Whitewater Preserve Camp & Hike

Testing gear and my own shortcomings…

I recently joined a meetup group that goes on one night camp outs in various places. Being limited timewise, I only can go to weekend trips and this past Saturday night I finally attended my first. Located at the Whitewater Preserve there was also a stargazing event as a group of people with HUUUUGE telescopes set up for visitors and campers to enjoy. I saw my first nebula!

This was the first time I got to set up and sleep in my Big Agnes UL1 tent. I’d set it up before, but never got the fly tight enough. There was 9 of us at the camp ground, so all that brain power didn’t go to waste! We figured it out, and I was happy with the result. In fact, that tent is super easy and sets up/breaks down quickly. This was a car camp event, which explains all the extra junk I brought along here…

This tent will serve me very well in a future PCT hike I hope to make.

One thing I have to revisit is my sleeping pad. I am afraid of puncturing an air mattress type, so I just have a Therma Rest RidgeRest. But, now I know its may not be thick enough – my hips and to a lesser extent, my shoulders were killing me on it. I have to rethink that…but I still need ultra light. Any suggestions would be great from  you all!

I failed at sleeping the entire night in my tent. Not because of the cold, and it was very cold, but I was very snug as a bug in my Nemo sleeping bag (rated to 15 degrees F). A late comer to the camp out pitched a tent near me and he was a sleep talker. No. More than that. He was a sleep talking, thrasher, ‘yeller’, swearing, mutterer. It never stopped. For hours this went on. After four hours of trying to sleep through this, I grabbed my sleeping bag and a few other things and trudged to my car. I got about 5 hours of sleep there. Ugh.

The next morning after a small breakfast with the rest of the group (The guy was still in his tent muttering and thrashing about), I introduced one of the others to geocaching and nabbed a nearby hide. Then I went out for a short but awesome hike to the Pacific Crest Trail, and then north a little over a mile. The access trail to the PCT is washed out due to the heavy rain the area has received over the month, but as long as you don’t mind a steep hill scramble, you can still get to the juncture trail and the PCT.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign!

I also found a few caches along the way. 🙂

This was a neat shot of the mountains

Fun Times!

Toe Injury

Lol yes – no joke. This is just a short note to whine.

Last week I dropped a chair on my toe at work (Thank goodness it was a light chair). It hurt and eventually my big toe on my right foot developed this black line across the joint.

I thought, “Meh. Its a toe, who cares?”

Then as the days go by I realize its uncomfortable if not a little painful to walk for long periods of time. Maaaaaaan, I really wanted to go out hiking at least ONCE this 3 day weekend. But nooOOooo!

So, instead I’m staying in to write, which may be a good thing to increase my pages per day amount. The problem is there are other distractions here at home.

Here’s to hoping this thing heals fast. I have places to hike to! 😉

Still Alive… Release!

Happy New Year people of the blog!

Here’s to hoping 2017 improves upon 2016.

So, I know, I’ve been relatively quiet about my stories for nearly the entire year. I have been writing, just at a very slow pace. Instead of continuing the Silverthran Fantasy series, I thought about trying my hand at Romance – LGBT of course. But, I can’t quite do things normally, I had to throw zombies in there. I mean, why not?  Still Alive… is in serial format too. The 1st book is about 65 ebook pages on Amazon.com. I’m already working on the 2nd one in the series.

Those of you who enjoyed the Silverthran series – I WILL continue that after I work my way through at least one more book of the new Still Alive series.

Note the difference in the author name. I’m using a pen name, ‘Leigh Ann Scott’,  for any Adult Romance novels I write to avoid confusion with my Fantasy books…especially since a younger audience may be reading them. The romance is VERY adult with graphic scenes.

Let’s launch it! Click the title; Still Alive; A Lesbian Love Story in and Undead World, and it bring you right to the book’s Amazon page.

Happy reading! ^_^

The featured photo is the cover to the ebook which was, once again, created by J Ash B Designs.