Milestones:
- 18th camping trip in 18 months. SHOW ON MAP
- 15th county in California.
My campsite wasn’t far from Nevada City, about 14 miles along CA State Route 20, which closely follows a branch of the Truckee Route of the California Trail, first used by California-bound emigrants in 1850 as part of the gold rush.
The big news on this camping trip was the fact that California was experiencing the first heat-wave of 2024. My campground was located at 4380 ft elevation, but that wasn’t high enough to escape the heat. It was 90 degrees when I arrived at 1:30pm and it didn’t get any cooler than 72 degrees overnight. The weather service said, “Little overnight relief will make for dangerous conditions for those without effective cooling or adequate hydration”. My solution was to sleep naked in my tent.
I setup camp, and opened up my food container which had my dinner: Niman Ranch All Natural Fully Cooked Beer Bratwurst and Panaji Original Flame-Baked Naan Flatbread. The problem was… I hadn’t refrigerated my bratwurst for 3 days, and it was starting to develop some mold. Not much, mind you. But, I was really looking forward to it. So, I scraped off the mold, made sure to burn the outside a bit, and had a wonderful meal. I figure my immune system had built up a certain degree of robustness over the many “less than 100% sanitary” adventures camping. I survived.
There was no one nearby me, in all directions. Except for two groups of people: 1) forest service personnel were using chainsaws (for almost 4hrs) about a quarter mile from me and 2) logging trucks and other big-rigs drove past the campground along CA Highway 20 (all day) about a tenth of a mile from me. Once the sun went down, things got a lot more quiet.
After dinner, the mosquitos came out and I got attacked. I’m seriously going to look into some sort of repellant or keep-away device. Bugs can really take the fun out of things.