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 161 - JMT Purple Lake and Tully Hole

We got our first glimpse of smoke far across the valley as we climbed higher. Up on a ridge after a morning climb, we followed a side trail to an open viewpoint beyond the trees. Selfie:) The smoke, while visible, seemed to give the mountains a blue glow-- like a highlighter to a sketch. You could still see the edges of the mountain ridges, the story of their creation. We could hike in this. But the smoke looked worse farther south. Or it was getting worse as time rolled incessantly forward. On day two we had ran into a northbound hiker we nicknamed Speedy Steve. Speedy Steve had hiked 18 miles a day through eight consecutive smoke-filled days, including atleast three "very bad days" when he couldn't see the surrounding mountains, the sun glowed a haunting orange and ash accumulated overnight. On the way to Purple Lake we ran into three dirty, beat up, tired north-bound hikers with a similar story. They had to spend one night in an emergency hut at Muir Pass to avoid the...

Day 48 - Canyonlands Island in the Sky Pt 2

Mountain biking the 100-mile 4x4 White Rim Road is said to be a great American adventure. But without any water, you need a follow truck to carry your water and gear, and reservations must be made three months in advance. So I just decided to hike down 1500 feet to the white rim and hike the road a bit. Steep, steep, steep was the descent down the Goosberry trail, but I reached the rim level in only 45 minutes! I hiked further down to the white rim road and then past to the very edge. Looking around for a possible path down to the river bottom 1000 feet below was a fun task, but a hard one as the "white rim rock" has a solid sheer 50-150 feet dropoff. I found one possible path down but a lone Nalgene bottle left down below the white rocks indicated an aborted attempt down. I continued to walk the rim for a few hours, finally climbing a small Mesa edge to enjoy the high view of the other side. After a brief respite, I walked back an hour along the Jeep 4x4 road to the G...

Day 41 - Escalante Coyote Gulch

This one or two night Coyote Gulch hike was an easy test of my newly learned navigation skills. Anxious to get started I awoke at 545 just as the sun was rising. I followed an obvious landmark, a tall thin spire called Chimney Rock, northwest to Hurricane Wash (a drainage running into Coyote Gulch). After a couple of hours of walking up over and around slick rock, I entered the famous Coyote Gulch. The walls around me raised up, darkened and th water flow increased--like nature hinting at the scenic beauty ahead. The normally crowded Coyote Gulch was fairly empty on this early Thursday morning, giving the canyon a very peaceful and quiet feeling-- fragile almost. Down steam, I ran into the famous Jacob Hamilton Arch and then thirty minutes further-- the Coyote Natural Birdge. Both were beautiful due to their see through the wall character, but both would be overshadowed in my memory by the Stevens Arch tomorrow. Pics. By 1pm, I had hiked for six hours...

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