We spent New Year's Eve at Samuel P. Taylor State Park hidden from the sun. There weren't many people there on December 30th but it seemed pretty populated for December 31st. Most people seem to have celebrated New Year from a different time zone, us included. But there was a bit of noise at midnight for a few seconds… and then silence.
We had a couple visits from raccoons while we were still finishing dinner. We learned from last time to put food away right immediately but they didn't even have the manners to wait until we were done eating. One of them actually got away with a box of crackers! Bugger! I don't know if it was the same one or not, but we had another visit later after all the food was put away. It walked up on the table and seemed to look at us like we were not following protocol by having put our food away. We made noise and, of course, it took off. But with our headlamps, we could see its beady little eyes looking at us from a tree with his bandit mask on.
We also used our Dutch Oven for the first time and I followed a very easy recipe for Monkey Bread…. basically cinnamon buns. I burned the bottom in the fire a little but the rest was baked perfectly and tasted awesome. I just need to learn some of the finer points of Dutch Oven cooking. Good first effort though!
For future reference, camping in the redwoods in the winter is just a tad cold. The sun doesn't penetrate the cover so the ground never warms up and the air is always chilled and humid. Even Jambo was cold! Can't complain too much with what the midwest is going through with their constant below 0 temps. But I can comment anyway.
Finally, we were in Site 14, which we did not reserve. It was right next to Site 16, which we had last time. Site 14 was a good site with just enough space for our tent with garage attached. The car was able to block us from people driving by and there was good tree cover between sites so it was pretty private. I would stay in that site again at SPT SP.
Endnote: Just an FYI that we spent Christmas in Las Vegas. So we had the full spectrum of celebrations this season!
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