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Pinnacles National Park, in Northern California, is beautiful with its dramatic rock formations and caves. It’s also known for Condors and dark skies for Astrophotography. Our first trip there was in September; my feet still hurt from climbing those peaks. The full moon and clouds obscured the Milky Way and partial lunar eclipse. Condors were missing in action, even though I mistook many Turkey Vultures for the much larger California State Bird. We arrived at the park campground, which was mainly dirt with some chalk lines. Susan asked me where the water hookup was. That was pertinent, especially since our Unity had no water onboard. Turns out the sites had no water hookups. Who knew?
Also, our refrigerator was running warm. One of our RVer friends was sure it was our fan being broken. I thought it was because there was too much food in it. While I was surveying the park in our Jeep, he took off the lower refer outside vent cover and put in a standalone fan because ours wasn’t on. It turns out it turns off and on via a thermostat. The temporary fan was plugged into the exterior patio power outlet. This made photo ops problematic due to the gaping hole on the side of our coach. Never mind, there were Condors, Milky Ways, and moons to photograph or not.
Pinnacles is located east of the Salinas Valley and 80 miles south of San Jose. The name comes from the rocks formed from an extinct volcano that moved 200 miles from its original location on the San Andreas Fault. President Roosevelt established it as a National Monument in 1908 and designated it a National Park in 2013. The caves are known as talus caves, formed by the gaps in large boulder formations. Did I mention there are 13 species of bats living in them?
After dealing with our search for water (about 100 feet from our site), the warm refrigerator, and setting up our new Starlink Mini, I decided to do the one-mile hike to the reservoir to shoot the sunset. The only problem was hiking back in the dark. My flashlight was dead, but luckily, my phone light worked! The sunset color was brief but brilliant. More brilliant than your author on this trip so far. However, I was very proud of myself for buying a Lifetime National Park Senior Pass, which I should have done last year while visiting Glacier National Park. Better late than never.
While I was gone on my unplanned nighttime hike, my RVer friends, five of whom are cops or retired cops (including two wives), were yelled at by the Ranger for using a portable propane fire pit. While they knew they couldn’t use the wood fire pits at each site due to fire risk, they thought propane pits were okay.
The next day, we set out to conquer the peak, or is that pinnacle? I brought a backpack but left the camera and lenses in the Unity. Phone camera to the rescue again. I did bring lunch and water. My fellow hikers had some backpacks with water built-in and a hose to their mouths. What will they think of next? They also had walking sticks. I wouldn’t even know where to buy these kinds of things. I had Fig Newtons, so there’s that.
It was a long uphill hike. September weather was more forgiving than the hot summers, happily. I had visions of communing with the Condors up at the top. The views were stunning, and the rock formations were spectacular! We reached the top, where we sat down on the ground and had lunch at the 3304-foot North Chalone Peak. Well, some of us sat down on the ground. It turns out there are these little, portable, fold-out chairs you can carry in a backpack. This was getting embarrassing. I had just a phone and Fig Newtons. I was looking forward to the hike back because I had cleverly deduced this would likely be downhill. My phone app told me that we had hiked 19,473 steps and burned 619 calories over a distance of 6.96 miles. I, of course, rounded up the hike to 10 miles to anyone who would listen.
I was happy to be back at our Unity with water in the tank, a cold refrigerator, and a Starlink Mini. The only problem was I gave one of our friends my Starlink wifi password because cell reception and park wifi weren’t adequate for his conducting of big real estate deals and downloading the history of Cinema. Given we have a 50Gb data cap, this was not as brilliant an idea as I had initially thought.
It was time for dinner, where the seven of us pooled our culinary resources, but more impressive were the defensive tactics against Yellowjackets trying to get at our food. We had smelly candles, little table-mounted horizontal windmills spinning feverishly, and decoy food. It was all very sophisticated, much like the hiking gear I didn’t know existed.
Morning came around, and it took until midday to start our day’s hike. This time, I went to the caves, which were just a bunch of really big rocks stacked on top of each other. But they were dark. One of our intrepid hikers suggested we turn off our flashlights (I got mine charged this time) to see how dark it was—it seemed like an oxymoron to me. Instead, I suggested he close his eyes to attain the same effect! I didn’t want to offer an in to the bats to attack while our flashlights were off, I mean we had learned so much about Yellowjacket defenses just the night before.
What had been promised a much shorter hike than the day before was just as long. I, of course, had left my good hiking boots at home. We met a mother, father, and adult son who had all kinds of gadgets attached to their bodies. Unique camera mounts, satellite communication devices, and self-defense items. They told us about near misses with bears (different parks) and other harrowing experiences. The good news was cops surrounded me, so I felt safe, plus they didn’t even have portable backpacks stowed camping chairs.
However, besides the dark hike, I also had a near miss with danger. A rattlesnake was enjoying a sun tan as we almost finished our hike. I was happy to take his picture up close from 20 feet.
The following day, sore from excessive, unnecessary hiking, we had run out of water and Starlink data. This is how I knew it was time to go home. But there was already talk of returning for the spring flower bloom. I was promised the hike to see them wouldn’t last long! I would use the intervening months to look into obtaining fancy hiking equipment. Oh, and our refrigerator is working fine again.
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