First Camping Trip During Covid 19

It’s a brave new world since the Coronavirus came to town. My wife Erin and I have been locked down for three months. The Friday before the shelter-in-place order on March 16, 2020 here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we had reservations for camping. It was abruptly canceled. This would have been the start of our camping season, be it late for us. We usually take the month of December off, and get right back to it in January.

After months of searching online, I lucked out with the help of a friend and found that some of our local State Parks were taking reservations, and opening up. In two days I made fourteen reservations in three different parks, from late June through early December. These were spaced out about every two weeks, leaving a week in between for other possibilities.

Two weeks later we were packed and ready for our first camping trip of Twenty-Twenty. On June 22nd we drove through the Napa Valley’s beautiful wine country to our destination, Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. It was a hot day, in the nineties, but our campsite was shaded as we set up camp. Everything was pretty nice except for a colony of Yellow Jackets that were swarming around our picnic table. We worked around them, and set up our basic equipment.

As the afternoon continued we walked down to the small river that borders our site. It was beautiful. We arrived back at camp and the heat was a bit oppressive, but we have been in worse. Because of the heat we didn’t build a fire. The Yellow Jackets didn’t go away, and we cooked sausages on the stove and ate away from the table. They really weren’t aggressive so we went on with camp life as if they didn’t exist. As we sat around drinking our wine the mosquitoes decided to visit, they were way more of an issue than the Yellow Jackets, but we endured as we have for many years of living outdoors.

It cooled down during the night and we woke, Tuesday, to a cool silent campground.

The trees here are an assortment of Oaks, Madrones, Douglas Firs, and Redwoods down along the river. The Oaks and Madrones are gnarly, bent, covered with hanging moss, and interspersed with Manzanita, shrubs, vines, and an abundance of Poison Oak. The look is amazing, it appears almost medieval, like something out of Robin hood.

There are Magpies, Robins, Finches, Blue jays, and Woodpeckers, to name a few. We saw lizards, frogs, and squirrels living in their realm.

Looking at other campsites we noticed that there didn’t seem to be as many Yellow Jackets. We had come to terms with the little yellow buggers and worked around them. This is their home, not ours, we are just visitors. I did throw a few small pieces of meat into the bushes around the camp, and they paid more attention to it, than us.

I wrote and Erin worked on her journal. We drank coffee and tea during the cool hours of the morning and went for a walk.

It got hot after two o’clock, and we tried to follow the shade, we took a walk and enjoyed the hot afternoon as much as possible. I built a fire at about four, mainly to ward off the bugs. We were very happy to have finally built the first campfire of twenty-twenty. The evening cooled down a bit and we made salads with chunks of pork-tenderloin I had cooked at home. We had wine and talked until we went to bed.

By the time we entered Wednesday morning we were getting into our normal camp routine, and all seemed very normal. We moved our camp across the road today, and there were fewer Yellow Jackets. It was another hot afternoon, but better in the bug department. We had our last two beers, and I cooked Buffalo burgers for dinner, they were amazing. We played Yahtzee at the table and sipped wine. We enjoyed a campfire and went to bed.

I got up at just before seven, made coffee and started writing. Erin got up about eight, and she made tea. It’s a magnificent morning. We will be moving to another campsite at about noon, this will be our last night, we will travel home tomorrow.

We got settled into our new campsite. It was shaded in filtered sunlight, and did heat-up in the afternoon. It turned out to be the hottest day yet at nearly one-hundred degrees. We were out of ice, beer, and our hot dogs were to a point we tossed them. I looked at Erin and said I would drive to town and get some beer and ice. She said that it seemed like a lot of trouble, but her expression said it sure would be nice. I drove to Safeway in St. Helena, and got beer, ice, hot dogs, carrots, and potato chips. When I got back we had ice cold Heineken, Kettle Chips, and played UNO at the picnic table until six o’clock. We finally had complete shade at the table. We built a fire and roasting hot dogs over the flames. The dogs and chips were perfect. We sat around the fire, be it at a distance, until the mosquitoes were not tolerable, and went to bed.

Friday morning we got up, made tea and coffee, took down camp, and drove home through the wine country to our air conditioned home.