We had been planning this trip for weeks. My buddy Matt had a birthday coming up and his wife asked him what he wanted to do for his big weekend. If you ask him what he wants to do any weekend, the answer will be the same, “let’s go camping.” He reached out to our group of friends to rally the troops - many had prior commitments with kid’s performances and/or other family obligations. Attendees included Matt and Alena + their two boys, Dan and Cathi + their two kids and myself.

As the day grew closer and the weather forecast looked bleak, Alena asked her husband again, “what do you want to do for your birthday?.”

“Go camping - We have a site reserved on the coast.” The weather was clearly not going to deter us, but that didn’t stop it from trying.

On Wednesday February 27, Matt received a call from a ranger at Sonoma County Regional Parks letting us know that Gualala Point Regional Park, the spot we had celebrated his 40th birthday three years prior and where we had our reservations, was going to be closed due to flooding from the week’s rain. The Gualala River that runs directly north of the campground had flooded, like many other waterways in the area, and it was going to be unsafe, especially with there being small children and dogs on this trip. We had to find a solution, because we were not going to cancel.

Matt, Dan and myself were sending frantic texts throughout the morning trying to find a solution. After a quick, cursory search of the area, Matt focused in on Stillwater Cove Regional Park about 22 miles south of Gualala. There were spots available so Dan took to google maps to see what the sites looked like while I got on the phone with Regional Parks to transfer reservations. The ranger I dealt with was clearly overloaded with work. He was making calls to manage campers and transfers and cancellations, but remained calm, patient and very helpful It took him two days to finalize the reservation, but in the end I feel we had two of the best sites in the campground.

I had been furiously trying to locate my camp gear in my storage unit all week. Late last year, I moved from my longtime residence in Natomas out to Fair Oaks. Most of my life is in a small storage unit that is packed tighter than Peyton Manning’s helmet. I found myself unloading the front half of the unit to make room on which to climb deep into the unit. You can’t see most of what’s going on in the image here, but I have 15’ of shelves on the right side of the unit with a 17’ canoe strapped to the ceiling resting on top of them - that’s where a lot of my camping gear was buried. My rooftop box in in the far left of the unit, upside down with gear piled on top of it. My beast of a grill is buried underneath the shelf the rooftop box sits on - there’s no way I would be able to get to anything on that side of storage, but I was able to locate most of the necessities - some of the other frills would not fit into the car this year because of a new addition to the family.

Calvin loaded up and ready for his first adventure

On January 14th, Calvin Archer arrived at his new forever home. I picked him up in La Grange, CA, out in the country from a family of Quakers who were teaching their young son business by having him breed Golden Retrievers and manage the process from beginning to end. Calvin’s mother belonged to this family and the sire belonged to another family not far away. He was born on November 17, 2018 and this was going to be our first of MANY adventures together (you can follow his journey on IG @california_calvin).

I was the first to get on the road. Matt shot me a text from Costco checking on my status and asking what beers I had decided to bring. This is big question - the last thing we want is to double-up on beer. Saying these trips revolve around drinking might sound elementary, even dangerous, but there are some things that my group of friends and I hold dear: Life is too short to drink bad coffee, bad wine or bad beer… and we put an emphasis on the beer.

Matt is the resident brewer of the group and always comes strong with the beer selection. I had roasted up some fresh 100% Kona coffee beans the previous night and made a trip to my local bottle shop, Payless Food and Liquor, the previous day and got a good selection of beer. German Pilsners from Device Brewing, American Sours from Mraz Brewing, IPAs from New Glory Brewing (including a collab they did with Drake’s Brewing), Saisons from Full Circle Brewing and a few staples from Sierra Nevada Brewing were all on the menu. I tried to keep all my choices local to Sacramento, but there were no local Saisons in stock so I decided to throw Fresno into the mix… and we always bring a few Sierras to pay respect to our Chico roots and the brewery that started us all down the path to enlightenment.

It takes me about two hours to get to Santa Rosa where Matt and Dan live. Matt was at home getting his stuff in order and double checking his newest gear addition was buckled down. He picked up a RTT (roof top tent) from Smittybilt and had just mounted it to his truck a few days prior. This would be it’s first time out, and looking at the forecast, his wife and kids would be part of the test. He’s a braver man than I… I would have tested it solo to make sure it was safe and comfortable before tossing the family into the mix. Fortunately, aside from missing a few poles, everything was in working order.

