Kimbal & Becca

Ultrasound: say hello to little Baby Hall

2008-10-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

Today Kimbal and I went in for our first ultrasound. I'm officially in my 2nd trimester, and our little one decided to say HI for the camera. It was super exciting! Enjoy the pictures!

Glacier from the East

2007-08-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

The Going To the Sun Road is the only road that crosses the park from west to east, so we spent the rest of our time in Glacier on the east side of the park. The road itself is pretty amazing considering they essentially carved it out if the side of the mountain; and the scenery is breathtaking.

At this point we were growing weary of camping so much since our sleeping bags were pretty gross, the tent was feeling really small, and a soft bed and shower sounded really good. With all this in mind, and without a reservation in the height of tourist season, we headed to the Many Glacier area (the name growing more awkward every year…) and pulled up to the Many Glacier Lodge. Our good luck held, and we got the last room available for the night.

The lodge was on the east shore of a small lake with craggy, snow-covered peaks in the background, behind which the sun sets. We settled into our room, cleaned up, ate dinner, and still had an hour before the boat rental place closed, so we decided to go for a romantic row around the lake.

The next morning we tried to check out of the hotel, only to find that none of our credit cards were working. With visions of spending the rest of our vacation doing dishes to cover the bill in my head, we made a phone call and fortunately got bailed out. A special thank you goes out to our hero of the day.

We still only had about $30 in cash between us, and thankfully, we had a full tank of gas. We made a couple more calls to figure out what the problem could be. Was there a bill we didn’t pay, and our creditors had frozen our account? Had we been marked as possible terrorists, and they froze our accounts before we skipped the country and fled across the border into Canada? (We have after all made financial contributions lately to such dubious organizations as the Sierra Club, NPR, and our local firefighters) We didn’t have a clue what it could possibly be.

So instead of worrying what the problem was, we went for a 10-mile roundtrip hike up to Iceberg Lake. There had been reports of a grizzly in the area, so we were extra vigilant about letting the bears know we were in the area. Becca wasn’t feeling particularly vocal that day, so the gravely serious responsibility fell on my shoulders, and I serenaded Becca, any bears in the area, and more than a few hikers we passed with little the little snippets of songs that I could remember, making up lyrics when my memory failed me, and singing completely off key. The ranger we spoke to said that the bears especially hate ABBA, but (un)fortunately I haven’t listened to any of their songs enough to remember more than a few words.

So we made our way to Iceberg Lake, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would name the place thusly. Fortunately, I had Becca there, and she explained to me that it was named after the not-so-well-known explorer Johann Iceberg.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the credit card thing just turned out to be a simple paperwork error with our change of address form, and was all straightened out within a day. Phew, we were back in business.

That night, after we were assured the money would be turned back on the next morning, we wrote a check to cover the campsite at the Two Medicine area of the park. We were informed when we showed up that half the campground would be closed because of a “bear re-education program” they had going on that night. There had been a bear that was visiting every night for the past week cleaning up after messy campers, and though there hadn’t been any problems, they wanted to ensure that there wouldn’t be any problems in the future. To do so, they set up a bear trap which consisted of a big cylinder that was closed off on one end, had an open trap door on the other end, and a tasty piece of road kill for the bear inside. Once the bear goes for the road kill, the trap door keeps the bear inside until they pick up the bear the next morning, and deposit it to an area of the park not so infested with people. We asked the rangers if the bear was going to wake us up in the middle of the night screaming and yelling about being caught, but apparently they are just happy to have some food, and they just quietly chow down until their ride comes. We never found out what happened, but we got the impression that nothing much happened.

Again, we had hiked the previous day and not showered, and stayed in the tent, and I was feeling especially dirty and daffy, so I snapped a couple of pictures that I think show how we felt quite nicely.

After I pulled myself together, we packed up, and headed to the great white north, passing a cool little feature called “trick falls” on the way.

The park formerly known as Glacier

2007-07-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

After Yellowstone Kimbal and I headed northwest towards our last national park of the trip: Glacier National Park. Yellowstone to Glacier is a pretty long drive, so we made a one night stop over in Missoula, Mt. In Missoula we found a really nice coffee/tea/wine café where we parked ourselves for a day and did some serious blog updating and Kimbal did some more job search type stuff. Other than the café, we weren’t too impressed with Missoula. It could have been the heat wave though; the high temperature in Missoula ranged from 97 to 107 while we were there. So when we were done internetting, we got some groceries and quickly left town for Glacier.

We arrived in Glacier on Sunday evening and found ourselves a nice campsite at the Avalanche Campground. After we finished dinner we headed over to the campground amphitheater for our first ranger talk of the trip. This program was about bears in the park. Since Glacier has the highest concentration of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, I wanted to learn a bit about them before I set out on the hiking trails. The talk was pretty interesting and the ranger even had us singing campfire songs. The rangers advice for hiking was to make lots of noise, so you don’t surprise any bears. Also, Glacier is pretty good about bear management, and if too many bear sightings happen on one trail, they will close that trail. For example, a grizzly bear had been false-charging people on one particular trail the week before, so that trail was closed while we were in the park. We were loud hikers while we were in the park and didn’t see a single bear. (I was a little disappointed. I didn’t want to see one up close—that would be scary, but seeing one across a meadow, or something, would have been neat.)

(Kimbal writing now)

On our first full day in the park we did the “loop hike”, which is actually an 11.6 mile one way shuttle hike. The hike started at elevation 4,500 ft in an area that burned a few years ago in a forest fire, and then progressed up to an alpine environment over elevation 6,000 ft. It started out at a balmy 80 degrees, but as we climbed it quickly cooled off to the lower 50s and windy, and we found ourselves a little underdressed.

We were promised by the ranger that we spoke with that the bighorn sheep and mountain goats would be waiting for us up there, and after hiking the first 7 miles of no wildlife other than an overly friendly marmot we were starting to wonder.

The rangers were right though, and we found a bighorn sheep about 150-ft off the trail nonchalantly munching on some grass muttering to itself “dumb tourists, staring at me while I’m eating my lunch, why don’t they go stare at the mountain goats instead”.

So we did. A little farther down the trail we came across a mother goat with her kid which hardly seemed to notice we were standing less than 30-ft away. We didn’t want to get too close to the animals, and they were standing right on the trail, so we walked up and around and continued on our way. All in all, a great hike.

The next morning we took a stroll up to Avalanche Lake from our campground to start the day.

We left the campsite and headed to the east side of the park via the Going to the Sun Road, and stopped at Logan Pass again and went up to the hidden lake overlook. It’s a mile and a half each way up a hill, and it looked pretty tame from the ranger station so I decided to wear my flip flops. Once we got over the first hill, we discovered the trail wasn’t quite as tame as we thought as it was covered in snow. We continued on anyway, and I gingerly made my way over the snow. The lake was beautiful, and well worth the slippery trip.

Yellowstone

2007-07-08T11:00:00.001-07:00

Taking the short drive north from the Tetons, we came to Yellowstone – the Official Favorite National Park of Becca Hall. Not long after arriving we encountered the ubiquitous Buffalo (Latin alias – Bison Bison).

After driving around some we decided to stay at the Indian Creek campground, apparent fly capital of the park. The flies decided that the park was much too nice for us to just hang around the campground all day, so they did their best to encourage us to leave. We obliged and headed down to Firehole Canyon where there is a nice little geothermally heated swimming hole in the river, and we played in the water for an hour or two. After we partook of some rather expensive showers at the Old Faithful Lodge, and had a nice picnic dinner by the side of a river. Quite nice.

