Our Volksvegan Adventure

We made our way through Oregon and stopped in Boise for a few days to visit family. Then we came up to Moscow and picked up our friend Crystal to head to the Okanogan Family Faire. We attend the barter faire every year so we couldn’t miss it. Unfortunately dogs were banned this year, so we had to leave Juneau with friends in Moscow.

We got up to the faire Thursday afternoon, driving through rain that eventually faded into sunshine by the time we got in and set up our camp and booth. We got a good spot near the drum circle and were excited to finally have the bus at the barter faire. It was a cold weekend but we had a blast. We made some great trades and had some excellent food at the many delicious food booths. It was cold at night so we spent a lot of time around the fire sharing some homemade barter faire wine. On Saturday night we climbed up the hill near the barter faire and saw a glowing figure up on the cliffs. Curious, we climbed up to discover a guy wearing a glowing costume and spinning color changing glowing orbs. “Glow Man” became our night’s entertainment as he handed us some 3D glasses to fully experience his “show.” It was certainly like nothing we’d ever seen before.

We had a great time at the faire and got to see a lot of friends we hadn’t seen in a while, but as usual the weekend went by way too fast. Sunday morning brought rain and we made some last rounds around the faire before packing up and heading back to Moscow. We hope to stay in Moscow for a while and decide where to go from here. We’re hoping to start seriously looking for a place to settle down in coming weeks. Stay tuned!

It’s good to have friends spread all over the place. We have discovered this wonderful fact during the course of our trip. We’ve even made a few new friends in the places we’ve been to, so now we have even more people to visit. Thank you to all our friends who have let us stay with them (usually with very little notice), fed us, and let these dirty hippies finally get a shower. You all rock!

We headed to Santa Cruz, a mix of the NorCal and the SoCal. The weather was hot and beautiful, and we met Josh and Cori and went to a fabulous vegetarian Indian restaurant called Asian Rose. We were told upon entering that it was a set menu, a five course meal, all vegetarian, and we could simply pay what we thought it was worth at the end. I couldn’t believe Josh found such an awesome place; the food was delicious! We hung out with Josh and Cori for the night, then stocked up at a natural food store and played a round of disc golf at a really unique 27-hole course. After that we were on our way toward the Bay to see our buddy Jake.

We met up with Jake in Berkeley and continued the awesome veg food trend by going to Herbivore, an all-vegan organic place Jake frequented. The next day while Jake went to work, we got the muffler on the bus fixed for the umpteenth time and had lunch at Pyramid Brewery. We randomly ended up parking near this house where we noticed two cars on the driveway with “Powered by Recycled Veggie Oil” stickers. When a third veg car pulled in, we had to say hi and ask where to get some oil. The guy we met ended up being the owner of PlantDrive.com, a grease car company! Unfortunately the veg oil hookup wasn’t possible without a membership and a wait, but it was kinda cool to randomly meet a very important greaser!

We crossed the Bay Bridge and went to Golden Gate Park to ride our bikes and give the pooch some exercise. Then we picked up Jake and went to Cafe Gratitude, a live organic vegan cafe that my friend Crystal worked at last summer and we’d been dying to check out. All the food is vegan and raw, and each dish is named with an affirmation. We ordered “I am rejuvenated,” a wheatgrass sparkling lemonade, and I had a sampler plate called “I am abundant.” We played the game the restaurant was based on and then hung out at Jake’s place where he performed some of his music for us.

The next day Jake showed us a grove of oaks on the UC Berkeley campus where a group of activists had been tree-sitting for ten months. Sen and I had read an article about the tree-sitters in a magazine we picked up in Eugene. The University wanted to cut down the beautiful grove of oaks to build an athletic facility. Activists continue to camp in the trees, many of them there since January, to press the University to build elsewhere. The grove is on a fault line, not a good place to build anyway! We talked to some of the supporters and donated some food for the “tree people” before heading up the hill for a hike on campus. Jake showed us a trail with a great view of the entire Bay Area, which was a great way to end our visit. If anyone in the Bay Area needs a good voice actor, ya gotta ask me to get you in touch with my buddy Jake. He’s hilarious and very talented.

