By Nate Beaudoin

One of my favorite memories with Richie was our road trip all throughout California with Richie, my brother Nick, and I. We hit 5 different locations, driving many hours and many miles all through the state. We started at Nick’s house just south of LA.

Our original first stop was to be Lake Tahoe, but it was too far a drive so we decided to make a one night stay in Monterey, CA, 9 hours north of our starting point. The scenery was absolutely amazing on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), but the pictures do not do it justice. We left pretty early, so we got there in time for dinner. We ate at this nice restaurant right on the water, where we happened to catch a glimpse of some seals hanging out on a dock. We couchsurfed that night and headed out early in the morning to get to Lake Tahoe, which I believe ended up being our favorite spot on the trip.

Seals on the dock

Nice views on PCH

Richie feeding a cheeto to a hungry squirrel

The second stop was Lake Tahoe. The lake is absolutely beautiful and the water is crystal clear, as well as freezing cold considering it is glacial runoff. We camped here for 2 nights, but we all agreed that we could have spent the entire trip here because it was so amazing. One of the best parts about this area were the hiking trips we took. We just walked from the campground, had no idea where we were going, and managed to find our way back. My favorite memory of Richie from this stop was when he thought he could swim about 100 yards out to a buoy and back. He hadn’t touched the water yet, so he had no idea how cold it really was. Nick and I had mentioned how cold it was, but Richie thought he was a big tough guy so he wanted to bet us $50 that he could swim to the buoy and back. I said, “Ya know what Red? I’ll give you $100 if you make it there and back and you don’t have to give me anything if you don’t.” That’s how sure I was that he had absolutely no chance of making it. So he says fine, then runs and jumps into the water. He took all of 3 swim strokes out towards the buoy before turning back and sprinting back to the beach and wrapping himself in a towel. We said “Jeez you almost had it!” and continued to pick fun at him the rest of the trip about it.

Lake Tahoe from above

Beach at the camp

Nick and Richie on a hike

Nice quiet little pond we found

The third stop was Mammoth Mountain. We took the wrong road and somehow ended up on the entire wrong side of the mountain from where we had booked our campsite. This added like 3 hours to the trip, but finally we made it. This was, once again, another nice area with plenty of lakes and streams around. The nights were chilly (28-35 degrees) and very windy up on the mountain. We stayed at about 6,000 feet of elevation. We were totally unaware of how cold it would be at night during mid-June. We had just assumed it would be warm because it was California. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have been more wrong. Luckily we had stopped at a liquor store before arriving and had plenty of beer to keep us warm. The fire helped, too. There was a lake right near the campsite and my favorite memory of Richie from this location was at the lake. We grabbed our fishing rods and headed over. He caught a nice sized trout on his FIRST cast, which is unheard of. We were all so excited and continued to fish, eventually catching 3, one for each of us. We ended up having trout for dinner, cooked over the fire, with some spices and tin foil we used from a helpful neighbor at a nearby campsite. We stayed here 2 nights, hiking during the day and trying to stay warm by the fire at night.

Richie’s fish

Mammoth Mountain

Richie fishing

Our campsite

The fourth stop on the trip was Sequoia National Park. The drive there was quite eventful, as we were nearly out of gas when we entered the park, thinking our campsite and a gas station would be nearby. Turns out, the campsite was another 20 miles after entering the campground and the closest gas station was after the campsite. Nicks Hyundai Elantra stated that it had about 30 miles left until empty. However, the road to the site was very windy and slow, so the mile gauge was ticking down faster than the amount of miles we were actually going. We eventually made it to the gas station and back to the campground with a full tank. The best part of Sequoia was seeing those giant Sequoia trees. It is unfathomable to understand how big they are without actually seeing them in person. We hiked through the forest until we finally arrived at General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume. It is about 52,500 cubic feet and is over 2,000 years old. It was crazy to think that we were standing next to something that was around in the B.C. times. Once again, we camped here for 2 nights and moved on to our final destination, Joshua Tree National Park.

Entrance

Richie and I next to two giants

Path cut into a massive fallen tree

In front of General Sherman

The fifth and final stop of this amazing journey was at Joshua Tree National Park. After all the lakes and forests we saw for the first 90% of this trip, it felt like we were on a totally different planet when we arrived at Joshua Tree. This was in the southeastern part of the state. It is due east of LA and three hours southwest of Vegas, in the desert. It was a nice change of pace from the rest of the trip. Instead of waking up freezing with the morning light, we were awoken that first morning as soon as the sun climbed above the rocks. The sun hit the tent at about 6:30 and started to slow roast us until we got up. There is no sleeping in, in the desert. After the sun ‘wake and baked’ us, we got up and decided to do the same (hey, it was legal in CA at that time). After a quick breakfast, we decided to explore and go rock climbing right at the campsite (the campsite was called Jumbo Rocks, after all). What else is there to do at 7:30 in the morning in the middle of the desert? We spent a couple hours rock climbing until we couldn’t climb anymore. We spent another 2 nights here and then headed home in the morning.

Campsite from the top of the rocks

Campsite from another view

Amazing desert sunset

Our campsite

This wraps up some of the best memories of my life with Richie and Nick. We had so much fun and I left out a ton of other memories from the trip to try and keep it concise. After the trip was over, we were all itching to do another trip. Although it never happened again with the three of us, Richie and I were able to go on plenty of other journeys together. I miss you bud.