Adventures in Roof Top Tents

When we left our nameless little campsite next to Mono Lake, Highway 395 immediately began to climb. And up at the top of the climb we found a little pulloff. With this view:

Wow! Of course, I was also intrigued by something else: bumper stickers. They were all over the barrier of this parking lot.

 

 

Some were funny, some made no sense, and some even represented good old Longmont, Colorado.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We even managed to get our picture taken together. When you travel with just one other person, it can be harder than it sounds, proving you were at the same place at the same time.

Moving on, our next stop was Travertine Hot Springs.

The day was a little bit warm for me to soak in a 105^o pool, so I just soaked my feet. Michael went for it. We found a pool down the hillside that was just a bit cooler, but still had an amazing view.

After our soak we stopped in the town of Bridgeport – mostly because we found a parking spot in the shade, so we could let Bailey out and have a tailgate lunch. We also spotted this beauty as it drove by:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As nice as it was in Bridgeoprt, we had to move on. We were headed for Carson City, Nevada, to meet Bobby, our contact at Cascadia Vehicle Tents. This story goes back several months. I can’t remember exactly when, a long time back but the zipper on the mesh screen door of our tent got sticky. (This is the door that we use to get in and out of the tent.) The zipper got worse and worse, until when we tried to force it the zipper just split.

Sometime in March Michael called Cascadia. We just wanted to know the best way to get that zipper fixed. The CSR we talked to said we’d best talk to Bobby and gave us Bobby’s phone number.

Much to our surprise, Bobby suggested just replacing the entire tent. We were pretty shocked, but said okay. A free tent seemed like most excellent customer service.

Well, Bobby turned out to be a little hard to pin down – as you can see by the amount of time that has passed. But we finally met on a sunny warm day in June, at a WalMart parking lot in Carson City, Nevada. This is the rig Bobby showed up in:

As they shook hands, Michael asked what, exactly, Bobby did for Cascadia Vehicle Tents.

“Oh,” Bobby said casually. “I’m the owner.”

 

I think my head spun as I tried to rewrite that narrative. All this time we’d been dealing directly with the owner of the company. Talk about excellent customer service!

 

 

Cascadia Vehicle Tents currently operates two showrooms, one in Bend, OR and a new one in Chattanooga, TN. And Bobby drives the tents back and forth. (He said that when shipping from Bend, tents going to anywhere east of Colorado tended to arrive damaged, so he opened a showroom in Tennessee to help alleviate that problem.)

He was a super nice guy, and he helped us take the old tent off, install the new one, and showed off all the new bells and whistles as we set up the tent right there in the WalMart parking lot. Honestly, the thing I noticed the most is that our new tent has a 3” high-density, open-cell-foam mattress. (The old tent had a 2” mattress.) I’m a side sleeper and this has made all the difference in the world. I finally got rid of that old Ridgerest closed-cell-foam pad (half-destroyed by Elvis) that I used to fold in half and put under my hips.

Another fun addition to our new tent is the stargazer rainfly. Sure, we can see the stars, but at dusk leaving those doors open lets in a ton of light. We use our Luci lights less. Yay!

So a huge THANK YOU to Bobby and CVT for taking such great care of us.

We camped that night in Toiyabe National Forest, and the next day we got our first glimpse at Lake Tahoe.

I’ve seen so many pictures of this lake that show how clear it is. I’ve been unable to reproduce them! It’s been breezy and the pollen is flying here in South Lake Tahoe. So when I can get into a small cove, or anything out of the wind, the water is covered with yellow pollen, making it impossible to see the bottom.

Looking for a place for Bailey to stretch out, I saw lots of these signs:

Which I thought was odd, considering everybody and their uncle seemed to have a dog with them. Michael did a quick online search and the only beach that allows dogs was called Kiva Beach – but the website said all dogs had to be on a leash.

That’s a little bit of cruel and unusual punishment, I think, taking Bailey to the beach and then not letting him run around. Another Google search showed that South Lake Tahoe did in fact have a dog park.

I tend to judge a city by their dog park, and South Lake Tahoe’s was pretty okay. There was shade, there was water, but there were also a lot of wood chips, which can give dogs splinters.

Luckily Bailey remained splinter-free and we wore him out with a tennis ball. We met a local who told us that leash laws weren’t too strictly enforced at Kiva Beach, and that we definitely should go.

That afternoon it looked like the wind had died down a bit, so we went ahead and rented Stand Up Paddleboards. This was our third time renting SUPs. The first was on a river in Florida, the second was at Avila Beach in California. The water in Lake Tahoe was rougher than either. All the wind came from the north while we paddled westward towards a river inlet. That meant we kept getting hit with waves from the side.

Keep in mind that these were tiny little waves – although it sure didn’t feel like it. Both of us went for a dip, and not voluntarily. I slid up on wave and when I went to paddle on my left side, my paddle met with air instead of water. I leaned forward right as the board slid into the trough – and over I went.

That water was cold! Somehow my sunglasses stayed on my face but I had to grab for my hat and my paddle. Luckily it’s pretty easy to get back on a SUP. And once I was back in the sun, I have to say that my little dip was quite refreshing.

So there are no pictures of our SUP adventure on Lake Tahoe. The camera never came out of the waterproof case. But we had a blast and definitely worked hard. After 2 hours on that board I was ready for a nap.

Next post: Kiva Beach!