Some real wandering

In a couple of days, I'm going to be doing some actual wanderings, something that I haven't done in about a year and a half, since right before the pandemic shut everything down. I've been planning this trip for the past 6 months, getting everything together, taking training hikes at altitude, and keeping in shape, just so this could happen.

Next week, I start a 23+ mile backpacking trip into the Sierra Nevada out of Horseshoe Meadows trailhead. The nice thing about this trek is the most I'll be hiking on any given day is about 8 miles. Most of the days are in the 5 to 6 mile range. I haven't been backpacking since I was in college, way back in (mumble, mumble), let's just say, Elvis died the week I was backpacking in the Sierra.

Our first day, we'll hike about 5 miles up to one of the Cottonwood Lakes and find a campsite. There's actually a couple of geocaches up there, so we'll probably look for those after we set up camp. Those might be the only geocaches we find on the entire hike, but that's fine. My plan is to enjoy this, take lots of photos, and possibly put together some video blogs when I get back home.

The second day is probably our toughest day, hiking 8 miles up and over New Army pass into Sequoia National Park. Campsite is scheduled to be Soldier Lake in the park. From there, on the third day, we'll hike south, pick up the Pacific Crest Trail and follow it southbound to our next campsite. The next day, we'll complete the loop and end up back at Horseshoe Meadow. 

I'm really looking forward to this trip.

Petrified Forest National Monument

Once again, it's time to look back on my youngest and my 2017 road trip to Wisconsin and back. When last we checked, we had stopped at Capulin Volcano National Monument in northeast New Mexico. The following morning, we headed off with the intention of making it into Arizona, somewhere near Petrified Forest National Park. As we drove we, of course, geocached along the way, because that's what we do.

We stopped for lunch in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then continued on to Arizona, reaching Petrified Forest sometime around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, which gave us plenty of time to tour the park. This was my second visit to the park and the first for my youngest. For those of you unfamiliar with the park, you can either enter the park at the southern end or at the northern along Interstate 40. There is no established camping in the park but there is plenty of wilderness backpacking opportunities, although you'd have to be prepared since it is a desert and water is scarce.

The park, for the most park is a drive through, something that can be seen in a couple of hours, but that doesn't diminish it in any way as a national park. The scenery is breathtaking with broad vistas in the northern part of the park. The small loop hikes take place in the southern part of the park where the concentration of petrified wood is found There's even several geocaches located within the park boundaries, which is very rare since the National Park Service views most geocaches as litter, but since these were all placed by a ranger who was stationed in the park, the park service allowed these. They even have a page dedicated to geocaching on their website. For the most part they were simple hides, but they took you to many viewpoints and points of interest within the park, without impacting the landscape in any way. Besides the traditional caches, we also found a couple of virtual caches and a couple of geological based earth caches.

Looking at the second shot, you can see in the distance, a developing thunderstorm. This would curtail a little bit of what we wanted to do, but we still were able to enjoy the park and what it had to offer. We drove through the painted desert part (northern) and stopped at all of the viewpoints, including one where there was a rusted hulk of a very old Studebacker roadster where there is a geocache hidden. Petrified Forest also has the distinction of being the only national park that the original Route 66 crosses through, which is what this viewpoint was pointing out.

After that viewpoint, you then cross over Interstate 40 and are now in the petrified forest. At every viewpoint, you get glimpses of logs, petrified with beautiful colors. As you can see in the third pooh  the colors of all of the logs were simply amazing. According to the park's website, the colors primarily come from three different minerals. "Pure quartz is white, manganese oxides form blue, purple, black, and brown, and iron oxides provide hues from yellow through red to brown." Most of the logs during this point are farther away, but you can walk out to them. Being in the high 90s, we opted to take photos and then continued on our drive, hoping to hike the Crystal Forest loop trail.

Once we got down to the Crystal Forest, we stopped and decided to hike the loop which takes you through a large portion of petrified wood and brings you very close to a lot of the logs that are preserved in the park. The temperature had cooled down considerably at this point owing to the impending thunderstorm which was approaching from the east. We kept hearing thunder in the distance and occasionally would see flashes of lightning, so we quickened our pace just a little bit. There's not a lot of cover out in the desert so the threat of a lightning strike was slightly higher, not to mention the distinct possibility that we could get rained on by a cloudburst.

I took some more photos and we finished up the loop and hurried back to our car, getting there just about the time it had started to rain. You can see the rain in the distance of the last photo as we hiked the Crystal Forest loop trail. As we walked the loop, I was struck by the immenseness of the logs, many like the one in the last photo lining the edge of the trail. I also lamented the fact that there had to be signs along the trail at regular intervals telling people that it was against the law to remove any of the petrified rock. In fact, people were encouraged to report other people who had removed pieces of petrified rock from the area. As you can see from the last photo, there's a lot of petrified wood, but if everyone took a piece every time they visited, the park would soon not have any of its namesake to even be a park anymore. If you are out and about anywhere, please practice the Leave No Trace principles as outlined on the link provided.

