A Look into my Life

Well, once again, it's that time of the month where P.J. has his monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is "A Look into my Life." I figuredwith the amount of photos I took this past month, I should be able to come up with five photos that sort of personify me.

1. Geocaching and travel

As you all know by now if you've been paying attention, I love to geocache. I also love to travel which works out well since they go hand in hand with each other. Last month I attended two geocaching Mega Events, one in the Los Angeles area (Spring Fling) and the second one which was in Flagstaff over Memorial Day weekend (GeoWoodstockXX). Both of the events were put on by the same individuals, so there was a lot to compare and contrast but if push came to shove, I'd say the GeoWoodstock was Spring Fling on steroids. It was just bigger and better all the way around and that's to take nothing away from the Spring Fling. 

Let's just say over the course of five days in Arizona, I got to see a lot, find a lot of geocaches and just have a really good time enjoying this crazy hobby that I've been doing for over 23 years. With the two events and other geocaching excursions I did this past month, I found 430 caches, which was my second best month ever. 

I've said in the past and I'll say it again here; geocaching takes me to places that I wouldn't necessarily visit were it not for geocaching. I mean, I got to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona while the store across the street played "Take it Easy" in a loop all day long. Unless you make it a point, a lot of these interesting tourist spots just get driven right by, but because I have an interest in travel and geocaching, I've gotten off the main highway and done some scenic byways that I might have missed otherwise. Watch the Pixar movie "Cars" and I think you'll understand perfectly.

2. Hiking

I also really enjoy hiking along all kinds of trails, but I have a big interest in longer trails, trails like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and the Arizona Trail (AZT) to name a few. I've hiked portions of all of these trails in my lifetime and while my age is starting to become a factor in how much backpacking I can actually do, I haven't ruled out the possibility of doing some section hikes on any of these trails. I've just become more accustomed to the finer things in life, like an actual bed to sleep in when I travel as opposed to a sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the ground.

While in Flagstaff, I was able to hike a portion of the AZT. Once again, geocaching was involved. We'd gone up to finish off a geocaching adventure up in the mountains north of Flagstaff and we'd noticed this cache just off the road at a turnout. We decided to find that cache after finishing off the Adventure stop and I am really glad we did. We pulled off at the trailhead, then took a side trail, which took us down to the AZT, which then took us up to the junction that led us out to the meadow you can see in the distance. Eventually, we found another side trail, which led us to the geocache we were looking for, one that had been hidden in July 2001. It's always cool to find caches that are 23 years old. As time goes on, these old caches are becoming rarer and rarer and so they become valuable in the game for different challenge caches out there that want you to find old caches.

3. Photography

If you're still reading along, you're probably noticing a theme for this entire entry, but you knew that was going to happen anyway, didn't you? Anyone who travels knows to bring a camera along to record their journeys and refresh their memories when they get back home and I'm no exception. 

This particular shot wasn't taken on any trip I took, but I happened to spy this ladybug right outside our community center about two blocks away from our house. I really loved the large amounts of yellow and green with that little splash of red thrown in which made for a very pleasing image in my opinion.

My photographs tend to lean heavily towards the natural side of the earth as opposed to the cultural side of things and so I have lots of landscape type photos in my galleries and photo albums. I will also tend to have lots of animal photos both large and small. Looking back on this blog entry however, I think I've actually achieved a good balance between nature and culture this time around. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

4. Food

When I'm out and about traveling, I tend to lean toward more local cuisine, especially when I'm eating at the dinner hour. This trip to Flagstaff last month was no exception. We had Mexican food, we had Neapolitan Pizza, and then we had some American comfort food in the form of this Texas burger with sweet potato fries and a stout chocolate porter. And yes, there's bacon in there too. Just looking at that photo makes my mouth water. This meal, for the most part, was the perfect ending night of that weekend.

Please also understand that for lunch I'll usually eat at a place that's tested and true for fast food, mainly because I have an agenda that I like to complete. We ate at In-n-Out for lunch one of the days on this trip. It was quick and easy and I can now say I've eaten at the highest elevated In-n-Out at just around 7000 feet above sea level. In fact, it's the only in-n-Out I've eaten at where they didn't have the crossed palm trees (a corporate symbol) out in front of the restaurant. It's just too cold for the palm trees to survive. So it's fast food for lunch but breakfast and dinner are really supposed to be savored when I'm traveling.

5. Family

I really couldn't go an entire blog entry about myself without talking about my family and particularly, this little gem. I found myself getting to hang out with my favorite tiny human in the middle of the month in Paso Robles so her parents could attend a wedding there. We got to hang out all weekend together, play in the park, go to a farmer's market and then enjoy each other's company in the evening while her parents were at the wedding.

