An Exciting Overview of our First California Road Trip A Lost Blonde

After 6 months of living in the Wild American West, your two favorite road-trippers could no longer ignore the siren song of California. The endless, romantic possibility that makes up the Golden State provided for many late-night Pinterest sessions and adventure daydreams before we finally gave in to its beckoning…. A California road trip needed to happen!

So, we planned. Should we drive North, South? To the beaches, or mountains? To rural campgrounds, or bustling cities? Narrowing down our ideas into a general plan took longer than expected with California’s vast pool of opportunity. Our California trip had to rival our previous road trips, with enough adventure and excitement to satisfy our travel bug. Liam’s love of lakes and my magnetic pull towards the mountains guided our outline toward two destinations: Lake Tahoe & Yosemite National Park!

The Plan:

We divided our trip into two destinations, each location providing key elements of entertainment required to successfully both relax & amuse myself and Liam on a vacation. Those elements are:

The 8-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Tahoe City went smoothly on a Sunday night, driving through the expansive nothingness that is Nevada, trading shifts until arriving to sleep around 6:00 a.m. We caught up on sleep for a few hours before beginning our lake vacation!

Lake Tahoe:

Lake Tahoe boarders both California and Nevada, the two sides demonstrating an extreme difference in development & expense, but both states ensuring the beauty of the lake’s incredibly blue waters. Almost looking photoshopped, the saturated aqua hues of Lake Tahoe are represented by the pure lake water, tested 99.994% pure (cleaner than most commercially sold water bottles) even with swimmers, boats, kayaks, and jet skis. Emerald Bay was named after the gemstone for good reason!

At 22 miles long and 12 miles wide, exploring all of Lake Tahoe would take us several days! Before truly diving into the deep waters, Liam wanted to explore Squaw Valley’s Olympic Village. The 1960 Winter Olympics put Squaw Valley Ski Resort on the map in terms of destination skiing. Gorgeous sweeping views of mountains and lakes combined with nearly vertical slopes define Squaw, but that wasn’t what enticed Liam to visit.

Liam’s favorite movie, G.N.A.R, was filmed at Squaw. This 2011 comedy ski film explains a game of “radness” created by professional skier Shane McConkey. The movie documents 20 skiers competing in the game, in honor of McConkey’s death in 2009. You can watch the movie here, then tell Liam all about it!

After exploring the Olympic village, we set off to finally begin exploring the lake! Our goal was to spend the day at Sand Harbor, but we quickly learned the public beach was disgustingly crowded so we opted for a private location. We discovered a pull-off on the side of the road where we could hike down a cliff to our own secluded waters! A two-minute hike gave us access to exclusive, crystal-blue waters without the noise from hundreds of tourists.

An afternoon of swimming, grilling, relaxing on the water summarized our first day of California-camping, now it was time to find a place to park for the night! Though we loved our private beach, Liam was uncomfortable with sleeping on the side of such a busy road/cliff. About an hour away, Eldorado National Forest hosts free campsites with one rule: absolutely NO fires! To find free campsites anywhere in the country, Liam and I always use this website. It offers photos & reviews from other campers, to ensure safety! I cooked steak, parmesan risotto, and an assortment of veggies while Liam set up the van and watched for bears.

Yes, you read correctly: BEARS! Everywhere in California, there are signs warning campers about friendly, curious bears who will steal your food. “Bear boxes” are placed on every street, a dumpster-like contraption that bears cannot figure out, for campers to place their food inside. We risked leaving our food inside the van with us, I made it a goal to see a bear before we leave.

In the morning, we drove an hour back to South Tahoe to cook breakfast on the water. Bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast bagels and a good book kept me occupied while Liam finished a little work. For a bit of exercise and adventure, we grabbed our longboards and headed down the road towards South Tahoe’s pier. The beach was crowded, and much dirtier than Northern Tahoe, but the walk was long enough to get the blood moving before jumping back in the van for the day.

Emerald Bay was our target destination for a kayaking adventure, though we quickly discovered it was not what the internet led us to believe. Named for its striking blue/green color, the Bay is essentially only accessible by boat from other ports of the lake, unless you want to hike down a massive 600ft cliff. A little disappointed but never deterred, we turned around and made for Baldwin Beach, a public beach down the road.

Yosemite:

One more dip in the lake had us satiated with the Lake Tahoe portion of our road trip. We were ready to move on to the mountains! Another 5-hour drive took us from South Tahoe to Yosemite National Park. We were foolish to forget how expansive the park is, and we didn’t arrive to our camping reservation until well past the check-in hours. Once we arrived at Upper Pines Campground, Liam realized we had run out of propane for our grill, which meant goldfish for dinner! Luckily, a long day of driving had us falling asleep quickly.

Morning came quickly with a 6am sunrise over El Capitan’s peak. Luckily the camp store had propane tanks to refill, which we stocked up on and cooked breakfast with incredible views from the valley. While preparing for our hike, we saw a bear! A little black bear snacking on some berries right across the street. We learned from a park ranger that despite their presence on the state flag, grizzly bears have been gone from California since the 1920s. Even though this little bear was brown in color, it was indeed a black bear, and in fact most “black” bears are brown, red, or even blonde.

Our main activity of the day was a long hike to the top of Yosemite Falls. This 8 mile, 4,000ft elevation gain hike was estimated to take us 6-8 hours, but took us less than 5! We started around 1:30, summited around 4:00, and got back to the car around 6:30, stopping for about an hour at the top. Stopping to take many photos and videos along the way, we were awe-struck by the incredible views throughout this hike. At the top of Yosemite Falls is a small river, where we cooled off and drank congratulatory ciders. Liam was really excited about the concept of peeing off the top of Yosemite Falls, knowing he was making his own 4,000ft water fall… men.

To celebrate our hard work in record time, we gorged on mac & cheese, sausages, veggie kababs, and ice cream sandwiches back in the valley! Friendly bats spent the night swooping over our heads, eating all the mosquitos while we watched the sky for shooting stars.

It wouldn’t truly be an Abby & Liam road trip without a little adversity…On our way out of the park, several gallons of melted ice accidentally landed on our mattress, soaking it entirely. Liam ended up strapping the bed to the roof, and we drove around until 1 a.m. in an attempt to dry it out before finally sleeping on lightly damp blankets.

It was time to head home. Staying away from the dog for too long causes separation anxiety in our hearts, even though our sitter claimed the dog didn’t seem to miss us at all! A 14-hour drive through the void of Nevada (can you tell I’m not a fan?) brought us home to Salt Lake. Another successful road trip in the books!