Baden Powell. Not the boy scout guy but a mountain named after the boy scout guy. The second highest mountain (after Mount Baldy) in the San Gabriels, not too far from Santa Clarita. Mount Baden Powell. THAT’s where it all began.  

So we’d decided that a camping trip in late September would be a great idea. After all, this is Southern California, the weather at this time of year is still temperate, verging on hot. The camping was preceded by an 8 mile hike up Mount Baden Powell, a grueling series of 40 switchbacks (seriously – that’s what it said in the hiking guide book and I audited it on the way up – yep, 40. And double checked on the way back down – still 40).

Our hiking conversations generally vary between travel = where are we going next. And food = what’s for lunch, what’s for dinner…. Today’s hiking chat took a turn in a slightly different direction – similar travel theme but building on our Alaska RV experience: what would it be like to actually have our own RV, instead of renting? Fun to talk about but something we’d been putting off until we’re retired. For now, we’d already graduated from camping in a tent to camping in the flat bed of our truck.

After our hike, we were lucky enough to bag the last spot at Blue Ridge campground. As the sun’s rays faded, we shivered in the cold mountain air and Darren got a campfire going. Hot as it had been during the day, the temperature dropped quickly as the sun went down and it was forecast to be not much above freezing overnight.

By the time we’d finished huddling by the fire, having troughed through our pasta, drunk through our beer/wine/hip flask supplies, and boiled 3 kettles to fill our hot water bottles, it was proper cold. It was around this time I realized we were a sleeping bag short. Count of sleeping bags: 1. Count of people needing sleeping bags: er… 2. Yep, some kind of packing error resulting in only one sleeping bag instead of two.  

At this point I graciously offered that we should take a sleeping liner each, huddle up, and drape the open sleeping bag over us both. Darren was insistent that instead, I should take the sleeping bag, and he would be fine with a couple of liners and hot water bottle. Cue a very uncomfortable night spent shivering, Darren thought he was going to get hypothermia, a never again type night.  

Come the morning, cursing and shivering trying to make coffee with gloves on, cue the questions: so why do we have to wait til we’re retired to get an RV? That seed had already been sown during our hike the previous day and festered in the freezing depths of night. And so it came to pass that we hotfooted it straight to the RV dealer, and an Airstream Basecamp was born!