First Dispatch From the Feathered Road (U.S. Route 395) June Lake: Ashes, Ice Cream & the Longing to Begin
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Alexander Blue Feather takes us deep into the heart of the Eastern Sierras in this rich, reflective, and often hilarious travelogue. Recorded over several days during his solo summer road trip, this episode is an audio journal of wonder and wandering. From chipmunks and cold plunges in June Lake to the tender salt-and-peppering of his father's ashes at June Lake on Father's Day. Come along for unexpected wisdom, campground comparisons, and a bucket of dildos in a small-town Oregon bar. Yes, really!
SUMMARY
In this episode, Alexander shares moments from days one through four of his June 2025 solo road trip to Glacier National Park. We hear field recordings from June Lake Beach, reflections on grief and Father’s Day, birdwatching adventures, solo camping lessons, and a delightful breakfast with a stranger who survived the Paradise fire. The episode also includes reflections on aging, embodiment, and the transformation that happens through nature, improvisation, and spiritual presence. It’s part campfire story, part grief ritual, and part summer travel memoir.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Let the journey teach you: From organizing gear to re-routing plans, travel is its own teacher when we stay open to change.
Grief rituals in nature: Alexander sprinkles his father's ashes along the journey, honoring both memory and the living world.
The magic of solo travel: Cold plunges, camping breakdowns (and breakthroughs), and a reminder that being alone doesn’t mean being without connection.
Comparison and compassion: Even at the campsite, envy can arise. But so can self-love, humor, and acknowledgment of how far we’ve come.
Meetings on the road: Breakfast with Linda, a Paradise fire survivor, becomes a sacred exchange.
Beauty is everywhere: From birdsongs identified via an app, to unplanned scenic roads and spontaneous bike rides—the land offers endless invitation.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Viral Mindfulness, the podcast. I'm your host, Alexander Bluefeather. It's day one. I'm on June Lake Beach. I just walked down.
It's 9AM. The sun's out. The people are still sleeping at their camps and having breakfast. I've gotten a jump start on the day. I traveled all the way from Huntington Beach yesterday and came up the Eastern Sierra Bypass, but Scenic pass.
It was so gorgeous. Never been through there before. I stopped in, like, Lone Pine and very cool places. I'm gonna sit right here on this rock and tell you a couple other things. Oh, hey, chipmunk.
I've wanted to come here before to June Lake, and it's really fantastic. And I pulled into Silver Lake last night. I was able to get a reservation a couple days ago. Somebody canceled a tent spot right next to Silver Lake, which is just down fifteen minutes closer to the mountain range and snow capped Sierras. Not sure of the names yet.
And I have a lake view spot, and it's unbelievable. I slept in my tent last night. It was really windy. It was, it took some time to get used to the sound and strength of the wind, and then I finally was able to fall asleep till about 02:30 in the morning. And then I wasn't sure if it was gonna rain.
It started to get cloudy, and I thought I have a new tent system. I should definitely check and see how to grab this rainfly because I had not put it up because I pulled into my camp spot at around, 07:40, just about forty minutes before sunset. So one of the things I wanna tell you is just camping and getting out to campsites with all your gear. It is so much work. It can often feel very overwhelming.
And if you can shift the paradigm, if you can do an inversion and see it as part of the adventure and the anticipation that you have this hunger or longing to land next to a Lake on Friday the thirteenth, Silver Lake, and potentially be at risk of being stabbed by Jason or Jason's mother or any other cuckoo loos. But instead, I get to sit under the star, sleep in a new tent system. I didn't practice setting my tent up before I left, which is always recommended. But since I felt like I had some tent skills, my new tent is bigger. It's a four person tent.
I can almost stand up in it, but it did not come with a footprint for underneath. So I thought it would. And so if you're able to invert and to get creative and see your packing and not knowing and learning and trying to get a reservation and risking doing a day of place or a hotel tonight place or a cancellation at a campground. You can have the most amazing adventures. So June, I passed Mammoth Lake on the way, came into June Lake.