After leaving Berkeley, we’ve been on a fast track North, stopping in Eugene to stay with a friend for a night and driving long hours to get to Boise in a hurry. We’re getting ready for the barter faire and making soap to sell at our booth while we’re in Boise, then we’re heading to Moscow to pick up friends to go to the barter faire. Speaking of which, I need to get busy making jewelry for the faire. Ciao for now!

We stuck around Boonville for a couple of days, visiting nearby Ukiah (where there was an organic brewery and another disc golf course) and camping outside Boonville in a campground full of huge redwood trees. Then we parted ways with our friend and headed Southeast to Yosemite. We stealthily camped at a spot we found along the way, which is how we normally roll to avoid paying for camping every night.

Neither of us has ever visited Yosemite, and we were most excited about seeing the park’s groves of giant sequoias. We stopped first at Merced Grove, and hiked in to see a small grove of enormous sequoias. Sequoias, cousins of the coastal redwoods, are the most massive species on earth and the largest trees by volume, though not height (that honor belongs to the redwoods). The trees are wider than our bus, with gnarly trunks that get bigger at the base. The bark is a beautiful cinnamon red, even brighter than the redwoods. We enjoyed being in the presence of these ancient giants.

After hiking in Merced Grove, we headed to the famous Yosemite Valley. The glacial valley has very interesting geology, as most of the mountains surrounding it are solid granite. We saw Bridalveil Falls, reduced to a tiny trickle, and El Capitan, the biggest granite monolith in the world, towering above the valley floor. Half Dome is probably Yosemite Valley’s most well known feature, a granite mountain that forms a round dome that looks like it was sliced in half. The autumn trees were just starting to turn, providing splashes of color against the gray granite walls of the valley. We drove down the valley and walked to Yosemite Falls, which unfortunately was dried up due to the season and drought. We watched the sunset casting colors on Half Dome and left the park to camp.

The next morning we went back into the park for a last view of the valley. We found a trail and hiked to Inspiration Point for amazing views of Yosemite Valley. Then we headed to the Southern end of Yosemite to see Mariposa Grove, the park’s largest grove of sequoias. We spent hours hiking around the huge grove full of beautiful sequoias that were spread out over a few miles. The massive sequoias certainly stand out among the other trees around them and are easy to spot. One of the oldest sequoias in the grove (2,700 years old), Giant Grizzly, had branches bigger around than any of the non-sequoias in the grove. We climbed into trees hollowed out by fire that were still living, one of which had a tunnel carved out by fire, another that was hollow far up its trunk so you could look up it from the inside. After playing in the giant trees for a while, we left Yosemite and headed South toward King’s Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

Once in King’s Canyon National Park, we went to Grant Grove, home of General Grant, one of the largest sequoias. We walked among the forest, stopping to admire the sequoias as it started to hail. The hail turned into snow and started piling up. We couldn’t believe it was snowing at the beginning of October, but at over 6,000 feet it’s not uncommon. We headed into the canyon, and as we lost elevation we left the snow behind. King’s Canyon is a beautiful deep canyon with colorful granite walls dotted with yucca plants. It was a bit foggy as we drove into the canyon, which made it seem even more surreal. We stopped at several waterfalls and sights on the way through the canyon. After the short drive down the canyon (you actually can’t drive very far into it, most of the park is only accessible by hiking), we camped at a free campground in the forest just outside the park. We were soon glad we didn’t pay anything to camp there, as a group of six cars pulled in that night and unloaded a miniature village of people at the campsite right next to us. They crammed nine tents and probably around thirty people into a tiny campsite, yelling and talking loudly in Spanish into the wee hours. Needless to say, we didn’t get much sleep and got out of there as soon as we could the next morning.

Since it was clear and sunny, we decided to drive back into the canyon for a better view. First we stopped at Boyden Cavern and got an early morning private tour into the marble cave. Several caves formed in the Sierra Nevadas in pockets of limestone within the mostly granite mountains. There were really cool calcite formations all throughout the narrow, winding cave. Once we were out from underground, we did a little hiking and got much better views of the tall mountains surrounding King’s Canyon, then we headed to Sequoia National Park.

