Saturday, June 1
Redwoods National Park
We slept in, ate brunch, then headed to some of the cooler hikes in the park. Lady Bird Johnson had a grove named for her after she helped Redwoods become a national park. The hike through the grove was really neat. The air above us was misty as we had driven up about 500 feet and the trees towered around us. The pictures from this day came out pretty well. The trees are so tall that you can't even really get a good feel for their height; they just keep going up. For the next hike, we first had to drive up a mountainside in really foggy conditions on an unpaved road. It was definitely an experience. The hike then went down about 800 feet near a creek silted by erosion from logging. Supposedly, some of the tallest trees in the world are in that grove. The hike was easy on the way down, but tiring on the way back up. We walked around the tall trees, then we walked out on the creek bed (off the trail). From there you get a much cooler view of the really tall trees from a few hundred feet away, where you can actually see the tops of the trees. We were running out of daylight so we headed back to our campsite, and we setup for dinner. We used up all the firewood that we bought in Boulder, so we bought some of the firewood they had at the state park. They sold us cut up 2x4s. We were a little confused at first, but then we figured they wouldn't sell us treated wood (which is full of chemicals) to burn at our campsite. Well, we were wrong. We found the hard way as we tried to cook some food over the flame, which was putting out lightly black and sooty smoke. The food was ruined, and fire was still putting out not so nice smelling smoke. That sort of put a damper on the evening, so we burned the rest of the wood and called it a night.
Jackson taping the thick vegetation. I've never been in a rainforest before, although I suppose a tropical rainforest would be different. The temperate rainforest still has dense vegetation, and different ecosystems at different levels.
Jackson snapped a candid shot of me ahead of him on the trail. This is what we spent a lot of our time doing in the parks - walking on trails, although it doesn't always show from most other pictures, where you stop at landmarks and scenic points. The journey was a large part of the fun too.
Jackson performing a 4 skip throw on the creek near the giant redwoods.
Sunday, June 2
Redwoods NP to San Francisco, CA - 310 miles
We packed up and showered
in the morning and headed out for San Francisco. We figured we had a little
time, so we drove down 101 to Route 1, which for the most part goes along
the California coastline with some great views. After we got on Route 1,
we had to drive through the mountains to get to the coast, which was definitely
the most tortuous drive we had. When we saw signs that said to take turns
at 15 mph, they really meant it, unlike the exit ramp signs in Texas. After
45 minutes of mountain driving we finally got to the coast and the view
from Route 1 was worth it. Light blue water, 70 degree weather, and nice
beaches. After driving another 20 miles down Route 1, we decided we should
head back to 101 if we wanted to get to San Francisco any time soon. We
had another 45 minute drive back over the mountains, and then drove down
101 into San Francisco. We hit a lot of traffic, considering it was a Sunday
afternoon, but I guess that's just how it is in the Bay Area. We took the
Golden Gate, and of course stopped for pictures. A cool thing happened as
we were crossing the bridge. When we started across it was 3 lanes of traffic
going each way, but a truck drove my on the other side and moved the little
yellow tubes marking the middle of the road over one lane, so we had four
and the other side had two. It was really cool, and I had never seen a lane
change direction in the middle of traffic. We arrived at Jackson's cousin's
apartment, which is really nice and is in a great location in San Francisco.
We were on the 12th floor and we had a great view of the of the city. We
went out to eat with Jackson's relatives, then got to sleep early.
After our twisty, mountainous drive we got to Route 1 and the coast was about as scenic as it gets. It's like this for a few hundred miles all the way down to LA.
The Golden Gate was a nice greeting to San Francisco (along with all the traffic we hit on 101 an hour before SF). The thing in the upper right hand corner is my thumb. It's a lot bigger in the panoramic version. It isn't the first or last time my thumb was in a picture on the trip.
The really cool transition from 3 lanes each way to 4 one way and 2 the other while we were driving across the bridge. I had never seen a lane of traffic switch direction while cars were going by. Unfortunately we didn't get this on tape, but a truck drove by with guys picking up and dropping the yellow lane cylinders on each side.