It's gorgeous. So do it. Coax yourself into outdoor time. It's really interesting. And then I have plenty of space today because I'm sleeping here again tonight, so there's so much freedom.
I have a home base. And now I'm gonna go to my car and get on my swim trunks and do a cold plunge in late June in honor of you. Summertime is coming, and I love that we're here on the podcast together. So much more coming your way. It's day two, and it's Sunday morning, and I'm next to Silver Lake.
Silver Lake is just up from June Beach. There's actually a loop. It's called the June Lake Loop, and then there's one other lake on the other side. You can make the whole loop. I drove it yesterday afternoon, listened to music.
So it's Sunday morning. It's Father's Day, and I feel so grateful for the fact that I get to be a little mini tiny bit of a fatherly, motherly, humanly, lovingly, uncle blue feather, goddess father to Harvey Rose Kate's Frisbee blue. I'm also really grateful that I get to have such beautiful memories of my dear father and friend of many years, Cardell w Smith. I think I want to give him a house of blue name that is great feather. Great feather, blue dell, papa in the sky.
The great feather, blue dell, papa in the sky, pops in the sky. I think SB pops because that's what my older brothers called my dad for many, many years. Decades, really. Of course, I've been thinking about him, and I've been talking with him and sending my love as he journeys in the invisible world, and I have his ashes with me. I know.
Some of you don't trigger warning, content warning, dead father's ashes. Oh, I'm sprinkling them along the way. It's my salt and pepper extravaganza. I have this little wooden, like, I don't know. It's, like, six inches long, maybe two inches wide.
Little wooden case that the tops comes off, and you can salt and pepper ashes. Well, I took him yesterday morning, first thing in the morning to June Lake, and there weren't very many people there. So we were alone, and I was able to sprinkle a little dusting at June Lake. Oh, yeah. It's Father's Day.
I should do a little bit here at Silver Lake. Right? I've had some memories. Part of my walking in apprenticeship with grief and loss and sorrow and to keep the conversation alive and not look at it as a one time event is to do things like this. And, like, today, it's Father's Day.
So here at Silver Lake, I will do a little bit of intentional salt and peppering. And I was gonna say that the work in part is to be open to all the memories to come home. I had some memories based off of the trees that I'm camping next to of when I was a kid, a very young kid, and we would camp less than maybe eight years old, eight years old and younger, even younger than six or five. And we would go camping in Utah. And so it's really beautiful.
I woke up early this morning at the bewitching hour of 3AM, and the moon was out shining in my tent. And it was a little little over half. It's it's waning now. So we're pushing to new moon soon. I'm going to make my way into Idaho, and I digress.
I will get there on another day, but I wanted to tell you how wonderful yesterday was. And I also wanted to tell you one of the things that I observed this morning. So I'm in a really great campsite, and there's lots of people around me. And right over here to my right is this really awesome family. And, of course, I'm coveting all of their camping supplies.
They have, like, a huge car, like, a big, huge, like, trailer with, like, a bunch of different pods of storage, and they have a whole cooking system, and they've got electric bikes, and they have these cool lights that light up their camp at night. And they have kids, and it looks like it's a family, an Asian family. And they're so lovely to observe. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And then over here to my left is a big huge Tundra with truck, four by four that's pulled in a a large camper, and they have, like, huge, like, solar charging system and, like, a big dog.
And I'm over here in this little teeny tiny little blue feather camp. And it's interesting how even out here when you come into the camping site world well, I follow myself. Right? My dad, speaking of him and my mother, they used to say, growing up, wherever you go, there you are. And so here we are.
Here I am this morning and can always compare myself, what I don't have, what I wanna get. But let me tell you where I've come from. I did not like to be outside in nature camping. I was really funny about germs and dirt, and I didn't know how, and it was intimidating. And I learned how in my when I was about 30 and then in my thirties.
And one of my dearest friends, Weston Hall, taught me how to do nature and camping. And it was so much fun. And I hello, beautiful song, bird. I have this really cool app. It's called the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell Lab.