As noted above, you can probably see the entire park in about a couple of hours. To really delve into some of the trails, it would probably be more like four or five hours. But if you're traveling on Interstate 40, in the eastern part of the state and you're not in a hurry, this is a spot that you'll probably enjoy. I've been back a second time in October of 2019 when I was coming back from my Colorado road trip. I mainly stopped that time to find some of the geocaches that we hadn't found on the previous road trip mainly because it was really hot the day we were there. In October, I didn't have worry about heat and I was able to find the ones we'd bypassed two years previously.

Happy

Well, July was a total bust regarding this blog. I had high hopes for the month of July, but the month just got away from me. A trip to the Bay Area during the second week in July fulfilled my retirement goal of an overnighter per month, which is starting to look pretty good for the near future at least. 

And I was able to get out and take some photos, so P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge looks doable this month as well. With these photo blogs, I usually don't try to think about the theme very much and then when the month is ended, I look at the shots I've taken and see if they fit into the them for the previous month. Sometimes, it's really easy, sometimes, I don't participate because I didn't take anything that I felt fit the theme.

This month's theme was happy and I think I was able to get five shots that fits the theme pretty well. So without further adieu, I give you my take on the theme happy.

1. The COVID hairstyle

Most of you who have been following along know I decided right from the get go that I wouldn't expose myself unnecessarily and so things that didn't need to be done, didn't get done, like getting my haircut. Several of my friends took the same tack, one of them being John, a fellow geocacher. We both had gotten our last haircut in February of 2020 and had only seen each other via Zoom meetings. We joked about the length of our hair and decided to have a contest as to which of us could have the longest hair length by the time the next time we met at a geocaching event. Yesterday, for the first time in about a year and a half, we saw each other at a geocaching event. Since I got my haircut about a month ago, I definitely lost that contest, but it makes me happy that we were able to get together once again.

2 & 3. Family and Dogs

As always, getting together with family makes me extremely happy. In mid July, my wife and I drove up to visit with two thirds of our kids, both of who live up in the Bay Area with their respective spouses/partners. My youngest was visiting with his partner back east, so he wasn't along for the ride, otherwise it would have been the first time the entire family had been together face to face, since before the pandemic began.

We also got to meet my daughter and son-in-law's new dog. I say new, since we'd never met her before, but they've had her for over a year now. About a week before we got there, my son's partner got a German Shepherd puppy which we also met for the first time. It's been a long time since dogs have been in our households and it was really good to see four legged friends enjoying life under our rooftops again.

4. Travel

I love to travel. I especially love to travel to new places that I have never visited before, but a couple of places are near and dear to my heart, one of them being San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I could sit in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge and watch the sunlight and clouds play around its spires for days and days. No matter how many times I visit, I try to sneak in a visit to the bridge and this last trip up north was no exception.

Because I was doing some geocaching related things I also decided that it would be a good time to explore Ft. Point again, located underneath the bridge and to also walk across the bridge over to Marin County. I've done that one time previously about 6 years ago, but it felt like a good time to do it again. I'm not sure I'd do it again, mainly because of the noise and the fact that I've already done it twice, but standing on the bridge and getting different kinds of photographic shots still inspires me and makes me happy, so I won't say I won't ever do it again, because I know in the long run what makes me happy.

When I originally took this shot, I thought it was going to be a throw away shot, one that I take, because I don't think I've gotten enough shots of a particular subject. I always take more than what I really need to take for this reason, because every now and then, you get a shot that just tends to grow on you. This is one of those shots. I love how the south spire of the bridge disappears into the mist of the cloud bank and how you can barely make out the north spire. 

I love the architecture of the bridge and how the bridge was redesigned  to include the arch so that Ft. Point wasn't demolished when the bridge was built. I love that surfers use this area as a gathering spot in which to ply their particular hobby (It's not for me, but that's what makes the world go around, is a little bit of diversity).

5. My love

I met her at a party in June 1986 and we were married a year later in July 1987. We've had our ups and downs, but mostly it's been a lot of ups, which makes me very happy.  To this day, I can't for the life of me even begin to understand why she still wants to be around me with all of my faults, so I guess I can consider myself a very lucky man.

I know she doesn't really like this particular photo, but I think it's one of the better photos I've taken of her over the years. It was taken at an outdoor dining venue in town, where we went just to enjoy each other's company and enjoy eating together. I like how it shows her relaxed side. As my daughter says, "Vacation Mom is the best mom." 

We don't eat out very often during her regular work year, but when she's on summer vacation, we get to spend a lot more time together. Evening walks to help keep us in shape happen during the summer time and she's expressed an interest in continuing that into the fall and winter months. I'm agreeable to that. And so it goes. But she makes me happy and I hope I make her happy as well.

And that's my take on this month's theme. Stop by P.J.'s page and click on the links at the bottom to see how other people have interpreted this same theme.