Week 15: A Relaxing Week in Shelter Cove

This week we enjoyed a more relaxing week on the California Coast. We booked a Hipcamp (similar to Airbnb for privately owned campgrounds) for the week in Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove is a very rural community just south of the Redwoods in northern California.

Our drive on Sunday from Sonoma to Shelter Cove was very scenic coastline. The drive was a little over 6 hours but took us most of the day between groceries and stops at various overlooks and scenic areas along the way. Although it was a beautiful drive, we spent most of the day on very curvy, mountainous roads so we were happy to be at our destination at the end of the day.

Like I said before, this week was very chill so there’s really not a lot to write about. A couple of evenings we enjoyed venturing down to the beach. It was just a short walk from our campsite to the beach access. It was a very rugged, rocky beach but very beautiful. Just off the beach were some big boulders where seals and sea lions would hang out. We enjoyed just sitting and watching them for a while. They are such funny animals and they always seem to look so uncomfortable. One evening there were probably about 30 seals on a single rock. At one point a couple of them sat up and started jumping off the rock. And then all of a sudden all of them except a few were jumping into the water all at once. We guessed they were probably going back into the water to eat but weren’t sure.

We enjoyed having some amenities at our campground like water, showers, and laundry. Monday evening Trevor said he was going to go shower and asked if I was going to. I told him probably not. Although it’s always nice to have a shower at our campgrounds, most of the time they are pretty dirty and sometimes the water only comes out cold. I was not super excited about a shower so I told him if he came back and told me it was the nicest shower he’s ever been in, then maybe I would go shower 😜 A little while later he came back and said that it was the nicest camp shower we’ve had yet. I thought he was joking…but he wasn’t! I think the showers had just been redone because they were super clean, nicely tiled, and had super hot water. We were really spoiled with the showers for the week and took full advantage of them!

After coming from Pinnacles with the 100+ degree weather, we were very happy to enjoy much milder temperatures this week. Most days the weather was around the mid 60s. One thing we didn’t expect going into this trip was the variations in temperature we would experience with elevation. I have some warmer clothes in some packing cubes that I’ve been keeping in the back of the van under the bed. I figured that around May I would be done with those clothes, but I still find myself breaking them out often. One week we will be wearing shorts and a t-shirt and the next we will be in sweatpants and sweatshirts. Overall, the cooler temperatures are much more enjoyable in the van and we’re hopeful that as we move into the Pacific Northwest we won’t have too many more really hot days.

As we were driving the curvy, mountainous roads earlier this week, I was reflecting on our past few weeks since we returned to the van from home. These weeks have probably been some of the more enjoyable weeks in the van for us. I hate to say it out loud for fear that things could quickly change, but things have gone very smoothly for us since we’ve been back in the van. For some reason, when I was thinking about this I got a flashback to my Psychology class during my freshman year of college. Below is a chart I remember learning about.

According to Google, this chart is a model for understanding the motivations for human behavior. I feel that it pretty accurately describes my experience living in the van. In the first few months of van life, our time and efforts were pretty focused on meeting our physiological and safety needs - food, water, place to stay, etc. - and it often felt difficult for me to fully appreciate the experiences we were having and the amazing places we were seeing. Shoutout to Trevor for putting a lot of time into planning out the rest of our trip and making sure all of those needs will be met in the rest of the places we’ll visit. As things have gone quite smoothly these past few weeks, I’ve felt myself enjoying the places we see more, feeling more creative and motivated to do things I enjoy. I’m happy to have climbed the pyramid a bit.

And with that, class is dismissed 😊

While we enjoyed our relaxing week on the coast, we were ready to get to the next park and do some more hiking and exploring. Saturday we left Shelter Cove and headed to Lassen Volcanic National Park - about six hours west of where we were. This day, again, was filled with lots of curvy, mountainous roads. We stopped in Redding, the last big town before we hit the park, and picked up groceries and got a much needed oil change and a few other small maintenance things done on the van. We made it to our campground in Lassen National Forest around dinner time and were very grateful for another smooth travel day.

Thanks for following along for yet another week on this adventure! 😃