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 82 - Yellowstone to Montana

My alarm sounded at 5:30am, a time early enough for me to arise before someone found me secretly camping. The geyser prediction said Grand at 6:15am so I set out toward it. I ran into geyser gazer Jim there and he said it likely erupted at 4:30-- missed it. Early morning eruptions are hard to predict as someone needed to have seen the previous overnight eruption in order to make a prediction. I walked on toward Artemesia, an unpredictable geyser at the far corner of the basin. I had seen her erupt from a mile away and wanted a closer inspection. The early morning setting was momentous, yet I didn't see a geyser erupt up close until Grand at 10:30. Then Sawmill erupted with its twirling thirty foot action (pic). The only remaining geyser left to experience on my mental list was Beehive up close. With a predicted window of 810 to 1210, I arrived at 1030 and waited until 1pm, before giving up. The sun was hot, I had read the geyser book cover to cover, and while seeing e...

Day 78 - Yellowstone Old Faithul Geysers

See Old Faithful, Grand, Lion and Beehive geysers erupt in 60 seconds: http://youtu.be/tv7BPXW4x5g This morning was one of the most exciting mornings of my trip. It started off when I decided to take a long solo hike through the geyser field, leaving at 630am. Mist was still covering this dense geyser field as I walked from geyser to hot spring (20% of the world's active geysers reside here in this one square mile area). Following a boardwalk, so not to get burned, I saw a man sitting on the boardwalk staring at an empty geyser hole. I asked him if he worked for the park service and he responded no-- he was an amateur geyser gazer-- he watched the geysers and recorded eruption times. He mentioned that we were quote "entering the window for Grand" -- geyser gazer speak for Grand geyser is about to go off. I walked a short ways to Grand and waited, one of a few at first and then one of a few dozen as a quick hour passed. The Geizer Gazer, Jim, instructed me on how to wa...

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...

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