Andrew Yeckel > Stories > When we were very young

Youth of a thousand summers

Here is the first picture I ever took of Lisa, on the sand north of Windansea in 1985. She didn't want me to take a picture, but I caught her by surprise. This is back when she was swimming and diving a lot, so her hair has that green tint.

In December, 1985, we visited Zion National Park. We borrowed a tent from Lisa's roommate, packed some groceries, and stopped on the way out of town for me to buy a decent sleeping bag. Here I am standing at the edge of a 500 foot cliff (but not too close!). It was a cold trip, and I remember we used newspapers to line the bottom of the tent for better insulation from the cold ground.

The following summer we visited Zion again. It was the second of seven trips we would make there. We were lucky to do it when this magnificent park was relatively uncrowded. The number of annual visitors has nearly tripled since then. Here are some places off the beaten track we found without another soul in sight.

          

We were poor. We owned only our sleeping bags and Lisa's truck. Everything else was borrowed or discarded by someone else, like the primitive gear Lisa is using in these pictures.

                   

We visited the Everglades in November 1986 when I attended my first engineering conference in Miami Beach. We had this cheap plastic tent that Lisa found in the trash. She rigged it with ponchos to cover some big holes in it.

In 1987 we purchased some of the best gear on the market. We outfitted ourselves with a new tent, stove, sleeping bags, and backpacks. Here is the tent, perched on one of our favorite spots on the central coast south of Big Sur.

Here we are inside the tent, playing Parcheesi by candle lantern while clothing hangs drying. The tent is a masterpiece of design. The sleeping arrangement is head to foot, maximizing utility of the small space. We each have our own door with vestibule to store a backpack within easy reach or shelter a cooking stove during a rain.

We are sporting our new backpacks in this picture taken at the start of a 1987 trip in the San Jacinto Mountains. I hiked a hundred miles in these mountains before I met Lisa, and we hiked another hundred there together.

Big Sur was another frequent haunt of ours. This is what a short walk after breakfast looks like there in wintertime.

Mexico road trip in 1987. Look at how perfectly we fit into the Sonora desert in this picture. It's uncanny.

The desert was always a favorite of ours. The next picture shows Anza Borrego, just two hours drive from our home in San Diego. We have been there too many times to count. It's a magical place, especially at nighttime when the stars and animals come out.

Our biggest adventure of 1987 was hiking the Zion Narrows, a special experience you can read about here.

These were bargain basement trips. Gas, groceries, and an occasional sawbuck to pitch our tent somewhere was all it cost. We were just getting started. Here is a list of parks and monuments we have visited.