Oh, yes. And you can turn it on. It's free. You do register with an email address so they can get your data to observe birds. You record audio of the birds and then it identifies, and you can sit and see all the different birds.
So this morning, I woke up and I turned it on. There were, like, seven different birds and varietals of birds. And then as it's recording, it's, like, analyzing all the different birds and then it highlights them in your little app feeds so you can see which bird and so you can get to know the birds. And then you can select the birds that you've seen and add them to your lifers, your life list, birds you've seen in life and heard in real life. Oh, cool.
I can actually see this one. I think this one's a warbler. I've been listening to him all morning, but I don't really know yet. So wherever we go, there we are. And I love birds, and I love their song.
And my dad and my mom taught me such things, and so it's it's easy to compare. And so today, I'm practicing a more embodied acknowledgment of how far I've come. And I learned so much from Weston Hall about camping and putting it back in the car, which I'm getting ready to do. I walked around the camp to go to use the restrooms, and I was looking at everybody's stuff. And there's a lot of fishers here.
It's fly fishing. It's a lake. These lakes have tons of fish. These are this is big, huge wintertime. There's a ski resort here, June Mountain, and I'm not sure if it's called June Mountain or June something else, but this is like the first weekend of the season.
And so it's quiet for the beginning. Not the beginning, but, like, it gets super busy all year for the summer into the fall. So I came on the perfect weekend because I tend to pick weekends to travel. So, I mean, I've come so far. I learned through Weston.
Weston would always make room for me to be part of his little plus one or plus two or plus three. And he would teach me camping skills, and I would develop this fancy and flavor for being outdoors. And then I kept it going when I moved to California and left Utah, which is where Weston was from. Morning again. Good morning.
I'm doing really well. Good. So neighbors on the trail. So be gentle. I always encourage myself to take an inversion and to acknowledge where I've come from and to mind my lusting and hunger and wanting for more.
And, this is as deep as I've ever been. I have my new car, which is a Subaru Wilderness CrossTrek. It can go off road. I have some new accessories. I have a cargo carrier on top, a Thule cargo carrier.
I ended up getting some footwell blue lights put in the front and passenger footwells. I have a Thule bike rack that comes out of the trailer hitch. Minty green, my Bianchi from 2008 is here with me. I got a bigger new tent system for this season. And so, I mean, I've come so far.
The one thing I don't know at all about is, like, the whole cooking thing and being solo. Like, I just feel like it's so much easier to do cooler camping. And I went into town yesterday and had breakfast and had dinner, got a pizza for takeout and but I have lots of delicious snacks. So, like, this morning, I had coconut yogurt with a a really ripe juicy white nectarine from Southern California that I brought and a banana. And I had a hard boiled egg that I prepared and have in the cooler.
So number one, you can do this if you have a desire. Number two, it's never worse than you think and it does take a lot of work. So for example, the mosquitoes. There are a lot of mosquitoes because we're next to the lake, but you just buy this, like, insect repellent that smells really good. They've got these more modern smells that are, not modern, but they have, like, a more natural flavor and mixture tincture.
Tincture. Is that the word? And, you know, I put it on, and I'm fine. I haven't bit been bit once. They don't seem to be biting.
And I read something on the camping board that said that there's fun facts about mosquitoes, how vital they are to this sort of terrain. And so these are my thoughts as I sit sit here at the end of the this morning's campfire. And be compassionate and loving to yourself of how far you've come. And if you wanna learn new things and try new things, find friends and people who can help teach you along the way. And it's Father's Day.
So for any of you out there who are missing your fathers, for any of you out there who lost your father, who didn't have a relationship with father, who don't have a father, all the different variations. And to all of you who are doing very masculine caregiving to young kids under the name of fathering. And for any of you doing feminine fathering, that's me, the great feminine father, blue feather. Feminine father feathering. I love that.
I love the things that I come up with. Okay. I think that's everything I wanna tell you on day two. Oh, I wanted to tell you yesterday, I went swimming in the lake in the morning. I went for a bike ride.
