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Granite Chief Wilderness

24 Jun 2010
Posted by Lindsay

This weekend was my first venture out into the wilderness since I've started SCD. Far away from any kitchen, restaurant, or any other food source. It's a pretty nerve racking situation considering one wrong meal and my condition deteriorates considerably. But I love, love, love going out into the backcountry and I'm not going to let something like a restricted diet stop me from going. You can see all my pictures here and all of Shawna's pictures here.

Day 1
I left the Bay Area around 11 am on Saturday morning with Sadie and a few extra packs in my car. We were headed for Sacramento where my good friend Leslie was waiting for us. We had a bit of traffic before Davis, but other than that it was a nice drive. Leslie rode the rest of the way with me up to the Talbot campground. She was a good navigator, but that didn't stop us from chatting and reminiscing about past backpacking trips and old times. Leslie is one of the core group of friends that goes on just about every camping trip I do. She's known my husband since they were in elementary school and she's known me since we were in high school, I meet my husband through completely different connections and to this day it's fun to talk about how small the world feels sometimes. 
We arrive at the campground and trailhead about 6pm and the 5 of us (we've meet up with the other girls at this point) are thinking we might be able to get an hour of hiking in before it gets dark. We load up our packs, strap them on and walk to the map near the trailhead. At this point we realize that the trail we want to take is completely in the Deer Fawning Zone where no dogs are allowed and we have three dogs with us this time! Ugh. All that planning I did for the trip goes up in smoke. So instead we decide to stay at the campgrounds for the night and investigate other local trails in the morning. 
The night was good, we had a campfire and the girls had smores (not me!) Fortunately there were no melty marshmallow disasters which is a personal fear of mine. And as the moon came further up the temperature went further down, into the 40's as expected. So 5 of us girls and 2 of the dogs piled into one two person tent. That was a riot, and it was warm. Emily told some good stories, though sadly NONE of us knew any ghost stories. As it turned out we didn't need any ghost stories to keep us up that night. We had heard from our camp neighbors that a bear had visited the campground the last 3 nights and every cough, sleeping bag shuffle and gust of wind left us tense and awake. Fortunately the bear didn't come back that night. 

Day 2
We woke up not so bright an early to our undisturbed bear canisters, had a late breakfast and packed up camp. Now we were off to check out the other nearby trails. So we drive back down the dirt road and find the road that leads to the new trailheads. This road goes up in elevation quite a bit; up, and up we go. Although we've been seeing a few patches of snow on the ground we are starting to see quite a bit more as we get higher. Until we get to a spot in the road that is completely covered in snow still blocking us from getting to the trailhead. Ugh, foiled again!
Well, since we're here we let the dogs play in the snow (we did a little playing too). It's always fun to see Sadie roll in the snow, then she digs in it while laying on her side, and finally eats it. She likes it so much. The other two dogs we had with us enjoyed the snow too, but they were runners. There padded paws would hit the snow and they would start dashing around. 
Well, since this avenue was now closed to us we figured we would go back to where we were and check out a creek trail we heard about. So we all pile back up in the cars and we're driving back down the big hill when suddenly our lead car stops and starts honking. I really can't figure out what's going on so when we the lead car starts moving again I think it must not be anything interesting. As it turns out it was a big 'ol brown bear! They were honking to scare him off and it worked, they said he "scampered away", which I thought was a great image. A big fat bear butt scampering off into the woods. 
We get to the third trailhead and are investigating. Looks promising enough so we strap on our packs (again) and get the dogs ready and start hiking. There's more snow here, but on foot it's not so bad. About 15 minutes into our hike we hit a properly line "No Trespassing" sign. Ugh (again), we just can't win this trip! Were tired of all this wandering around and we don't have enough time left in the trip to find a new trail, so we hike back about 10 minutes and make camp by the creek we passed on our way up. It was a good spot, and we didn't see anyone else. Overall it was a great spot. We pass the night similar to the evening before, but without a campfire and with a little more time to relax in the afternoon. Of course we all snuggled into one tent again, I like this tradition, lots of giggling and fun talk. 

