Episode 40 - WROLC! ⛰️
A blindfolded tent, so many geocaches, and a fun weekend in Sacramento :)
There are many wonderful acronyms: LOL, YOLO, ASAP, PIN, and my personal favorite, CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, obviously).
But let me introduce you to the greatest one of them all: WROLC!
The Western Regional Outdoor Leadership Conference!
Amazing! Fireworks go off! The crowd goes wild!
So what’s WROLC? Well, I’m glad you asked.
WROLC is an annual weekend-long conference where the outdoor programs at different West Coast schools meet up to share stories, lessons, and best practices in the outdoor world.
In a tremendous stroke of luck, I was invited to go as a student trip leader for the Excursion Club, and off I went! What followed was a tremendously fun weekend with 6 other UCLA students, full of so much laughter, fun, and hilarious jokes.
Let’s go!
Friday, January 17th, 2025
Since WROLC was in Sacramento and UCLA is in LA, we had the interesting situation of needing to drive a school van 400 miles up the I-5 to get from UCLA to Sacramento.
Fortunately for me, I was chilling in Antioch with my roommates (LA wildfire self-evacuation, anyone?), so I had the much smaller distance to travel from Antioch —> Sacramento. Now that is doable!
Emilia (another student going to WROLC from UCLA) was spending the week at home in Oakland, so she picked me up at 1 pm on the way to Sacramento. We had a lovely drive up to Sacramento, saw lots of wildlife along the Delta, chatted about the different outdoor clubs at UCLA (she’s a trip leader for the backpacking club, me for Excursions), and I learned that she trains guide dogs. That’s so cool!
The funniest part about Emilia was that being from Oakland, she is a proud East Bay resident. As a result, every time I mentioned that Antioch was also in the East Bay, she got quite flustered and denounced Antioch’s self-proclaimed status as a proud East Bay city.
What can I say, though? The yellow line of BART goes straight to Antioch. Case closed.
Emilia and I made our way to the Sacramento airport, where Anna (another WROLC participant) had flown in from Phoenix. We picked her up, then headed to the conference campground to check in for the UCLA contingent.
Turns out, Anna had a CRAZY night out in Arizona: her Illinois ID was taken at a bar (the bouncer thought it was a fake, which it wasn’t; Illinois IDs are super thin and flimsy), her friend called the police to get the ID back, and that friend was subsequently jailed for calling 911 for a fake emergency. Anna slept outside the jail waiting to pick up her friend, got through TSA without her ID (which I didn’t even know you could do), and barely made it onto the plane.
All I did the night before was watch Pirates of the Caribbean with my family. What a lovely time!
For lunch, our group headed to the delicious Panda Express. I ordered online, put the directions into Emilia’s phone, and we were there in no time at all. I asked for food, and it was nowhere to be found.
Turns out, I put in the directions for the wrong Panda Express, so there was nothing left to do except put in the new directions and drive over. Bruh moment. 🤦♂️
Once we ate lunch at the correct Panda Express, our Three-Musketeers car of myself, Emilia, and Anna drove over to the check-in area, registered our group, and parked at the campsite. By then, the UCLA van (which had left at 8 am from Westwood) had arrived at the campsite, so we joyously rejoined as one whole group and headed over to the opening ceremony right as the sun was setting.
The highlight of the opening ceremony was the team-building activity, where random groups of 3 were tasked with rebuilding a complex Lego structure from memory. Only one person saw the example, and had to describe the structure to their teammates without building it themselves.
My groupmates were Noble and Noel (super easy to remember their similar-sounding names, also HI NOEL, thanks for subscribing!!!), and we worked SO well together! I was the memorizer, and it was so fun conveying the instructions to my team. When all was said and done, we won 2nd place, with Brooke’s team coming out on top. What a tremendous time!
After the team-building activity, our UCLA contingent headed back to the van and drove over to Brooke’s house in nearby Rocklin for dinner. Dinner was some DELICIOUS pesto pasta, and we had a lovely conversation about mega-churches and religion (turns out, Jess performed in a lot of mega-church choirs as a kid lol, and it’s quite competitive to get on!). After chatting for a long while, we finally packed up and headed back to our campsite for the night.
At this point, a WROLC-wide campfire was happening, where the different schools had campfires at their sites and invited the other participants to join. Our UCLA group wandered around the different campsites (sampling some gnocchi along the way), then arrived at the main campfire to make some banana boats, the GREATEST camping dessert ever.
Basically, you get a banana, put in some marshmallows and chocolate, wrap it in tinfoil, put it in the campfire coals, and then eat the delicious melty goodness a few minutes later.