I took a nap in the tent. I read a bunch of books. I went and had ice cream before dinner. I saw people protesting no kings on the road, just about 10 of them, and I got to honk and yell and and support them. I I had such a lovely day.
It takes time to deconstruct from nature or from modern life and technology. So I'll see you on day three. Hi. Welcome to day three. I was hoping to be, you know, like, day two with birds in the background and nature, but I'm on one of my big travel drive days and pushing through.
So pushing through to make the legs of the trip so that I can arrive to the destinations. So if you don't know where I'm headed, I'm headed to Glacier National Park, but I think I've said that. But I kinda wanna just take you along day by day. So day three, I was really sad to pack up and leave June Lake. So that's when you last heard from me.
And it was fun to get everything back in my car and be have it kind of where I had it to start with because it was very much organized, and then making one or two changes based off what I learned along the way. I think that's the first beautiful lesson is you learn things along the way and you integrate or implement them. And I think so often with the whole camping gear, it's a lot. And you think you have a great system. And then once you're there at night and you're looking for that one thing and it's up on top of the car and that cargo carrier, way in the back, you're like, oh, wait.
This should be up here in the front. This bag should be the front so that I can pull this up first. You're able to implement those into the systems and processes. And it's just like a whole cool little world that I love to explore with. And if no one else is here in your solo, there's really no interruption, and I can really track a lot of details.
And, of course, having gone through the recent desert of dementia and decade with my dad and his dementia and the reality for a lot of us aging people, the percentages of people that develop memory issues. And I just think, oh, I hope I get to hold on to my my details and my memory and my mind. I also really wanna hold on to my hands to the ability to use my hands to play the piano, to paint, and to write, and to do things you're doing when you're camping. My hands have been so sore from all of the parts, putting together all the parts, the bike rack. Okay.
You get the idea. So I packed everything up, headed out on the north side of the June Lake, the the June Lake loop. So there's a loop it makes around June Lake and then Silver Lake and then Grand Lake. So I took the Grand Lake exit. And when I was passing, it was a beautiful Sunday, midmorning, blue sky, warm, not too hot.
The Ansel Adams Wilderness was to my left. That was part of what was emerging from the Sierras. And there was a trail, an off roading trail, so I decided to take my Subaru Crosstrek. I call my Subaru Crosstrek Hudson after the Hudson Valley, which is north of where Harvey and Daz live in New York. There is this a a city called Hudson that I love.
But the Hudson Valley and Hudson Harvey is my car. Mountain Feather. HHMF, Hudson Harvey Mountain Feather. They do so well in off road, and it was just so beautiful. I took some video.
If you wanna see video, you can always head over to my Instagram at Viral Mindfulness, and I post some really great digital content right now. I'm learning how to utilize the four k video option with my really great phone, and it just takes more power and juice and memory. And it looks awesome. And it's a cinematic four k video feature. And it took me a minute to kind of get it into my system, and I just posted a beautiful montage of my June late weekend.
I was thinking maybe I would swim in the lake again, but I was going out to the Grand Lake exit. I'm like, I swam enough. I'll swim again soon, which I did last night. So we'll get there at the end of day three. I drove off road.
I saw some gorgeous mountain landscapes, wildflowers, and then I drove several hours and drove past the Tioga Pass, which is into Yosemite Park. So Yosemite maybe it's called the Yosemite Range, but Tioga Pass is the highest northeast point above the Yosemite Valley. And a year and a half, almost two years ago when I was there with Jude in September of twenty twenty three, we took the Tioga Pass all the way up almost to the entrance, which is where the I just was on the east side of that entrance. It's very high up. I think it's upwards of 8,000 feet or higher.
So I would have had to head west, climb up, hit the national park entrance, and be at the Tioga Pass where I was. It was probably an extra thirty or forty minutes. Didn't wanna do that. Was wanting to make good time to get to my next destination, which is Lake Tahoe. So I didn't have a reservation yet for a place, and I was kind of wanting to play it by ear.