Monday, June 3
San Francisco, CA
Jackson and I got up late and then we did a fair amount of walking in downtown. We walked from his cousin's apartment to Pier 39 and the surrounding area. We cut through Chinatown, which was really crowded with people buying stuff from all the shops, and walked by North Beach (SF's Little Italy). We had a view of Alcatraz in the distance and also got to see (and hear/smell) the sea lions. We walked back to get to the car and do some driving around. The California Academy of Sciences was pretty neat. There was a huge skulls exhibit with what seemed like 1000 skulls from a bunch of different animals. Unfortunately we missed the planetarium show, since we wanted to walk around Golden Gate Park. The park is really amazing. Most of San Francisco is really packed with townhouses and other buildings, and the drivers are fearless (compared to what I'm used to). Golden Gate Park was open, green, and had lots of things to see: The Academy of Science, Japanese Gardens, a few small lakes, lots of walking/biking trails, and a few monuments. The park is adjacent to the Pacific and we took a walk on the beach. After that we met up Bo, another friend from high school. He did undergrad at Berkeley and was working there for the summer, so he took us around to a few places in the city. After a winding drive down Lombard St., we went to the Metreon, an awesome movie theatre shopping complex, with just about every cool Sony product you can imagine. The area around it was pretty upscale and we got a chance to walk around the Union Square area. After parting with Bo we went to see some of Jackson's Rice friends in Fremont. I didn't realize just how big the Metropolitan Bay Area was...it's huge. We had a late night drive back to the apartment, going over the Bay Bridge, and we went to sleep.
Near Pier 39 with a view of Alcatraz.
Sea Lions sunbathing on man made floats near the pier. They were pretty loud and funny looking. They are apparently pretty smart and know to avoid boats and other hazards.
We took a cable car from the pier area back towards downtown. The cable car museum had some really cool stuff on their history and the technology behind the cable cars. They work by grabbing a set of moving cables running under the streets. All the cars are powered from a central location (in the picture), the museum building, by huge electric motors.
The view (looking west, I think) from Jackson's cousin's apartment. She lived on the 12th floor of a really nice apartment building in the middle of Downtown. Twin Peaks was just off to the left in the picture.
After visiting Golden Gate Park, we dropped by the adjacent beach and walked around for a while. Jackson's calling Bo in the picture. We met Bo and a friend and they took us around SF.
Tuesday, June 4
San Francisco, CA to Three Rivers, CA - 270 miles
After getting up a little
late in the morning, we set out for Brian's place in Three Rivers, CA. On
the way we started listening to Timeline by Michael Chrichton. Jackson
has a pretty low opinion of Crichton, and to some extent you could tell
his writing wasn't made to challenge the reader. But I figure his books
were written with entertainment in mind, not enlightenment or education.
Back to the trip... We drove down I-5 by farm after farm after farm. The
smaller roads we took were also surrounded by farms. Brian told us to stop
at the grocery store on the way, since there aren't any in Three Rivers.
Brian is a friend of Jackson's from Rice who was renting a house just outside
Sequoia National Park for
the summer. He went up on tons of hikes and backpacking trips through the
park. The first day we went and saw the more touristy parts of the park.
We walked around some giant sequoias, but unfortunately didn't take any
good pictures. (I think we were in anti-tourist mode at the time) There
were some spots with really cool views of the mountains and surrounding
area. Moro Rock is a very large rock jutting out of a mountain side, and
the view from there was awesome. You could see for seemingly miles, and
if it weren't for the pollution in the air, the scene would have been picturesque.
We also walked around a mountain meadow and saw a bunch of deer, including
a buck and two bears! One of the bears was really young (a cub) and we didn't
want to get close for fear of it's mother. We headed back to Brian's place
for the night, ate dinner, and we planned our backpacking trip for the next
day.
Jackson sitting atop a big rock next to a river at low elevation in the park. The water was really loud, cold, and it was rushing by.
On the left is the bear cub that we backed away from. (This is with about 25x zoom) The bear on the right was just minding its own business and grazing with people watching all around.
One of the many deer we saw around the park. I haven't seen many bucks walking around the woods in Houston, so this was pretty cool.
We had to walk up a steep man-made staircase that went up the side of Moro Rock. My fear of heights was in effect, which you can see by my hand grasping the rail.
The view from here was just awesome. You could see half a mountain range and down all the way into the valley. Mt. Whitney is behind these mountains, and this range is the tallest in the lower 48 states. The pollution detracted from the view, though. Brian said that the pollution rolls all the way through the central California valley from San Francisco and LA and funnels in here.