The next morning, we went for a hike that was supposed to be teeming with wildlife, but alas there was none. We cut that hike a little short and headed over to Artists Point for some great views of Lower Yellowstone Falls.

About the time we were done anyway, a storm came rolling in, so we took some more showers (twice in two days!!) and did some laundry while it was merrily raining, and thundering away outside. Since it was still storming when we were done, we went to diner and while we were at the salad bar we were treated to a huge lightning strike about 100 yards away (that’s how far you’re supposed to stay away from bears in the park also).

We finished dinner about the same time as the lightning storm ended, and headed to the northeastern corner of the park for some wildlife watching around sunset. We went almost all the way out to the park entrance, seeing antelope, elk and bison along the way. All very cool, but nothing we hadn’t seen plenty of the past few days.

On the way back, we stopped at a relatively uninhabited pullout on the side of the road, and found a ranger setting up his scope to look at the hill in front of us. A couple more cars pulled in right after us, and there was one silver haired gentleman that caused Becca to do a double-take. After taking the binoculars from me for a closer inspection (he was only about 100-ft away) she confirmed that the gentleman was indeed Anderson Cooper. After some deliberation, we decided it was best to admire him from a distance, and instead to talk to the ranger, who was very helpful. He told us that yes, he was Mr. Cooper, and they were doing a story about wolves in the park, which they expected to come over the hill at any moment. He showed us a grizzly bear in his scope on the hillside he had found, and when the wolves showed up, he showed us those as well.

Around that time, Mr. Anderson Cooper, the ranger he was interviewing, and 2 cameramen headed over towards where the wolves were to get a better shot for the interview, with Anderson carrying his own equipment. That’s him in blue, second from the left with the incredibly shiny hair (although you can't see it in the picture).

We stuck around for a while longer taking turns with the binoculars, and ended up seeing 2 or 3 wolves running around before it finally got too dark to see. We drove back to the campsite elated, with Becca’s decision on her favorite National Park firmly cemented in her mind.

The next morning, we headed out the west entrance of the park, and within 10 minutes of leaving the campsite, we came across a brown bear (same thing as a black bear, Latin alias – Ursas Americanus) 40-ft off the road. Used to being gawked at, it pretty much ignored everyone watching it while it ripped the top off a log, gobbled up all the bugs inside, and then trotted away into the woods.

We thought for sure we were done seeing cool wildlife in the park, and then only 20 miles from the park exit, we saw a coyote trotting along the side of the road, which looked up at us nonchalantly as we passed, and the turned into the woods for a little more privacy.

Yellowstone did not disappoint.

Tetons

2007-07-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

It was the Monday before the 4^th of July, and we headed into Teton National Park looking for a campsite. Since we got there just after lunch, we secured one of the 3 remaining sites that day in the Signal Mountain campground, and subsequently watched about 20 cars, trucks, and RVs circle the campground first naively hopeful, and then with the crestfallen look of someone slowly realizing the music had stopped, and they were left standing in a big game of musical campgrounds.

We waited out the midday heat in the shade reading our books (I took a cue from the local animals and took a nap) and in the afternoon headed over to Two Oceans Lake for a short (6-mi) hike. We didn’t see much wildlife, but Becca heard some rustling in the bushes pretty close by at the end of the hike, which after talking to some people at the trailhead was a mama grizzly with a couple of her cubs. We were pretty relieved to have missed each other.

After the hike, we went back to camp, made dinner, and sat by the shore of Jackson Lake and got some good pictures of the mountains.
Early Tuesday morning we drove down to the Jenny Lake trailhead, and started off towards Lake Solitude. It turns out the name wasn’t entirely appropriate when we got there, but it was definitely nice. 18 miles, a few blisters, 4 tired legs, and several bug bites later, we returned. We headed back to the campground, to the lake to cool/wash off, made some dinner, and went to bed well before the sun was down.

On Independence Day, we rented a warped plastic canoe for the outrageous price of $13.50/hr, and floated around on the lake for a little while. I once again proved to myself exactly how well sunscreen works when I missed a big spot on my stomach and ended up with a rather unattractive and uncomfortable red splotch that I’ve been wearing around for the past few days. Afterwards, we went swimming, read our books some more, made some dinner. Our fireworks display was au natural, and one of the better ones I’ve ever seen. Judge for yourself.

A day on the road...

2007-07-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

On Sunday morning we rose early and went for a morning hike in the Mt. Zirkel wilderness area. It was a 7 mile roundtrip up to a beautiful alpine valley and lake (Three Island Lake). However, as you may notice in the pictures, almost half of the pine trees along our hike were dead. This is because for the past 10 years most of Colorado has had a problem with bark beetles, which eat the bark off of pine trees, eventually killing the trees. It used to be that the winters were long and cold enough to kill a decent amount of the bark beetles, so the trees and beetles had a healthy relationship. With global warming, more and more beetles live through the winter, and the forests just can not sustain the current beetle population. It’s all very depressing and motivating at the same time. I’m sure you all understand why it’s depressing, but it also motivates us to keep making additional adjustments to our lifestyles, to better serve our earth.

After the hike we headed northwest toward the Grand Tetons. As we drove through northwestern Colorado, we spotted a pronged-horn sitting on a bluff over looking the road, way cool. A little further down the road (in northeastern Utah) we noticed a big grey cloud rising up over the mountains ahead of us. We got a little closer and decided that it was a pretty large wild fire. We gawked at the huge smoke cloud for a while, but then passed it by, leaving the fire in our rearview mirror. It got to be around dinner time, and we decided that we should set up camp and cook some dinner. So, we stopped at a fairly deserted campground in the Flaming Gorges National Recreation Area. After being at the campground for about 10 minutes or so, I started to get a bad vibe, felt light headed and realized that I smelled smoke. Kimbal quickly identified that we were downwind of the wildfire. Well, that made me pretty uncomfortable, and Kimbal was starting to feel sick too, so we decided to pack up and press on towards the Tetons for a few more hours. When we left the Flaming Gorges valley, I looked back and could see the entire area just blanketed with smoke, yuck. The next day we heard that the wildfire was almost completely uncontained and on the move, so I’m pretty glad that we moved on.

The next few hours drive provided an absolutely spectacular sunset! Since we were driving west the sunset seemed to go on and on. We just couldn’t stop marveling at the natural beauty and wished that we knew something more about photography so that we could adequately capture it. We did our best anyway.

Long after dark we ended up finding a dependable KOA campground to spend the night, with smoke-free air and showers too. A good ending to a great day.

Steamboat Springs

2007-07-07T19:34:00.001-07:00

As we left Rocky Mountain National Park we only had one thing on our minds… showers! So, we headed to the lovely town of Steamboat Springs, Co. and managed to secure a decent room at a downtown motel. Ah, to be clean again! (See, there were no shower facilities within the park, so we were rather ripe after four shower free days.) Once we were settled in and clean we had some dinner a decent Italian restaurant, and went back to our hotel room to be lazy couch potatoes and indulge in the Daily Show.

For the majority of the day on Friday and again on Saturday morning we hunkered down in a nice internet café, so Kimbal could do some more job searching and applying. While Kimbal was dutifully applying to jobs, I read and did a little bit of window shopping. And I have to say that a few hours in I started to get antsy, and was wishing that I could apply to some jobs myself, but all in due time.

