Friday night we flew into Calgary around 9. We made it to our hotel around 10pm as the sun was setting. The next morning we went back to the airport to pick up our rental car. The thrifty agent let us know they had a “special” on 4x4s and he recommended it if we were driving in the mountains. It would only be twice the price of the compact we’d requested. We declined. Suddenly our original compact car disappeared from their system…
On Thursday morning I drove east on the 10 past the stretch of Los Angeles suburban sprawl until the malls faded into gas stations and the houses thinned to shacks and sheds. Once in the open desert on the other side of Riverside county I realized I forgot the annual national parks pass we’d purchased in sequoia last spring. A warning, perhaps? When civilization whittled to nothing and the last turbine faded from view, an oasis appeared on the horizon. At…
This year we thought we’d be clever and use the long labor day weekend for our annual trip to La Jolla. Our cleverness rewarded us with a drive of over four hours to get down there and a less than favorable parking situation, not hitting the water till after 2pm. Our friends that followed us arrived even later, as the sun was starting to dip back past the cliffs and the water of the cove became murky. However, no matter…
On Saturday, August 26th we flew to Kalispell Montana. Because we didn’t attempt to book lodging until four or five months before the trip our reservations were scattered around the park. Our first night we stayed in one of the tiny cabins in rising sun motor inn. We killed two black spiders before turning off the lights. Bites on my back the next day suggested we didn’t catch them all. The next morning we hiked to Saint Mary Falls and…
On Friday we made our way northwest to San Francisco for a late lunch on the Wharf. Because we drove up in Sam’s Miata we couldn’t leave San Francisco without a trip down Lombard Street. From there we drove over the Golden Gate and continued to the Muir Overlook before doing a U-turn to begin our journey south along the Pacific Coast Highway. We stopped at the Marin Headlands vistas before plowing on down to Santa Cruz to visit Natural Bridge…
On Memorial day we drove up to Yosemite, arriving in the valley in the early afternoon. Other than tunnel view (a requirement), our first stop was Brideveil Falls. Just like Grizzly Falls, Brideveil overflowed with melt from the storms earlier this year. So much so that walking to the viewpoint to take pictures was no different than walking into a rainstorm. We’d later read that water hadn’t flowed like that in the park since the 1960s. After walking a bit…
On the Saturday before Memorial Day, Sam and I drove through central California on our way to Fresno to start our national parks California road trip. We went straight to Clovis to check in but the room wasn’t ready so we backtracked to Sequoia. I didn’t know what I was doing when I booked this trip. When I first searched the lodging inside the parks they were all sold out on our dates. Only later, after we’d booked other stuff…
On Wednesday, March 29th, I picked up my parents at Burbank airport and took them to Quenelle ice cream for a snack on the way home. To their melatonin releasing systems it already felt like 11pm, so there was little more to do at home but swap gifts and head to bed with the promise that (for the first time) they may not be waiting an eternity for us to get up since Sam’s Pilates teaching schedule has turned us…
We’re all used to seeing rainbows all the time a little further west in Hollywood (and closer to the ground), but on Saturday after the rain stopped and the sun peeked out a big one arced over Griffith Park. I noticed it while sitting in our home office working on those trip videos. I grabbed my camera and literally ran out the door and up the hill. I had to stop several times to catch my breath as ascending that…
Friday morning we were off on a little boat to Isla Coronado, the closest of the Loreto islands formed by volcanic rock. We first stopped beside a high cliff on the southeast side of the island. The water was freezing, but I managed to see another stingray sunning itself on the higher rocks before our guide rounded us up. At the northeast tip of the island, we observed a colony of sea lions basking in the sun while red crabs…