Balch Park, CA 18—23 July 2015
Up to this point all of my posts have been about adventures on my 47' Catamaran named Escape. In retirement, my goal has always been to get proficient enough with Escape that I could start using my Airstream trailer again to do land adventures by visiting national parks and other scenic terrain and to perhaps do some wildlife photography. Well, after two years after taking delivery of Escape, I think I'm finally at that point so from 18 to 23 July 2015 I dusted off my Airstream trailer and headed four or five hours north to an old favorite camping spot of mine and of my kids as a test run for the truck and trailer. We first found Balch Park back in the early 1970's when I was still in the Army and was stationed at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. It was a busy time for us because our first and second sons, Jack and Chris, were born there at Fort Ord, I was taking 26 credit hours per semester to get my masters degree in Operations Research and Systems Analysis, I was finishing up getting my private pilot's license, and I was taking a side course from Bell and Howell on how to build my own digital 27" TV. I was lucky to find Balch Park back then as a place we could go to unwind, do some fishing, hike, and spend really good quality time with the kids. Jack and Chris loved catching tadpoles and frogs there and it was high enough, around 6500 feet, that it was cool at night. Jay, my third son, who has been in all of my previous blogs about Escape, has been bugging me for years that he never got to go to Balch Park so this seemed like a perfect time to renew my attachment to Balch Park, take Jay there, and test out the truck and trailer.
We set out early in the morning on the 18th and by 1:30 PM we were at Balch Park. I had forgotten how high up the mountain it was and how windy and dilapidated the road was, but it was scenic and had the fresh smell of a pine forest all the way up the mountain. We're in the middle of a very severe drought here in California and it hadn't rained in months, but about the time we pulled in to Balch Park it started to sprinkle. Most of the RV sites didn't even exist when we camped there in the early 70's so I didn't have a good idea of where we wanted to camp with the trailer. We had an old VW camper back then. It looked like the roads going up to the RV sites were really steep and only partially paved so I was a little worried that they might be slick and difficult to navigate in the rain. So we parked in the first site we could get in to and walked around looking to see if there was a bigger one. We got soaked in the rain, but we found this fantastic camp site with a fire ring, table, lots of space, and giant Sequoia trees right beside the trailer.
We had to set up the trailer and get the awning out in the rain, but it was one of the best camp sites I've ever had. Our dog Séamus was glad to get out of the truck after several hours of driving and he had lots of things to explore including a hollowed out Sequoia right next to our campsite. There were lots of interesting smells for him to investigate and elusive chipmunks that could scamper up the tree trunks before Séamus even got close to them. The first thing we did after the rain let up was to hike down to the ponds where I had caught a lot of fish in the past.
Alas, with the severe drought the ponds had shrunk a lot and looked a lot more like big mud puddles than fishing ponds. I asked the park ranger if they still stocked it, and he said they had not stocked it in four or five months because of the low water levels. So much for catching fish, but at least we had a great time hiking around the ponds and sitting on the huge Sequoia stumps where Jack and Chris had had such a good time with a giant bull frog they caught and named Freddie the Frog. These huge stumps were all around the ponds and gave us an idea of what it must have been like back around the turn of the century when these trees were being cut and logged out of there. There's even a museum at the camp entrance that shows some of the crews cutting these giant trees down with axes. They then cut them into manageable lengths, peeled off the bark, and then hauled them over to wooden chutes they built to slide the logs down to where they had sawmills to cut them into boards.
Just to be sure there were no fish in the ponds, I went back to the trailer and got my fly rod. I put a fly on the line and fished around the entire perimeter of the pond. My definition of a place with no fish, is if I make five casts with my fly rod in a fan pattern and don't catch anything, then by definition, the place has no fish. This pond clearly had no fish.
Next we hiked down to the entrance of the park where they had this old fallen Sequoia tree (see photo at right). It's hollow inside so you can climb the stairs and look down inside it or you can go around to the other end and walk into it like a big tunnel like you see Jay and Séamus in the pic below.
The tree is hollow all the way through so you can climb out at the other end (pic below right) or just peak out the other end as in the picture 2nd below. It really gives you a feeling how gigantic these Sequoia trees really are. Not far from this fallen down hollow log, there was his hollow stump still standing. It had obviously been topped with saws many years ago and then succumbed to a fire at a later date. Séamus and I went in to
check it out. You can see Séamus coming out of the stump to the right and a picture of what it looks like from inside the stump below right. You can see a video of me coming out of the hollow stump to get a better idea of its size at
http://youtu.be/jOxttW8JVmc. After exploring the hollow stump we headed back to camp as the sun was starting to go down (see pic with sun shining through the trees below).
