George Rebane

It was our first solo trip with our ‘new’ trailer.  Jo Ann and I got back from Trinity Lake yesterday afternoon after spending a few days under the trees at Pinewood Cove RV Park.  We are lifelong dirt campers, so talking us into upgrading to a starter trailer wasn’t all that difficult.  It only took Russ and Ellen Steele about five years to help us switch from a ripstop tent to an aluminum box on wheels.  Memories of weeds poking into our undercarriage were a definite goad to less surprising twilight head calls.

So there we were, practically lakeside and under a thick canopy of tall pineys with our little toyless toy hauler all properly hooked up and canopy deployed.   The RV park grounds sit on, what else, scoured red dirt.  You know, the kind we have right here in Nevada County.  Our little  camping chairs and tables were all set up in the stuff.  Our puppy took no never mind to it, and, rejecting her nice clean bed, stretched herself out on the dustiest parts, being careful to change sides regularly so as to apply an even coating.

Meals were fun because Jo Ann could use the kitchen to prepare some really special vittles for eating around the campfire.  We brought along our own firewood – cured digger pine which makes and maintains a beautifully tight flame mass for hours (contrary to popular local myths, I have yet to burn a bad piece of madrone or digger pine).

The pictured idyllic little scene was made possible following a six hour drive that involved some very curvy roads after we headed west from Redding on State 299.  While there, the major entertainment consisted of driving down to Weaverville to celebrate our 49th, and watching RVs occupy neighboring sites.  From this educational spectator sport one learns a little bit each time as vacationers of various skill levels maneuver their rigs into place and go through the set-up chores – the Germans also call this shadenfreude.  It’s especially relaxing after you are already comfortably ensconced with martooni in hand, and covered with red dirt beyond caring.

Pinewood Cove also offered another bane or benefit, depending on your perspective.  It is a complete black hole as far as connectivity is concerned.  Forget about the outside world, because up there it is inaccessible and therefore simply ceases to exist.  Jo Ann and I are mildly afflicted connectivity junkies; not that we’re always on line, but in that we could be if we wanted to.  Reading a book or writing something has become so much better knowing that you could periodically check your email, news, blogs, look up stuff, … .  Yes indeed, Pinewood Cove took us right back to yesteryear.

Friday morning we got up promptly because it was ‘travel day’, time to break camp, secure everything for a bumpy ride, and see if we could pull out of our slot and through some very tight roadways without leaving some aluminum sheeting on a camouflaged pine tree.  Another sigh and thankful prayer heavenward as we turned on to State Hwy 3 for the ride down to civilization.  Trailer brakes and our truck’s ‘smart transmission’ definitely made the stately procession we led down the mountain enjoyable.

After Redding it was I-5 and clear sailing.  And it was time to reflect on our little sojourn in the mountains.  We looked at each other and asked, ‘now what was that all about?’  Don’t get me wrong, we have taken all sorts of two and four-wheel drive vehicles into deserts and mountains where they were never intended (and sometimes even permitted) to go.  We are not strangers to wild country and camping in wild weather.  But why keep doing it at this time in our lives, towing a rig with a hundred things that could fail (and some did) with great inconvenience that is compounded by the asinine location to which you hauled the damn thing.

We live on a Nevada County ridge that is beautifully forested, with appropriate vistas that even include the coastal range in the winter.  That is why we moved here from the People’s Republic of Los Angeles County.  We no longer wanted to drive a day to get to the big pineys, today we own our little patch of forest with paths and benches, and walk there in a moment with an appropriate adult beverage in hand – no packing or preparation or set up or take down or … required.  And with all this, we were stupid enough to take two days to pack up a trailer and haul it six hours into another mountain range to sit under trees that take a distant second place to the ones on our land that I see out of my windows right now.

All this wisdom flooded the cab of our pick-up as we turned off Woodruff on to Hwy 20 and home.  Our takeaway from this deep thinking was summed up, as it often has in the past, by the motto of the Jewish Defense League – “Never Again!”

From now on our trailering will be to RV parks that are civilized (read ‘flat pull throughs with wide access and full hookups’) and located near points of cultural interest that cannot be duplicated by an hour spent in our own little forest.  Another little nostrum that I’m having a harder time fitting into this tale is the familiar ‘taking coals to Newcastle’.  I’m still working on that one.