Porterville, CA - Sun, 23 September 2018. 9am.

Last night was a late evening getting back to Porterville. It wasn't as late as our arrival Friday night, which didn't happen until 12:30am Saturday morning, but by the time we hiked to The Needles, explored the Stairway to Nowhere atop the mountain, and finished up at The Trail of 100 Giants it was ( Read more... )

Johnsondale, CA - Sat, 22 September 2018. 7:30pm.

This evening, after we finished a beautiful hike at The Needles, we debated whether we had time and energy left for another hike. Fortunately the Trail of 100 Giants, an easy walk through a grove of huge sequoia trees was nearby, and it was, well, an easy walk.


( Read more... )

Part of our epic busy day last Saturday in Colorado was visiting Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. As I mentioned at the time discovering/remembering this park was here was a bit of serendipity. I'd remembered the name from reading it once before but forgotten where it was.

White Mountains, CA - Saturday, 30 June 2018, 6:30pm.High in the remote White Mountains of California is an interesting protected area, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Standing at elevations of approximately 10,000' - 11,000' (3,050 - 3,350 meters) these trees can only be reached by common means a few months out of the year. And they have to ( Read more... )

Redwoods Road Trip blog #10
Sunday, 25 Sep 2016. 6pm.

We're not out of the woods yet on our Redwoods Road Trip. In fact, after I drank 14 beers in Fort Bragg, we're going back into the woods. And merhawk is driving since, like I just wrote, I drank 14 beers. Okay, they were small ones, but still, 14!

Redwoods Road Trip blog #5
Saturday, 24 Sep 2016. 6:30pm.

In my previous post, Driving The Avenue of the Giants, I wrote about the importance of flexibility in road-tripping. Well, thanks to a mindset of schedule flexibility, we were able to turn driving amongst the giants turned into also hiking amongst the giants.
( Read more... )

Redwoods Road Trip blog #4
Saturday, 24 Sep 2016. 6pm.

After hiking Grizzly Creek Redwoods we turned back south, headed toward our destination for the evening, the town of Fort Bragg on the Mendocino County coast. Though it was already going on 5pm we were not done for the day. While there is life left in my lungs, While there is light left in the ( Read more... )

Redwoods Road Trip blog #3
Saturday, 24 Sep 2016. 5pm.

After a lot of time getting there (see previous entry) we arrived at the remote Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park.

How remote is it? Well, our hiking guidebook suggested going on a weekday to have a chance of having the entire place to ourselves. We can't get away for weekday hiking jaunts, ( Read more... )

Redwoods Road Trip blog #2
Saturday, 24 Sep 2016. 2pm.

This past Sunday Merhawk and I went hiking in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It was part of our we-don't-care-about-the-Super-Bowl plan I wrote about recently. The idea was that we'd take advantage of the fact that so many other people were glued to their TV sets to go outdoors and hopefully encounter fewer crowds there and less traffic along the way. On ( Read more... )