I don't know if you've ever heard the sayings about being a grandparent, but everything you've heard is definitely true. Being this tiny human's Papa is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. We're fortunate enough that we live only a half day's drive away from them, so I get to see her on a regular basis. That, plus the technology of the day where we can FaceTime at meals really allows me to see her grow up. And yet I'm still amazed when I look back at videos from six months ago and see how much she's grown. Let's just leave it at, I'm really enjoying this part of my life.

And there you have it, my take on the theme "A Look into my Life." Please feel free to comment and check out the other entries to this month over at P.J. blog.

Adventures

The theme for P.J.'s photo blog for this month is Adventures, and it couldn't have come at a better time, since I went on quite an adventure this past month, though not exactly as planned. But then again, that's kind of the point of an adventure in that you never know how it's really going turn out until after it's done. So here's my five photos from last month, four of which are part of my backpacking adventure and one is of something different.

1. Two striped garter snake

For those of you who have been following along, I've gotten the reputation as the snake whisperer. For whatever reason, I seem to attract snakes to me. I prefer to think that it's because I'm more observant when out walking in the wild, but that's another story that would take too long to tell here. Either way, people say it could be quite the adventure hiking with me. 

My friend Greg and I were on several training hikes up in the Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake area of our local mountains. In Lake Arrowhead, we spotted a Southern Pacific rattlesnake attempting to cross the road. Fortunately, after our car straddled it on the highway, it had the sense to go back to the side of the road and I was able to get a nice video of it as it slithered into the bushes.

This garter snake, a type I've never encountered before, was stretched across the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) when I spotted it. I was pretty content just to lay across the trail while I took some video and photos of it. I estimate it to be about 4 feet long or so, on the large side for garter snakes, but I guess it was enjoying a bountiful time eating some of the rodents out in the wild. We walked around it, I decided to take another photo from the other side, but never got the photo because I accidentally kicked a rock in the direction of the snake and it took off.

2 - 5. The big adventure

We'd hoped that the training hikes at altitude would have prepared us better for the trek ahead, but we miscalculated a little bit. This is the beginning of our hike which was supposed to be a 23 mile loop through the Cottonwood Lakes region, over New Army Pass and into Sequoia National Park. Following that, we were then going to head south on the PCT and then catch the Cottonwood Pass trail back down to our base camp near Horseshoe Meadows. We spent the first night at Horseshoe Meadows, which is slightly over 10,000 feet in elevation and then began the hike the next day.

As you can see, it looks like I'm pretty excited to head out on the trail and I'm not going to lie, I was. The adrenaline had kicked in and my pace was way too fast for the first 100 yards or so. Fortunately, my shortness of breath told me I needed to slow down, which I did and we progressed at a much more reasonable pace for the rest of the trip.

However, what you're not seeing in the first photograph is my migraine headache. Most of my migraines are caused by stress and usually when the stress is released, is when I suffer the headaches. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had a migraine on the first day of Christmas break, the first day of Spring break and the first day of Summer vacation when I was teaching. This hike was no exception. I was stressed. As I noted in my last blog entry, this was the first time I'd been backpacking since I was 19, the week that Elvis Presley died. You can do the math, but needless to say, it had been a long time since I'd been backpacking and I was overpacked. I had way too much food and the other big thing that was weighing me down was my tent. Couple that extra weight I'm carrying with a migraine that my prescription meds are just barely blunting and it wasn't the most pleasant trip I've ever been on.

Still, we pressed on and slowly the first couple of miles were behind us. We'd entered early on, the Golden Trout Wilderness area and then progressed up the hill until we entered the John Muir Wilderness area. The next day, we were supposed to enter into Sequoia National Park, but we needed to finish out this day first. 

With the headache, at least checked for now, the hiking was a bit easier, but I had no appetite. So that meant the weight of my pack wasn't declining either. I forced down some food knowing that I needed calories in my system, but it took me the better part of an hour to eat an entire Clif Bar. If you've ever backpacked, these are snack bars designed for hiking, very dense, loaded with calories to give you energy. 

I think there was another contributing factor as well, in that we were getting smoke being blown into the area from the French Fire, which was about a hundred miles away or so. The views were rather hazy and you could smell smoke in the are. If you look at photo number 4, you can see the view from our campsite was rather hazy. I'm sure this didn't help since we were also hiking above 10,000 feet.

After setting up camp and finding a geocache at the far end of Muir Lake, we hung out at camp and discussed the next day's hike. This would have taken us up over 12,000 feet in elevation and been the longest mileage day of the hike. Neither of us were feeling really well and we made the decision that we were going to end our adventure early and head back down to Horseshoe Meadows and go home.