I loaded up some wood and a pop-up tent into my car now that he can’t fit shit into his Tacoma with the RTT mounted. Matt and I have a long-running rivalry between our vehicles - Outback vs Tacoma. There’s never really a clear winner, but when you consider he now doesn’t have room to bring gear in addition to the incident I will never let him forget where I had to strap up and pull his stuck-ass out of a ditch with my wagon… the needle may be leaning towards the Soobie. Just sayin….

Stillwater Cove Regional Park Campground

I arrived at the campsite just before sundown. The rain was starting to fall so I had to get set up fast. I started with my tent and hustled to get the canopy up above the picnic table. We needed a space to keep our food-stuff and wood dry before the rain really got going. Dan rolled about 45 minutes later and started setting up his condominium of a tent, cursing and complaining because the thing is a pain in the ass to set up, especially in the dark. As Matt and Alena got to camp, Dan was horrified at his realization that he had forgotten to pack the rain-fly for his shelter. We rallied and came up with a solution that involved tarps and a second pop-up shelter. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. Now Matt had to break the cherry on his RTT, and he realized that he forgot to bring the levelers to put under his wheels for uneven ground… so we had to improvise using firewood. I was pretty impressed with how level we were able to get the bed of the truck (I used a bubble level app on my phone to help get it dialed) and after this, he was able to get his shelter dialed in about 5 minutes.

This brings me to something that I had been thinking on for the past few years, and now more than ever with the addition of Calvin to the family. I love my Subaru. I have been driving one for 20 years. As I get older, I find myself leaning away from the ELS (expensive lightweight shit) gear of my youth and more toward larger, more practical gear that is becoming more challenging to fit into the outback, especially with a furry companion. I don’t want to give up the comfortable ride, the every-day mileage or safety of the Outback for a larger rig. Even with the rooftop box, things are getting tight. I am starting to think pretty hard on getting a camp trailer. There are so many bad-ass trailers on the market and I am really just starting to do my research. The price tags are a bit scary on some, but one of these would be a game changer. The one I am looking at now is from Moby1. If anyone has any suggestions to look into, please leave a comment with links. I’m hoping to pull the trigger on this or something similar this time next year once the Outback is paid off.

Dan and Cathi were in charge of dinner on Friday. They took care of the kids first with hot dogs and salad. They grilled up some, I want to say chicken and pineapple, sausages for the adults with some grilled peppers and onions. After a few s’mores for the kids, it was time to put them down for the night so we could concentrate on enjoying a few beers around the campfire in the rain. It wasn’t coming down too hard quite yet and 1am rolled up on us way too soon. We cleaned up camp and called it a night. All of us were in for a treat of some kind.

The guys are accustomed to camping in foul weather. It’s not a big deal. When we throw families into the mix, the stress levels are elevated. The rain began really coming down in the middle of the night. Dan’s tent had more than one leak due to him missing the rain-fly. Because his tent is 1500 square feet, he was able to move the family around to keep them relatively dry. My tent on the other hand, doesn’t allow for much movement to get away from the water. It’s unfortunate that my tent has decided to fail on me - it’s a beast of a 4 season tent. I worked in the outdoor retail industry for over 20 years and I don’t fuck around with my gear. I brought my North Face VE-25 that I have had for quite a few years. A tent like this should last a lifetime with the kind of use I put it through. I maintain it well and because I rotate between 6 or so tents, it doesn’t get a lot of use. The small plastic windows in the vestibule areas are both cracked and the rain-fly seeped all night long, allowing my tent to accumulate 2 inches of water in the downhill side of the shelter, soaking my down sleeping bag and the dog’s bed in addition to my pillow. The North Face boasts a lifetime warranty on all their products - let’s hope they make this right. One doesn’t buy a $750 mountaineering tent to get soaked in a moderate coastal rain.

Breakfast still on his face before our short hike

I am the one in charge of all breakfasts for this trip. Generally, all the guys have specialties when it comes to camp cooking. I’m in charge of breakfasts and proteins. Scott (who wasn’t able to make it on this trip) tales care of the fire and open flame bacon, Dan makes a good salad and sandwich, and Matt brings comes strong with appetizers and snacks. For the first morning I made raisin/cinnamon bread french toast with homemade vanilla extract and Grand Marnier. The problem I had is that in my haste to pack food, I forgot to bring maple syrup. I called an audible and made a fresh blueberry compote as a substitute. I fried up some pork belly and thick cut bacon and pressed some of that freshly roasted Kona coffee. This made for tasty fuel for our upcoming trip to the beach.

