Backpacking! (part 1)

As I had mentioned "our big backpacking trip" a while back, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up and share some about that trip.

Like so often happens in life, this trip morphed about a million times.  Originally, we were planning on hiking across Sequoia National Forest with our friends from New Mexico, Stuart and Laura, aka Staura.  It was actually their trip, and they had invited us to go with them.  This was plan A, and honestly I was a little trepidatious about the ambitiousness of the trip--it was going to be something along the lines of 50 miles in 4 days. yikes.  I had been training for it though!  However, as I had mentioned last time, there was too much SNOW in the Sierra Nevada's to make many forays into them, and this included plan A.  We neither had the inclination, the expertise, nor the equipment to go snow backpacking for a week.  So we tried plan B, go back to the Trinity Alps near Mt. Shasta with Staura.  Rational: it has a lower altitude than Sequoia, and it's been a month since we were there last so surely the snow line must be lower.  However, creek crossings were going to be troublesome, if not impossible, but we thought we'd give it a try, rent snow shoes, and car camp with day hikes if absolutely necessary.  But neither plan A nor plan B worked because of the Las Conches fire near Los Alamos, which caused our friends to remain in New Mexico.  Cue plan C: carry out plan B, but leave out Staura.

As it turns out, we ended up at plan D.  Staura had a B&B reservation in Pacific Grove (near Monterey) for Monday night that was non-cancelable, but it was transferable. If we wanted it, it was all ours.  We found out about this Monday morning, and in the end we decided, why not?  It made for a super hectic Monday as we completely remade our plans to leave 18 hours sooner than expected, and changed the location of our backpacking trip to the Ventana wilderness to be closer to the B&B to eliminate some driving.  Once we made it to the B&B, The Inn and 213 Seventeen Mile Drive, everything settled down wonderfully and the adventures of another trip for Quacky and Quirky were just beginning.