The magnificent sequoias grow only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. There are only about 75 groves, mixed forests where sequoias tower over cedar, oak, dogwood, and ponderosa pine trees. These colossal beings seem to be relics from an ancient time, growing up for the first part of their lives, then expanding outward to reach diameters of about 40 feet! It was truly awesome to see them and learn about these ancient trees, some of which are nearly 3,000 years old. We drove through sequoias to the Giant Forest, one of the largest groves. There we visited General Sherman, the world’s largest tree (in volume, not height) and several of his humongous neighbors. We went on a hike in a meadow surrounded by sequoias, then hiked up to Sunset Rock for a view of the Sierra Nevadas. We were pretty tired as we drove out of the park and found a campground.

We’re now heading back up North and back to the coast. Our first stop was Santa Cruz, where we visited one of my good friends from high school, Josh, and his girlfriend Cori. Then we’ll go through San Francisco and stop in Berkeley to visit our friend Jake. We’ll hopefully be able to visit a few places we missed on the way back up. Eventually we’re making our annual trek to the Okanogan Family Faire in Tonasket, Washington, an event we’ve been going to for years. It’s about time we went to a barter faire this fall, and it will be the first time the bus will be with us. See you at the barter faire!

It was difficult for us to leave the beautiful Mt. Shasta (the mountain of course, but the town was awesome as well). From there we went to Lassen Volcanic National Park, an active volcanic area that last erupted in 1915. We climbed Lassen Peak, the volcano that erupted and the highest point in the park at just over 10,000 feet. The geology was really interesting and the top of the peak was a craggy maze of lava rock towers and snow-covered mud.

We then hiked to a place called Bumpass Hell, named after the guy who discovered it and then lost his leg stepping through the crust into boiling mud. It reminded us of Yellowstone, a bubbling, steaming, sulfuric display of earth’s extremes. After being on Mt. Adams and Mt. Shasta, both volcanoes in the Cascade Range and part of the “Ring of Fire” along with Lassen National Park, it was a cool way to end our volcanic experience.

From Lassen we went through Redding to Arcata. We visited Arcata and Redwood National Park a few years ago on our first road trip together, so it definitely brought back memories. We found some yummy pizza, then checked out a bead and crystal shop where we talked to the guy working there for a while. Of course we had to head to the Co-op, which is the biggest grocery store in downtown Arcata.

In Arcata we found a gas station selling B99 Biodiesel (99% Bio/1% Diesel). We have normally only found B5 – B20 while on the road, so this was quite a surprise. We had to get some regular diesel as well as bio because we don’t have viton seals in the bus yet. Biodisel erodes the natural rubber seals in the injector pump of older diesels. So we tend to stick to B20.

We camped North of Arcata at Patrick’s Point State Park, and in the morning after a rain we went down to Agate Beach to collect rocks and shells. Then we headed to the disc golf course on Humboldt State University, which was overgrown with redwood trees and very confusing. From there we stopped by the park near campus and ran into our friend Hallie, who we knew in Moscow and hadn’t seen for a long time. We caught up with her, swapped road stories, and then parted ways as the sun went down below the trees. Our last stop in Arcata was for pizza, then we got a quick beer at Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka on our way south.

We camped along the way down Highway 1, a gorgeous and windy drive along the ocean. We had breakfast looking over a cliff into the Pacific, and stopped at a random beach access route that led to a nice little cove with a private beach. We played in the waves and collected shells and beach glass. Juneau had never played in the ocean before, and he was pretty wary of the waves. From the coast we turned inland, and the road was lined with towering redwoods. We drove through a tunnel of forest that gradually opened up to open vineyards, a little pocket of Northern Cali wine country. We stopped in Boonville to visit a friend and checked out Anderson Valley Brewery, which also had a disc golf course. There has certainly been a lot of brewery visits and disc golf on this trip!

From here we hope to go to Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, then head back up North for the Okanogan Family Faire. Hopefully some other faires and events will be along the way. Stay tuned…