rowanf | Yuba River getaway

I'm back at work after an amazing long weekend in the woods. I am covered in mosquito bites despite my Lentek bite shield. I wonder if I need a new cartridge since it has been about a year since I used it last and it worked wonderfully then. OTOH, when I wasn't wearing it it was worse. I got about eight bites during the unloading of the car before I got my bite shield onto my belt.

Beth & Jim's land is dry and high in the mountains. There wasn't poison oak or much in the way of critters (though she says a bear once shredded her dome). The dome and a generater are the only improvement on her 11 acres and we all (there were 24 of us) brought in water and everything else. The generator did mean that at night there were holiday lights strung everywhere and it was beautiful and otherworldly.

We had been divided into groups of three who did all the prep and offered various meals. Kurt & Jim & I had Saturday lunch and we did wraps with an array of meats and vegetables that wre a big hit. Other meals included Thursday night chili, Saturday morning personally cooked pancakes with peaches and/or bananas and/or blueberries. It was to yum!

We spent most of Friday and Saturday hanging out in the Yuba River at a spot that, I must say, is the second best swimming hole I've ever been in. Since the best is in Tennessee, I think I may find my way back here someday. Two dozen naked adults playing like children - swimming under the waterfall, jumping off a rope swing (not me!), shooting the rapids and just generally frolicking in a way I must say I don't often find myself doing. In the evenings we did community-building exercises and deepened our friendships. I'm really glad I went but I must say that camping in the heat and bugs is *not* my cup of tea.

Between this and Ancient Ways this year I am quite off the idea of camping. Saturday was 104 F (though much cooler by the snow-melt-fed river) and I am just mosquito bait. A nice air conditioned motel in Nevada City or Grass Valley, even though 25 miles from the swimming hole, sounds much better to me. And both those hamlets looked like they'd be great fun to explore. (We stopped in GV on the way up to use the free wifi at Wall St Cafe and we caught a cache in NC on the way home.) So I'm not wholly against the idea of a trip to the area again (hopefully in spring or fall) because (a) it was beautiful and (b) there are a *lot* of caches there to go for. We tried to get a cache in each county we visited but we didn't quite manage that.

But maybe some of my georges will make it to counties where I have no hits. I did actually spend $24 (four fives, four ones) in Sierra County at a wonderful diner, the Indian Valley Trading Outpost in the Tahoe National Forest. We had foolishly tried to grab some Sierra County caches without having the full cache description (so we DNF'd both of them). But the breakfast with homemade corned beef hash and biscuits and gravy with actual chunks of a lovely sage sausage was fabulous! I'd go back there just for the food.