Liwa desert camping

Go a little past the town of Madinat Zayed, past the last homely house, and you'll be in dune country. 

We followed our (more intrepid) friends there this weekend, driving into the desert in search of a quiet, empty place to camp. Steerforth was game.

Nick was pretty game, too. 

With significant coaching, he made it up to our campsite....

...on the third...

...or fourth try.

We didn't count too carefully. 

Relieved, we set up our tents (check out our fancy green sand tent!), and discovered that we had the dunes to ourselves.



Liwa is tremendous. Alone in the dunes, a few hundred meters away from our campsite, the desert was ours, and it was empty. We lay in the sand as it cooled down, and watched sun set and the stars pop out of the sky.

We've never seen so many. 

Camping at Jebel Yibir

Despite a previous trip to the Northern Emirates, it was still odd to get an email from a friend suggesting we take a trip to the highest peak in the UAE, Jebel Yibir.  Isn't the highest point in Dubai?

It takes about three hours to get to the middle of nowhere, UAE.  (A bit less if you're not particular about the view.) To get there, take the bypass road to the Dubai bypass road. Despite the double bypass you will have performed, expect to find traffic. But there is happier traffic, as well: dozens of camels happily lolling beside the road.  Then, pass through a few small towns, on the lookout for any goats who may wish to cross the road. If you're hungry, stop off at one of the many Pakistani restaurants, where you can get delicious biryani, daal, fresh bread and tea with condensed milk -- but you'll have the wait until the Friday prayers are over.  Even the "24 hour" restaurants are abandoned during prayer time.

After some wadi wandering, we found a flat place for our tents.  It must have been a construction site at some point -- we found pallets and old metal doors with the UAE falcon, which were useful wind screens for the fire.

We went for a scramble downhill to a wadi, and up a cliff face the next day. Near the wadis there are amazing wildflowers.

From the wadi, we scrambled up our mountain...

...from which we had views of both the east and west coasts of the UAE.

On the way home we stopped off at some crazily orange dunes on the way to the UAE's (heavily irrigated) farmland. The dunes first appeared as a deep orange glow about the horizon....and slowly materialized, into burnt orange sand, stretching in every direction.

Cayucos and Hearst Castle

Nick's birthday present was a trip to Hearst Castle. The trip was sensational in every way - good friends, good food, an eccentric mansion to explore, and a lovely beach town to crash in every night, with a little cottage a block from the beach, a block from sensational smoked fish tacos, and (best of all) right next to a cookie store.

We drove down Highway 1 to get there, and stayed at Andrew Molera State Park, which has wonderful walk-in campsites an easy hike away, and a lovely hike from the camp sites out to a an incredibly clear lagoon....

from which you can see the ocean.

And after our stroll, we had one of the best camping dinners we've mustered so far. The secret? Frozen spaghetti that was already pretty good....

...some fresh veggies, wheat pasta, and cheese. Lots of cheese. 

And (Nick was there, after all) red pepper in abundance. 

The next day, we got back onto Highway 1 to drive to Caycucos. I don't need to say how wonderful Highway 1 is in the Big Sur area. It is wonderful, and that is all. 

Just a few miles north of San Simeon lies a beach covered in elephant seals. It's hard to imagine a more Dali-esque creature. They were singularly unattractive, but fun to watch in action (which is rare). 

Even driving manages to make us hungry, so we stopped in the tiny town of San Simeon across the street from the entrance to Hearst Castle, where Sebastian's Store serves beef sandwiches to die for made from Hearst Castle beef. This photo represents about half of Nick's sammy.

Cayucos is about 20 minutes south of San Simeon. Our inn, "The Saltbox", was gorgeous - an old, old house built in the 19th century for one of Admiral Cass's crew. The town was sleepy, but lovely, with a reasonably priced grocery store, good produce, loads of (actually) fun antique stores, and a cookie store. Did I mention the cookie store? 

This cookie store was not just any cookie store. The best way to describe it would be to say that there were free samples aplenty that tasted like this.

And the beach was unbelievable. The Cayucos Pier has pelicans in swarms, diving for fish and gulping them down. Morro Rock, a King Kong outcropping about 7 miles south in Morro Bay, lurks gorgeously at the horizon.

Each morning, beach combing was rewarded with star fish, crabs scuttling, anenomes waving eagerly after our fingers, and more sand dollars than I've ever seen intact in one place at one time. 

We saw purple starfish, lavender starfish, and orange starfish.

Nathan and Eisha liked to look at them, too. 

And finally, we trekked back up Highway 1 for Hearst Castle. I expected tackiness, not grandeur. But we got grandeur in full force. By the end of the day, I wanted a large swimming pool and a Renaissance ceiling to call my own...or at least to swim in for a little while.  

But we had to be satisfied with pictures.

The next day, we kayaked in Morro Bay, saw some sea lions, found a Robinson Crusoe Beach, and trundled home cold and a little wet.

But what a lovely place to be cold and wet in!

Dinkey Lakes

 Yosemite was overflowing, and even backcountry permits looked impossible. Nate saved the day with Dinkey Lakes, a chain of gorgeous lakes nestled into the rocky crags of Sierra National Forest. Our lake (Cliff Lake -- get there via the Cliff Lake trailhead at Cortright Reservoir) was particularly lovely: strikingly clear, reflective, and just warm enough for swimming. 

On our first day, we hiked the 5.2 miles in, each of us lugging our own impractical camping "needs" with us: eggs, bacon, beer, wine, fresh bananas, apricots, apples, oranges, grapefruits, onions... Anson was the most practical, leaving his treasured Dorritos and shrimp chips in the car for the ride home. The thousand foot  ascent made me almost regret the liter and a half of wine...but not quite. 

Arriving at Cliff lake was a triumph....

...as was dinner that night, which would be totally do-able even for more serious backpacking endeavors. We boiled couscous and added diced salami and green onion near the end. Seasoned with red pepper flakes, salt or soy sauce, and perhaps a drizzle of olive oil, it hit the spot.

Apricot crumble and a star-filled night sky followed for dessert. 

The next day, Nick and I had misguided plans of doing some marathon training, but the terrain was truly terrible: rocky, unpredictable, and often slippery. In fact, it proved tough to stay on-trail at high elevations, with poor markings and a universally sandy terrain. So we tagged along on our friends' day-hike. The "relaxing" hike they had planned turning into an all-day march through the chain of lakes, with occasional bush-wacking to get back on trail. 

Anson presciently dubbed the forest Mirkwood. It was always a mistake to leave the trail, however tempting the environs might be. But we were lucky to be in a group, and to have a water filter, a compass, and a map. Rescue patrols were searching for Larry Bishop while we were there, who (it turns out) spent two days alone stuck on a cliff face after losing his way down Dogtooth Peak. He survived in a fantastic rescue effort. 

Having hiked all day and seen most of the lakes at least twice (I liked Swede Lake best), we were once again hungry. After a swim and beer/wine hour by the lake, we cooked alpine pasta, boiling pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and freeze dried mushrooms and corn. We drained the water when the veggies were soft, and mixed in cheese, chorizo, and green onions. 

It was delicious. Banana boats with marshmallows and chocolate and peanut butter pieces for dessert. And more stars, along with a slightly fuller moon. Amazing. 

Hiking out the next day was much easier than in. We were less my massive bag of wine, eight cans of beer, and a dozen eggs. We washed the dust off in the reservoir, but not for long. There were the shrimp chips and diet coke waiting for us in the bear box at the trail head, ready to be devoured.