It had been a good day so we decided to cook the steaks we brought with us over the fire outside. The only problem was that all of the wood we had brought with us had gotten wet in the back of the truck from the heavy rain. I tried the old crumpled up newspaper trick, but that didn't work, so I went to the nuclear option and doused the kindling with a little white gas that I carry in the trailer for the Coleman lantern. That did the trick and we
soon had steaks and some baked potatoes that we wrapped in tin foil and cooked in the coals. We sat by the fire for a while, but we were in the sack by 9 PM.
On the morning of the 19th we slept late until about 0830 which is very unusual for me, but the trees are so high that it takes a while before the sun is high enough to start shining on the trailer. I made some great coffee using our Aero Press and coffee grinder and an omelette with ham, green pepper, tomato, onion, and cheese in it. After breakfast we just sat out in the camp ground for about half an hour soaking in the view and enjoying our coffee . Séamus took the opportunity to roll in the dirt to scratch his back. See the movie at
http://youtu.be/XLwsiD5mEzw. After that we set
out on the day's adventure which was to drive up to Hidden Falls and hike the trail north from there along the Wishon Fork of the Tule River. It's about a 4 to 5 mile drive along a very windy and potholed road so it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to Hidden Falls. Along the way we saw this doe and her fawn crossing the road so we stopped to watch them for a while. They didn't seem to be very concerned that we were in the area even with our relatively loud diesel engine running. At the beginning of the trail and above Hidden Falls we came to this pool so
Séamus decided he needed to take a dip before we headed off on the hike. Séamus loves the water, but after being on Escape so much during the last year and being in the salt water with his life vest on, he was a little surprised that he didn't float very good in the fresh water. It took a couple attempts before he became comfortable with swimming out in water to fetch a stick when he couldn't touch the bottom with his feet. We followed the trail uphill from the pool along the river among the Sequoias and along a path that was padded with centuries of fallen pine needles and leaves from the towering Sequoia trees.
Almost everywhere we were close enough to the river to hear it rippling over the rocks and every hundred meters or so Séamus ran down to the river to wade in it and get a drink. Along the trail were hundreds of stumps and fallen trees with moss growing on them like the ones to the right and on occasion we'd come across one that was rotten and had been torn apart by bears looking for grub worms. About a
mile up the trail we came to a point called Redwood Crossing where a giant Redwood Tree had fallen across the river. You didn't need to walk across the log because the river was only about six inches deep there, but if it were raging, I guess you could have gotten across by walking along the fallen tree. We took a rest break at the crossing while Séamus played in the water. Here's a movie of Séamus having a good time at Redwood Crossing:
http://youtu.be/H5x821gYjl0. Whenever Séamus finds a stick floating in the water he tries to retrieve it. In the picture below he picked one just a little bigger than he could handle. Eventually he realized that he was in a
losing battle and picked a more appropriate stick (right) to bring to us. After crossing the river, we came across the remnants of the Redwood Tree for which the crossing was named. At some point it had fallen across the trail leading south along the river to
Shake Camp, which is a pack mule and
horseback riding camp. Since horses don't climb over big trees very well, they had to cut a path through it so the pack mules and horses could get through (see left). You can get an idea of the size of this magnificent tree from the picture below with me standing beside it and in the picture below that you can see how thick and fibrous the bark is for these trees. It felt really wooly and it offers a lot of protection against insects and fire. We hadn't been able to get a map from the ranger station before starting out
on the hike so we weren't sure how far we would have to follow the trail south before we could
find the road going back to Hidden Falls so we turned around and backtracked the same way we had come in. On the way back down the trail we met a girl who had some topo maps on her cell phone that showed the trail on the other side of the river would have taken us about two more miles before we could have cut back towards Hidden Falls so it was a good thing we turned around. Not only did we save time, but the trail we were on was right next to the river so Séamus could get drinks whenever he wanted and believe me he takes a lot of water.
Once we got back to Hidden Falls we started searching for the actual falls. When we first got there in the morning, we didn't see any real falls near the parking lot so we figured it must be up the river, but it wasn't. So we followed the river south of the parking lot and within a couple hundred meters we found the Hidden Falls. It was pretty impressive and the pool beneath the falls was about 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. It was crystal clear and ice cold. Since it was late in the day, I didn't hop in, but I decided I would come back on another day to swim in that pool.
Back in camp, Jay relaxed and read one of his books on how to create your own craft brewery while I hiked around camp to check out some of the other campsites in case #40 is occupied the next time we come to Balch Park.