And OH MY, were they yum! I love banana boats so much! Jess and I talked about the Russian language, then Brooke and I departed to go for an amazing evening stroll along the regional trail nearby.
3 miles later, we made it back to the campsite, where we all brushed our teeth and played a few games of Egyptian War. I won them all (nice!), we made a ton of funny jokes, and we all learned that Tallis (a UCLA freshman) works for UCLA Parking. If I ever need someone to park my car, he’s the first person I’m calling.
What an amazing first day. :)
Saturday, January 18th
We woke up bright and early at 7 am (!!) for a long day of exciting, fun, and ENGAGING conferences. We got ready in the freezing morning (it was so cold, omg), brushed our teeth, waited in the chilly line for the bathroom, and by 7:30 am, we were all packed into the van and off on our adventure.
Our first stop of the day was breakfast at the lovely Coffee Republic, located right next to Brooke’s Fleet Feet store where she worked a few years ago. The coffee was delicious, the bagel sandwich was yummy, and the almond croissant was ok. After studying abroad in Paris, I have a VERY high standard for French pastries!
While we were munching, the owner came out and started talking to us, and apparently, thought we were a rowing team! We were all quite shocked about this, and had a good laugh about it.
Meanwhile, I noticed that all around the coffee shop were some flyers for a chess game night that happened every Tuesday evening, so I asked the owner (imma just call him Bob at this point) if he had a set of pieces we could use.
Lo and behold, he did! Ryan and I borrowed the set, headed outside to the tables there (they had a chess set built into the top), and began our game.
BUT THEN! Bob came out and turned out the heated lamp, and our great game became not just great, but magical.
The game started off as a disaster for me, with a poor queenside castle early on securing my defeat. But at the last second, Ryan blundered off a queen trade, I won a few pawns, and I somehow squeaked out a resignation from my opponent. Quite the momentous breakfast!
After breakfast, we all packed back into the van (we were getting really good at this by then) and headed over to the Sac State campus, where all the day’s events were taking place. We arrived in high spirits and right on time, and our entire van group strolled over to the main student union building, hooting and hollering the entire way.
The way that WROLC worked was that throughout the day, participants from the different schools presented workshops on different aspects of outdoor leadership, with the goal of spreading wisdom through the California campuses. Around lunchtime, there was also an exposition event, where different companies and recreation agencies advertised their internship and career programs to the students. Nice!
Brooke was leading the very first workshop of the day (epic!) about leading and facilitating activities in the outdoors (having worked at the UCLA Challenge Course and in the gear center for a year, she was quite the expert on the subject). Our first activity was to toss an orange around the group for introductions, then recreate the order of this tossing as quickly as possible.
Orange throwing at 9 am? Yes, please!
AND THEN!
6 participants volunteered for the next activity, and were subsequently blindfolded. The rest of the group (there were ~15 of us, including me) were tasked with directing the blindfolded folks to set up a tent and climb into it, all without using tent-specific terminology. Therefore, poles became “elastic stick thingies”, a tent became a “waterproof portable house”, and the rainfly was a “magic water protecting sheet”.
This was so unexpectedly fun, and the non-blindfolded folks were laughing so much. Ryan and I had a tremendous time joking with Anna’s directions (“run straight ahead!”), and Ryan hilariously was directing a girl into the tent by snapping in her face and telling her to follow the sound.
Which I must say, worked perfectly! All 6 made it into the tent with uproarious applause and lots of high-fives.
After the tent-setting-up festivities, our group headed over to the Well (Sac State’s state-of-the-art gym facility) for a workshop on adaptive climbing. I wasn’t too interested in the workshop, so I decided to dip and explore the entire building.
And my oh my, it was SO cool! It was by far the most modern gym I’ve ever been to, and I was honestly blown away by how nice it was. Brand new equipment, huge racquetball and basketball facilities, a full indoor track, it was crazy. I scored some imaginary goals in the indoor soccer facility, then headed back to meet up with the UCLA folks.
By the time I was done, a few other folks in our group were ready to dip from the workshop, too, so we decided to leave and go geocaching instead.
Turns out, there were 7 (!!) geocaches on Sac State’s campus, and several in our group had never been geocaching before! Brooke had found some with me before, but Ryan had never even heard of the activity and decided to tag along. We 3 ventured out of the Well, and proceeded to find 3 different geocaches on campus. They were the first ones logged for Brooke and Ryan, who both made geocaching accounts to log them online. It was such a fun time, and the stroll we had around campus was amazing, too. Check out the video of us geocaching here!
