Glamping at Pinnacles Campground

We thought it would be fun to take a quick, two-night trip to Pinnacles National Park with hopes of seeing some of the Perseids meteor shower in their dark, definitely not marine-layer infested skies.

Pinnacles National Park is a bit quirky - you can get to it from the west or the east, but there is no way other than a lot of hiking to get from those two entrances. And if you want to stay overnight there, you need to go to the east entrance where there is the Pinnacles Campground.

The campground has the normal options of tent and RV spaces (with full hookups), plus they also have several tent cabins - some with electricity (four) and most without (six).

We chose a tent cabin with electricity, which had the added bonus of being closer to the store and pool (but was further from the toilets than the non-electric cabins). 

Ours was the one second from the left in this shot.

Each cabin had two twin beds and one queen bed. They were surprisingly roomy and nice looking on the inside, with actual sliding windows on three sides and a locking front door that also had a sliding window.

If those mattresses don't look comfy, you are wrong. They were very uncomfy. But a lot better than sleeping on the ground.

Each cabin came with two chairs that you could use to sit on the "deck," as well as a bench.

The cabins with electricity also came with a large standing circular fan, a small lamp, and a bit surprisingly, an electric heater.

We had a good laugh about having a heater when we got there, as it was probably 100º in the cabin. We stopped laughing later though…

The front of the cabin with its "deck" sort of thing.

The cabin was actually pretty comfortable, and we were able to spread our stuff out nicely. It would creak a bit when the wind picked up, but that only happened during the day. There was a picnic table in back, along with a fire ring that we were not allowed to use, and a box to put your food into if you don't want to put it into your car (we left ours in the car - food was not allowed in the cabins, and there were many voracious critters that would barely let that canvas slow them down if they thought there was a bag of chips on the other side). 

The fire ring we were not allowed to use due to the extreme fire danger. Sadly, we had not known that and had brought some firewood for roasting s'mores. Granted, the idea of having a fire while it's 90º out was challenging to imagine. Well, except for s'mores!

The box to store your food if you don't want to keep it in your car. There are likely no bears to worry about, but there are MANY aggressive raccoons.

Our superpower was this portable toilet. It would have been very challenging to get up and hike several hundred yards to the nearest toilet during the night, especially while listening to coyotes howling, raccoons looking for chips, and bobcats looking for raccoons. And being old, we would have had to do that two or three times a night. 

We've had this for many years, and never has it earned it's keep more than on this trip!

"Chips? Did you say something about chips?" There were a lot of deer around that were not very shy.

Diane on the "deck" in the cool(ish) evening air.

There is wifi, but you only get 30 minutes of it per day per device for free. We did get a reasonable cell signal though, so we were able to search for things like "do deer like chips" and "why is it so dang hot."

We decided that we'd go to bed at a decent hour and wake up early to look at the meteor shower. When we got up at around 5 AM, it was to find that the nearly full moon was bright enough to read by, and it was completely washing out any meteorites that might be wandering into the atmosphere. But we did get a very nice view of Venus and Jupiter hanging out together.

Venus and Jupiter. Venus is FAR closer to Earth, but Jupiter, for science reasons, appears bigger and brighter.

The other thing that happened that night was that we found out why there was an electric heater in the cabin. 

During the day, the temperatures got into the mid- to upper-90s. If you were in the sun, you could hear your skin sizzling. When the wind came up a bit, it was like a somebody was pointing a blowtorch at you. We threatened to try a hike, but man, it was really hot.

In the evening, after the sun had set and things started to cool down a bit, it was quite pleasant. Before long though, you were grabbing your jacket (and being very thankful you even thought to bring one). 

For the cabins, you have to bring your own bedding and pillows. We figured we wouldn't possibly need any kind of a real blanket (looking at the forecast for the park showed that it would get down to the mid-60s at night, which is not that cold), so we only had a light cover, and we left all the windows open.

