Category: California

Screams of wild coyotes broke through the nighttime silence (and our sleep) multiple times. I think I even heard one trot past the tent, though I tend to think I hear a lot of things in the dark that are revealed in the light to have been imaginary. For the most part I think we’ve…

An early pass by San Simeon State Park, with its hiker/biker area visible from Highway 1, proved that staying put for a second night in our motel was likely worth the extra $35 we paid over camping there. Soon after we passed through the much busier Moonstone Beach resort strip, and town of Cambria, which…

The onion smell kept me awake more than any raccoons did, but morning reconnaissance revealed they had unzipped one of Rett’s pannier pockets (but not taken anything), and left their muddy prints on her bags and towels we had left out. So although they might have won a battle or two, we won the war,…

We were up at 5:45am, in an attempt to get out on the roads before most of the car tourists even had their pants on. My conglomeration of mouse-proofing attempts was successful: no mice got to our food this night. Or, maybe my mouse-proofing was a waste of time; as a control in this experiment…

Waking in the near-dark, I started my usual routine of getting coffee and breakfast started, while Rett stretched in the tent. I opened the food-storage box, and immediately saw that our hot pad had been ripped to shreds. What?! Mice! It was a metal box, unlike the wooden ones we had been using in much…