And since it's Sunday night, I had been checking reservations, and lots of things were open. I know that I like to travel on Monday Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights and be really flexible. Because sometimes when I'm on the road, I wanna keep driving. I have energy, or I wanna go a certain way, or I have a mood. And I like to honor my moods, honor the road, honor improvisation to draw from a music and piano metaphor to improvise.
And sometimes I get stuck in the actual, like, process of figuring, planning, wanting, looking for the best place, the right next thing. Because the truth was leaving June Lane was so sad for me. It was perfect. I've always wanted to be there. I've it's been on my bucket list, and it was such a wonderful environment and a perfect climate.
And so there was this element of sadness, and I wanted to find the next great thing and soothe my sadness as opposed to on the journey. Here are the all the meta along the way. This is why I like to also take you along on these episodes because it's fun to learn and to hear me on the road or trail talk is what I like to call up. Yes. This is me driving in my car, speeding past the semi, putting the blinker on.
So I love that you get these sound effects. I'm I'm gonna model up. For those of you that Marco Polo, you know what it's like, except I don't have any video that I could look down at and see myself, be all self consumed. So back to the lane. Here we are.
Let me adjust my speed. Okay. We are one way each lane just going through Northern California almost to the Oregon border, but back to Lake Tahoe. So the little meta, the lessons you learn along the way. I was, like, out down below Lake Tahoe, and I thought I'm gonna jump like, like, maybe I should just go stay in person, sit here, go to Reno.
So I started looking at the hotel rooms around 02:20 in the afternoon, and I thought I was I was stuck. And I had to check-in with myself, so that's another lesson, an idea that I want to also share with you is noticing that I'm maybe avoiding the sadness, the pain, the loss of toothache, wanting to find something to fill that void, and realizing that it was gone and that I didn't have to get stuck looking, looking, looking. I was gonna waste time. I needed to keep going on, being out of the car, biking, walking, being out in nature, around people. And so I made it a smart decision.
I checked in. I'm like, why are you gonna go to Reno and hang out, bike in a small mini version of Las Vegas? I've never been to Reno. I go up to the lake. It's thirty five minutes.
There's a green hotel, and it looked really cute. And so I just booked it, and I said go with your original plan. Usually, the original plan that I made at home many weeks ago is the smartest idea because I have all these layouts. Last night, I thought I might book a room for tonight in a different town in Oregon, and so I changed it when I started looking at the final reservation options. So, yeah, I was gonna say thanks for listening.
But that's what you come to the podcast for. Right? It's to listen. So side note in real time, I am going to get ready to listen to what he gets to. All of a sudden, I thought I need to go through, like, her top 10 most listened to songs and just rock out and dance and sing.
So that's where I'm headed next. So let me finish in Tahoe. I made it to this cute hotel, checked in, took a few things into the hotel, decided to go get something to eat, like, 4PM, went down to the to the little beach Lake Beach that was just down the street. Got a free entrance ticket with my hotel stay. Cozy quarters.
Nothing super fancy. I think I paid a $130 for the night. I'm trying to budget with the campsites, which are $30 a night, and save more money and be able to buy more accessories for my car. So that's part of utilizing camping and doing the big work of setting up and breaking down camp. It gets faster and faster each time.
So I'm headed soon to another two full nights in the forest, and I'll surprise you when we get there. And this next round will be even more quick, efficient, and prepared. So the end of day three, I'm in Lake Tahoe. It's so beautiful, by the way. And I've never been there in the winter, and so I'm looking at the ski resort right above the lake.
I went to have ice cream. It's summer. I have ice cream as often as I can. This one was a blackberry, like, crumble, and it was delicious. And I went and watched the sunset over the the mountain range, the end of the lake.
It was so beautiful. I caught a great video in four k of it that I'll post to my Instagram. And I was able to check-in with my computer and start preparing for a big push of many hours of digital work. And so I was able to do all those and take a shower and clean a few things in the bathroom, like, a few dishes that I brought, like a spoon a food a food and a fork, a spoon and a fork, and I was able to get my tent out and make sure that it was not tucked away wet. It had been a tiny bit wet, and it dried out really well overnight.