We did manage to have a bit of fun in Steamboat too. On Friday evening we went to a very nice natural hot springs. Supposedly it’s clothing optional, but everyone there was well behaved, and clothed. It was beautiful, relaxing, and very hot! We had to keep working our way down to the cooler pools because we just couldn’t take the heat. Also, Kimbal and I were already really relaxed, I mean we’ve been on vacation for over two months now, so we didn’t stay at the springs for too incredibly long because relaxing soon turned into boring. On the way out, we passed a few coyotes on the side of the road.

Saturday afternoon it was really hot so we decided it was time cool off with a tube ride down the Yampa River. The tube ride was pretty decent, with some fun abrupt 2 ft drops. It was a great way to spend a hot afternoon. That evening we decided to do something cultural, and went to the rodeo! It was my first rodeo, and I didn’t know much about them before we went, but Kimbal filled me in, since he had been to a few at the Cow Palace in the Bay Area when he was a kid. It was a really great time… I especially enjoyed the barrel racing, and, of course the bull and bareback riders were very exciting to watch. Really, the real talent at the rodeo are the guys that distract the bull after the rider has fallen off. Man, that’s a scary job. I do wish that the announcer had kept his republican propaganda to himself. Talk about alienating people, geeze. We were there to see the rodeo, not to be converted into republicans. Even with all of his bull crap, we still managed to have a great time.

Rocky Mountains

2007-07-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

After Jeff’s, we stopped at the National Renewable Energy Lab before headed on to Rocky Mountain National Park. Due to 9-11 they no longer give tours (booo) and, from the looks of the public exhibits, they’re currently under-funded (I blame the current administration). Nevertheless, we did learn a few interesting thing about conserving energy.

We arrived at Rocky Mountain National Park and secured ourselves a campsite on the east side of the park. We did two good hikes on the east side of the park. On our first full day in the park we hiked in the bear lake region, and did a loop hike up to a number of alpine lakes. The hike was really beautiful, but on our way down it clouded up a bit and before we knew it there was thunder rumbling in the sky. Luckily, by the time it started raining we were back below the tree line. Here’s some pics from this hike:

On our second morning in the park we hiked up to the peak of Deer Mountain. We hiked pretty quickly, and it felt great to really get our blood moving. The top of the mountain was in the clouds, so no view, but nevertheless, it was a great hike.
After our morning hike we hopped in the car and headed west over the mountain pass that is the highest paved road in the lower 48 states. We stopped near the top to do a short hike and take some photos. The air sure was thin, and the mountains sure were gorgeous. We saw some elk, marmots, pikas, and some other unidentified small rodents on our second hike of the day.
Once we got to the west side of the park we got a great campsite that overlooked a stream and meadow. To round out the day we did one more short hike along the headwaters of the Colorado River. Back at the campground that evening, and again the next morning we were serenaded by elk calls. Their calls were really beautiful, haunting even, like a really high pitched brass horn, or something. We ended our stay in the park with a long hike up to Granite Falls. The falls were really beautiful, and the rest of the hike was pretty picturesque too. Unfortunately, the west side of the park is very mosquito infested, and boy, do they love Kimbal. So, we didn’t really take time to enjoy the scenery. Luckily, there weren’t too many mosquitoes right by the falls, but we really scurried the rest of the hike. I think it was the fastest that we have ever hiked, 13.4 miles in just over 4 hours, including our lunch stop.

Boulder

2007-07-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

Kimbal and I spent the past weekend in Boulder visiting Jeff, my friend from Tufts. Boulder is a really cool (and liberal) town and it was really great to spend some time with Jeff. Friday night was Jeff’s birthday, so we went out in downtown Boulder to celebrate. We started off the night meeting up with a bunch of Jeff’s friends for some happy hour drinks and dinner. Jeff’s friends were all super fun and really nice, which, if you know Jeff, is no big surprise. And, we ended the night on a relaxing roof top bar on Pearl Street (more or less the Faneuil Hall of Boulder).

On Saturday, Kimbal and I were a little under the weather. As it turns out, drinking hits you more at altitude. So, we had a pretty relaxing day, but still managed to fit in a tour of the Celestial Seasons tea factory and a trip to REI.

Jeff showed us around town a bit more on Sunday. We took another trip to Pearl Street to do some window shopping, ate lunch at this really amazing tea house, and went climbing at an indoor bouldering gym. The climbing gym was fun, and I could do all of the beginner climbs no problem. However, I tried to do a climb rated a little harder (a beginner +) and I just could not do it. Kimbal and Jeff tried too, but they couldn’t do it either, it just took more upper body strength than we had. The people that were obviously regulars at the gym were really incredible! Their moves were so purposeful and graceful. It was really inspiring to watch them.

Overall, it was a really great weekend. Thanks Jeff!

Telluride & Ouray

2007-06-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

After Mesa Verde, we finally left the desert and headed into the mountains. We spent the night in a campsite near Telluride, CO among aspen trees and with a great view of a couple of fourteeners right across the valley.

The next day we hiked up Lizard Head Trail, half of which was above tree line. On the way back we heard some unidentified rustling and growling sounds coming from amongst the trees on both sides while we were taking a short break, and decided it was probably time to keep moving. Later while we were watching “Planet Earth” we decided that the sounds were probably just some deer being vocal.

After the hike we headed over to Ouray, CO which was a cool little town nestled in among several steep mountains. The campsite we stayed in was on one of the slopes of the valley, and had no showers again, so we bought 3-day passes to the local hot springs. The town made some swimming pools of varying temperatures heated by the hot springs, complete with lap pool and water slides. They had showers too, and it was a great place to relax after hiking all day.

We went on several hikes, all of which were very cool especially since we were back in the mountains where there were some trees around.

Mesa Verde

2007-06-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

We spent the next two days exploring Mesa Verde National Park… and it was really awesome. A lot of the park is not accessible to the general public because of the fragile state of many of the ruins (which I can understand) and other parts can only be seen if you go on a guided tour. Kimbal and I decided to go on two tours: the balcony house and the cliff palace tours. Our cliff palace tour was packed (well over 40 people on the tour) and you more or less walk around the outside of the cliff dwelling. It was still really cool, given that the dwelling is in such good condition (about 70% is untouched original) and its immense size! The guide said that the current theory is that the dwelling was more of an administrative center for the community (maybe where they store and distribute crops), rather than people’s homes.

The balcony house tour was really neat because we were able to walk throughout the dwelling and we were lucky to be in a small tour group (only 8 people). The tour required climbing up and down a bunch of ladders and stairs and squeezing through tight spaces:

Our guide also believed that this dwelling was not your normal cliff dwelling home, but, instead was a spiritual center where they observed the moon, which dictated the growing season. There were several circular depressions in the floor, and on the solstice the moon beam through a window outlines the depressions (or something to that effect). It was really, really cool. And, because the dwellings are in such good condition, with a little imagination, I could picture what the community must have been like.

We visited a few more cliff dwellings and pit houses that were open to the general public. They were ok, but nowhere near as cool as the guided tours. Our last stop in the park was a hike out to some well preserved petroglyphs, which archeologists think describe the migration of the native people from their entry into the world (through a mystical hole in the Grand Canyon) and their break-up into different tribes. My favorite was the goat tribe, shown in the photograph below.

More Moab

2007-06-24T07:57:00.001-07:00

We continued our Moab adventures with a guided duckie (single inflatable kayaks) tour down the Fischers Tower section of the Colorado River. Overall, it was a pretty mellow day; however, there were a few sections of decent rapids (class 3). Kimbal is pretty at one with the water and gracefully executed all of the rapids. I, on the other hand, was not as confident and pretty excited/nervous for each of the rapids. I got through most of the rapids a-ok, but managed to take one dip in the river at the most challenging rapid, as you can see below.

