With our plan being to stay off the I-5, we were lucky enough to hear that a few friends were going to be camping in Yosemite. We kept our trajectory aimed loosely south and made a run for the mountains to see them. The guys behind Excursion Always are really good at what they do, they dropped us a pin and said something about a 100ft natural rockslide in the middle of Yosemite before losing service. We knew we definitely did not want to miss out so we meandered through the park and with a rough idea of where to go we started hiking. After a few miles and thousands of mosquitos we found em at the bottom of a canyon surrounding Nate, he had broken his ankle on his first slide down and was waiting to get airlifted out. These guys are smart and for the most part safe but sometimes life will kick you down anyways. Not a great start but it was beautiful nonetheless. It was a pretty incredible thing to watch; the helicopter navigating its way down to the rocks and taking him out.
Living on the road can leave the world feeling both endlessly huge and incredibly small so running into people you know in the middle of the California wilderness somehow comes as no surprise. We have been friends with Tommy for a few years now but can never seem to end up in the same place at the same time, til this weekend. He and his lady MacKenzie are in the middle of overhauling a Sprinter van to live and work out of and we got to see it at its very beginning stages. We love our trailer but we know what they're building is going to make us seriously envious. It's not a unique idea, living on the road. We do it, our friends do it but each person's experience is incredibly varied and its truly special to spend time together and be inspired by them.
We ended up camping out with Tommy and MacKenzie at a few amazing hot springs, all within a few miles of one another just outside of the park borders. California's got something special going on and we've never given it a fair shot. Between Excursion Always and the LA Swim crew, they make the most of their state and if anything it made us feel a little stupid for not taking the time before to get off the interstate and take a good look around.
