“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.” ― Langston Hughes

After Brendan and Chelsea flew out of Sacramento, I got in touch with an old friend from studying abroad in Australia, Kevin. We did a quick tour of Old Sacramento, ate incredible Mexican food, shared good conversation, then it was time to get back on the road again, freedom in the wings!

My next destination was to visit friends in Reno, but I pit-stopped at Lake Tahoe along the way. After texting my mother, I was informed that my cousin, Katie, was also at Lake Tahoe! After some quick communications, we were eating lunch together within an hour or two, along with her friend, Eric.

They graciously invited me to tag along on their plans for the day! A short hike to a waterfall at Fallen Leaf Lake, a drive by Emerald Bay, and then back to Eric’s house in Truckee, CA.

In the evening we walked down to “Truckee Thursday” for dinner from food trucks, live music, and a craft fair. Later that night we met up with Eric’s friends, Nate and Kat and drove to a concert at a local casino, the opening act was The Naughty Professor, and the headliner was Galactic. Pretty neat jams from both of these bands before we headed home around midnight.

Katie just happened to be flying out of the Reno airport, so I was able to drop her off on the way to visit Sarah, Jason and their dog, Astor. Sarah and I met while studying abroad in Australia some 12 years ago, and have remained dear friends over the time and distance, and her husband, Jason, is a stand-up guy, the both showed me outstanding hospitality.

On the first night in Reno, we met their friend, Brooklyn for Mexican food, I went out on a limb and tried the beef tongue, not half bad! We watched the sun set over the mountains from their back yard and caught up on the years since we last saw each other. After breakfast the next morning, we packed a daybag, threw the dog in the car and drove out to Lake Tahoe for a hike up a side trail to an alpine lake after an hours walk. The water was freezing, but Astor was loving playing fetch with her toy, I dove in with her, knowing I might not get another chance to visit this serene lake!

In the evening, we visited Sarah’s brother, Brian and his girlfriend, Liz, for a cookout. Sausage, watermelon, corn, and potatoes on the grill…mmmm, mmmm, it was good eating and great company! Sarah and Jason are intrepid explorers and besides the wonderful friendship, they also gave me sage advice on what to visit and what not to visit in the area before setting off the next morning, many, many thanks to this loving couple!

From Reno, it was 300 miles South to Death Valley, California. The scenery out in Nevada is barren and rugged, but nice to have stretches of long, open road, exactly what a road trip makes me think of. One car caught up to me but wouldn’t pass, once I got sick of him on my rear, I pulled into the left lane, hit the brakes, and he went by…reverse pass baby! In the big, open valleys, there were about a dozen small tornadoes, dust devils, at any given time, very beautiful to watch in the distance. One was swirling over the road as drove through and it gave me a harder shove than I expected! I stopped for gas frequently, as I saw signs reading “No services next 100 miles”. My first way-point was the “Car Forest” in Goldfield, NV. Neatly decorated cars, buried vertically in the dirt!

Second way-point was the deserted mining town of Rhyolite. Some building still remained, but there is also some unique outdoor art, including a giant naked women made from cinder blocks.

Then, it was onto the main event…Death Valley! It was many miles down to the bottom and I slowly watched my dashboard thermometer tick high and higher, capping out at an astounding 128 degrees at 5:00 PM near Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, nearly 300 ft below sea level.

I wanted the full experience of the area, so I refused to use my air conditioning the entire time, so hot. The wind blowing in my windows was scorching, much of the time, it was cooler to have the windows up to stifle the hot breeze!

After exploring the depths of the valley, I drove up to Dante’s View just in time for sunset, 5,000 feet above the valley floor, such splendor.

I chugged water all day, but still felt a little off and mentally slow from sweating my brains out. Even at 10:00 PM, in the dark, my thermometer still registered a sweltering 115 degrees.

I knew I couldn’t sleep in that kind of head and had to get to cooler temperatures at higher elevations. I drove into the night to the opposite side of the park, seeing long-eared jack rabbits, and even some wild donkeys along the way! I watched the temperatures drop as I started up the road towards Telescope Peak at 8,000 feet. About two miles from the end of the road, the surface turned from pavement to loose gravel, the patch steepened, and a sign read, “4×4, high clearance vehicles recommended”. Oh well, I figured I could always back down slowly if I had to. The red Rover amazed me once again and despite some tricky areas, we chugged all the way to the top around 11:30 PM, a cool 75 degrees at the top!

