At the beginning of July, nine Wimberley High School graduates set out on an ambitious journey to hike and camp in the major national parks of the western U. S. and Canada. Three of them – Aiden Dornak, Ivan Becken and Gavin Bock – recounted their travels for the Wimberley View.
In all, the nine grads traveled 8,100 miles through more than a dozen states. During the month they were on the road, they answered only to themselves, rose to unexpected challenges and experienced people, places and events they’ll never forget.
Making the trip were Aiden, Ivan and Gavin, along with Reid Leinneweber, Tison Sames, Brock Williams, Dorian Bishop, Christian Garcia and Cash Toomey. The travelers set out from Wimberley in three vehicles. Aiden and Ivan were in Aiden’s Toyota 4Runner, Dorian, Cash and Christian were in Cash’s Dodge Ram truck, and a quartet of friends, Gavin, Reid, Tison and Brock, were in the third vehicle.
“The planning for the trip was what I’d call semicollaborative,” said Gavin. “The guys with more travel experience from family vacations had more insight about where to go and how to get there than those whose experience was less.”
The day to set out finally arrived. One by one the travelers took to the road, keeping in touch with each other by phone. Their first destinations were the spectacular national parks of Utah – Arches, Zion, Canyon Lands and Bryce.
As the car with Gavin, Reid, Tison and Brock approached the Four Corners area where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet, it developed engine problems.
“The eighth piston stopped firing in our engine so we got stuck in Farmington, New Mexico for three nights,” Gavin said. “It’s not a place you want to get marooned. We stayed at a Travel Inn and on the morning that we left, the police were arresting a drug dealer who was also staying in our hotel.”
Aiden said, “We had a blowout on I-70 in my car. That was scary. We were listening to music and having fun, going 70 or 80 miles per hour. So we dug through the trunk and put the spare on at the side of the highway.”
“While Brock, Reid, Tison and Gavin were stranded in Farmington, Ivan and I met Jimmy, Johnny and Ricky,” said Aiden who elected to tell the story.
“We were camping on public land where we met the trio. It turns out Jimmy, Johnny and Ricky were working drifters and after hanging out for a while, one of them confessed that he was wanted in Texas for armed robbery. We fled soon after hearing that. Those guys were hilarious, though, and they got a kick out of us. They were our age and wild, and hadn’t gone to school in 10 years.
After hitting the road again, thanks to a loaner car that was driven to Farmington by a friend of Tison’s mother, the group met up in Arches National Park near Moab. While in the exquisite red rock dreamscape of sandstone arches, they hiked the challenging Fiery Furnace. The “Furnace” is an extensive natural maze of narrow ledges and gaps to be squeezed through and narrow crevasses to be climbed. The maze is so complex that anyone who hikes it, has to hike it out to the end.
“We totally got lost in Arches,” said Aiden. “To trek the Fiery Furnace, hikers are required to get permits and be led by a guide. But we didn’t and entered on our own. We thought we knew what we were doing, but we ended up going up in a big loop and had to backtrack some. By the time we found our way back to the cars, it was dark.”
After visiting the rest of the national parks in Utah, the entourage headed for California. Their first stop was Los Angeles.
“While I was filling the tank at the first gas station we stopped, a truck drove straight into the gas station,” Gavin said.
“I was taking in the scenery because I’d never been to California before. I was watching a lady with a weird anime mask wheeling a shopping cart when two seconds later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a F150 truck slam into the front of the gas station, driving nearly half of it straight through the brick wall.”
“It was very surreal and shocking. As soon as the driver crashed into the gas station, everyone just started going crazy, looting the store. We didn’t want to be a part of that, so we got out of there.”
“After our Los Angeles gas station experience,” said Ivan, “we drove by the Hollywood sign and headed to Santa Monica Beach. We hung out by the Santa Monica pier talking to people and taking in Muscle Beach.
“Ivan and I thought it’d be fun to go jump in the Pacific,” said Gavin. “So Ivan gets about 15 yards into the water and decides to dive in what turned out to be a foot of water. He had a solid, quarter- to a halfinch dent in the front of his head, gushing dark red blood. I was scared for him. I’m pretty sure he was concussed. I don’t know how he healed up as quickly as he did, but it only took him about a week or two.”
As the group left southern California they set their sights on destinations further north to Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon, Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite National Park and Tahoe.
“Sequoia is very interesting,” said Gavin. “To get up into the park, there’s an hour drive of crazy switchbacks. The scary part is that there’s not much of a shoulder. If you don’t see the curve coming, or you turn into it a little late, there’s a major drop off.”
The plan was for Ivan and Aiden to rendezvous with Reid, Tison, Brock and Gavin who arrived earlier and had secured a place to camp.
“We had a lot of trouble finding a campsite because it was so late and all the spots were taken,” said Ivan. “We were getting pretty nervous, after looking for them for over an hour.”
“We can’t find them because there’s no service. We decided to hang out with these Spanishspeaking guys and they made us street tacos at one in the morning. They were funny, saying things like ‘oh, the gringos, they want the tacos.’” “I couldn’t understand them,” said Aiden. “But they tried to teach us Spanish anyway.”
After everyone found each other, the next stop was Yosemite National Park. On the way they swam in Yuba City and took in Lake Tahoe. As they approached Yosemite, the group was readying themselves for their first backpacking trip at Mammoth Lakes.
On the approach to Mammoth Lakes. The group stayed at the walk-in campground at Mosquito Flats in the Inyo National Forest.
“It was weird, the Mosquito Flats campground was right off the parking lot,” said Gavin. “To get there we had to drive point-four miles, at what must have been a 45 degree angle. When we made it up to the top of the cliff, the environment was completely different. There wasn’t anything around us.”
When they arrived at Mammoth Lakes, they backpacked in.
“It was just beautiful,” said Aiden. “We saw crystal clear, ice cold lakes with mountains all around us and trees, and there wasn’t anyone else on the lake. It was really pretty.”
From Mammoth Lakes, the guys dug in for the long haul to Yosemite National Park.
After what seemed like along time on the road, the three cars rolled into Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately, the park proved to be extremely crowded so they implemented plans right away to push all the way to the Pacific Coast. Their destination was Redwood National Park.
“Redwood is located right on the Pacific coast in northernmost California, and it’s very eerie,” Aiden remembered. “The trees are covered in clouds and you can’t see more than 300 yards up the road. It’s a thick environment. It was chilly. It was unlike any place we’d seen on the trip. It was like you’d stumbled into an alien place.”
“It was mythical,” he continued. “Even though the individual trees in Sequoia were bigger and cooler, I think the Redwood forest was completely awe inspiring because there were so many of them. You could feel the connection with the trees.”
“You know,” Gavin added as Aiden spoke, “the sixth episode of Star Wars, “The Return of the Jedi,” was filmed in the Redwoods. They chose it because it looked like an alien planet, which they intended.”
“The forest was beautiful and the trails were completely cool,” Aiden continued. “You had to walk through a little tunnel to get to the Grove of the Titans which was gorgeous.”
As the groups walked the beaches in the area, Aiden was surprised to see how different they were.
“It was a shock for me to see the beaches on the Northern Pacific coasts,” he said. “I grew up going to beaches like Port O’Connor, Port Aransas and Corpus Christi, but those beaches had super fine black sand. The water was very cold and huge boulders stuck above the water.”
“Reid and I walked out and climbed up one of the huge boulders, and when the tide came in, we were stuck out there. Along the beaches, there were all sorts of tide pools.”
Part Two: Medford, Music and Canada
