camp: mountain cabin getaway

Past the age of 55, I no longer wish to back country or even car camp. A tent is just too darn untenable when you're a senior citizen even if I don't need a hair dryer or cosmetics at my age. I now need appliances like CPAP, and sunblock is the only thing I apply on my face. Whereas on a honeymoon car camping trip in the Pacific Northwest at the age of 20, I brought tent and stove and a cooler full of hamburger patties and hot dogs and ate godawful unhealthy meals, I'm driving only a few hours or less from home here in God's country of California and shopping my membership warehouse and local markets for foodie fixes of gourmet goodies and farm-to-table produce. 

No car camping or pitching a tent, but driving to the deep East Bay of tech towns like Livermore, San Ramon and Tracy and then a stretch of Highway 5 through Stockton and east on Highway 4 through Copperopolis, the entry point into Calaveras County and then Angels Camp and Murphys and upward. On this past weekend, I went away with a couple neighbors and their dogs, one of whom has a family cabin in Arnold, a town in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, where Dawn assured us there's a grill on the deck.

The ladies were amenable to weekend meals of Korean bbq, Vietnamese street food, and an American diner lunch. As ever, I made lists...and brought bulgogi and japchae from Costco, homemade kimchi, white kimchi, and many types of banchan: cucumber, bean sprouts, Japanese eggplant that I made the morning before the trip.        

I also remembered to pack the gochuchang for said Korean feast as well as hoisin sauce, Kewpie mayo, French pate in a can, my new copper grilling grate, a Ziploc bag of marinated lemongrass pork shoulder, a jar of do chua or pickled daikon and carrots, a cucumber, jalapenos, green onions because I was also making banh mi sandwiches for supper on our first night. For the road, I used the rest of the Pickle butter, ham, and Trader Joe's baguette to make sandwiches. And I also packed ground beef, cheddar cheese, a pack of brioche buns, a jar of my Pickled Jalapenos, red onion, and spring greens for a lunch before we left.

Here was the view from the cabin's deck.

Our first meal was to utilize the French baguettes that Cecilia had baked into Vietnamese sandwiches, and I was excited to use my brand new copper grill grate that I had bought from Jagalchi. I sipped a beer as I readied the charcoal grill and watched the sunset through the trees.                               

My new grill worked great. No turning over little pieces of meat and making my hands sore from squeezing tongs. I gifted a large vase, a bud vase, and cocktail/coffee cups to Dawn and Cecilia, which she filled with flowering deer brush.

The next morning, Cecilia and Dawn got up early and walked the dogs up the mountain. I tried to sleep in but instead read before a breakfast of hash browns, English muffins, country sausage, bacon and eggs before heading into town for Dawn to buy handmade soap from a local at the post office while Cecilia and I were excited to window shop at the Ace Hardware--that store is the best for buying souvenirs. I found cool t-shirts for me and Patrick, admired the Lodge cast iron cookware and this cute mug.                      

It's made in China, but still cute enough that I wanna copy it. 

I was excited that the cabin is so close to giant sequoias. Dawn drove us to do some forest bathing in the North Grove of the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Cecilia had brought her dog, Olivia, who unfortunately couldn't go on to the main trail and so she took in the forest from the fire lane and walked the campgrounds.            

 

For scale, I took a long shot of a fallen tree and stump.

And took the stairs myself to stand atop the tree stump and just look up.

 

Others obviously did the same.

And this fallen tree while stunningly pretty was so sad to me.

I told Dawn that I like to imagine much of this old growth forest just covering the state of California, pumping all of its oxygen into the world.