The best part was when we walked across the American River to the American River Parkway, a ~40-mile bike path that goes from Sacramento to Folsom Lake Dam. Man, what I’d give for UCLA to have such nice trail infrastructure near campus!
Geocaching made us quite hungry, so our group met up with the rest of the UCLA contingent to get lunch. We packed back into the van, headed into Sac, and got some more delicious Panda Express.
I really love Panda Express!
Ryan and I got some food to go, then we all drove over to Dos Coyotes (a Mexican restaurant) for the rest of the group to get lunch there. Brooke was a huge fan of their homemade salsa, and I verified that it was, in fact, super yum.
The highlight of the lunch was asking Tallis a bunch more questions about his job at UCLA Parking (he parks cars at the UCLA Hospital). Turns out, he gets to actually drive some pretty cool ones for the guests, and gets an awesome UCLA Parking beanie.
So awesome, in fact, that I realized I needed one of these beanies really badly. But that’s beside the point.
After lunch, Brooke and I went to the main expo, where different outdoor groups and companies were recruiting WROLC attendees for their programs. I wasn’t too interested in any of the programs, but I was really interested in all the free merch. That chapstick was truly amazing.
By this point, it was around 2:30 pm, and time for my very own WROLC presentation. I had applied a few months ago to lead a workshop, and decided to do one about planting. I came up with the clever title, “Grow your Happiness through Planting” (which I was very proud of), bought the little pots and tomato seeds from Home Depot, and was all good to go.
Surprisingly, 25 people showed up! I honestly thought it’d just be the UCLA contingent that’d pull up, but a lot of folks were there, ready to learn about gardening.
I started off my presentation the way anyone would: by shotgunning a Redbull. Someone had to get the crowd hyped and excited, and it seemed that responsibility was put on my shoulders.
And bear that responsibility, I did!
After downing the Redbull in record time, I began sharing some personal anecdotes about planting (specifically how I grew Carolina Reapers in my freshman dorm room), talked about plants and how they grow, and fielded a ton of great questions from the audience. It was honestly such a fun time chatting up there, especially since everyone was genuinely engaged and excited to learn.
Once I was done presenting, we got in a line and planted some cherry tomatoes. Everyone got a super cute pot from Home Depot, dirt from my backyard, and a few seeds from the bag. What a lovely time. :) 🍅
Funny enough, when my workshop ended, there was still another half-hour until the next one started. This meant only one thing: more geocaching!
The squad departed my workshop space, and we were off. We headed over to the geocache’s locations and found a few more cleverly hidden ones, including one that was a fake pipe.
The best part for me was seeing how excited Ryan was about geocaching — despite just learning about it today, he loved it so much and told me how excited he is to find more back home. What a joy it is to spread the geocaching gospel.
After our second foray into geocaching, we headed back to the student union building for Jess’s presentation about through-hiking. It was in a big conference room, and it was PACKED! Ryan and I sat right in the second row, the announcer came out to present Jess to us, and it was the greatest introduction of all time. In it, the announcer told us that Jess had:
Through-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail
Completed the Salt-to-Summit challenge
Graduating from UCLA this spring
Was overall just a certified legend
It was actually the most epic intro of all time, and Ryan and I were so hyped in that second row. So much so, that when I peeled the orange I got at lunch, the juice sprayed all over myself and the random girl sitting next to me.
Then, Jess pulled up to the stage, fireworks exploded, cheers rang out, cats meowed, it was such a great time! Jess gave us a banger presentation, and our UCLA contingent went crazy.
Naturally, we decided to celebrate the epic performance by finding more geocaches. We had three left to find on the north side of campus, and by this point, we were pros! We’d get to the GZ (geocaching zone, or the general area of the hide), and within 10 seconds, the cache would be in someone’s hand.
We were so good at geocaching, in fact, that we had to invent new ways to entertain ourselves. When Tallis found a geocache with a wet log, Jess bet him he wouldn’t lick it. He asked for $10, Jess countered with $8, and they had themselves a deal!
One lick later, Tallis was $8 richer and I was significantly more impressed by his guts. You have to love the freshman antics.
Having found all the geocaches on the Sac State campus, our victorious group hustled back to the main student union building for dinner. The dinner was some more yummy pasta (I’ve been eating so well at WROLC, wow), and then it was time for the keynote presentation. We were all really excited about the presenter because he founded a successful movement to get more Latinos into the outdoors, but unfortunately, he barely touched on his work there at all.
Eventually, the keynote ended, and it was time for the much-anticipated final raffle of the day. For every presentation that you went to, you were given raffle tickets, and the prizes ranged from a variety of outdoor gear, to bird books and water bottles.