The next day, 20 July, we headed out after breakfast to see the Genesis Tree and Dogwood Meadows, which another camper told us were well worth seeing. To get there we had to go up the same road we had been on the day before to Hidden Falls, but it was a lot closer. The trail that led to Dogwood Meadows
was only about one and a half miles from our campground so it didn't take us long to get there.
Dogwood Meadows was more of a marsh than a meadow. You could walk on it, but it was very spongy and you could tell that if we weren't in the fourth year of a drought we'd be standing up to our knees in mud and water. The Genesis Tree is at the far end of the meadow. For some reason the park service has named many of the large Sequoia Trees after biblical names. Maybe it attracts more visitors, I'm not sure. About half way through the meadow, we came upon this old decayed tree so Jay and Séamus walked along it
to see if there were any critters hiding out in it's carcass. As you can see from the picture of me standing in front of the Genesis Tree below left, it's a very
large and impressive tree. When you get closer and go inside it, you can see below right that it's even more impressive than it is from afar. Not only is it huge inside, but there's another tree growing up from inside the trunk and going up through the slit you see in front. Jay is a little over 6 feet tall so you can get some idea of the size of that tree and the room created from one or more fires over the ages. Below left is another perspective showing how the younger tree was growing out from under the older tree before it got broken
off somehow. We also found this large piece of mushroom that someone had broken off on the floor of the room beneath the Genesis Tree.
Séamus thought the mushroom was evil or something because he barked every time we got close to him with it.
The next tree we were looking for was called the Bonsai Tree. It was marked on the map about half a mile farther up the same trail the Genesis Tree was on so we unloaded our mountain bikes from the truck and set off to find it. Many of these
"named" trees aren't marked with a sign or anything in the park so you just kind of have to find them on your own. I think the park service does that on purpose so you look at many of the trees trying to decide which one it really is. It could have been the tree to the left. It's kind of deformed and looks like a bonsai tree. Or it could be the one I'm pointing to on the right, or it might even be the one Jay is riding up to below left. We never did find out for sure which tree was the Bonsai Tree, but we certainly found some really nice trees that could have been it. On the way back to the truck we took a break in a clearing where they had been clearing out some of the logs in the area.
Séamus took the opportunity to dig a hole to see if there were critters hiding under the stump. Here's a movie of him digging:
http://youtu.be/B_TeW-aCgHk. Jay broke a spoke on his back wheel while we were looking for the Bonsai Tree so he had to repair that once we got back to camp. Lucky for him, I was carrying spare spokes in my tool box. The next day, 21 July 2015, we headed out to find "the Indian
Bath Tubs" which are nothing more than big holes somehow carved out of the solid granite outcroppings, the Hercules Tree, and the Memorial Path. It didn't take us long to find the Indian Bath Tubs. They were only about two miles from our camp and only about a quarter of a mile off the road. Here's a picture of Séamus inspecting the Indian Bath Tub and trying to decide whether to
get in it or not. Eventually he did get in and waded around getting a sip of water or two. There were signs along the self-guided path that took considerable literary license regarding the history of the Indian Bathtubs saying they "could" have been used by the indians for bathing, or they "might" have been used to heat and soak pine cones, or they might just be holes full of rainwater. I think I'm in the camp that believes they are just holes filled with rainwater. That big block of granite looks like a pretty big heat sink to me so it
would have taken a lot of hot rocks to heat the water up in there, or maybe the Indians just let the big stone slab heat up with the sun and then hopped in. The Hercules Tree was a little more interesting. It's a giant Sequoia Tree with a room carved out of the trunk. Here I am (above left) with Séamus entering the tree and here's Seeamus looking out of the door from inside the room. I'd say the room was 10 to 12 feet in diameter and 7 feet high. The tree was big enough so the walls were still a couple feet thick so it would have been pretty warm in the winter. There wasn't a chimney
though and the floor was obviously wood so unless they had a stove insulated from the floor, walls, and ceiling I don't see how they could have built a fire in there.
Next to the Hercules Tree was this other tree that also had a big room burned out inside it. Jay went to check it out, and of course Séamus had to join him.
