#50 - Go Camping. For Real This Time.

Our campsite.

Remember that time I bitched about how often I'd had the "You've Never Been Camping?!" conversation?

Me too, and guess what?  I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN.

I am so excited.

I am so excited never to have that conversation again that I'm having trouble focusing on just how fantastic my first camping experience was.


Since no one ever followed through with organizing an actual camping trip with me, I found another route to get myself into a sleeping bag on the ground in the middle of no where.  I asked Mark Ceder if I could be his teaching assistant for his Outdoor Leadership course at the University of San Diego.  He graciously accepted even though my outdoor experience did not include any camping or real outdoor overnight experience at all.

One component of the course is a class camping trip.  We debated a bit on where to go and landed on the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert in California.

The Salton Sea is a weird place.  A WEIRD PLACE.

We left USD around 5pm on a Friday and drove to the desert in a van with a trailer full of kayaks.  We got some looks.  We stopped at El Centro for some In and Out and made it to our camp site around 10pm.

We set up our tents by the light of headlamps and had some s'mores around the fire.  Emily and I decided that the 4-person tent looked a little squishy for 4 actual people, so we set up our own and then had no idea how 4 people would fit in a tent that size.  Until we got up in the morning and realized that we had set up a 2-person tent that was half the size of what everyone else was sleeping in.

I don't have much to say about sleeping in a tent except that I really don't mind it it all... as long as I'm not 400 yards from train tracks of a line that runs regularly all night.

Mark, Scott, and Weston cooked us a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and hash browns with apples that the 10 of us enjoyed all together around the picnic table.

Then we headed out on a hike of the Painted Canyon.  The rock was in a variety of colors but those browns, blacks, whites, and grays were the only colors in the Painted Canyon since it's the desert.  So that was weird for me.  But there was a bit of variety of terrain in that we entered in the canyon, climbed some ladders, headed through some slot canyons, found ourselves on a ridge, and then hiked down into a wash for lunch and then the trek out.  I really like hiking and it was fun to chat with some of the students I hadn't gotten to know as well.  Retroactively, I really liked that Mark kept vowing to jump into the Salton Sea when we got back.  A ranger had stopped by in the morning and announced how refreshing the water was.

After 4-5 hours on the trail, we stopped by the visitor's center for a short video about the weird place we were in.  Then we headed back to camp for some down time.  Mark convinced a couple students to join him in his swim, so I followed them to the shore with my camera.  (Because of my professional background, I don't really enjoy recreational swimming.  I definitely don't enjoy it in waters that have substantial warnings about eating the fish that come out of them.)

We quickly found a pile of decomposing fish.  Then we walked across what should have been sand but was really just crushed up fish vertebrae that are extremely uncomfortable to walk on and get into flip flops very easily.  Then, at the shore, we noticed how snotty the water looked and the film that seemed to lie across the edge of the sea.  It was disgusting.  We stood around and commented for awhile.  Then we headed back to the site.  I accidentally stepped in a marshy section of fish bones and got the nasty fish water on my feet, which then made the fish bones stick to it more.  Gross.

Everyone washed up and then we had a delightful burrito dinner, and, in true California style, that included avocado, cilantro, limes, and Tapatio.  Obviously.

Then we lit a fire, Mark made us apple cobbler.  We played Hot Seat.  I loved how open everyone was to sharing, even some difficult stories.

The next morning we got up for a sunrise paddle (kayak) on the sea.  However, once we were up, Mark informed us that it was way too windy so we should go back to sleep and we'd go for just a quick paddle from the Visitor's Center back to camp in a bit.

That was awesome.

We had bagels and fruit for breakfast.  Then we headed to the Visitor's Center.  We had a quick paddle school at the boat launch and then spent some time practicing in the marina, which it was pretty calm.  Then we headed out to the sea, which was not calm.  It went really well, except for every time someone got sprayed or splashed with sea water, there was a cry of disgust.  We got to camp in about 10 minutes and checked kayaking in the Salton Sea of our lists.


We packed up and headed out.  See #2 - Road Trip Somewhere New for the fantastic tales of the trip home.