The next day we rounded out our stay in Moab with a nice morning hike in Canyonlands National Park. The hike took us through some beautiful fields and to the rim of the canyon. It was really beautiful, and we were out there all by ourselves, which made it even more spectacular.

Moab

2007-06-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

We started out our day by fueling up for our days activities with a yummy breakfast at Jailbirds. After breakfast, we went on a mountain bike tour up Klondike Bluffs…. and had a BLAST! There were only a few of us on the tour (Kimbal and I, one other couple, and a guide), which was nice. It was also nice that we went early in the morning, to beat the heat. I hadn’t been mountain bike riding in over 5 years, and I forgot how much fun it is. Fortunately, I did not forget my skills, and I totally rocked the rock! (The trail was mostly slick rock, with some dirt road portions) Kimbal did pretty darn good too, especially considering he dwarfed his rental bike. Also, dual suspension is great. I’d only ridden bikes with front shocks before, so that was a nice treat. Once we got to the top of the bluffs, we had a nice view of Arches national park. The temperature started rising on our way back to the truck, but luckily it was all down hill from there.

We attempted to escape the mid-day heat by sacking out in our motel room for a few hours. But, before it could cool off, I got antsy and wanted to do some more exploring, so I woke Kimbal up from his peaceful nap to go do the Arches scenic drive. The drive was good, and we stopped at a couple of places to hike out to various arches and balanced rocks. We probably would have hiked even more, but the temperature (105 F) and our grumbling stomachs held us back. We rounded out the day enjoying some air conditioning while having an indulgent meal of all you can eat pizza at Zax. Yum.

Car Solutions

2007-06-14T16:27:00.001-07:00

Well it turns out that the starting problem was caused by a short in the battery, and another fuse wiggling its way out a little. With that fixed, and new rear shocks due in tomorrow, we should be ready to roll. In the meantime, we’ve signed up for some mountain biking tomorrow morning, and some river rafting on Saturday. We got some new sunglasses as ours have been falling apart, Becca got a new pair of shoes, and we got new sleeping pads to replace the ones that we apparently put holes in a few nights ago when we were camped out on Lake Powell. Between all that, a nice shower, good food, and perhaps a movie in an air-conditioned theater tonight, we are feeling as good as new.

Car Problems

2007-06-14T16:21:00.001-07:00

Well, that same 26-mile washboard dirt and gravel road that we had to drive over on the way in to the slot canyons gave us some trouble on the way back out. First, we got the car bogged down in some fine sand, but after digging out the wheels, and getting a push from the people we were blocking in, we were soon out of the sand and on our way again.

The bigger trouble showed up when we had about 10 miles to go before we got back to the main road. We went over a particularly big bump, and I thought I saw something come out from under the car, so I stopped the car, and it immediately died. Not good. I went back to where I thought I saw something come out from below the car, and there was nothing to be found, so I got back in the car, and tried to start it. No dice. It didn’t even turn over. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to have stopped the car pointing downhill, and since it’s a manual, I tried compression starting the thing just to see what would happen, and it started right up. Phew.

With the car started, we headed the rest of the way down the dirt road without incident, and headed straight for the closest town of Escalante, UT to figure things out. We stopped the car in the Escalante High School parking lot across from a gas station, and popped the hood in a futile effort to see if we could diagnose the problem ourselves; of course not. So, we hopped back in the car, and it didn’t start again. Since I had the stick-driving experience, Becca was relegated to pushing the car on the flat parking lot so that we could drive across the street to the gas station. How chivalrous of me. Again, the car started fine using a compression start, and we left the car running while we looked up the closest Nissan dealer, which happened to be in St. George, UT on the other side of Zion. Well, we had just come from that way, and we didn’t want to go back, so we decided to head on towards Boulder, UT where we had intended to stay the night.

When we pulled out of the gas station in Escalante, we discovered another problem with the car – apparently the washboard road wasn’t too great for the rear shocks with 500-lbs of food, clothing, books, and camping equipment in the back of the car. The back end was awfully bouncy so we took it nice and slow.

We made it to Boulder fine, and it being a small town and without an auto repair shop, we thought it would be best to keep going while we could, and head for Moab. We passed through Capitol Reef and a few other places that would have been cool to see if the car was alright, but getting the car fixed took precedent and we passed them by.

Eventually we needed gas, so we stopped to fill up and turned the car off. Naturally that meant that we would have to turn in back on again, and again Becca (with the help of a nice gentleman that happened to be there) valiantly spurred the car to life again, whereupon I almost immediately killed it, and the nice gentleman wasn’t interested in helping again. So yet another time, this time all by herself, Becca saved the day, pushed the car back to life, and we were on the road to Moab once more.

After about 5 hours of nursing the car along and getting passed by an endless string of cars and trucks, our back end bouncing to the rhythm of the road, we finally arrived in Moab, we found ourselves a nice motel with soft beds, a nice shower, and only a block from a good auto repair place. We went out to dinner, had a couple of margaritas, and considered ourselves lucky as it could have been a whole lot worse.

Slot Canyons

2007-06-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

After Bryce, we headed east to Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Good ol’ Bill made it a National Monument in 1996, and just about every road in the place is a washboard dirt and gravel road, with the “Hole in the Rock” road being no exception. That’s the road we took for 26 miles south to Dry Fork where there were some slot canyons that needed some exploring.

The first canyon we went down was called “Peek-a-boo Canyon”

We had to scramble up about 12 feet to get into the opening of the canyon, and from there it was another half mile or so until we got to the other end. Here are some more pictures from Peek-a-boo Canyon:

Next, we headed down to Spooky Canyon, which was much narrower and much longer.

About halfway down Spooky Canyon, it started to get REALLY narrow, and Becca got a little claustrophobic, so I continued on a ways farther by myself until I got to a backup of about 8 or 9 people that were trying to get through one particularly tough part. With all those people around, I started to get a little claustrophobic myself, and I was practically at the end anyway, so I decided to turn around and enjoy the canyon in some peace and quiet.

I met up with Becca on my way back, where she jumped down from a ledge and scared the daylights out of me, and then we headed out the canyon and back to the car.

Fire in Bryce

2007-06-14T14:36:00.001-07:00

Our next stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. I’m not sure why, but this park didn’t really light our fire. Maybe it was the fact that our lifetime guarantee camping mats had failed and deflated, so we weren’t sleeping well… But, nevertheless, Kimbal and I still made a go of it: we camped in the park for two days, went for some decent hikes, saw the hoodoos, observed the wildlife, and ended up enjoying ourselves. The coolest part of our trip into the park was that there was an active forest fire in the park. The fire was pretty tame, nothing like what I pictured when I think of forest fire. Logs, stumps, and trees were smoking right on the road, and we even saw a couple of flames. It was remarkable how some areas were completely untouched by fire, while 20 ft away the ground and first couple feet of the tree trucks were black and charred. Also, when we woke up our last morning in the park, there were some deer less than 10 feet from our tent. Being as sleepy as I was, I think I was more started than they were. We also got some cool pictures of a grazing marmot.

Lake Powell

2007-06-13T21:23:00.001-07:00

Saturday morning we went to the Lake Powell boat rental site at the Wahweap Marina, and we picked up our 19-ft motorboat with a broken gas gauge and headed out for adventure. Unfamiliar with the lake, we weren’t entirely sure where to go, and with the water level constantly changing, creating islands out of peninsulas and vice-versa the crude map only helped a little. After a few wrong turns into dead-end bays, we finally got our bearings and made our way upstream.