Tallis and I were really hoping to win, and we spread out our many tickets all over the table, ready to seize our prize when our numbers were called.
We never did get called, but Emilia did win! By that point, though, the only prize left for her to choose was one of 12 identical propane canisters, which I thought was pretty hilarious.
The tremendously ironic thing about me laughing about it was that immediately after, my own ticket was called and I won one, too.
So now I was left with a propane canister myself, which actually ended up being a pretty cool souvenir.
After the dinner, we had some time to kill before we went back to our campsite, so Tallis, Ryan, Jess, and I had to figure out how to entertain ourselves.
We ended up inventing a TREMENDOUSLY exciting game — office chair tag! Each of us sat in a wheeled office chair, and we had to stay seated while pushing the chair around, tagging each other, and avoiding crashing into the walls.
It was such a quad exercise, and the most fun I had all day. Check out the videos here, here, and here!
We eventually made it back to the van and eventually, the campsite. We all packed into one tent to escape the cold (nicknamed “Brooke’s Sausage Emporium”), drank the ciders we bought on the way back, and played a lot of Egyptian War. The best part was when I randomly said, “Someone slap that”, Tallis blinded slapped, and burned his last card. Good times!
Sunday, January 19th
I woke up at around 8:30 am to the sounds of our camp getting packed up. I managed to sleep in somewhat, and learned that half of our group woke up at sunrise to swim in Folsom Lake. Now that’s dedication!
Tallis and I went to brush our teeth, but the line for the bathroom was around a dozen people long. We headed up the hill to find another bathroom with no line and eventually found one. I went first and waited for Tallis, then decided I wanted to be super dramatic when he walked out. I heard the door unlocking in one of the bathrooms, so I stood up, started loudly clapping, and cheered, “Great job, Tallis!”
So imagine my embarrassment when a random Asian dad walks out with his kid, confused as to why I’m there. Bruh moment (again) 🤦♂️
Once I got over my embarrassment there, Tallis and I walked back to the campsite (seeing a cool mushroom along the way!) for the last presentation of the day. This one was a bird-watching class, and Brooke’s dad and sister came by to participate!
Brooke had often told me about how much her dad loves birding, so I was super excited to see him in his natural habitat. And let me tell you, I was IMPRESSED! We’d hear a bird call, and he’d proceed to point to it in the tree and give you its exact name, flight patterns, mating habits, and seasonal migration habitats. I was so blown away!
After the birding workshop, I chatted a bit more with Brooke’s dad (especially about the amazing Sibley birding guide), then said my goodbyes to pack up the campsite and do a final check. There, we saw the students from CSUN (Cal State Northridge), one of whom called me a Junípero Serra apologist (lol), was from San Bruno (a fellow yellow BART line resident), and subscribed to this blog (hey!). This drew the interest of the other CSUN folks, who seemed curious as to why I had a blog. They ended up subscribing, too. What a funny interaction.
Once we said our goodbyes, the UCLA contingent packed back into our beloved van, said goodbye to our lovely campsite, and drove to a DELICIOUS creperie for breakfast. The coffee was delicious, the food was insanely good, the chef was amazing (turns out he was the head pastry chef at Caeser’s Palace in Vegas!), and Tallis’s portion was humongous.
We had such a lovely time at breakfast and spent a good 30 minutes there just chatting. Once we were all done, we packed back into the van, and sadly said goodbye to Emilia. She was driving back to Oakland to fly back to UCLA, and was passing back through Antioch in the process (which I’d like to reiterate is in East Bay).
Once we said bye to her, we were off to UCLA! Driving went smoothly, with a few stops for gas and food (and geocaching at the stops when possible). On the drive, we got 13 semi-trucks to honk at us (by making a honking signal with our arms when driving by), and every single driver broke into such a huge smile when we did this! So so sweet :)
The best stop on the way back was, of course, the In-n-Out at Wheeler Ridge. How could anything beat In-n-Out? We packed 6 of us into one booth, dramatically cheered when our food order was called, and all made it back to UCLA in one piece.
What an amazing trip, and what a lovely time at WROLC. To all those who made it such a fun time, thanks so much!
Best,
Dennis :)
Some more pictures (shoutout Jess for the professional shot beauties 💪):
If the BART goes to, it’s in the Bay. Everyone knows that!
Hi Dennis, I read your whole blog (I've never read a blog before). I'm the guy you referred to as the San Pedro resident and I am here to correct that. I'm actually from SAN BRUNO (AKA the best yellow line city). Good read, thank you for posting!
-Dale