Some of you might say that the trip was a disappointment. Not really. I learned some valuable lessons from the trip. While my tent is an awesome tent for car camping when I'm by myself, it's too heavy for a backpacking trip, so I need to look for something that's much lighter to carry on my next trip. And there's the second thing I learned and that even though this trip was very hard, it wasn't something that would turn me off on backpacking forever. I'm looking forward to more adventures like this, perhaps even coming back here next year. 

The third thing I learned was I packed way too much food. A guy in camp told me his bear canister weighed 10 pounds for an 8 day trip. I had a 10 pound canister for a 4 day trip. Yeah, I had way too much food. And so I'll adjust.

When we got back to the car at the end of our up and back overnighter, I told my friend, "Let's remember the good things about this trip." And so I leave you with one last photo that I took that morning. The winds had shifted overnight and blew all of the smoke from the fire down the hill into Owens Valley and we were left with crystal clear views. The sun was rising, just starting to hit the tops of the peaks. The waning gibbous moon was starting to set over the same peak and the scene was magical. This is why I go on adventures like this.

As John Muir stated, "The mountains are calling, and I must go."

Please be sure and check out some other people's interpretation of the same theme on P.J.'s blog.

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.

700 and Scenic Route & becoming a Trail Angel

Two weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to go on my first camping trip in almost 2 years. Yeah, COVID will do things like that, but I digress. Most of you who are probably reading this, have already seen my video I put together about the hike we did on that Saturday up to Kearsarge Pass. If you haven't, I would suggest clicking on that link and watching it. As we were making our way up to Kearsarge Pass, we kept bumping into Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) hikers coming down the trail heading either to Independence or Bishop for a resupply of food. I talked with several of them and made up my mind if I could help a hiker or two get down the hill the next day, I'd do it. 

The next morning, Sunday, as I packed up camp and loaded up the Jeep for the ride back home, I did a good job of Tetrising my stuff so there'd be enough room for two other backpacks and two hikers I could bring down the hill. And as luck would have it, as I was entering the hiker part of the parking lot, there stood 700 with his thumb out and I asked him how many in his group. He said one other, Scenic Route and I said "Hop in." We drove down to where Scenic Route was and the look on her face as she put her thumb out, then realized that 700 was already in the car was priceless. We loaded up her gear into the Jeep and down the hill we went.

I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation as we made our way down the hill into Independence. 700 told me that he got his trail name because that's the amount of water he carries maximum. I guess in the Sierra, that's probably OK since there's lots of water around, but hiking with only 700 milliliters of water in the desert just seemed like downright scary to me. Scenic Route got her trail name because she ended up taking several hikers down the wrong trail at some point, thus she took them on the scenic route.

I dropped them off at the corner of the road as it joined up with HWY 395, we fist bumped and I asked if I could get a photo of the two of them. Now, I wish I could have gotten a couple more shots of them, but this one will do. Scenic Route took a photo of me with 700 for her albums. I got 700's Instagram account and am now following him there, so I can see how the rest of their trip is going. We then said out goodbyes and I watched them as they headed north to get a burger at a local restaurant.

And that's how I became a trail angel.

PHOTO BLOGGING CHALLENGE (JUNE 2019): GET OUT AND PLAY

So I haven't done this in a couple of years, but since I have a new blog, I thought I'd get back into this again.  The theme was relatively easy to cover this month, since it was pretty much in my wheelhouse considering the circumstances in my life at the moment.  This month's theme was "Get Out and Play" and I did that a lot this past month.

1. Foggy morning

For readers of my other blog that haven't come over here yet, I retired at the end of May after teaching for 36 years.  I can really get out and play all the time now.  This particular photo was taken on Monday, June 3rd, the first day of my summer vacation since I don't technically retire until August 1st. The fog is actually the key to this photo.  This is a fire road loop trail in the foothills north of the town I live in in California.  This is the sunny side of the trail.  Coming down the other side you descend into a creek ravine and there's lots of trees there, so I usually just do the loop counter clockwise so I can finish in shade.  I didn't need to do that this time, but I'm really glad I did.  Hiking is one of my passions and I'm trying to build up stamina even more for longer hikes in the future. This, being the first hike of the summer, was a short hike by my standards.  But at the 2 and a half mile marker, I came upon a bear walking up a side trail.  For those of you who are familiar with this loop, this is really close to civilization, but there he was, a bear on my first day of vacation.  And, no, I was too interested in watching it that I didn't even get any photos of it.  By the time I thought about taking a shot, it was up on the ridge above the main trail, in heavy fog, behind some bushes.  Even if I had taken a photo, it would have been a grey blob.  So, you'll just have to trust me on this one.  Talking with rangers after I came down indicates that they think there's at least 3 bear up in the foothills calling this spot their home.  I've been hiking up there for the better part of 15 years and this is the first time I've seen a bear.  I probably have a better chance of seeing a rattlesnake up there, yet I haven't seen one of those either.  And so it goes.