Lake Powell is formed by the damming of the Colorado River, and the filling of Glenn Canyon. Somewhat similar to the Grand Canyon, there are many smaller canyons off to the side of the main channel, and we spent our time exploring those.

The weather was about as perfect as you could ask for with sunny skies, highs in the lower 90’s, lows in the 50’s-60’s, and water temperature of about 70 degrees. When we got hot from being in the sun, we simply found a nice spot, turned the motor off, and jumped in the water.

After going down Navajo and Antelope Canyons on Saturday, we headed farther upstream to Gregory Butte at the end of Last Chance Bay, and we found a nice beach to spend the night on. In one direction, we had a view up the river for about 6 or 7 miles, and there were beautiful mesas, buttes, and mountains in every direction. We cooked up some dinner, had some beers on the boat before heading up the beach a little ways to lay out our sleeping bags, watch the end of the sunset and the bats flying and swooping every-which-way, listen to the coyotes howl, and fall asleep without another person in sight. In the middle of the night, we both woke up a few times to some strange noises, slightly surprised to find we weren’t in a tent, but then we’d look up at the stars and the big, clear Milky Way streaking across the sky, and drift back to sleep.

We awoke the next morning before dawn, pleasantly surprised to find that the boat was right where we left it. I wanted to document all this with pictures, but alas, I only took a couple of pictures of our boat on the beach when the batteries died, and without any spares we were left pictureless on Sunday. After packing up our belongings and having a quick breakfast, we headed further upstream.

Our first stop was at Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the largest natural bridge in the world, measuring over 300-ft wide, and over 200-ft tall. The only way to get there is by boat, followed by a short walk up an easy trail; otherwise it is a very long, very hot trek through Navajo country. Since we got there early, we had the place to ourselves, which was quite nice considering the canyon has quite an echo, which I happily made full use of.

We spent the rest of the day going down other narrow canyons, seeing how far we could get while marveling at the steep, red, sandstone walls that jutted straight out of the water. I thought the best one was Secret Canyon – so named because it’s a little tricky to find I guess, and not marked very well on the map. In any case, it was very narrow, and we eventually had to stop, not because it got too shallow, but because it got too narrow. We reached a point where the boat was touching the canyon walls on both sides and could not go any further, so we backed out for almost a quarter mile before I could use my superior boat-handling skills, and make about a 16-point, Austin Powers style turn so that we could go forward again.

We eventually made our way back to the marina, never having run out of gas, and having had a lot of fun. Rafting down Glenn Canyon before the dam was there must have been truly spectacular.

Leaving the lake, we stopped by Glenn Canyon Dam, and took the tour.

Heading north

2007-06-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

Kimbal and I woke up early and hit the road (good-bye smelly campsite!). We decided that we wanted a few more hike-free days (my knees needed a rest) and we chose to head north towards Lake Powell to do some canyon exploring by powerboat. But before we could relax on the lake, we had a few national monuments to visit that were more or less on the way. Our first stop was Walnut Canyon, where there were over 100 primitive cliff dwellings in a beautiful sandstone canyon with a surprising amount of trees and greenery. The dwellings were really neat because we were allowed to walk around in about 1/3 of them. You could still see the burn marks on the canyon walls where their inhabitants had kept their cooking fires. Oh yeah, and the bugs were really noisy, I’ve never heard so many clicking bugs in my whole life!

Our next stop was Sunset Crater/Wupatki National Monument. The crater was pretty neat, and I had no idea that there was so much volcanic history in Arizona. We didn’t stop though, since it was really hot out and my knees were still a bit sore for hiking. But we did see a jack rabbit, and my, do those little buggers look tough, and what big ears! Wupataki, however, did warrant a stop. The monument is the site of a number of pueblo ruins. The biggest ruin was closed to the public when we visited, however, we did stop and visit a smaller and way cool pueblo. The red sandstone of the pueblo ruins against the blue sky was really spectacular!

From here we headed straight for Lake Powell, where we were able to secure a 19 ft power boat for the weekend and settled in for the night at our most luxurious campground yet. There were showers, a pool, and internet, yeay! Kimbal will fill you in our boat trip in the next entry. Right now, my stomach is rumbling and it is time for dinner!

The Worst Campsite Yet Award

2007-06-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Sedona a little tired, and decided to eat out for dinner rather than cook, since we didn’t have much food to make that night anyway. After dinner, we headed to our campsite.

I don’t remember the name of the place we stayed that night, but it wins the Worst Campsite Yet Award. When we arrived, we felt lucky to get the last spot in the small campground, but quickly realized why that spot was the last taken. It was directly downwind of both the outhouses and the garbage bins that had not been emptied in quite a while apparently – the smell was pretty bad. Also, next to the outhouses, pointed directly at our tent, was the brightest damned Coke machine I’ve ever seen. Becca and I kept waking up every few minutes thinking it was morning already because our tent was lit up like a circus. Eventually, Becca told me I would be her hero if I went and unplugged it – how could I refuse? After that we slept like babies… until the car alarm in the site next to us went off for a minute or 2 before someone figured out how to turn it off. But after that we slept like babies.

We have had pretty good camping experiences so far, so just those things are more than enough for the place to win the Worst Campsite Yet Award hands down, but the topper is that before we went to bed, we were sitting and planning where we were headed next, when we heard a “POP-BANG” from the road about 200-ft behind us, and 20-ft up. Cars had been driving down the road all evening, and we didn’t give it much thought. A full 4 seconds later, it hit us; they hit us is more like it. They landed on us, coming between Becca’s head and mine, one landing on my forearm, a few on the map on Becca’s lap, and a couple more on one of the guidebooks we had open. What were they? That’s what we wanted to know. They looked a little like watered-down marinara sauce, but as near as we could piece together with the reactions of the other campers in the campsite, the “POP-BANG” was a car hitting an animal on the road, and the drops were the blood/guts that were shot from the body. Nasty, nasty, nasty. Ew.

Grand Canyon

2007-06-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

Well, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was not entirely what we expected. When we thought “Grand Canyon”, we thought “Big hole in the ground with a little river along the bottom, and not a living thing within sight except for cars.” We were happily surprised on the drive up to the north rim that it’s actually pretty heavily forested with pine and aspen trees all the way up to the rim. This is mostly due to the fact that its over 8000-ft of elevation. We were also happily surprised that a cold front moved on overnight so we had uncharacteristically cool temperatures with highs in the upper 60s. This mad the mostly flat 12 mile hike along the rim on Widforss Trail out to a view point of the canyon really nice. It would have only been 10 miles, but with the cold front that moved in, there was a tree down over the road about a mile before the trailhead parking lot, so we just parked the car on the side of the road and walked. There were several people that were stuck behind the tree, but I guess they managed to get a hold of some rangers, and the tree was gone by the time we got back.

While we were sitting on the rim of the canyon, looking down at the bottom of the canyon a mile below, and the opposite rim 10 miles away, and extending to the horizon either way, that they were a bit modest when they named the place. Instead of “Grand Canyon” I probably would have gone with “Absurdly Gosh Darned Really, Really Enormous, No Really I’m Not Joking Its Preposterously Huge Canyon” but I guess the explorers in those days were more concise than I.