It ended up getting down to the mid-50s at night, which turns out to be pretty cold, especially when it was probably in the mid-70s when you climbed into bed. So we got up, closed the windows, put on some clothes, used our huge, thick beach towel as a bonus blanket, and plugged in that heater to get through that night. 

This isn't really a desert area, but the temperature swings sure acted like it was. (A family moved into the cabin next to ours on the second night, and Diane warned them that it was going to get cold and to have the heater ready. We could hear them later having a good laugh about that crazy lady and the heater. The next morning, the mother thanked us for the warning - they had indeed used the heater after all!)

A herd (flock? brilliance?) of quail looking for who knows what to eat.

Diane got this close up shot of a quail, showing its curving topknot. "A covey of quail is what we are called you doofus." 

One very fun thing this park has is a pool. After getting up early and watching the temps climb ridiculously high, we decided to try to chill by the pool. Everyone that was staying in the cabins around us and the nearby tent site had all left. The campground was pretty empty when we wandered over to the pool.

The pool is wonderful. Until later in the afternoon though, it has no shade other than the few patio umbrellas scattered around. Fortunately, since there was almost nobody else there, we snagged umbrellas and deck chairs. (Bring your own chair and shade if it's busy at all, or just stay in the pool!)

Me in the pool, wearing a large floppy hat that did not hold its shape well when it got wet. I stayed in that pool for a long time.

It took a bit, but even Diane went into the pool.

After a bit, new people started checking in and the pool gradually got busier. Also, the wind started blowing, which wasn't all that fun (unless blowtorches are your thing).

Back at the tent cabin, this squirrel had heard the deer talking about chips, so he was a bit annoyed to not see any around.

For dinner, we had brought some leftover stir fry that I heated up on our camp stove. We also decided to try making s'mores on the camp stove, but the chocolate bars were completely melted, so these turned out to be pretty non-traditional (but still tasty) s'mores.

This bunny wanted to try the s'mores.

"NONE SHALL PASS!" Look closely at that brown thing on the trail near the bottom of the picture.

On Tuesday morning, we packed up and headed to the Bear Gulch Caves area, hoping to get a small hike in before it got too hot out. We came up to this slot canyon sort of thing, and there was a couple standing there looking a bit puzzled. We then saw why.

It was not interested in chips at all.

He was not being aggressive, but wasn't going to move, no matter how nicely we asked. We actually thought maybe he was dead, but he kept flicking his tongue out. We stood there for a minute or two, noticed that it was only getting hotter, and decided the rattlesnake was telling us we had hiked far enough, so we headed back to the car.

And that's about it! The moon pretty much doomed our meteor shower hopes (well that and us not really wanting to be up at 3 AM), but we got to see Venus and Jupiter frolicking a bit together and lots of wildlife. (Weirdly, we never saw a raccoon, but we got to hear lots of yelling at them by the people around us at dusk.) 

We now know that next time we should try to bring a thick mattress pad and heavier blankets. We had an electric kettle that we used to heat water up in the morning, and that was great (not sure if it violated the "no cooking in the cabins" rule though). We also thought to bring a couple power strips which helped a lot as we both had lots of things to charge.

The campground store was pretty good - in retrospect, as long as you don't have gourmet ambitions (I could live on frozen burritos), you could get by without cooking at all between their sandwiches and frozen things you can heat up in their microwave.

The daytime heat is pretty oppressive, and the pool is the only real way to escape it. Our timing was pretty good with their not being many people here, but I suspect in the summer, that pool get totally overrun with kids.

The tent cabins are not even vaguely soundproof - you could hear normal conversations being held several sites away. (And people unlocking their car to drive to the toilet.) Amazingly though, things really did quiet down around 9:30 to 10:00. 

All in all it was a fun, quick get away that's not too far, but far enough to feel like you've gone somewhere. The trails in the park are very cool, well, when it's not so hot out. I'm sure spring or fall are much more pleasant times to be there and take in what the park has to offer.

But don't leave your chips unguarded.

That's it - move along…