What I Did on My Vacation, Part 2

When you're in the middle of a bunch of giant redwoods, you hear absolutely nothing. An overwhelming silence surrounds you. Everything is dimly lit and muted. It's peaceful but a little unnerving. You sort of half expect to be attached by a velociraptor, or swept up by Treebeard at any moment.

During our hike, the wind hit the top of the trees. All I can say is that our mouths dropped open and we turned to gaze to the tree tops. Honestly, the trees serenaded us with a song that sounded like that of a blue whale. We listened for a while before we decided to move on in the event that something fell.

The Lost Coast
After leaving the redwoods, we headed about 30 miles east to an area known as The Lost Coast. Several years back, I did a multi-day hike there with KDawg, Blackass, and Griffer. The scenery was fantastic: miles of protected, undeveloped coastline with rugged mountains almost meeting the ocean. Although we didn't have the time to really stay and explore like I wanted to do, I wanted Winning Run to at least glimpse it. You know, plant the seed for a return trip and all.

Last time I was there, I got a great photo. This time, I took another one that I love.

Starfish from my first trip.

Hike-in surfing from the recent visit.

It's a place that you should visit at some point during your life. It's awesome.

Photos from The Lost Coast.
(Click a photo for a larger view.)

A Visit with C-Dub and Family
We spent Wednesday night with one of my old roommates and his family. He and his wife just had their third child! All of them are super cute and outgoing. On arriving, his son put on an airshow with his favorite camo jet that coincided with the first 10 minutes of "Top Gun." It was awesome. That night, we dined on fare from The Dutch Goose. The next day, we tromped around "The Dish" at Stanford which, I suspect, was on top of part of the linear accellerator.
We had a fantastic visit. It was great to see C-Dub, C, and the kids.

Photos of the kids.
(Click photo for a larger view.)

A review of our wine country antics to come.

What I Did On My Vacation, Part 1

On the 11 OCT, Winning Run and I flew out to San Francisco a week in advance of a close friend's birthday celebration. We took the extra time to visit a few friends, get to the northern part of the state for some great hikes, and take some R&R.

Driving across the Golden Gate, heading north from San Francisco.

Fleet Week in San Francisco
On arriving Saturday morning, we met up with your friend Eric (a.k.a. Blackass) and his wife, G, at their place in the city, near the Ferry Building. As we were pretty beat that night, we went out for a bite to eat and ended up just hanging out with them, catching up, and watching the Red Sox game. The next morning, we had fantastic Dim Sum nearby and then drove to Tiburon, caught the ferry to Angel Island State Park, hiked to the top, and watched the Blue Angels Air Show over the bay.

One of the views of San Francisco Bay on the way to the top of Angel Island.

View of S.F. with Alcatraz in the foreground.
The jet has just flown out of the top right of the frame.

The jets screamed into view from our left, taking everyone by surprise.

It was pretty cool. Later that night, a wildfire hit the island and scorched over 350 acres, included the area from where we watched the airshow. Guess we were pretty lucky to have made it off the island before anything started. Anyway, we considered it a close call.

That evening, we drove up Hwy 1, through the Muir Woods.

An overlook at Muir Beach.

As darkness fell, Winning Run got ridiculously freaked out by the hairpin turns of the coastal highway which prompted us to bolt for the freeway and head north.

Photos from Angel Island and Muir Beach Overlook.
(Click the photos for a larger view.)

The Giant Redwoods of Humboldt County
For our redwood portion of the trip, we decided to make Garberville our base for hiking and driving through the groves of giant trees. We did an 8-mile hike through an old growth redwood forest. Holy crap, did we feel small. Honestly, there was nothing in there except for these giant trees and tiny, tiny us. The problem with our photos is that, although they show beautiful trees, they do not present the scale or depth of field in a way to accurately show how damned big these things were. Anywho, hopefully the following photos help out a little:

Winning Run inside a "goose pen," a hollow area in the base of a tree.

Me inside the base of a fallen tree.

At the base of a large tree that was at least 300 feet tall.

A forest full of trees that were that big!

Garberville seemed to be a quaint little mountain town with more than its fair share of dirty, unshowered hippie drifters. In fact, one could sense the "subtle" antagonism between the locals and the drifters by simply looking around a little.

These days, I'm with them on the patchouli oil.

Photos from Humboldt Redwoods State Park
(Click the photos for a larger view.)

More to come on the trip.