My hotel room It was a hard wood floor, so it was very open to dirt and dust. And I got to check-in with my new summer show. I'm really enjoying HBO Max's and just like that season three, summer in New York City. It's so fun. It's all about summer in New York.
I love it. I love season three. It feels on schedule. Finally, all the kinks are worked out. It's just funny and summery and just great to me.
So I the new episodes launch on Thursday nights, so it's really fun to drop in wildflowers in that meadow. It's really fun to to snuggle up in my hotel room last night and just watch my episode and then tuck myself into bed and had a very sound sleep, and that was a beautiful end to day three. And alright. See you on day four. Welcome to day four.
Okay. I forgot to tell you one of the most beautiful morning moments from day three. I was all packed up from June Lake Silver Lake, and I stopped to grab some breakfast at this diner, the Silver Lake Resort. And I was sitting solo at the counter, and they sat this young woman next to me. She was actually open with me.
This young woman, maybe seven maybe close to 80. Linda was her name. And she was very cordial, and, the server that asked us if we were Rachel or thought we were together, and then she said, oh, we're not together. And I just kind of gently said, or or we can be together if you want, or we can just be quiet. I don't know.
Something silly. And at some point, I looked her in the eyes, and, maybe she asked a question if I was camping, and I said I just finished and this is my first time. We actually ordered and ate pretty quiet until the middle, of our breakfast. And I ordered an extra two pieces of French toast because I wanted to try them. I was actually wanting to compare them to the challah French toast from the East Coast that Harvey, Jay, and I discovered this last season, and Harvey has now moved from her pancakes at the Nyack diner spot to the Challah French Toast.
And it is challah good, man. So it was very disappointing, but I had extra, and I had ordered some eggs. And I asked her if she would like a piece of French toast before I dug in. And she's like, yeah. I'm like, great.
So she handed her plate over. So then we ate quietly, and then towards the end of breakfast, we started talking. And she was so lovely and gentle, and she asked questions. She answered questions. She listened.
She shared, and it was lovely. And the most beautiful, interesting part was her mentioning paradise, the campfire, and she lost they her and her husband lost their home of eighteen years in the campfire, the Paradise fire. And, oh my goodness, she started talking about it, and I just felt so grateful to witness. She is now living on the East Eastern Sierra, North Of June Lake, just a couple hours right below Lake Tahoe, right before Reno Carson City, I should say, in Gardnerville. And I listened, and I held space.
And I have so much more awareness after this last winter in LA's fires, being very educated about the fires. I watched a bunch of the documentaries after the LA fires in February and March. It was very soothing to my grief and to the collective grief happening in Pacific Palisades and also in Altadena. And I thanked her for sharing it with me. And she was, you know, on she was in her car.
She got split with her husband. They had to stop collecting stuff in their two vehicle vehicles and had to just get out because propaneting started exploding. And she said it was just like you saw. She said that the documentary to watch is the one on Netflix, which is the one I had watched. And she got separated.
Her husband went down a different road. She was on the road below the hospital that she thought she was gonna die. That was just blocked and fire consumed with darkness and fire, and she thought she was gonna die there. And then she's just sitting here having breakfast with me, Linda, on Father's Day. Oh, I just passed a little fresh tiny spout of waterfall on my left.
Forerunner. I'm in Idaho, but that's for another day. Okay. Onward. Onward to day four.
Alright. So day four, I woke up in Lake Tahoe. I woke up early. I felt rested. I took a shower.
I cleaned all my body and all my hairs, and I worked, worked, worked. And I took my laptop at, like, 05:30AM to a Starbucks. That was the only thing that was open for coffee. It click click clicked away and worked as fast and efficient. So this is a little metaphor lesson on working remote and digital.
And in fact, I should do a little bit of mid to late summer about how I transitioned in my career. Oh, it's been fourteen years ago now from a traditional therapist to social worker sitting face to face with clients and totally moved my my practice online and learned a whole new career. And I have to tell you that what I'm looking at right now is just, like, so beautiful. I've seen so much beauty the last couple days. So I will do something like that very soon for you all.