The weather cleared up in the morning and even saw a few fleeting patches of blue sky as we made our walk to the coast. The trail was short but quite pretty. Lush greenery and a well-groomed trail led us down toward the water.

This would be Calvin’s first time seeing the ocean, or even a running stream. We wasn’t having anything to do with the ocean - I led him to where the waves were lapping up on the beach and standing in 2” of water and he was pulling away from me not budging. I lured him in with a few treats to experience the water, but he didn’t last very long before he was ready to get back onto the dry sand where he felt safe.

I kept him on-leash because there was another family with a German Shepard that seemed super friendly, but you never know. Calvin isn’t 100% done with his shots and I wasn’t going to take a chance. Plus… some of the family members were a little bit… interesting. I mean, I don’t think I would be lifting my toddler daughter in and out of the water in her soaking wet pajamas while she screamed, but I guess that’s just me.

Once the other family left the area, I let Calvin run free off-leash for the first time to play with Uncle Leo and Finley, Dan’s 12 year old and 4 1/2 month old Labs. It’s interesting, when Calvin is at home, he plays incredibly rough with his brother / litter-mate Bodie. They are wrestling and chasing each-other as often as we allow it. Finley plays like Bodie… but Calvin was much more timid around this “stranger” dog. Finley definitely is a bit bigger than Calvin being a month older and maybe 5-10 lbs heavier. It took Cal a little bit to warm up to Finn’s play-style, but before long they were playing keep-away with driftwood and running around like crazies. It was fun to see him interacting like this.

Once the kids were thoroughly soaked and the dogs were worn out, we made out way back to camp. The skies were turning a little grayer and knew another round of rain was coming soon. We decided to get started on dinner early while it was still light and somewhat dry to make lives a little bit easier for everyone. Matt was in charge of tonight’s dinner - He cooked up some chicken legs and thighs that had been seasoned generously in S&P and paprika. We cooked the legs up for the kids while we gave the thighs a little but of an extra marinade in OJ. While dinner was being prepped, we snacked on jalapeno and mushroom cheeses along with some double cream brie and smoked oysters… Alena worked tirelessly on her area of responsibility, mustering all her energy tossing a pre-packaged salad. It may have been the highest anticipated salad ever after she relentlessly told us how hard she had worked on it. It was pretty good… but the chicken was pretty outstanding too.

By the time we were all done with dinner, clean up, bathroom trips and dog walks, it was time to get some s’mores into the kids and put them down for bed. They were pretty worn out from their time at the beach and the adults were pretty thirsty for adult beverages. We brought out the big guns tonight - Matt brought a 2013 Deschutes Abyss before opening a 2013 collaboration between Sierra Nevada and Boulevard Brewing that we enjoyed with some dark chocolate + shaved coconut. Oh my… Another eye-opening event happened on this trip. We all realized Alena’s weakness… Salt Water Taffy. Boom.

We were beginning to fade as midnight approached but made it to the stroke of midnight so we could wish Matt a proper happy birthday. Had another rough night of sleep with water dripping directly onto my head no matter where I moved. Woke up with more water in the tent than the previous night and a drenched sleeping bag. Again… I sure hope TNF takes care of this issue.

On Sunday morning’s menu was fully-loaded breakfast burritos. I had pre-prepped a thick cut bone-in rib-eye roast steak 2 days prior to the camp. I gave it a good coat of S&P and garlic before a coating all sides generously with dark-roast coffee. I partially cooked it sous-vide to 120° for 3 hours and put it on ice. Now that it was at camp, I cut it from the bone and into small pieces that I seared in a hot cast iron cooking it the remaining few degrees and getting it nice and warm. I cooked diced fingerling potatoes and onion along with cheesy scrambled eggs. I diced avocado and served with salsa and sour cream and some sriracha ketchup on a warn toasty flour tortilla…. made for a damn good breakfast burrito.

After breakfast, we started packing up camp. Unfortunately the rain continued to come down and we were running out of time and dry clothes for the little ones. It was a short lived camping trip, but it was a really good pre-game for our men’s trip to the Lost Coast in just over a month. We were able to find the weaknesses in our camp boxes and make note of what to bring next time so we all have a great trip. We missed everyone that wasn’t able to make it on this trip, but we had a wonderful trip with the ones that did. As always, I’m counting down to the next campout… Secret camping spot, we are coming for you!