Days 141 to 145 - San Francisco and Stockton

I went in to San Francisco one weekend to visit Chris, a friend from college. Chris had recently taken a year off work to travel through Africa and Central and South America. Two other friends from college had also recently taken sabbaticals. Travel is cheap and time is short-- every one who can take time off for a "big trip" should.

Chris lives in the mission district. We walked to this park for charming views of SF.

We walked down to the docks and saw this acrobat performing for the crowd. He was very entertaining and represented the youthful expression of this new city.

We walked further along the bay to a park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Sublime.

I really enjoyed reminiscing with Chris and learning about the startup and tech scene in SF. The vibe here is young, energetic, future-optimistic, but you do get a feeling that the hotness of tech is fueled more and more by greed not by invention.

The next few days were spent playing with Anderson, Carrington and Grayson, but also finishing meal planning for the John Muir Trail, a 200-mile hike through the High Sierra mountains. Bobby Massengale, my best bud who I've known since kindergarten, is flying in to hike this 18 day trail with me, starting in late August. Bob ordered bulk dehydrated foods online for shipment to my sisters house, but they didn't arrive until one day before I had to leave her house, so I had to rush to divide out the ingredients and ration everything out into two buckets for shipment halfway along the trail. I finished the job at 230am and mailed the buckets off the next day. We wouldn't starve in the mountains.

Here is our food for the first seven days, overflowing the bear canisters.

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Day 104 - Glacier to Vancouver

The hike up Balu Pass was supposed to be fairly easy, beautiful and dotted with waterfalls, but when I talked to the park ranger and learned that Vancouver was an eight hour drive away, I decided to skip Balu and drive west. I left behind this pretty view. And drove many hours through pristine mountains, fewer and fewer snow-capped ones the further west I drove. Some of the valleys were flooded to make reservoirs, leaving scenic sights. I eventually made it to Vancouver and drove right on through to Point Roberts USA, a five mile by five mile coastal land just below the 49th parallel and thus in the USA. The park ranger had suggested this as a good place to camp but being late of the Thursday night before the Fourth of July there were no spots available. I drove around instead and stopped at a forested coastal park. After ten minutes of walking I came to my first grand Pacific view with Mount Baker 60 miles east. The San Juan Islands and Orca Islands could also b...

Day 122 - Mount Saint Helens

Mount Saint Helens is sinister and wonderful. I spent the morning at Rainier watching the end of the British Open on my phone, then drove south to Saint Helens. I arrived at the park's northeast entrance by early afternoon. A massive bulge of rock built up on the northeast side of the mountain before the 1980 eruption and then caused a tremendous landslide when the eruption started. I drove to the Windy Ridge at the end of the road, listened to a ranger describe before and after photos of the mountain, then hiked up to a high viewpoint. You can see the circular ridge with a notch missing where the landslide occurred, the desert-like exposed right-side where the landslide blew away life and covered 15 miles of terrain with 150 feet of dirt and rock, the greenery that was on the lucky side of the eruption, and Spirit Lake which was covered by dirt and slime and fallen trees for years. The mountain was over a thousand feet higher before it erupted. After taking in t...

Day 62 - Colorado National Monument

Established as a national monument early in 1911, Colorado NM is known for its high canyon "rim road" and sandstone spires of Monument Canyon. The canyons of west Colorado are pretty--as they have more green trees and shrubs than the more famous Utah canyons. This gives them a more alive feeling, although the sandstone spires were formed many thousands of years ago by erosion. Rim Rock road curves up the the top of the canyon cliff, goes through several round tunnels and is lined with scenic viewpoints. The best views were in he Monument Canyon section, and included in sequence, the Coke Ovens, The Kissing Couple (behind my head), and the most famous of all: Independence Monument, the tall spire in pic 3 and viewed from the side in pic 4. The original promoter and caretaker of the park, John Otto, was the first person to climb Independence Monument and now it's a climbing right of passage. Every July 4 climbers ascend and mount an American flag at the summit. Fun! ...

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