That night we stayed at Jacobs Lake, which is about 30 miles north of the canyon. In this case the explorers were not so humble – I’ve seen bigger puddles. In any case, the camp ground was nice if not primitive. It had a shower though, which counts for a lot these days. With the cold front having just passed, the pleasantly cool day turned into a fairly cold night. We crawled into our bags at dusk, and bundled up for the night. Although neither of us were too cold during the night, we found our water jug that we had left out overnight was frozen in the morning. Not what we had expected in Arizona in June.

The South Rim of the Grand Canyon on the other hand was exactly what we expected; dry and barren except for the cars. After getting our fill of canyon views from the north, the south ended up being more of the same, but more crowded including parents walking around with their kids on leashes (not kidding).

Oh yeah, and I got a new hat. You'll be seeing more of that later.

We didn’t stick around too long, and headed south to Sedona for the night.

Zion

2007-06-05T20:11:00.001-07:00

The heat continued in Zion with high temperatures over 100F, so we woke up early for our hike Monday morning. We rode the Zion park shuttle into the canyon (no cars allowed) and climbed up to Observation Point to take a look around.

Passing the people on their way up the trail while we were on our way back down, made us very glad that we got going early before the sun got over the canyon wall.

We spent the afternoon in the heat of the day in the park museum, looking through some shops, and lounging in the shade.

Today, we went for a trip up The Narrows, which is a narrow, steep canyon carved out by the Virgin River at the upstream end of Zion Canyon. It was an excellent way to spend a hot day, since we spent most of the time wading through the 61F water. The water-carved sandstone cliffs were amazing, with all the different shades in the rock including grey, red, brown, tan, buff, and a thousand other shades to subtle to mention; and contrasted against the greenery, blue sky, and dark shadows. Around each corner was a scene more beautiful than the last. We are really looking forward to exploring more canyons in the coming weeks.

On our way back from The Narrows, we went to Weeping Rock where water that has been percolating through the porous sandstone for 1200 years or so drains out of the rock and creates a hanging garden of plants living on the rock. The shade and water were refreshing in the mid-afternoon sun.

Since it was against the rules to bathe at the campground we were staying in and we had gotten pretty salty, sweaty, and dirty over the last couple of days, we decided we would shack up in a motel tonight at the Treasure Trail Motel in Kanab, UT on our way to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon tomorrow, with a wireless connection care of the Best Western across the street. The shower sure felt nice, and catching The Daily Show on Comedy Central was a nice touch also.

Vegas

2007-06-03T18:04:00.001-07:00

And now for something completely different…

Vegas Baby, where it was only 105F instead of 120F.

We stayed at the Mandalay Bay Resort Friday and Saturday nights, and had a pretty good day on Saturday. We woke up with an all you can eat breakfast buffet, spent several hours lounging by the pools, playing tag and swimming recklessly in the lazy river, and showing the landlubbers how to body surf in the wave pool. We slept in a clean king size bed, took as many showers as we wanted, and surfed the web and read.

That evening we saw Spamalot at the Wynn, and had a fantastic dinner at one of the restaurants there named for the chef - Daniel Boulard. We saw what we think was a famous rapper with his posse (judging by the outrageous shirt, diamond jewelry, and body guard) but we aren’t hip enough to know what the kids are listening to these days on their MTZ.

Sunday morning we woke up, wrote a couple of blog entries, and got the hell out of dodge. Vegas was fun, but one day was plenty. For anyone curious about gambling, we never partook – we lost our money the old fashioned way. We spent it. They sure are good at sucking you dry in that town.

Right now we are watching our laundry dry outside Zion National Park, and will go check things out tomorrow. That’s all for now.

Death Valley

2007-06-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Becca and I left Yosemite after filling up with over $4/gallon gas (I got proof) and headed out over Tioga Pass, down the east side of the Sierras, through Owens Valley, and into Death Valley. We made a few stops, but mostly we drove and looked things over from the car. It was a little warm outside afterall.

We did stop at Badwater, the lowest point in the

to take a picture. Then we got back in the car with the A/C and headed to Vegas.

Yosemite

2007-06-03T10:00:00.001-07:00

Next, we were on to Yosemite. We arrived in the park on Monday afternoon (Memorial Day) and the place was an absolute zoo. I (Becca) went into total shock after the peace and quite in Kings Canyon. On our first day we did a quick touristy loop of the valley, stopping at Bridal Veil Falls, the visitor center, etc… We soon decided that there were too many people in the Valley, so we headed to our campground in Wawona, which was still in the park, but about a 40 min. drive south of the Valley. The campground was fabulous – nice and peaceful, and our campsite was right on the banks of a rushing river. It seemed like most people that chose to stay here were avid fishermen and came to spend a few days trout fishing in the river.

The next day we ventured back into the valley (which was much less crowded since the holiday weekend was over) and we spent the majority of the day hiking up to the top of Yosemite Falls, and then on to Yosemite Point. The hike was very, very steep (over 3000 ft elevation gain), but pretty short (only 3.7 miles to the top of the falls and another mile to Yosemite Point). I thought we did pretty well, considering this was our most challenging hike yet. The view from the top of Yosemite point was spectacular. I am a bit scared of heights, so it was a bit unnerving being so close to the edge of shear cliffs, but I stuck it out for the amazing views:

We ended the day by having a good dinner at the Wawona hotel, and went to bed very, very tired.

The next day we hiked Vernal and Nevada Falls. This was also a great hike, as you can see by the pictures. And we made a hiking friend for the day (Hi Paul!). After the hike we rented bikes and toured the valley – way better than a car tour! By the end of the day Kimbal and I were totally beat and ready for some relaxing.

Our last day in Yosemite we took a lazy raft ride down the Merced River. I paddled and Kimbal enjoyed the views. Since Kimbal does most of the driving, it was his turn to relax and look around; besides, sometimes I like being the skipper! After the raft ride we headed up towards Glacier Point, where we hiked to the Fissures and Taft Point, and then enjoyed the scenery, dinner, and a nice sunset at Glacier Point.

The next morning (Friday), we rose early and headed out of Yosemite over Tioga Pass, which was also beautiful. We didn’t stop much though, because the mosquitoes were out in full force in this part of the park.

Next stop: Death Valley and then Las Vegas for some pampering!

Kings Canyon & Sequoia

2007-06-03T09:34:00.001-07:00

Upon leaving the bay area (Wednesday, May 23^rd), Kimbal and I drove straight to King’s Canyon/ Sequoia National Park and set up camp. We wanted to make sure that we got there pretty early in the week, since the coming weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we were pretty sure the campgrounds would fill up. Well, getting there on Wednesday was plenty early and we got an excellent campsite in a grove of large cedar trees overlooking a small meadow in the Kings Canyon Sentinel campground. All of the campgrounds did end up filling up, but not until late Friday night. We spent Thursday through Sunday enjoying all that the two parks had to offer. In Kings Canyon we were wowed by the raggedness of the valley – to us, the valley looked like something out of the lord of the rings: primeval and not really of this world. We did two great day hikes in the canyon, one to mist falls, and the other to a place called “Cedar lookout point”. On the mist falls trail we saw a bunch of King snakes (they eat rattle snakes). We didn’t see any rattle snakes, but we passed some people on the trail who had a rattle snake shake his rattle at them! The falls were beautiful, as were the views of the canyon, here are some pictures:

At Sequoia, we saw a greater variety of wildlife: trout in the streams, pikas, yellow bellied marmots, deer, and a bear! We saw the bear soon after we arrived in the park, and thought it was a taste of more to come, but alas it was our only bear sighting on the trip thus far. We did several short hikes to get a flavor of the variety of landscapes in the park (saw the Sherman Tree, walked out on Moro Rock, hiked the Tharps Log trail past some beautiful meadows) and we did a long day hike up to some alpine lakes (Heather and Aster lakes). We also took a tour of Crystal Caves. The alpine lakes hike was absolutely breathtaking (both beautiful and strenuous) and it was a nice taste of the high Sierra Nevada. The Tharps log trail was also really peaceful, and we could tell a lot of bears like to visit the alpine meadows on a regular basis given the large amounts of scat that we saw. The big trees were cool too, although Kimbal and I have decided that we are partial to the giant Redwoods. Here are some of our pics from Sequoia:

Bay Area

2007-06-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

Becca and I spent a week and a half visiting family and friends in the bay area, and we had a great time. We caught a ride with my Dad on one of his sailing races on Saturday, and we went for a hike up Mt. Tamalpias and caught some great views of the bay area. We went out on the bay and saw some fireworks on my Dad’s birthday, and spent Mother’s Day with my Mom on the Napa Valley Wine Train. We played with our niece Cally on the slide, and we went to a nice French restaurant for Becca’s 27^th birthday. A good time was had by all.

The next stop will be Kings Canyon / Sequoia National Parks for a few days, then up to Yosemite for a few more, and then down to Las Vegas where we hope to win enough money to finance the rest of our trip. Wish us luck.

Redwoods

2007-06-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

We’ve gotten behind on our blog entries, so this is from a few weeks ago: Becca and I spent 3 days in and around the various Redwood state parks, slowly working our way south. The first full day we drove down Howland Hill Rd, which is a slow, windy dirt road where you can drive slowly enough through the park to appreciate the size of the trees. They are BIG. About half way down the 7 mile road, there is a hike that heads north off the trail to fern falls and the boy scout tree. We headed off down the trail on a nice leisurely stroll just taking everything in. There is a distinctly different feeling in old growth redwood forests than anything I’ve ever experienced before – everything is a little hushed, and the size and spacing between the trees is humbling. I could spend days just sitting there and soaking it all in.

That night, we headed down the road a bit to our next campsite at Elk Prairie where we discovered there really is something to the name of the place.

On Wednesday, Becca and I went for another walk through the trees.

And then we headed out to the coast to a place called Fern Canyon, which you might recognize from Jurassic Park. The canyon was in “rough shape” according to one sign because of several downed and dead trees that got swept into the canyon during the winter storms. We made our way about a mile up the canyon balancing on logs that had been laid across the stream in a mostly futile effort to keep our feet dry. Very cool.

Again, we headed south to that nights campsite at Patrick’s Point State Park, where we made some dinner, and brought our hot chocolate out to the bluff to watch the sun set over the ocean.

Thursday we drove down to the bay area to see my parents, sticking to the coast the whole way. By this time we had spent the past couple of weeks on the coast, and around every turn there would be another beautiful seascape, and then another, and then another. Yawn. It became so routine we didn’t even take any pictures. We also drove down the “Avenue of the Giants” which used to be the highway through the area. It was nice, but the hikes we had been on the past few days were much more impressive. Must be time to head back to civilization for a while.

Oregon Caves

2007-05-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Kimbal and I had a nice breakfast with the other guests at the B&B. I enjoyed the intellectual and liberal conversation we had: all about alternative fuels and flying. Oh yeah, and here's a not so great picture of our awesome room at the B&B:

After breakfast we headed down 199 to the Oregon Caves National Monument. We did the caves tour, which was interesting, but not super exciting. In some places the cave was really small (Kimbal was nearly crawling), but other “rooms” were huge, with cathedral ceilings and beautiful rock formations. Back on the surface I watched a deer family move through the woods, a momma with her two twins. They appeared to move very deliberately, each step appeared cautious, but with definite purpose. I guess you have to use caution when you are potential prey to cougars, yikes! I try to use caution too, who's to say the cougar wouldn't want me for dinner, but I certainly don't let it stop me from enjoying the beautiful forests!

After leaving the monument, we headed south to California. An hour or so down the road, we rounded a bend and we were suddenly in redwood country! Pre-historic mammoth trees right on the side of the highway! We settled in for the night at the Mill Creek campground among some fallen redwood trees (it’s a second growth area). It was by far the best camp site that we have stayed in thus far. I'll let Kimbal tell you all about the redwoods in our next blog entry.

Sunday: Crater Lake

2007-05-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Kimbal and I drove up to Crater Lake and did a little snowshoeing. First seeing the crater took my breath away and I felt fear or maybe awe at the immense size of the crater, I mean that used to be one huge volcano. It must have been something when it blew up! It is really an awesome display of the earth’s power. There is a road all the way around the rim of the crater, but most of the road is still covered in feet of snow, and only about a mile of the road was plowed and open to the public. Once we couldn’t go any further in our car, we put on our snowshoes and plodded another mile along the rim of the crater. We had to be careful to stay behind the tree line at the edge of the crater because in many places the snow overhangs the land. The lake was just beautiful down below, so crystal clear with a variety of blues, depending on the depth of the water. We didn’t go too far along the crater because Kimbal was still getting over his cold and, unfortunately, I was just starting to get sick. Sick or not, it was still a great visit to our first national park of the trip.

After leaving the crater we visiting a few nice spots along the upper Rogue River: a gorge with big rapids and a spot along the river where the water actually disappears underground in a lava tube for a short stretch. We watched some kayakers do the class 4 rapids downstream from the lava tube: they made it look easy!

We ended our day in the town of Ashland, a great town! We had a yummy dinner and stayed at a nice B&B in a totally awesome room. The bedroom was lined with high, short windows that let in a lot of light, but maintained some privacy and the shower had solar tube skylights. – way cool. Since I wasn’t feeling great, we crashed early, but if we ever make it back there again we’re definitely going to the Shakespeare Festival.

Saturday: Over Bear Peak

2007-05-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Kimbal and I woke relatively early on Saturday and went for a 6 mile hike to the peak of humbug mountain and back. It was a very nice hike, but there was little to no view at the top - might be why they call it "Humbug". The best part of the hike was that we had the trail to ourselves! The trail was actually closed because of many downed trees, but we were able to scramble over them pretty easily, and from the looks of things, many other people had done the same thing.

After we finished the hike we drove south along the coast until we reached Gold Beach and the Rouge River, at which point we took a left and headed east along the river. At first, we were on a nice country road. Then, we were on worn out country roads. And then, we were on a narrow one lane, twisty road that lead us up over a mountain pass, called Bear Peak. It felt like we were really out there in the wild (minus the car)! I was a bit nervous about the steep drop offs, tight turns, and absence of road signs, but we made it through a-ok. At the top there was even snow on the road! We got some great pictures at the peak:

After returning to civilization, we hopped on Rt. 62 and headed towards Crater Lake. We ended up spending the night at a nice inn in the town of Prospect. The coolest part about the inn was the small town people watching: many of the towns people were eating dinner at the inn. Their teenage kids kept running in and out to get permission to take part in the evening activities at the town school - donkey basketball. I just can't imagine what it would be like to live in a town with just one small school for k-12!