Tell you a little bit more. Do a little limited series about how to go digital, how to change your career, some of the things I learned along the way. So part of what I do now is I seasonally batch things. And the digital marketing I do for a company of god, I've been with them for almost thirteen years. There's a certain rhythm and mostly it's predictable.
And so I'm able to kind of have these rhythms where I can batch my work and work extra, systems and processes in the months where I'm planted with the double screen system, usually in California, sometimes in New York side. And so I was able to work the last month or longer and really push through some major digital dilemmas, DDs, and set up a system to check-in every day, to check-in especially on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, via my laptop, and that's the system I'm in. So day four, Monday, I'm in Tahoe, and I need to push through. And so I noticed how distracted I initially felt because I was surrounded by this lake, Tahoe, and this huge mountain range that is a ski resort in the winter, and there was such beautiful mountain energy. And I wanted to just play.
And I thought, put your head down, put your headphones on, turn on some soft noise canceling helps. Soft music that focuses me, which which is either piano or gentle classical, sometimes just the noise canceling, ambient soundscape. And I got a bunch of things done, Push push push, packed up my car, and tuckered out and was going to do a long drive. And I packed up my car in Tahoe. Last thing to go onto the car from the hotel was my bike.
So I took a bike ride, went down to the South Beach next to the hotel, did a little movement, and got on the road and had to push through about seven hours of driving. And I took the three ninety five and stuck close to California knowing that I would eventually cross the border into Oregon, but didn't really know what I was going to come across. So fun. I got to travel down the mountain into the the side of Carson City and then over into Reno. I've never been to Reno, and it felt like a little mini Vegas.
So I definitely left the Mountain Lake lands to the desert, which is very familiar, and I needed to get a couple supplies. I really did need to get a footprint for my tent. I thought my new tent came with a footprint for the ground, and it did not. And it's sold separately. And so I went to an REI in Reno, and I ended up getting paid from an invoice, a chunk of cash.
And so it gave me some spending money, so I decided to buy a new little tent light that has colors and also some LED lights for my bike that I have with me minty green. And then I had to pull myself away from REI quickly. So I'm like, you don't need anything else. Put that down. Put that down.
Met someone who has the same tent system I have now, which is called the Base Camp. I have Base Camp 4. He has Base Camp 6. Was able to learn and asked him at REI. I love going to REI.
Becoming a member there was so great. I can use this tent and return it within a year, totally used, and they'll give me a refund and no questions ever asked. I've only returned a couple things, and it's such a great part of being a member of their coop. I love it. And he I didn't really know how to use my rainfly and tie down with the ropes and the gear, and so I was able to ask him, and he totally helped me and encouraged me to get some extra stakes.
Very inexpensive, but very handy in case you hit a rock underground and bend one. Nothing worse than being short stake or two. So I got my supplies. I got going and started climbing up the 395 North into California. And, eventually, I hit this little pocket where I suddenly noticed after several hours that everything was really green and gorgeous.
And the first thing I remember is Honey Lake. It looked like honey. The color was not blue or green, and I don't know if that's common out there. And then I moved into this town called Likely, and I was like, what a fun name. And then the landscape took this, like, height elevation of beauty and wildflowers and greenness, and, I mean, I was blown away.
And then I'm in this, like, remote road that's traveling along the 395 Goose Lake. And then I cross into the Oregon border, and I'm, like, blown away with what I'm witnessing. Nobody out there. Totally incredible lake. And then it goes into a bigger lake called Albert Lake.
And I'm like, what in the world am I witnessing out here? I felt so grateful. And then I just was in Oregon, and I kept traveling through these beautiful pockets and then started heading into these smaller towns. And the sun's going down, and I need to eat some dinner around 08:30 near my hotel in Burns, Oregon. The only thing open was this, like, lounge, bar, restaurant place, maybe, like, 3,000 population.