Only about a quarter mile up the road from the Hercules Tree, we saw a sign going off to the right that said the Memorial Trail was up that road so we took that road to see what the Memorial Trail was all about. It turns out that it was very interesting and was by far the best marked and best maintained trail and
memorial in the Park. It turns out the memorial was for Rob Stone the Battalion Chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention and his pilot George (Sandy) E. Willett, Jr. They crashed and died on 6 September 2006 while fighting some fires in the local area so the men and women of that organization established this memorial for them. It's one of the best I can imagine as an outdoors person. They established this small memorial close to the end of the road where anyone could get to, probably family members and dignitaries and they dedicated
these two gigantic trees to them. The one on the right to Rob and the one on the left to Sandy. You can see the plaque in between the trees. Then from the open meadow where the plaque is there is a trail leading off to the actual crash site, so we
followed that trail for another half a mile or so and at the end of that trail is another memorial even more impressive than the first. It has a sign shaped like aviator wings with Rob and Sandy's
names on it and some crosses nearby where visitors have left momentos like hats or pieces of the
wreckage in memory of the two fallen comrades. Then off to the side about fifty feet or so is this fantastic bench where you can sit in
complete silence and pay your respects. It's clear that the place is well maintained and visited by quite a few people. They even had a 0.50 cal ammunition box partially buried in the ground where people can leave small momentos in memory of the two. Overall, I thought it was a very impressive memorial.
We then set off to find the Adam and Eve Trees. We were on the right road, but we didn't see any trees that were obviously the Adam and Eve Trees. We did
see this very impressive grove of Sequoia trees though so we took some time to go into the grove and into some of the tunels within the grove. Right behind where I'm standing with Séamus, it looked like someone had scattered the ashes of someone else. I'm not positive that's what it was, but it sure looked like it.
Since we weren't able to identify the Adam and Eve Trees from the dirt road we were on, we decided to take the hiking trail the next day that supposedly went right beside the two trees. It's a two mile loop trail that is aptly named, "The
Loop Trail". About half a mile up the trail, we came across the same two logging tractors we had seen on the road the day before. The first one is a really powerful looking machine with a dozer on the front and a humongous claw on the back so it can cut a trail or push fallen trees or rocks out of the way and then drag the trees to the road with the claw. The other tractor has a set of tongs on the bottom like a fork lift and a set of big claws on the top to hold a tree so it can move them, stack them, or load them on a truck.
We hiked about another three quarters of a mile before we came to the Adam Tree. It
wasn't anywhere close to where it was shown on the map, but it was along the right trail at least.
Here's Jay and Séamus beside the Adam Tree and then below left a picture looking up the trunk of the
Adam Tree.
Obviously, the Adam Tree had suffered some fire damage, but it had survived and appeared to be otherwise healthy. A few hundred meters farther down the trail was the Eve Tree. It clearly wasn't so lucky and had been destroyed by a fire sometime in the last few years.
You just can't help but be awed by the majesty of these gigantic trees, some of which are 1000 years old. Their girth is just unthinkable for someone who has never seen a giant Sequoia or Redwood Tree.
Another few hundred down
the trail we
came across this cable sticking up out of the trail, a remnant of the heavy logging that took place back towards the turn of the century. There are such artifacts and scars in the earth everywhere showing where the logging had taken place, and for that matter is still going on. Now, however, there's no clear cutting
and they're mostly thinning the forrest to give the Sequoias more room to grow, or taking out the dead trees that have been killed by the pine beetles. Nearby was a giant stump with a tiny seedling growing right out of the middle of it (above right). So, given time, the forest will rejuvenate itself. As we neared the end of the trail, I saw this large house-sized boulder with a six
to eight foot overhang and had to take this picture to show my Search and Rescue Teammates so they could go there and practice climbing this rock and out over the overhanging lip. Also near the end
of the trail I came across this Indian Paintbrush flower with a honeybee gathering nectar so I took this picture in an attempt to hone my wildlife photography skills.
After hiking the Loop Trail, we continued on up the road back to Hidden Falls and jumped in to cool ourselves off. In the picture to the right you see Jay and Séamus and in the one below is proof that I too hopped in that icy water. It was really a lot of fun and we had the pool all to ourselves. The big log you see in the foreground was semi-waterlogged and could barely float. In this movie (
http://youtu.be/I_Ni9cA34vE) Jay put Séamus on the log and in the follow-on movie at
http://youtu.be/GeNIHmnTmf8 Séamus insists on retrieving the big log and bringing it back to shore. Down beside the pool there were literally thousands of Lady Bugs swarming on the logs and rocks around the pool. I had to blow this picture up so you can see them. I wish I had them all back in my garden. Back in camp that night we built a big fire and made some mock filets and some acorn squash for supper. It was our last night so we made a good fire and sat
beside it for hours to enjoy it as long as we
could. There's something about a camp fire that's very therapeutic, kind of like watching fish in an aquarium. It's very relaxing. Fortunately for you, Jay took a movie of that last fire and you can see it too at
http://youtu.be/397N_1wtpTM.
