September 2005 - California

Prior to the camping trip, we moved about 23 tons of wood into their garage for storage. If and when Book Zoo expands, these will become shelves (which they were in their previous life as well).

On the edge of the valley, we stopped to switch drivers, and spotted this giant 'log mover', complete with tremendous piles of wet wood. The pile extends out of the picture to the right, too.

After we ate some lunch, we passed this clearing in Yosemite where a fire had taken place. A lot of the fires up there start from lightning.

It was starting to get quite overcast and cold as we gradually wound our way through Yosemite.

This is just after Tioga Pass, the highest point on the road through Yosemite. At this point we had gone from shorts and t-shirts to pants, flannels, sweatshirts and stocking caps.

Coming down from Tioga requires you to ride your brakes an awful lot. This was just one of a million amazing overlooks you encounter.

We camped out in Inyo National Forest, and in the morning it was bitter cold. I wandered over the car to find it encased in ice. All those little droplets were frozen, and we had to break out the scraper!

This was our front porch that night. Seen here at about 7am.

As you can see, no rainfly coupled with a steady overnight rain means wet tent. Add a dash of cold weather, and that makes for one unpleasant morning.

Thankfully, the sun was shining. We ran into town and got some coffee, then headed for Mono Lake.

Mono Lake is known for its tufa formations, which is basically just limestone, but it's formed underwater. The reason so much of it is exposed is because Los Angeles diverted water from its sources a long time ago. They are planning on gradually raising it, but it will probably never be back to how it was. It sure does look cool, though.

In these next two, I was trying to show off the impressive Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

The shore and sandy areas are covered with Alkalai flies, which don't bite you, but make an interesting sound when you pass through a swarm of them.

The dark mass in this picture is the island in the center of Mono Lake. Apparently there are a number of unique bird species that hang out there, but I was still a little too cold to attempt the swim over there.

It's so salty that even up in the grass, things are just growing right around piles of it!

I think Nick was beyond that second mass of tufa at this point, testing the waters.

The water was amazingly clear, too.

There was some weird kind of web between all these plants. It almost looked like a miniature cloud.

Back near the parking lot, people have kindly tossed cups, bottles, and other trash. Still, the view is impressive.

We started driving around looking for hot springs, and trying to scope out as much of the valley as we could.

We thought for sure this would be a hot spring. It wasn't.

The map we had was leading us down some strange roads, mostly just bumpy gravel. We wandered in and out of cow pastures, trying to find signs of hot springs.

This is the view back from where we came.

And the view in front of us.

Not quite sure where the hell we're going...

But this was common scenery around there, so it didn't really matter.

We found one! However, this one we knew we could find, as it was clearly marked on the map - not to mention, crowded with German tourists.

Eventually we made our way back into Inyo and set up another camp. A lot of the wood was wet, so this fire shrine was built in order to get it nice and dry.

We had it together this time. No mess, and our "rainfly" might have actually worked - if it had the chance to block rain.

Before the sun goes down, Nick tells me, is the golden hour. Everything is lit by a strange glow. I hoped this picture would show that, but other than the trees and the pine needles, it's hard to see.

The next morning I woke up and wandered around, trying to find patches of sun to warm up in.

On our way back through Yosemite, we climbed Pothole Dome, which afforded us one hell of a view. I had no idea I was such a badass.

Around the back of the dome, we came across this little lake, which wasn't on the map.

The whole time we were down there, this dead tree was creaking against its neighbors very loudly.

For our last stop in the wilderness, we wound our way down to Hetch Hetchey Dam, which is a reservoir for San Francisco. You can see it way off in the distance. Up on the top of the mountain on the left there were some fires started by lightning that the park service was keeping an eye on.

Here's the cool overflow system they have. Nick tells me the last time he visited, it was pouring over top.

Nice spot for some lunch!

We drove for a long, long time after that. Across the valley, over the costal range, and into Oakland.

Then we went off to an A's game.

This guy came up to our section, dressed in a wrestler's mask, and played a tiny accordion for us. Then he ran away.

The A's won 6-1!

However, the damage had already been done.

This place has the same name as my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Cleveland. Huh.

On Friday night, we rode our bikes in the 13th annual Critical Mass, downtown San Francisco. If you've never heard of Critical Mass, it's just bikes taking over the city. By gathering in a huge group, you're pretty much unstoppable, and by now, even the police have given in and provided us with escorts where necessary.

This is the only picture I took, when we were stopped in an intersection and everyone was holding their bikes in the air and screaming. There were cars on all four streets intersecting here, all waiting for our next move.

Here's two little galleries I found though: One Two