My buddy Greg and I went out for a quick overnight trip to Big Basin State Park last Friday night.
Big Basin is a local State Park in the “Redwood Belt” of the Coastal Range. Lots of very large, very beautiful trees.
I originally thought about using this trip as my first solo trek. The park is close by and hardly the wild backcountry, so I figured it would be a good chance to spend the night out alone to see how I liked it.
Turns out, the backpacking campsites are all designated by the park and are all together in a cluster. There were ten sites with a capacity for up to 60 people spread out along about 200 yards of fire road. We had a couple of guys about 30 feet away and a group of maybe 10-12 young people about 50-60 feet away.
Had I been by myself, I would still not have been alone. I was glad to have Greg along for the company. I'll get that solo trip in another time in another place.
Back to the beginning, I picked Greg up at his office at 2:00, we drove to the park, registered and got on the trail right at 4:00 pm.
Our destination was Sunset Camp 5.5 miles up the trail. The trail immediately dives into the woods and rolls along up and down parallel to a creek. I forget the name of the creek. Finally we arrived at the Berry Creek trail intersection, hung a right and headed up the hill along Berry Creek. There are a set of three pretty good size falls along the creek.
After a short steep climb we made it up to our campsite. We really didn't have too much light left, so we just set-up camp and ate dinner right away. After dinner we hung our food and I talked Greg into a couple of hands of dominoes with my MYOG balsa wood tiles. I forget who won.
In the morning I played around with tarp set-ups. My friend Ken loaned me two tarps that I tried in different pitches to see how I liked tarp life. I liked it fine.
After a while we packed up and headed out, covering the 5 miles back out to the trailhead in dead-on two hours. I was home by 2:00 pm.
I had a nice visit with Greg, always good company, a nice walk and a good camp-out. It was a pretty good start to the weekend.
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