Day 3
A late morning again, more breakfast and packing up camp. We finally break camp around 11:50, take a few more pictures and then hike back to the cars. We were there by 12:10 or so, that's how close we were at our campsite. The drive back was an uneventful and quick conclusion to the trip. We all agreed that it was a bummer we didn't get a good hike in, but that it was a really fun trip due to the good company!

Quick Food Notes
For food I mostly ate parmesan crackers, peanut butter, almond butter, banana chips, canned tuna, honey, peppermint tea, beef jerky, asiago cheese. I'd also brought some dehydrated eggs but we never seemed to have enough time in the morning and I wasn't that motivated to make them. The last night I heated up some dried Zucchini to get some veggies in my diet. And on the last morning I had some bacon, which even though it's cured with sugar (I'm not supposed to eat that) it's okay to have some crispy bacon once a week. Well, this bacon kicked my butt. It tasted good, but by 2 in the afternoon I could tell I was getting sick, and by 8 that night I was very sick. I'd had bacon in the past and was fine, so I think it's just that particular brand of bacon had a hidden ingredient in it. I won't be eating it again.

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Dehydrator Working Overtime

17 Jun 2010
Posted by Lindsay


This is my first batch of dehydrated food for my first backpacking trip post SCD. From top left to bottom right:
Zucchini - Mushrooms
Cheddar Cheese - Broccoli - Eggs
Onion - Tuna Fish - Banana Chips
My little dehydrator is working harder than I am trying to keep up with demand. Right now I have tomatoes, yellow peppers and green peppers in there. Still up is beef jerky, another batch of tomatoes and more eggs and cheese. I'm thinking I should have started sooner than I did :)

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My First Beef Jerky

02 Jun 2010
Posted by Lindsay


As promised, I've been putting the dehydrator that my mom procured for me to good use while prepping for my backpacking trip. So far not much has turned out that great since I'm still figuring out which foods do best in it. Spices, like garlic powder have been most successful, dried crushed pineapple has been the least (I should have used full slices). But I did have success with my first beef jerky!
The recipe that I used can be found at the Eating SCD blog. I used light sesame oil, instead of dark because I had it on hand, and I didn't use any liquid smoke because it's hard to find SCD safe. Drew felt the jerky was a little spicy, not that he couldn't handle it, but that spicy isn't exactly what you want when you are hiking on the trail. Next time I might use less pepper and/or red pepper flakes and more pineapple juice.

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Reporting In

30 May 2010
Posted by Lindsay


It's been over a week since I've posted, which might lead some of you to wonder "where the heck is she!?" Well, despite not having a job, or any other regular commitments, I've been keeping myself quite busy.

First, and least important, is that I have been playing more World of Warcraft lately. I think this satisfies some innate need I have to be short term goal oriented. At this time in my life the only goals I have are the ones I set myself, and that's kind of a big list of large items. WoW gives me small daily goals to achieve and gives me a sense of accomplishment on a daily basis.

A more long term goal I have been working on (and the reason for the attached picture) is learning C++. C++ is the computer programming language that was used at the game companies I've worked at. In the last 7 years or so I've picked up tid-bits about programming and scripting languages here and there, and even edited a few programs. In the grand scheme of things that's so little experience with programming, I could never say I know such-and-such a language. So I thought while I'm unemployed I could learn C++ and get a better idea of what the teams I manage are actually doing. As a far distant dream, I'd love to be able to write a small game of my own, but that's much further down the line.

Last, and probably least, I've been tracking my daily walks with Sadie. They are getting longer and longer everyday. Hopefully I'll be in shape in time for our late June backpacking trip.

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First Hike, Baylands

22 May 2010
Posted by Lindsay


Drew and I took a short hike at Baylands today. It's my first hike of the year and the first since getting sick. It was mostly flat, only an overall elevation change of 28 feet. While we walked I was picking up rocks and putting them in my backpack -- I'm going to use them for irrigation in my garden pots -- so there was some physical challenge in it. It went pretty well.
The graph above is from a program I used to track our walk on my iPhone. You can see the full spectrum of data logged on the RunKeeper website. It's a pretty nice program, but there are a lot of programs for the iPhone that track your walking/running/hiking activities. I might try a few others out this summer too.

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