Comets, Fire Trees, and Granite Domes: Camping off-the-grid in California.
January 31, 2025
“What kind of weird photo is that?” I complain to my husband. We're in Sequoia National Park in California, the epicenter for thousand-year-old redwoods. To better illustrate the immensity of the trees, I wanted my hubby to take a photo of me next to one of them from trunk to crown. Great. Now it's just me and a tree trunk!
“Sarah,” he explains to me in his imperturbable calm, which is often the water to my fire. “I'm already at full max wide-angle, more than the bottom of the trunk won't fit in the frame. The tree is far too big. But isn't that exactly what you wanted to show?”
I stare at the camera display. Yes. It. Is. Damn. How huge are these trees?
We are car camping from Wyoming through Utah to California. Four national parks, canyons, deserts, ancient forests, and landscapes so massive that make you shrink to the size of an ant in your mind. Two-and-a-half weeks of camping in a tent outside without solid walls, electricity only from solar panels and a rechargeable battery, water from a container in the back of the car, and food cooked on a portable gas stove. From over-tourism and comets to burning trees and tents in the snow. Let's go!
Zion National Park: too many people in paradise
The first night goes fantastically well. We treat ourselves to a new plastic tarp that can be spread out under the tent to protect the thin tent floor from stones and cactus. Unfortunately, we install it so idiotically that the inside of the tent floods during the heavy rain the first night.
After waking up, I put my hand into a puddle of water next to me as I stare at the goose-down sleeping bag, which is soaked in a few places. When down gets wet, the feathers clump up, the loft is gone, and the bag loses its most important function: Warmth. By the way, the temperature here is only 39°F.
In the morning, the rain stops, and we decide to hang everything in the surrounding trees to dry for the day. My husband turns the tent inside out, releasing all the water onto the ground.
Flop. I stare at the bag of clothes now floating atop the newly liberated water.
“That was all my clean, dry clothes!” I exclaim—loudly—in amazement. Because we only got married three days ago, I add: “I'm getting a divorce!” Then we begin to laugh out loud together.
Over the next two days, we explore Zion National Park, which we had both visited many years ago, but separately before we met. It's now so overcrowded that you can't even get a parking space at eight in the morning. And for the most treasured hike—Angel's Landing—you must enter a lottery to get on the trail because the trail can no longer cope with the hordes of people wanting to traverse the fragile and dangerous pathway.
We face similar crowded experiences all over the park. No doubt about it, the red rock faces, the green valley, the blue river: it's a paradise and certainly one of the most beautiful national parks in the USA. But there are people everywhere. Loud people. The hike to the Emerald Pools feels at times like the line snaking up the final ascent to the summit of Everest. I try to block out all the people, but it doesn't always work. And let’s face it—we are here as well. We are part of the problem. As spectacular as the Park is in terms of beauty, I wouldn't go there again.
Comets and cacti: Joshua Tree National Park
“There's something in the sky!” I shout and jump up from my camping chair. It's dark and we are in California sitting between huge, marble-shaped boulders in Joshua Tree National Park, our next stop. Above us is a sea of stars, on the horizon is a faint memory of an orange sunset.
“Where?” my husband asks, blinking.
There's a line in the sky, just barely visible, I'm not sure I’m actually seeing anything myself. But suddenly I remember that when we left Wyoming, our photographer-science-geek neighbor told us about a comet that's supposed to be visible in the sky now. The Tsuchinshan ATLAS comet. It really is called that.
I dash off, get my tripod and take a time exposure. And there it is! Bright and clear on the display. Wow! I jump around like a squirrel in a cage.
“The comiiiiit! Looook!” I shout, waving my arms excitedly. How crazy is it that we're camping in a starry desert right now and can see this miracle?
Next evening, I want to show my husband something that a dear friend, who has since sadly passed away, showed me on my big solo trip through the USA in 2017. Frank from Los Angeles.
He took me to the Cholla Cactus Garden in Joshua Tree National Park at sunset. Where the needles of the cacti glowed white with an iridescent halo in the evening light.
When we arrive, the cacti look exactly the same. I'm so happy to be able to see this amazing place with my husband and share a piece of Frank's story with him. When I look up a little later, I see a sun dog in the sky: Spots of light that look like little rainbows. It seems as if it is Frank is letting us know he is here! I wave.
As the sun sets, we see a fiery sky in the west where red, pink, orange and blue stripes merge behind gnarled Joshua Trees.