It was late, but I knew there would be a good sunrise, and Death Valley is famed as one of the best places in the country to view the stars, so I reluctantly set my alarm for 4:30 AM and rolled to sleep. When the alarm sounded, I sleepily got dressed in warm clothes, laid out on a log, and watched the stars glimmer across the galaxy…worth it! An hour later, the sun began to paint the sky. The sun rises and sets every single day, yet watching it never loses it’s majesty. I climbed a dead tree on the hill for a better vantage point.

The descent down the steep gravel road was easier than the climb, I checked out some old charcoal kilns along the way, and even saw more donkeys and a small wolf along the road!

A short hike took me up a canyon to the remarkable Darwin Falls, which flows year round despite the hot, dry conditions elsewhere. It was hot, even early in the morning, I chugged lots of water, but was still dehydrated from the day before and couldn’t catch back up, I had a headache and no appetite the rest of the day.

Driving West out of Death Valley, I saw a giant white wall on the far side of the plain…the high Sierras!

Mount Whitney was my next goal, the highest peak in the lower 48 states! I got my hiking permits and bear canister from the visitor center, scarfed a pizza, then tried to find some relief from the heat. It’s hot this far South in August, makes things tough for van dwelling. I read a book under a tree at a park, but I couldn’t escape the ambient 99 degree weather. After a short nap in the grass, I was once again desperate for cooler temperatures at higher ground and drove up to 8,000 feet to an area known as Whitney Portal for camp. The rest of the day, I prepped gear and looked in awe at the granite behemoths surrounding me, mountains like I’ve never seen before!

I slept in until 10:00 AM, thanks to the shade of the mountains, then began my ascent to the trail camp area where I could set up my tent for the night. I climbed and climbed and climbed , ever so slowly to prevent altitude sickness and allow my lungs to gasp for the thin air. After about five hours and 4,000 feet of elevation, I sat down next to my tent and stared at the world around me, enormous white cliffs, bathed in sunlight, crystal clear ponds, and clear skies, I didn’t even bother to purify the stream water before drinking it, perfectly crisp snow melt!

My phone battery died from the chilly temperatures overnight, so my alarm didn’t go off, but when I woke up to pee in the early morning, around 5:00 AM, I saw the sky reveal the slightest hint of orange…go time! I left the tent and any gear i wouldn’t need for the summit and began plodding my way up the eternal set of switchbacks, probably 2,000 feet of climb with a brilliant sunrise along the way.

After reaching the crest trail at the top, it was only two miles and 1,000 feet higher to the top of the lower 48 states! The air was very calm and temperatures were quite reasonable for how high we were, lots of friendly people were going up and down.

After another hour, I saw the small hut at the summit and was greeted with 360 degree views of the magnificent mountains, lakes, clouds, and cliffs.

 

Another hiker had randomly brought his friend’s didgeridoo to the top! I starred in awe at the views for at least 45 minutes, woofed down some prunes and granola bars, then began the trek back down.

***Caution, potty language ahead*** Clear, blue skies lead me back the way I came, and about one hour from my tent, the prunes hit me and I had to poop terribly bad, however, due to how many people climb Mount Whitney, one of the requirements for getting a permit is that you can only poop into the prescribed bags that they give you, and you have to pack your waste down the mountain. I had mistakenly left my “wag bag” back at the tent! I fought hard to hold it and made it back to camp just in the nick of time.After packing my gear, the slog down 4,000 feet began and I had severe gas the entire way, but couldn’t trust it. The pain and cramps of trying to hold it while working hard physically was a bad mix, and eventually the pressure won out…I pooped my pants in minuscule amounts at least a half dozen times and I was praying for the parking lot bathroom at the bottom. (I apologize for the graphic descriptions here, I’m certainly not proud of these moments, but my aim is to give a realistic description of the highs and lows of the journey so you can best live in the moment with me.) I feared that perhaps the source of my discomfort wasn’t actually the prunes, but rather that I had contracted giardia from the untreated water, but that usually takes a few days to fester. I got to the van around 3:30 PM, completely pooped, both literally and figuratively, chugged two Gatorades and ordered a burger and fries from the small camp store, boy oh boy, were they scrumptious! After putting my gear away, my belly seemed to settle down, I returned the rented bear canister to the visitor center and the arduous mission had been accomplished!

My GPS showed that Sequoia National Park was only 33 miles from Mount Whitney as the crow flies, but over 200 miles of road to go South around the Sierra mountains! Along the drive, tons of smoke rose from a forest fire, so much that it actually blotted our the sun!

