 12-mile adventure was waiting for us.

And so were the ticks.

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Coming soon… part two of the exciting saga!

Travel Tip Tuesdays: Making the Most of a Short Trip

How do you make the most of short trips? A lot of my friends say they only have a few vacation days a year.

I’ll be honest. This blog ventures into territory that I’m not entirely familiar with: planning a short trip. Most of my trips through the years have been eight or nine days minimum, but that’s the perk of having an online job. Lately, however, with Zach working a full-time job with no consistent days off, I’m learning the importance of short trips. They are brief, but they can be just as meaningful as a longer journey.

After giving it some serious thought and drawing from my limited experience, here is my best tip for short trips: prioritize. Most of what I have to say boils down to that simple word.

My three-day trip along the Katy trail
 in summer of 2011 was a lot of fun.

Prioritize your ideas. Everyone has a dream destination or idea of what to do, so focus on whittling them down to something manageable for the occasion. If you only have a couple days off, I’d highly suggest finding a destination close to home. For instance, Zach has a rare two consecutive days off next week, so we’re planning a mini-backpacking trip along the Katy Trail, which runs right by our house. 

Prioritize your activities. Some people want to spend their two days in Orlando by attending all four Disney World parks. This is a very bad idea. Not only will you not be able to appreciate the whirlwind, but you’ll burn out and probably have a miserable time.  In a short trip, pick one (maybe two) things that you really want to do, and focus on that.

Prioritize your money. I’m sure I’m not the only one who travels on a budget. Spend your money on what matters to you. That might mean staying in a cheap motel so you can afford the white-water rafting trip, foregoing the expensive tourist attractions so you can stay in a resort, or simply eating peanut butter sandwiches twice a day so you can enjoy the expensive local cuisine. If it doesn’t matter that much to you, don’t spend money on it.

Prioritize your time. Much of what I said in my previous blogs about time-saving and trip-planning apply to this.

Buford Mountain was a nice overnight trip.

Finally, in order for a short vacation to work, it’s important that you understand your goal for the trip, and whether or not you’ll actually enjoy it. If you need some down time and you relax best by kicking back on a beach, don’t plan a three-day adventure safari. If you’re ready to fill your day with activities and go on a bunch of adventures, that’s great, but don’t try to force yourself to do that.

Although short trips always leave you wanting more, they are still a great way to refresh yourself and experience new things. Remember to be wise about your resources, know your priorities, and savor every moment!

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Where to Go: Buford Mountain Conservation Area, Missouri

The view from Bald Knob

This wasn't even the rockiest part of the trail.

As an epilogue to my blog miniseries about Zach’s and my hike up Buford Mountain, I decided to give the area a more comprehensive review. Any serious hiker should check it out.

Why you should go: The 10.5-mile loop is is one of the most challenging hikes in the St. Louis area, and delves through incredibly scenic forests and glades, rich with wildlife, especially birds. There’s a nice view from Bald Knob. As a bonus, primitive camping is allowed year-round, so it’s one of the few places I’ve encountered in Missouri so far where you can just hike into the woods and pitch a tent.

How to get there: Buford Mountain is about two hours from St. Louis. Backpacker magazine has the most comprehensive directions in this article. (Note that, not being a Missouri publication, they label the trail as fit for a “lazy weekend.”)

What to bring: Assuming a day hike, bring plenty of water and snacks. Dress for some hardcore hiking, especially your shoes: as I mentioned in my previous blog, the terrain is really rocky. There are also no toilet facilities, so come prepared to do your business in the woods.

What else you need to know: The outstanding (but somewhat-lacking-in-trails) Elephant Rocks State Park is just a few miles away, and makes a good side trip. Also, from St. Louis, the drive down is full of scenic Midwestern vistas. Whether you’re day-tripping or spending the night, Buford Mountain is a great place close to St. Louis that lets you experience nature in a vivid way.

The trail also periodically turns into a creek.

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