2. Halfway through

One of my other passions is geocaching, which I do a lot.  Some people would say I'm obsessed about it.  I've been finding caches in the  wild and in the urban environments since 2001, before the hobby/sport/game was even a year old.  The nice thing about geocaching is it usually involves hiking, so I'm all over that.  Or at least getting off of your butt and out in the environment, even if it means just looking around town for things hidden then.  I prefer going out on geocaching excursions with other people.  This particular hike would have been really frustrating since we ended up with a lot of DNFs (Did Not Finds) for the day.  Eh.  That happens.  

As you can also see, I upped my mileage for this one.  Technically, this was a little less strenuous terrain-wise since it was all on paved trail, but it was definitely longer.  This was taken at mile marker 6.5 and we'd actually walked beyond that marker before we turned around and went back down the canyon we in which we were hiking.  I also hide a cache up in the canyon.  Curiously, no one has found it yet.  That is usually a rarity as there are always cachers out there who like to be First to Find on any cache, but since this particular hide is a 4 mile hike one way, it's going to take more than one cache to lure many people out there.  Had I hidden two or three caches out there, all of them might already have been found.  But just one?  I suspect it will sit there until the fall now before someone ventures out to find it.

3. Pacific Crest Trail

When I was younger, I really wanted to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail.  I still do actually, but life is in the way.  I don't think my wife would take kindly to me taking off for five to six months to be by myself in the woods.  Although today it's probably much safer than it was 40 years ago, it's still a challenge.  The trail is 2650 miles long.  700 of that is hiking pretty much through desert landscapes.  You hike 1700 miles before you even leave California.  It's a rugged trail to say the least.

This doesn't mean I've given up on the idea, it's just on the back burner.  Right now, I've been pretty satisfied just getting out and hiking sections of it, like this one north of Big Bear Lake.  Taking a weekend backpacking trek or possibly a five day trek is not out of the realm of possibilities.  I'm sure my wife would rest easier if I went with someone else.  Any takers?

4. Checkerspot butterfly

Photography, another passion of mine has changed over the years.  I've started an Instagram account called @dogzonwalkz where I literally go out and take photos of dogs on walks and post them to my account.  Feel free to follow along there as well.

I've always enjoyed photography and this month, I went back out and started exploring other areas that I've neglected in the past, particularly, nature photography.  While out on that geocaching hike earlier in the month, we were literally swarmed by flocks of butterflies.  We counted 7 different species of butterflies as we hiked in the canyon. I didn't have my main camera with me because I was trying out some new trekking poles, plus I was geocaching, so I felt that leaving the large camera at home was the right thing to do.  All I had with me was a point and shoot and my iPhone.  This Chalcedon Checkerspot on a berry blossom was taken with my point and shoot.  There was another instance where I had a chance to get a shot of one of the other types of butterflies and I couldn't get close enough to get a shot like this since all access in was through a large patch of poison oak.  Nope, I did not want to go there, which means there's still a place for my larger camera and its big zoom lens.

5.  Muir Woods National Monument

Growing up, my dad would always take the entire family on camping trips and most of those camping trips revolved around seeing some kind of national park in the western United States.  I continued that tradition with my kids and took them to many of the places I'd been to as a kid.  I also took them to new spots, places I'd never visited or camped at previously.  Joshua Tree National Park comes to mind very quickly as one of our spring trips.  Another spring trip was to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

One spot that I never visited, nor took my kids to see was Muir Woods National Monument.  I finally got to visit it when my wife and I went up to visit my daughter and son-in-law last week in the Bay Area.  We had tried to visit it last summer, but didn't realize that you need reservations for parking in the park, or to get a shuttle down to the monument and the place was sold out for the week we were there.  Once we finalized our travel plans this year, I went ahead and booked a parking reservation for the monument and we were good to go.

The park is very peaceful and despite the number of people in the park on the trails, it never felt like it was crowded, nor were the crowds disrespectful of the environment.  Most walked quietly taking in the glory of the coast redwood environment.  If people did talk, most talked in low whispers out of respect for everyone around them.  Other national park places I've been to people haven't shown the same kind of courtesy, which is why I really enjoyed myself while we were hiking along the trails.  My daughter said she enjoyed watching me just enjoy the moment.

And that's that for this month.  I hope you enjoyed these offerings to the Get Out and Play challenge set up by P.J. on his a Lil' HooHaa.  Check out some of the other photographers and how they interpreted the challenge for this month.

I apologize in advance if I don't comment back on any of your comments.  For some reason, I haven't been able to do that and if anyone else who uses Blogger can figure it out and help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.