Séamus seemed to know the trip was coming to an end as well and climbed up in my lap, at least as much of him as would fit on my lap, for a few extra pets before heading off to bed.
The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast, packed up and headed down the mountain. It was very steep and the road was windy so I was going down in second gear so I didn't have to use the brakes very often. At those speeds we had plenty of time to look around
and Jay spotted a couple of large blackberry bushes. I remembered from Ranger School that it's not wise to ever pass up a berry bush brimming with ripe berries so we stopped beside the road and hopped out to pick berries. Here's jay picking berries and his hat almost full by the time we finished with the second patch of berries. All in all, it was a great camping trip and I hope go go back to Balch Park many more times in the future.
could either be the impeller was damaged or something was plugging the intake holes on the sail drive. We brought in the sails, and put the boat in reverse to see if there was seaweed covering the cooling water intake. As soon as we did that, water started spewing out of the exhaust again and a piece of seaweed popped to the surface. We put the shifter in forward again and throttled up and the cooling water continued to spew out of the exhaust so the reverse gear trick worked this time. There were six sailboats in Coches Prietos when we approached 
that bay so we went on to Willows Anchorage (see pics above and left). We anchored in 14 feet of water in Willows at 1345. I also took a 360˚ movie of the anchorage which you can see at http://youtu.be/susuviaU_qU. The anchorage
was filled with sea weed like in the picture at right which is the same type of sea weed that blocked the cooling water intake earlier in the day. Jay took Séamus for a paddle board ride, but the swells were too big for me to get the dinghy ashore. You can get an idea of the swells by watching the movie I took at http://youtu.be/5gOKgX6IxtM.
The winds and swells were from the south so they were coming right in to the bay. Even so it was fairly calm and made for a good night's sleep. The next morning, 9 August, we discovered that we were out of dog food for Séamus so he got the same breakfast as everyone else: scrambled eggs with sausage, and hamburger mixed in it. When I put the bowl down for him to eat he gave me the look that said, "are you sure I'm supposed to eat the whole thing?" We departed Willows
about 0910 headed for Santa Rosa with light winds of 8.5 knots and an AWA of 157˚ so the wind was behind us from the port stern quarter. We put out the sails in a wing-on-wing arrangement and sailed at about 5.2 knots. Even though the AWA was at 157˚ on the port side we were able to put the foresail out the the port side by putting a snap shackle out on the port bow cleat and used that to pull the boom fairly far forward. At 1015 we were hailed by another boat that had pulled up beside us. I didn't hear them approach even though we were under sail with no engines running, but I heard someone yell, "Chan, Chan McKearn" so I went out on the back deck to see that it was John Schroeder who had worked closely with me on several projects at Raytheon. He said Matt Cox, another co-worker, had told him about my boat so he was on the lookout for us and when he saw a two masted catamaran named Escape, he knew it had to be us. 
He was going diving at Pozy Point so we only chatted for a few minutes before he motored off. Shortly after seeing John Schroeder, we sailed past Gull Island (see picture above right) which is a very popular spot for scuba diving. You can see a movie of us approaching Gull Island at http://youtu.be/pKMypEh7ZgM. Just before noon we approached Skunk Point which is on the east end of 
Santa Rosa Island (see pic above right). You can see a movie of our approach to Skunk Point at http://youtu.be/R-UgDlyy6vs. We anchored on Beechers Bay at 1200 in 11 feet of water. There are lots of nice caves and small beaches here and it seems like a well protected bay. At right is the view of Beecher's Bay as we approached our anchorage and below left is a picture of one of the beaches. I took this 360˚ video of our anchorage at Beecher's Bay so you could see what it's like: http://youtu.be/dXwmIGE7RFM.
There is also a fairly large pier at Beecher's Bay to support the ranger station which is located there. We didn't go ashore at Beecher's Bay but we sailed close to the pier on the way out of the bay and it looked like you could land your dinghy there and go up some stairs to access the pier. It was a six to eight hour sail back to the marina from Beecher's Bay so we did not go ashore to explore the ranger station, camp grounds, trails, caves, or beaches, but
In addition to the whales, we saw four or five pods of dolphins who were not to be out done by the whales. Some of the pods swam along on our bow wave for ten or fifteen minutes. Here's one of the videos I took of them swimming along in front of 
back we went right past one of the oil drilling rigs on the way to the Marina. 
These oil rigs make excellent navigation points because there are several of them in the channel so it's convenient to take compass readings on them and then compare the position you calculate from intersection of the azimuths to where your GPS says you are. They're also good at night because they are well lit up and can be seen for miles. 
