Five girls! Won't it be fun?!

In January of 2006, four other girls and I had planned to backpack along the PCT, and instead stumbled upon Newcomb's Ranch in the Angeles National Forest, where we spent the night sheltering from the hypothermia-inducing sleet outside. Darren the bartender wrote in our journals, played us his accordion, made us shots, and gave a moving lecture on why Los Angeles is the greatest place on earth. (I still half believe him.) It was a tremendous evening, after which we continued on our way, bumbling through the nearby trails, sunbathing in the sand, and doing some minor bouldering.

Memories of Newcomb's stuck, though, and when Eisha mentioned it as part of her weekend bike rides, we realized that it was the scene of my favorite college epic, an epic that I drearily retell at every opportunity. On my visit to LA last weekend, we made the pilgrimage, this time with a full tank of gas, yet another mistake we'd made before. The trek felt far too domesticated: I had a bland omelette, Darren's girlfriend, now living at Newcomb's, took our order, and the sky outside was gray but not particularly menacing. Gone was the puppy dog eagerness of my friends ("Five girls! Won't it be fun?" was the way Jenny invited our shivering crew inside to spend the night), the two am trip into the woods to rescue our camping gear, the overwhelming feeling of unexpected warmth and hospitality, and the $29 check for all our dinners, our drinks, and our lodging. This was just lunch.

And then, snow started to fall insistently. Unperturbed, we sat still, enjoying our hot drinks, and the hike we'd been planning looked more and more dubious. It was already three. I was wearing jeans and a rain jacket -- not the best gear for a winter snow storm; Eisha wasn't much better off. So we wandered out of Newcomb's, slightly too full, wondering half-heartedly what kind of walk we could take, drove a little ways through the snow, and parked the car in what looked like total isolation. We hiked an unmarked trail to Bandido Camp, and then down the Silver Moccasin Trail. The boulders we'd scrambled up six Januaries ago were dusted with snow. It was peaceful, almost stunningly quiet. And it was cold. Rembrandt insisted that we keep going, and we were happy to be goaded into going further than we'd expected and prepared for....

...until it began to get dark. We booked it back to the car, as I felt more and more like a stray hobbit on a journey designed for hardy dwarves. It was the right feeling for a day at Newcomb's: a little bit of risk, just enough, but far less than I could convey in the (now even longer) saga. We made the necessary stop at Newcomb's on the way back, had a good round of hot chocolates, and trundled safely home.

Last weekend, we went to Joshua Tree for mind-blowing night skies, desert flowers, bouldering, running, hiking...and eating. Eisha and I are hoping to expand our (somewhat lacking) ability to feed ourselves well while camping, and car-camping in J-Tree was the grand beginning of our culinary quest.

We may have gone overboard in this endeavor. Marinated thin cuts of beef, veggie packets, roasted bananas with marshmallows and chocolate, and (Anson's almost successful experiment) roasted ice cream cones full of marshmallows and chocolate.

Beef Marinade:
3/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup water
1 garlic clove, minced
2 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon Asian (toasted) sesame oil
2 pounds Korean-style short ribs (beef chuck flanken, cut 1/3 to 1/2 inch thickness across bones)

Virginia Woolf said that it's impossible to "think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." All well and good, but one cannot dine well if one has not played well. It was a tall order to get hungry enough to eat all our sensational food -- but we managed. We hiked to an abandoned gold mine closed in the 19th century, our trail sparkling with fools' gold the whole way up; we climbed a brief mile and a half up Mount Ryan to see the world laid out before us, stubby tree after stubby tree. Nick and Eisha and I ran on the road from our campsite (Hidden Valley was a great place to stay), as well as on a few trails. We all scrambled over all the boulders we could muster, including a gleeful sojourn for Eisha in the eye of Skull Rock. 

The flowers we found along the way were lovely -- unexpected, often hidden -- familiar ones like daisies and evening primroses and cactus blooms, but also the truly peculiar -- flamboyant yucca blooms, and a plant with poppable flowers strongly reminiscent of bubble wrap.





Our night skies were stunningly clear....a lovely excuse to stroll and chat after our feasts. The rocks were still warm from the hot day. 

What a lovely way to start our cooking extravaganzas...we have set a high bar for our Yosemite trip in July!