Wednesday, June 5
Sequoia National Park
We got up early, finished packing our backpacks, and headed back into the park. One important thing was to shed any weight that you didn't need to be carrying. It was about a 2 mile hike one way with a 2000 ft elevation change - so bringing the video camera was a luxury that would have weighed us down. When we parked Brian's car at the trailhead, we had to put chicken wire around the base of his car to keep the marmots out. Marmots are brown rodent like creatures that seem to like to eat anything human related. The reason for the chicken wire was to keep the marmots from climbing under the hood of the car. They chew up hoses to get to antifreeze and other 'tasty' car fluids, and in the process mess up the car. There were marmots under the hood of some of the other cars around Brian's when we parked. It wouldn't be our last marmot encounter... The hike was pretty neat and the area was really pretty. Snow capped mountains, with cold streams flowing fast down hillsides into mountain meadows. It was definitely one of the prettiest places on our trip. We had to walk across a few streams, getting our feet wet, since the trail was undeveloped - no bridges, bathroom, trash cans, etc. Another thing out backpacking in the wilderness is that you have to pack out everything you bring in. You can't leave behind trash, food scraps, even bathroom tissue. We stopped for lunch near a meadow under some shade. After about 2 hours we found a good spot to camp, dropped off most of our stuff then continued on the trail which led all the way up to the peak of a mountain. We went up pretty far, up to 11000 feet about. They couldn't get to the top, because the snow was too deep to walk on. I got tired and my fear of heights was starting to kick in, so Jackson and Brian did the last one to two hundred feet elevation without me. The elevation really started to get to me and to Jackson, because we had slept at 1000 ft, and now we were hiking at 8000 just hours later. We took breaks every so often, just to catch our breath, as that was the main thing slowing us down. After returning to camp we started working on dinner and marmots arrived. It seemed like they worked in teams with one coming from one side and another from behind to try to get at the food or our backpacks. They were either fearless or dumb, because they didn't flinch when rocks whizzed by them, and they kept coming back. After we finally cleaned up we sat around for a little while, and then went to bed really early - around 8 pm. We were really tired, and there isn't much to do without daylight. We had to pack all of our food and anything fragrant (toothpaste, brushes, deodorant) in a bearproof canister. Brian said to leave our packs open, so if bears (or marmots) came by, they would sniff at them and see that there wasn't any food, then move on. It got really cold that night, down to about 40 degrees. It was average temperature for the fact that we were about 10500 feet elevation, but by far the coldest temperatures on our summer trip.
This mountain meadow was the type of thing that you see in SUV commercials. Just awesome. We stopped here to eat lunch.
Jackson and Brian probably reached about 11000 feet, and this picture is near that elevation.
Snow in June! It was crazy to be walking through tons of snow. Having a snowball fight in June in 70 degree weather is surreal (not to mention being in the mountain air).
Jackson snapped a picture of Brian and I on the way back to camp from the climb
We had to bring some water with us for the hike, but water is really heavy, and to bring all the water we needed would have been a pain. Brian had a portable water filter that we used on the mountain stream water. This water was pretty clean, because it had likely just melted within the past hour or two and tricked down from the peaks. There is just SOO much snow on the mountains. Enough to feed rivers for months.
Here's a marmot. By the end of the backpacking trip Jackson and I (especially Jackson) had a strong dislike for these animals. They don't leave you alone. They chewed up Jackson's backpack and one of my socks. They kept bothering us despite the rocks we threw at them. I actually hit one with a rock, and I felt bad at first, but after a while I thought maybe I taught that marmot a lesson. Hopefully he'll tell the other marmots what's coming to them if they keep messing with people =)
Thursday, June 6
Three Rivers, CA to Lancaster, CA - 190 miles
It was a rough night sleep,
especially for Jackson, who was wearing shorts, because it was so cold.
When we got up, we packed and headed back up the trail. It was a lot easier
and faster downhill, and we got back pretty quick. We found that the marmots
had made it past our chicken wire barrier, but Brian's car was working fine,
so we were ok. It was cold where we camped, but it was really hot outside
Brian's house. The elevation there is only about 1000 ft, and it got gradually
hotter as we drove down the mountain. The daytime temperatures there were
over 100 F. Quite a change. We cleaned up, rested for a little, repacked
the car, and headed to Lancaster, CA for Jackson's SAE Aero competition.
We finished listening to Timeline, which was ok, but not as good
the Harry Potter books. I just saw that there's going to be a movie made
in the next two years from the book. After that we were back to the staple
of mp3s for a while. The drive was almost all flat, and near then end we
were going through the Mojave Desert. We drove by Edwards Air Force base
and all the sudden the air got really hazy. There were forest fires in the
hills east of LA, and the smoke was filling the valley. Visibility was greatly
reduced, like being in a light fog. We got to the hotel that Rice had booked
for Jackson and his teammmates, and then went out with them to eat at a
local Mexican place. I think we were still pretty tired from the backpacking
trip, and Jackson was starting to busy himself with plane preparations,
so we stayed in the hotel and rested. I started reading Shadow of the
Hegemon, which Jackson had bought and read earlier in the trip, and
Jackson was checking for parts and working on the presentation his team
had to give the next day. Sorry to say that I don't have any pictures or still from video from the competition or LA, because I didn't take any pictures, and I gave the lone copy of the tape we made to the people at Rice so they could use it to help design next years plane.