Sunnie with a chance of SNOW STORMS
After months of preparations, building, planning, glueing, anxious excitement, and dog drama, this trip was the "biggon".
To begin, I want to preface this by saying, this trip made me confident! In myself as a woman traveler, in Sunnie as a fully equipped livable rig, and in my friends for being THE BEST EVER. This journey came with its hardships, but was WAY outshined by its amazing memories.
Let's get into it...
The plan: 2+ weeks, 3 gals, 2 dogs, 8 states, lots of ski gear, and a partridge in a pear tree.
It all started in Los Angeles. Not too much to report about the first days' drive other than it took us 8ish hours with a few stops for dog and people potty breaks.
The last hour of the drive to Great Basin National Park was dark, deserted, and dotted with flurries. As the sun went down, we could see small snowflakes glow in the glow of the headlights. Sunnie had yet to see snow, and I was a little fearful of how she'd navigate, but we got through just fine.
We finally arrived at South Leehman Caves Campgound in the dark dark night. We pulled up to the entrance and the information sign said “$0” for the night. With a suspicious look to each other, we all gave a shrug, and proceeded through the campground.
We only spotted 2 other spots taken, and it seemed that they were tucked in for the night. We settled for spot #7 directly across from the pit toilet, made a quick dinner and tucked in.
It was a cold night, with a clear sky, and a full moon, the temp was in the 10s. We came prepared with lots of quality wool blankets and sweaters. Our bodies were warm, but we could still see our breath throughout the night.
Our morning was quiet and brisk, but we were happy to be beginning WOMENS HISTORY MONTH. Before we headed out for the day, we took a stroll around the campground. There were beautiful birch trees surrounding a small trickling frozen creek, and we could hear the gobble-gobble of wild turkeys in the distance.
Our first stop was the deserted visitor center where we were not so cheerfully greeted by the ranger (we could feel his unmasked judgement from 6 ft away). We asked if we could borrow snow shoes as advertised on the website and his answer was a pointed, hard, “no” because “you probably wouldn’t be able to hike far enough to get to where you needed snowshoes”, as in, you plus sized girls couldn’t possibly be “outdoorsy” or “fit” enough to want to hike for any period of time.
Turns out we were able to hike that far, and therefore had to turn around early because we couldn’t continue without snowshoes. DICK.
He also asked us what time we arrived, and if we paid our $20 for our campsite. We said "no" because the sign said "$0", but he made it seem like someone stole the "2". insert eye roll here.
Despite our disgruntled Ranger experience, we had a joy to a time wandering through what was open of the park (which wasn’t much since it was still winter and COVID times). But that didn’t stop us for enjoying what we could.
After our morning hike through the Grey Cliffs, we stopped in the nearest town for gas (which happened to be In Utah), went to the Baker Archeological Site (a great place to stop to make lunch), and headed back to camp.
We turned in for the evening while the sun was up, built a campfire (this evening there were a few more campers at the Lehman Caves Campground compared to the night before), and finished the night with some Curry, S’mores and a viewing of the classic film, Stick-It. HAHA.
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