The road that my GPS wanted to take was closed from the fire, so I diverted around through Bakersfield, CA, where I pulled into a hotel parking lot to sleep for the night. It was very hot in the van in this town and I couldn’t sleep. Around 11:00 PM, I started driving the remaining 100 miles to Sequoia National Park. As I left the pavement of the city and gained a little elevation, the temperature dropped from 96 to 76 degrees. I saw some tractor-trailers pulled off along the side of the highway, I assume to sleep, so I decided to do the same when I came to an empty turn-out. I was quick to fall asleep now that it was chillier and 1:00 AM.

I was suddenly awoken at 4:00 AM as semi-trucks flew by my van, making lots of noise and the wind shook my car. I couldn’t get back to sleep with all the commotion, so I drove the rest of the way to Sequoia. Just before the entrance, I pulled into another hotel parking lot around 5:30 AM for a nap, not even bothering to put the privacy curtains up over the windows. I was comically woken up a little after 8:00 AM when I heard a family with two kids going around the parking lot calling out the states on the license plates, “WOAH, Maryland!!! Get in there, I’ll get your picture for the collection, it even has fireworks and says Bob Bell, just like daddy’s name, Bob!” THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, the little boy was banging all over the door for a minute straight. I really wanted to put my face up to the glass for an epic photo-bomb, or spring the doors open screaming, but figured it prudent to remain incognito and not let them notice my body inside. The Sequoia trees are something that everyone must see in person during their lifetime, the enormity of these trees cannot be expressed through the words or pictures here.

I walked a circle around one tree and counted 34 paces, there was even a tunnel cut out of a fallen log that I drove my car through!

I strolled out to “Tharps Log”, where an old rancher had lived inside a hollowed out, fallen over, dead tree!

I also had the honor of walking down to the General Sherman tree, the largest tree in the world by volume. A nearby sign mentioned that if the wood of the General Sherman tree was water, you could fill a bath tub everyday for 27 years before running out of water!

After enough tree-gasms, I drove into the neighboring National Park, King’s Canyon. The canyon was similar to Yosemite valley, with massive carved, granite faces on both sides. I checked out some waterfalls, then drove back out as the setting sunlight ricocheted off the canyon walls.

I decided to try for one last destination for the day, the Boole Tree. I had no idea what this was, but the name on the map left me too curious to resist. I didn’t recall seeing a sign or the unpaved road for the trail on the drive down, so I watched the map and guessed where the access road was. I found a turn out that had a sign reading, “No Motor Vehicles”, and the trees were all burned from a recent forest fire, so I figured maybe the trail had been left to deteriorate. I found bits and pieces of old roads as I bushwhacked into the sunset, following a ridge and my compass off trail, I made a few arrows in the dirt with my feet as I went. Mostly, I was on loose, ashy, rough terrain and everything I touched left me marked black with soot.

After an hours hike and a beautiful sunset, things were getting pretty dark, then I heard a large animal in the valley below…MRROOOOO…and at the same time, I spotted a large paw print in the sand. My mind instantly switched it’s lock from Boole Tree to bears and mountain lions. I immediately turned around and was sufficiently frightened by myself. I stumbled through the night by headlamp, steeply skirting the ridge and following a loose South bearing as the animal in the valley continued to bellow. I wasn’t on the same route as I went out on, considering there wasn’t an actual trail, but I didn’t want to get any closer to that noise down the hill. Every minute or so, I scanned the surroundings with my headlamp, looking for a pair of eyes stalking me. After 30 minutes, I discovered another section of road, I followed this for a bit until I decided I knew better than the road and went back into the woods, confident that I would find one of my arrows and come out right at my car! But, when things didn’t look familiar I was able to catch the road again. The funny thing was that this road was in good shape, it wasn’t a rutted out dead-end section like I was on earlier in the evening. You can imagine my surprise when I cam upon a sign reading, “Boole Tree Trail”!

It turns out I was in the wrong area all along and there was in fact a beautiful gravel road, complete with signs! As I walked back to the paved road, I came upon an Asian couple, parked on the side, in an RV. I tried to talk to them, but they didn’t speak English and they were probably freaked out when someone came running down the road with a headlight at 9:00 PM when there were no other cars around. I walked half a mile down the paved road to my sweet house on wheels, and was relived to be there.

