11 July 23
I am heading to Virginia Creek Settlement next week. (I so hope!) My favorite lodging establishment in the Eastern Sierra and the place I affectionately call "The Covered Wagons." Of course they have lots of other lodging options, but I don't really care about them. What truly is amazing is their restaurant, from which wafts the smell of delicious pizza lunchtime on into the night. It is pretty hard to want to eat whatever delicious meal you have planned, prepared and put in the ice chest once you get a whiff of that pizza baking in their wood-burning oven.
Let the Baking Begin!
About a week out I do my best to bake cookies, granola, breakfast bread, corn bread. . . whatever is striking my fancy for a camping trip. So far I have knocked out a couple of loaves of banana bread. One is for my brother and niece who are going on a different camping trip in Oregon. The other one will be heading up the 395 with me.
13 July 23
I made a jar of quick pickled cucumbers. Always refreshing when the days are on the warm side, like next week looks to be. And got the Cowboy Cookies made. Now my favorite combination of Gorp ingredients have been bagged too.
Happy Birthday Lovely Lori!
The main reason this trip gets planned in July is so I can spend time with my favorite Wagon Camper and BBFF Lori Michelle Thrun near her birthday. I made a Honeyed Cherry Plum Tart with an Amaretto Cookie Crust for her birthday ahead of time. Fantastically it got to the destination safely, even with a husky in the back of the car. Virginia Creek Settlement was kind enough to store it in their refrigerator until it was time for me to surprise her.
(It was a delicious tart shared with me and my fellow campers on my birthday in 2012 at the top of Tioga Pass that finally inspired me to enter the KCRW Good Food Pie Contest.)
Make Ahead Things
CREPES
What to make ahead that will be delicious and simple to prepare or warm up on the camp stove? Last year I came up with the idea making crepes! It takes a bit of doing to put them together, but not that much really. They are so versatile, savory or sweet or a combination. Crepes can be eaten for breakfast lunch or dinner, vegetarian or not. This year I covered the crepes in a thin layer of Dijon, added Swiss cheese slices and then ham, mushrooms, spinach or any combination of these. I just wrap them in foil at camp and warm them in the cast iron skillet. For fruit crepes, just roll them up and bring them along. Add the fruit and yogurt at the table. Or fill with chocolate and warm up. If you don't eat them all on the trip, then you have something easy and delicious to warm at home after the long sad, terrible, awful, drive back.
CAMPFIRE MARGARITAS
This recipe uses Elderberry Syrup. Luckily I still had a bottle in the refrigerator left over from a Hollywood Orchard event held back in 2018! I taste tested it a few times to make sure it wasn't going to kill us before I made a batch to bring up. It features a simple syrup made with Lapsang Souchong Tea and smoked salt on the rim. The color is a gorgeous garnet and the combination of flavors are truly amazing.
MEALS for the PUPS
Don't forget to prepare the pup's special meals for the trip, especially if you have a picky eater. In the excitement of the fresh Sierra air, it can be difficult to get them to eat just plain kibble. Plus, they are on vacation too. Special nom noms are definitely in order!
Put it in the Car!
I keep all my camping gear organized in IKEA bins stored in the overhead for easy camping trip packing. This outing doesn't require any of the tent items so it will be much easier! The bins fit three across perfectly in my car, and stack easily too.
The only bin that changes much is what goes in the food bin. My food bin contains constant staples: olive oil, safflower oil, canola oil spray, and salt + pepper grinders. In small glass jars I have kosher salt, smoked salt, sugar and vanilla bean sugar (new this year for coffee.) A container of Jiffy Pop always lives in there too, but the date needs to be checked before heading out. They go out of date and taste terrible if it has.
My trick to packing the ice chest is to store food items in plastic containers with four locking flaps. Nothing is worse than discovering that your food is wet and soggy when you dig it out from under the cold ice. Plastic bags will not cut it. If you have a vacuum sealer, seal meat products ahead of time and throw it in. This saves a lot of space. Don't season the meat first though as it will over power the flavor by the time you use it. Bring as much milk or Half & Half you think you will need in a small jar.
The Road Ahead
also July 13th . . .
This is the most exciting news! Exactly what I wanted to hear. Tioga Pass is open to the top - but NOT into the park. It means we will be able to visit our favorite places but hardly anyone else will be venturing up.
Later that same night I learned Saddlebag Road is also open. Didn't see that one coming! Best friend of the Bakery Husky Pal Hawk is going to get to experience snow for the very first time!
The Journey Finally Begins
July 17th
I usually head up Hwy 395 well before the sun comes up. This year I saw Sparks at the Hollywood Bowl the night before and was waaaay too wound up and unfocussed to finish packing my clothes - or to fall asleep. Check-in time at the wagons isn't until 3 pm anyways, but it is always a good idea to try to beat the desert heat. The Owens Valley looks so much more beautiful in the light of the early morning.
It is absolutely thrilling to see Owens Lake full of water this year, thanks to the historic snowfall over the winter. My mom took us on our first camping trip in the Eastern Sierra when I was six years old. I have gone up every summer since and never has there been this much water in the lake!