During the day there is plenty of sun here, which is great for our mobile solar panels, which we use to charge our storage battery, our only source of energy during the two-and-a-half-week road trip. When we camp, we charge it with solar energy, when we drive, it is nourished with power from the car’s alternator. We use it to conveniently power cell phones, camera batteries, a laptop, and a small fridge.
Sequoia National Park: A Thoughtful Journey
From Joshua Tree we head to Sequoia National Park. Two things blow my mind there: The unbelievable size of the Sequoia trees, some are over 250 feet high (really no photo comes close to reality!), and the huge, burned expanses of the park. The KNP Complex fire raged here in 2021. Triggered by lightning strikes, two smaller fires combined to create a huge inferno. However, this was only possible because the area has been experiencing abnormally dry conditions for years, the likes of which have never been seen since records were kept.
Even though the National Park Service normally allows nature to flourish without human intervention (which is one of the purposes of a national park), attempts were made to protect some of the greatest treasures of our time. For instance, the lower part of the world's largest tree, the “General Sherman,” was wrapped in insulating foil. There are photos of firefighters trying, almost helplessly, to encircle the tree with foil while thick smoke hangs all around. The image is heartbreaking for anyone who can feel empathy. It doesn't matter whether you believe in climate change or not: weather patterns are changing and the consequences are saddening. Just go out and witness it with your own eyes, and your own heart.
Some of the trees here are between 2000 and 3000 years old. They were already there when the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were in power. Doesn't that make you feel incredibly small and humble? It takes a thousand years for a Sequoia tree to grow so strikingly large and red. That's almost 33 generations of humans. Suppose one of these trees dies and a new one begins to grow immediately. There will be 33 generations after us who will still not be able to see the tree as we see it at this moment. Hardly anywhere else is it so clear: we only borrow this world from our children and grandchildren.
Incidentally, on a small scale, fire is actually important and good for sequoias. The pine cones of the trees only open under great heat and only then are the seeds released. Without fire, the giants would also die out in the long term. As always, “everything in moderation” is the recipe. Something we should relearn.
Granite domes in Yosemite National Park
It gets cold on the last stretch of our tour. So cold that snow caps form on some mountains, and we no longer need so much solar energy, because we can leave our main power guzzler, the fridge, turned off in the car as the outside temperature drops below 40°F at night.
We are in Yosemite National Park. Indian summer is in full force here this year at the end of October. Yellow, red, and green leaves cover the steep slopes beside the road.
We arrive at the viewpoint overlooking Yosemite Valley. Wow!
Monumental granite domes whose steep walls drop over 3,000 feet vertically into the depths, massive blocks like cathedrals, an unbelievable force and silence. If just one slab of
it were to break off, the entire parking lot below, along with 50 people, would be flattened. For the twentieth time, I am mute and awestruck on this trip.
We spend three days in the park. We hike along the John Muir Trail toward Vernal Falls, discover Inspiration Point, and meander along the Valley Loop Trail through a narrow valley with the massive rock faces to the left and right. I feel like an ant. Like an eye twitch in the history of the universe.
Snow on the lava: Craters of the Moon National Monument
Finally, we pass through Idaho on the way back to Wyoming. There is the Craters of the Moon National Monument. A place where black, petrified lava stretches to the horizon. Unreal. And completely covered in snow on this day.
“Sarah, are you sure you really want to camp here?” my husband asks. It's going to be 20°F at night. Our equipment isn't really designed for that.
“Absolutely!” I shout enthusiastically. Camping in the snow. I've never done that before. I absolutely must do it now!
It turns out that we are the only people foolish enough to camp in the moon craters that night. The rangers from the visitor center look at us strangely. Then at 5 p.m. they go home to their warm apartments, and we are alone. The sun goes down. It's getting cold. No, it’s freezing cold. I want to jump into the bubbling water I’m heating on the gas stove. What kind of jerk wanted to camp here in the snow again?
I lie awake at night. The tent fabric glistens on the inside. Ice. I toss and turn. Every time I turn inside our sleeping bag, I expose a new side toward my husband for him to warm, but my side facing away from him gets cold. I imagine that I am a small ice planet in outer space. Then I make a mental list of warm clothes and Arctic equipment that we still need to get before I have such a stupid idea next time. I would type the list into my cell phone, but my phone feels like a block of ice and my fingers are clawing at the back of my knees for warmth. The next day, we are both discreetly exhausted. On the way home, I spend the first two hours thawing out by sitting on the car’s heated seats.
“But we camped in the snow!” I chirp. And then, for a moment, I feel great.
If you like, you can follow our stories, travels, fails and adventures daily on Instagram: @squirrel.sarah.
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