And the dining room was closed, and so they sent me asked if the the the bar was okay. And I said, sure. And so I sat at the bar, and once this one group of people left, all that was left was the counter full of, like, men. Like, straight men, it felt like, at the bar. And mind you, I did, you know, put on a hat, pulled my hair up, put on a cap, my new late June cap, because I'm used to code switching.
And when I'm solo and I'm not in a big city and I'm in more remote country, very masculine, I code switch into this persona of masculinity where I just keep quiet and don't give any indicators. It's something that helps me feel safe being a solo traveler and, you know, being in a environment in this country where fascism is on the rise and, you know, there's a lot of anti LGBTQ rhetoric again, especially starting trans, but it's tape it's trickling down. And we're having hamburgers, and I don't really look at anyone besides the server who's a male. There was a a female two female servers. So at some point, when I'm halfway through my burger, this woman comes up to the guy with two men on my left, and there were, like, six men on my right.
And I was not sitting directly next to someone. I was solo, and there was there were empty chairs. And she has a bucket, and she starts pulling out dildos and setting them to my left. Not setting, like, popping them down with their some dildos have suction cup bottoms, that and toys. One was a large hand.
Trigger warning content warning for, dildos. Most of them were in the shape of a penis. This one particularly large one was a whole arm from the elbow all the way to the fingers, a whole hand, you know, fist. And every all everyone just starts cracking up, and and they're just but it was this whole, like like, wave of, like, masculine, like, uncomfortable, let's make a joke. Like, we will we can't we could only be into this.
We have to say certain things, otherwise, we're gay. And I just was like, don't say a word. Don't linger with your looks. Don't look at anybody. Just pretend like you're just having a burger.
And there was about 10. And, apparently, there's this bucket of dildos that people leave behind for bachelor parties or, bachelorette party. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
And I just couldn't believe it, and I yet I did. I checked into this really great hotel. There's just a tiny little main street, and they had restored this old hotel. And it was a, you know, self check-in hotel. It was very cute, very big and spacious, and very nostalgic, very affordable.
I think they're building it up. It's a very small town. It was so interesting. This morning, I met some really nice people at the cafe on the corner below the space, and I am definitely in different territories of land. But, man, that landscape that I saw, again, if you go to my Instagram, Viral Mindfulness, you can view some of these.
I'm sharing reels over the next couple weeks, and, it's just gorgeous. I felt so lucky to be driving and taking the long scenic ways. And every which way I'm going are the scenic ways because I planned it this way, and I gave me plenty of space between accommodations so I could, you know, have days, a little bit of time off to exercise, to hike and bike and move, and then push through anywhere from five to seven hours. How beautiful. This planet is so gorgeous.
And not to mention that I'm headed towards one of the most gorgeous parks, Glacier National Park. So last night when I checked in at the hotel, there were there was there's so much space in this town. Like, the roads are wide. Nobody's walking around. It's 08:45, 9PM.
It's dark. Random cars will pass every so often. Most of the big huge trucks, dudes. I'm like, wait. Am I safe here?
And then I was like, well, maybe there's some hot, cute men here. I'm like, oh, maybe I should buy myself a little snack in Burns, Oregon. That was fun to notice a little bit of that fun spontaneous summer traveling new people energy. I actually haven't felt a spark like that in a long time. Hey.
I'm coming to you live from a different location in the future. I'll give you a clue. The word avalanche is part of the trail I'm on, not like I'm in avalanche danger. And you can hear it's raining, and the water rushing from above was at a lake. The water was gorgeous and clear and cold, but we'll get there soon.
I wanna do a pause here and give you this podcast episode. Day five is me traveling from Burns, Oregon all the way into Idaho to set up camp. The Sawtooth Mountains, Redfish Lake, my dad's home state. And so I'll be back in the next episode and really spend some time sharing my two nights under the sky, the star lit dark sky reserve. And I also have a couple of meditations for you following this episode, the sounds of water and nature.
So enjoy those practice and more coming from me towards you. Trail Talk, summer twenty twenty five.