SET UP HOUSE
The first thing that must be done upon arrival to the wagons is decorate! Get the Oilcloth on the tables and pull out the solar lights, untangle them and hang them up. By this time you will realize that the sunshade is actually the number one item to get in place.
Then put on the bedding and set up the inside of the wagon. I always bring my own, even though VCS provides bed linens. (I just can't help myself. ) Once everything is set we pop the bubbly, start catching up with each other and plan our High Sierra Adventures.
As previously mentioned, the delicious aroma of wood fired pizzas start floating around the site and it becomes impossible to ignore, especially after a six hour drive to get there. Why fight it? Their salads are delicious as well. Plus there is a good selection of wine at very reasonable prices. Ok. The Settlement wins!
Making it Campside
COFFEE
So many ways to make coffee! Do you want it fast or do you want it good? I thought I was a genius for discovering the pour over filter solution a few years ago. I barley even drink coffee at home at all so it is pretty funny I have started to make such a big deal about it when camping. But it is so much better in the mountains!
This year after listening to the hilarious KCRW Good Food Camping Episode, I decided to try a Vietnamese coffee filter. I had never heard of such a thing. I bought one and tried it at home, without the best of success. I think the 6 oz size is too small. I couldn't get the coffee to drip through in anything like a reasonable amount of time even though I kept packing it less tightly. So I bought two more 8 oz sized filters. One for my friend as well, since they weren't very expensive. As I mentioned, it was her birthday. Of course I forgot the Vietnamese sweetened condensed milk so that extra cool new thing was lost. The Saigon coffee was quite good, but in the end, using the Bialetti Moka Pot with Espresso won out. A few more dishes to do, but using the milk frother to make a cappuccino in a tiny enamel cup was the most special.
A PERFECT DINNER
On our third and last night we finally grilled the pork chops I brought. I had planned to cook them in the cast iron skillet, but I forgot there are numerous propane barbecues scattered about for guests to use for grilling which suddenly seemed like an excellent idea. Especially since it saves washing both the skillet and the stove. Had they not turned out as delicious as they did, we would choose the skillet next time. I brought my instant thermometer to make sure I didn't over cook them. It was a really good idea and doesn't take up any room in the bin to pack it along.
Lori had made a delicious yellow potato salad ahead (my absolute favorite), and I brought scratch Dijon Honey Mustard salad dressing. I discovered that my perfectly ripe avocado was nesting at home with the condensed milk but Lori of course brought one, and lettuce too, of course. I bought some Italian croutons in town. We also had Jay's Famous Focaccia. Such a scrumptious dinner with hardly any cleanup!
PICNICS!
Really what the days are all about. Hiking and having picnics. Once in a while fly fishing, but that is not the easiest thing to do with a Siberian Husky on your arm. Although of all the huskies I have had on my arm in the Sierra, friend Hawk turned out to be the most mellow husky of all. Next time! (I hope he gets to come up again in August.) We fill our ice chests and cars with all kind of delicious snacks for picnics. We can just nibble all day. It is the absolute best way to spend a day in the Sierra.
Occasionally we hike to our picnic destination, sit down and pull out all our snacks only to be greeted by some very exciting weather. Three years ago in the same exact campground, our picnic was also interrupted by rain, hail, lightning and thunder. I guess that is why this time it seemed funny. Really? Fine! Oddly neither of us wore (or even brought) rain repellent jackets. Luckily it wasn't cold as the rain soaked through our cotton blouses. Ok, it got a little cold after ten waves of hail while making our way back to the car. We counted. Ten! Still it was funny and we were fine. Hawk was not the least bit fazed. Had the lightning been closer and more intense, as has happened before, we might not have laughed as much.
Sometimes on a day like this day, we didn't end up being hungry for dinner when we got back and settled into camp. On a day like this day, a grilled cheese for Lori and a hot dog for me were the perfect easy and light things to cook on the camp stove.
Earlier in the day Hawk got to have his first visit to the snow up at Saddlebag Lake. So glad we were able to make it up there and find the resort still standing!
And then there was this . . . Lori and I both looked up and saw it as the clouds were clearing. I described it as a light train moving across the sky. When I Googled it the next day, that is exactly the way other people described it. Turns out they were Starlink Satellites and when they first launch, they travel together in a string of fifty. Once they have reached their orbit in a few months, they spread out and separate. People around the world have been surprised by this over the last few years. Our light friends were Starlink-90 (G5-13). Of course there is a way to track them. You can't see them well here in the Los Angeles area. There are Apps and there is this website findstarlink.com that is pretty cool, although it is more than a little disconcerting to learn the truth about how many of these things are flying around up there, and how many more there will be.
I can't wait for our next visit to Virginia Creek Settlement. It truly never disappoints.
In Memory of our Pups
This year was a heartbreaking one, with the loss of our younger husky Sulli. Joonbug, the sweet Sierra camping veteran cannot make the trip anymore due to her age and a spine issue. It makes me very sad. Everyone always came to greet them at the wagons. If you don't know, huskies are quite the silly, friendly characters.
This is how Hawk felt about heading for home. My sentiments exactly.