Friday on the Oregon Coast

2007-05-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

On Friday I let Kimbal sleep late, so he could kick his cold, while I relaxed at the camp site and read my book. Once Kimbal was up we went for a hike over the dunes to the beach. Actually, it was a hike around a small lake (in which we saw salamanders the night before), through the woods, over the dunes, and to the beach. There were big waves at the beach, a couple of surfers, and some rock jetties that sheltered some kind of aquaculture, oh yeah, and this sign:

Once we got back to camp, we packed up and headed south on 101 yet again. We stopped at a really cool candy shop in Bandon called Cranberry Sweets. You could sample most of their chocolates and jelly candies (which we did). Everything was really yummy-especially the dark chocolate mint creams. We left with a couple of goodies. I mean, we couldn't sample nearly everything and then walk out the of store empty handed! We also stopped at the beach in Port Orford and went for a walk to stretch our legs along the beautiful coast. As usual, we took lots of pictures:

We then stopped for the night at the Humbug state park campground. Another relaxing, beautiful day on the Oregon coast.

Thursday on the Oregon Coast

2007-05-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday Becca and I awoke happy, dry and warm despite several rain showers that passed throughout the night. That was a relief – we hadn’t ever camped in rain the in that tent before, but it did well. We hit the road fairly early, and headed south for another cold, wet and beautiful day. After a little ways, we started to get into dune country as you can see here:

At around lunch time we pulled into the Oregon Coast Aquarium and shoved all the little school kids out of the way so we could be in the first row when they fed the sea lions and sea otters. That’s what they get for being so short. Here is a cool picture of a puffin from the aquarium, the otters and octopus were the best part, but the pictures didn’t turn out:

After the aquarium, I was feeling like I always do after I go to aquariums or zoos – a little conflicted. Good aquariums (which this one was) usually have rescued animals on display that couldn’t survive in the wild, and in reasonably sized enclosures. The problem is that they are still enclosures, and the smarter animals know it. The less cognizant animals, horseshoe crabs in this case, just keep going around and around in their cages trying to go someplace and never get there. I always get the impression that their lives are empty, even by horseshoe crab standards.
Our next stop was the Sea Lion Caves to see some of the animals in their natural habitat. Not only did it not smell nearly as bad as I thought it would, it was much cooler also. We rode an elevator down about 200-ft through the cliff, and came to a fenced-in viewing area (we were in the cage this time).

Much better to see nature doing its own thing.

After the sea lion caves, we headed south again to our campground for the night at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, cooked some dinner, went for a short walk, and hit the sack.

Day One on the Oregon Coast

2007-05-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

We left Portland Wednesday morning, and headed northwest to Astoria, OR through some pretty descent rain squalls that would follow us around for the next couple of days. Leaving town, I did the same thing I do every time I gas up in Oregon – I start to go for the pump, and when some random guy starts to open my gas cap for me, I say aloud: “Oh yeah, I’m in Oregon!”, and then find the closest person who will listen to me and tell them that they don’t let you pump your own gas in New Jersey either.

Anyway, it was a typical cold, wet, beautiful spring day in western Oregon. When we got to Astoria, we went up the Astoria Column. Damn it was windy up there, and doubly cold, wet, and beautiful. The pictures and Becca’s expression says it all.

Heading south on the coast, we stopped and gawked at just about every chance we got, and we got plenty of chances. The ocean is amazing here, and there are wetlands and tidal estuaries winding in among mountains, islands, and farmland. My favorite though is the rough, gnarly coast and watching the waves break as they come into shore. Here are a few pictures:

Eventually we found our way down to Tillamook, and as I promised, we visited the creamery. Becca and I walked up a flight of steps to the observation area, and when we got to the top, we both had the same thought, and Becca blurted it out before I had a chance: “Holy cow, that’s a lot of cheese!” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

We took the self guided tour, and got down to the real business of taste-testing. We split a waffle cone of pistachio-pecan ice cream, and got a few cups of yogurt as well as a block of extra sharp cheddar cheese for the road. Yum.

We rolled into our campground at Cape Lookout at about 6:30pm with enough time to cook and eat dinner, and stroll the 150-ft to the beach and watch the sun set over the ocean. Not a bad day.

Resting in Portland

2007-05-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we had a nice, relaxing day in Portland running errands. Man, what a cool city! We were staying in pretty much the middle of downtown, and all the trains within downtown are free! We cruised around some, I got a backpack, Becca went to the ENORMOUS book store: Powell’s Books, I got a new cell phone to replace the one that found its way into the washing machine (BTW, that means I lost all my contacts, so please give me a call so that I will have your number again…) and we had a nice dinner on the Willamette River watching the dragon boats practice.

Leaving Leavenworth

2007-05-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

When Becca and I left Leavenworth and Dave & Diana behind on Monday morning, I was feeling a little under the weather. We headed south to Portland on a scenic route that Dave suggested. It took us through some amazing river-carved valleys, beautiful rolling green hillsides (that will probably be rolling brown hillsides in a month or two); through Ellensburg, Yakima, and down to Goldendale and the mighty Columbia River.

We’ve been along the Columbia before on some sailing trips, although that was farther west than where we met up with it this time, and much more lush. Where we entered the gorge, it was desert, and we drove along the Washington shore with the river on the left. After about 2 hours of heading downstream, we got to Stevenson, WA where we crossed over to the Oregon side via “The Bridge of the Gods”, and continued a couple more miles to the Bonneville Dam where we checked out the spillway and fish passage systems. Alas, not too many fish going upstream through the fish ladder while we were there. There were however several seals dining on the fish going downstream through the spillway. For those of you not privy to the goings-on in the northwest salmon restoration scene, the government is spending big bucks to put in fish passage systems around all the big dams (on which Becca happens to be an expert!) only to have the seals hanging out at the base of the dam gobbling up all the fish. They’ve been trying the last few years to get rid of the seals by more and more extreme methods: they’ve caught them and trucked them down the coast, they’ve shot rubber bullets at them, they’ve even detonated underwater explosives near the dams so that the seals wouldn’t want to stick around but food is just too strong of a motivating factor – I can relate. Now they want permission to violate the marine mammal protection act and shoot up to 70 seals a year, this time with real bullets. What a mess. Seals up the Columbia are nothing new though – I guess when Lewis & Clark came to town on their cross-country adventure, they saw the seals a couple hundred miles upstream of the Bonneville Dam dining on fish then also. The only thing new is the dam.

We rolled into Portland at about 5pm on Monday night, had a mellow dinner and I sacked out early so that I could hopefully kick the cold. Meanwhile, Becca posted the first official installment of this wonderful Blog you’re reading.

Climbing in Leavenworth

2007-04-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

We started off our travels with a trip to Leavenworth to visit some family (Dave & Diana). Dave and Diana are both huge rock and mountain climbers, and they spent the weekend giving us a taste for their passion. On Saturday we did two climbs at Peshastin Pinnacles. The first climb was supposedly more difficult (if you know climbing rating it was a 5-8, I think), but the climb was relatively short, so it didn't seem that bad. Then we did a second climb that was technically less challenging, but it was a lot longer, with a much bigger ascent, about 120 ft. I (Becca) was scared shitless and started crying about half way up, but I wanted to show myself (and everyone else) that I could do it, so I just kept going. I actually have a pretty good feel for climbing; I think that it is all of the tree climbing that I did as a kid - I just don't like the heights. Kimbal did pretty well too - it took him a few climbs to get the hang of it, but he wasn't scared, like me. The second day we did some small climbs in Icicle Valley. They were shorter, and hence more fun for me (no tears). I learned to rappel myself that day, Kimbal already knew how. Overall it was a very fun weekend and the climbing was an experience that I will always remember!

2 weeks worth of beard.

2007-04-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Well, now that Im unemployed, I thought Id grow a beard. This picture was taken a few days ago when it had been growing for 2 weeks.