I have been posting now for 3 days on things me and my family are doing and enjoying it a bit. It is late on Wednesday about 10 p.m. ( i say late because i have been up since 4 a.m.) but wanted to get a jump on my daily post. Plus because I slept so awful from having things on my mind, I thought this might help with sleep. (and the 1 or 2 shots of Jack Daniels )
I like writing these posts because I don’t have to be so official… Not that I am too much with my other articles, videos and podcasts, but sometimes i just like to write.
I mean i will spell things correctly because there is a red line under them if i don’t, but as far as punctuation and (capitalizing the i) I am not going to take the time. I say that because my wife and daughter are curious what i am writing about the family and correcting me on this. So don’t expect it here.
So I changed my format a little bit and instead of just using the title of my name and divorce611 and the date, I put a little title that references what it may be about. I am sure this will change over the days and months but will try to keep the dates right.
My wife and I are not good planners. I am not a good planner. I see my friends on Facebook over the summer posting their awesome summer vacation photos and understand that they probably made these plans several months or years ago and get jealous. Our plans are made about a week out, usually the day before we do anything which is usually camping in our motorhome.
Shockingly we made plans to go go camping about 3 weeks out. AND got a camping spot at a supposed awesome place at Grays Meadow which it in the mountains outside of Independence, CA.
Now I am always concerned when I am able to get last minute reservations for a ‘hot spot with awesome reviews” but we are just going to go for it.
If you are not familiar with Grays Meadow in Independence, CA, it sits at an elevation of about 9,500 feet. I read all the reviews and articles and the place looks amazing. Most are what people refer to themselves as “minimalists” which means they are totally satisfied in a tent, cooking outside, maybe not even cooking, hiking and living on the land. I am sure that people define “minimalist” different.
One thing is for sure. The place looks awesome. We are staying in a campsite that has a river running right behind. From the photos it looks like we can fish from the site. We’ll see with the drought and all here in California.
There are so many awesome photos of Grays Meadow that I will just post one here and them provide THIS LINK to google photos… You’re welcome!
I am going to be talking a lot about Grays Meadow because of the elevation. I said it is at 9,500 feet and the “minimalists” use this as a starting point to get acclimatized to Mount Whitney. From what I understand, they will stay here a day or two to get ready for the big climb.
We are just here to camp and fish and hike for a few days and i am concerned about the elevation. I have good reason to be.
When I was in the Marine Corps during Desert Storm in 1990 right after high school, I was first deployed to Okinawa, Japan at Camp Hanson. Here, we assigned as the second amphibious task force to attack Iraq. Okay, not the purpose of this post (and will discuss further later i am sure) we later deployed to Mount Fuji, Japan.
During our training we were able to train with the Japanese military, and later we deployed to Mount Fuji which sits a 12.388 feet elevation. Camp Fuji is at the base of the mountain, but we did have the opportunity to climb Mt. Fuji at some point.
Man I can get off topic.
Anyhow, the purpose of bringing this up is that I do get AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) otherwise known as Altitude Sickness. I did not know it at the time in my prime at 19 years old but I had a very negative effect at this altitude. It was only through the last 20 years, and most recently in the last 2 years, that I don’t feel to good at high altitudes.
The interesting thing to learn is that is has nothing to do with age or how good of shape you are in. I was 19 ( or 18 can’t remember) and out of breath, had headaches and was disoriented at 12,000 feet. Okay, the bottle of Dom Perignon we bought in Tokyo, Japan a few weeks prior did not help with the whole altitude thing when we drank it is a celebration of our climb to the top of Mt. Fuji.
Okay, have gotten way off topic. The point is I don’t do good at high altitude. I have done some research on high altitude that i will discuss in other posts.
Good thing I made this part 1. We are about 2 weeks from our camping at Grays Meadow and already have talked about many things,
If i can remember, i want to talk about what you can do to eleviate high altitude or AMS symptoms that I found useful on the internet. I will also discuss whether they actually worked as there is not a whole lot of discussion on the internet about it.
Even the Yelp reviews of Grays Meadow don’t say anything about the altitude or getting ready for that for us normal people, so want to make sure to discuss it.
Talk to you tomorrow.