I knew I had to find this elusive Boole Tree once and for all, I started the car, drove to the gravel road, past the Asian RV couple, probably freaking them out again, and 2.5 miles down the rutted road to the trail head where I climbed into my bed for the night. On the drive down the road to the trail, I saw lots of cow poop on the road, I’m pretty sure it turns out that I was all freaked out and running from a cow. When morning came, I hiked one miles out to the Boole Tree, another massive Sequoia in a grove of many huge stumps which had been harvested for lumber many years ago.

When I first arrived, I heard lots of commotion off to the side of the trail, a big animal in the woods. I couldn’t get an angle on it to see what it was, but I could see the top of a pine tree, swaying back and forth and heard branches snapping, pretty sure that one was not a cow, a bear the best I can figure. The last hike in the area, was out to the Mark Twain stump, a giant that was cut down many years ago, so that cross sections of the tree could be sent around the world and put on display in museums.

Los Angeles was 200 miles from Sequoia National Park. I was able to locate the Civic Musical Road along the way, which is a series of rumble strips along the road, created for an automobile commercial. When you drive over the area at a consistent 55 MPH, it plays a song! I arrived in LA in the evening and met up with my cousin, Laurie, and her husband, Todd.

They are awesome fun, as always. We went to a comedy show at The Improv, visited their new condo in Malibu, walked the shore, ran a sand dune, grabbed a beer, watched a movie, and even found a place to eat Cambodian Food, The Golden Lake Eatery!

I was thrilled to speak Khmer with the woman running the store, and she was just as jolly and friendly as I remember Khmer people being.

While in LA, I was able to grab tickets to a video game tournament for a game known as League of Legends, a game I enjoy playing, and the professional teams have become quite huge in recent years. Waiting in line, an employee asked for solos, then took me and another individual into the stadium and we filled two seats in the very front row! I’ll spare you all the nerdy details, but it was sensationally dorky!

Thanks again to Laurie and Todd (and their dog, Newton) for all the fun things, housing and feeding me, and the supportive love!

An hour South from LA, in Newport Beach, I visited an old adventure racing friend, Josh. He just happened to have an extra mountain bike and helmet, so we hopped on and tore up some hilly trails along the coast during the sunset, we even saw a big hair tarantula! Sandy, but firm trails, great flow, great views, and a great friend!

Officially turning East across the Southern USA, I drove 100 miles East to arrive at Joshua Tree National Park. Very scenic desert landscape, lots of boulders and rocks to climb on, and the Joshua trees themselves are crazy looking with branches in every direction.

One especially unique portion was the cholla cactus garden, where these cactus grew on a hillside for as far as you could see in every direction!

I slept in a turn-out on the side of the road in the park and was gifted a magical sunrise in the morning, I simply opened the sliding door on the side of the van and watched it directly from bed, snuggled up inside my warm sleeping bag in the cool morning air! Those are some of the greatest moments that this lifestyle provides.

During some research, I discovered a neat hike known as the Painted Canyon, the entrance to the sandy dirt road had another sign reading, “4×4 high-clearance vehicles only”.

There were a few small sandy patches that I was able to power through, but after 5 miles it happened…the car got stuck in the sand, in the middle of a canyon, in 105 degree heat…oh crap!

I threw it in reverse, turned the wheels side to side and punched the gas and luckily I was able to grind back to solid ground. I just left the car there and walked the rest of the way to the start of the trail. The hike was a blast, rock scrambling through a tight sandstone slot canyon, a few ladder climbs, and gorgeous sunlight flooding in from above!

Next stop was Slab City, CA, and old military base that Brendan had told me about, where people now live an “off-grid” lifestyle in the middle of the desert.

Located along the entrance road to the area is a very impressive art project known as Salvation Mountain, decorated hills, cars, and junk turned art, all decorated with religious themes…something like an ultra devout Dr. Seuss!

Slab City itself was all but deserted this time of year considering the temperature was 110 degrees, most people move down to escape the cold Northern winters.

Leaving Slab City, I called my cousin, Maddie, and her husband, Nathan, in Phoenix, Arizona, then decided to drive all five hours out to their house that evening. I randomly drove through an area known as the Imperial Sand Dunes, and what a treat it was, sand dunes as far as you could see in any direction and the highway runs right up the middle of it!

I pulled into Phoenix around 9:00 PM, caught up with Maddie and Nathan, met their two dogs, Enzo and Gracie, and they even got me a birthday cake to celebrate my 32nd birthday. Another great birthday spent doing what I love and with people I love!