Tag: Man-trip

After twelve nights away the trip has ended, but here’s a recap of the last three days. On Tuesday we set off for Elkhorn Slough, an area thirty minutes north of Monterey that is normally a hotspot for sea otters. On this visit, however, construction equipment and a “closed” sign blocked the parking lot; they are apparently doing some habitat restoration, so future visits should be even better, but we were stymied in our otter quest this time. But (spoiler alert) there were a ton of otters down the coast; the cute little buggers are doing much better than back in the early 1900s when they were feared to have been hunted to extinction.

On Wednesday we made a third quick visit to the aquarium and then headed south via the 17 Mile Drive along the coast and through Pebble Beach. It’s a touristy thing to do, but it’s a really pretty part of the planet so I didn’t mind paying $12 and sharing the road with a bunch of other tourists. From there we continued south to the town of Los Alamos. I’d picked it since it’s close to Vandenberg Air Force Base, the west coast’s spaceport, and I was hoping to catch a rocket launch, but unfortunately nothing was blasting off while we were there, so we’ll have to try again in the future.

Our lodging for the night was the Victorian Mansion, a building that was originally built in 1864 and later moved to Los Alamos in 1980. As if staying in a 160 year old mansion wasn’t enough of a draw, they have also themed each room. We stayed in the French room, with hand painted scenes of Paris on the walls and a spiral staircase leading up to our loft bed, but other rooms included a gypsy room, an Egyptian room, a pirate room, and their Hobbit Hole will be opening soon.

The town of Los Alamos is a tiny place with numerous buildings that date back a hundred years, and while it’s supposedly crowded from Thursday through Sunday, on a Wednesday night it was almost completely empty and Audrey accurately remarked that it felt like we were in a Twilight Zone episode as we walked a mostly-empty street with a cowboy saloon on one side and an old railroad depot on the other. We ended up in an ancient mercantile that is now the Pico Restaurant, and I placed my standard cocktail order, asking the server to bring me the girliest, most embarrassing drink they could come up with. In twenty years of making that order, this one was the best: they actually brought me two drinks, one a purple and pink margarita, and the second was a brown and white tropical drink with an entire garden of fruit, mint, flowers, and whatever else they could find decorating the top. I went to bed a very, very happy, and quite tipsy, man.

Today we enjoyed breakfast on our balcony, made a stop in the weird Danish town of Solvang, then returned home after a 2.5 hour drive. All in all it’s been a nice little tour around California.

It’s been a few days since the last journal entry ended with me annoying a very large bull elk during a hike through the fog in Point Reyes. The day after that adventure I met up with Ma & Pa Holliday in Bodega Bay where we enjoyed some crab, took a nice hike on Bodega Head, and then headed inland fifteen miles to an Airbnb in the tiny town of Freestone. I’ve developed a liking for weird lodging, and this one fit the bill: a 100 year old redwood cabin decorated in a Bohemian style, including a ten foot tall stone urn from the 1923 World’s Fair that watched over us from the pond behind the cabin. The cabin was also a short walk from the amazing Wildflour Bakery, and much delicious bread was consumed during our stay.

Day two with Ma & Pa took us back to Point Reyes to visit the scenic lighthouse and find some elk for my dad to photograph; luckily the elk were obliging and the Skipper returned home with a treasure trove of photos and videos. Once back my mom was strangely excited by the ping pong table at the cabin, so the Hollidays made an embarrassing demonstration of their lack of coordination to close out the day.

The following morning we took my dad to do his favorite thing: eat. After that I’d stumbled upon mentions of “junk art” along Florence Ave in the nearby town of Sebastopol. The artist’s name is Patrick Amiot, and he has made hundreds of humorous statues out of random discarded metal items that are displayed in his neighbor’s yards and throughout town. My mom was tickled pink as she went from house to house taking photos of metal witches and six foot tall cats. After bidding farewell to the parents I was off to San Jose to pick up Audrey, where I met her at the airport holding a “Welcome back Audrey!!! Congrats on your parole!!!” sign, much to her bemusement. A short drive later and we settled in for three nights in Monterey.

Today we renewed our membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and spent the morning with the fishies, then we headed over to the surprisingly-deserted Fisherman’s Wharf; apparently it’s much less crowded on weekdays after Labor Day. The highlight was watching a paddle boarder have seals repeatedly leap onto the back of her board to relax, although we did also get to see everything from a massive bull sea lion to rays to jellyfish to seagulls who were so used to people that they just stared at us while we passed by six inches away from them. Dinner was chowder and cookies, because grownups get to eat whatever they want, and tomorrow is likely to be filled with sea otters and possibly another visit with the fishies at the aquarium.

Point Reyes was a foggy place with limited visibility at 7am, but the birds and rabbits were all waiting for me when I got to the Abbott’s Lagoon trail, and the short out-and-back to the ocean was a good appetizer for the rest of the day. Quail were all over, sparrows were hopping at my feet, and the least-afraid/least-annoyed great blue heron I’ve ever met posed for pictures on a bridge for at least five minutes.

The main hike for the day was the nine-mile round trip to Tomales Point at the park’s northernmost end. I started off in the fog with tule elk bugling all around me, and enjoyed a druid-esque walk through the landscape with just deer and the elk as companions. The scenery on this trail is supposed to be extraordinary, but with visibility limited I was excited to have an elk or deer pop up fifty feet from me every few minutes. On the way back the fog lifted somewhat, and while the scenery was great, the animals remained the stars of the show, including a massive bull elk who was grazing ten feet off the trail on a portion that bordered a cliff, and who was none-too-pleased when I timidly walked by, all the while calmly telling him not to mind me and to continue eating.

Dinner tonight was at the Hog Island Oyster Cafe, and while they didn’t quite top the oysters in Tasmania, barbecued oysters and homemade sourdough bread while sitting at a picnic table next to the ocean wasn’t a bad way to wrap up the day.

Days three, four and five of this trip are now in the books. For unexplainable reasons I woke up at 4:30am on Labor Day, and needing to arrive in Truckee by 11:30 decided to get on the road. Scenic Mono Lake unfortunately passed by in the dark, but eventually the sunrise lit up the Sierras, and three-and-a-half hours later I pulled into my brother’s driveway. Delicious meals, a few hikes, some last minute fantasy football magic, a plunge into Donner Lake, and an utterly massive slice of apple pie at Donner Ski Ranch were but a few of the adventures during our two days together.

This morning I bid adieu to the younger Holliday and headed to the coast. After clicking the “avoid freeways” button in Google Maps, the route led past Folsom Lake and along remote mountain roads. Eventually Lake Berryessa appeared, a giant reservoir that is most famous for the unique spillway at its dam. The Lake Berryessa Morning Glory Spillway is a 72 foot diameter circular opening that normally juts above the water’s surface like an enormous bath tub drain, but when the reservoir is full it creates a mind-blowing circular waterfall. It wasn’t overflowing today, and I couldn’t do justice trying to describe what it looks like anyhow, but there’s a YouTube video that’s definitely worth a watch.

After geeking out over engineering I headed towards Muir Woods, since it would be crazy to visit this part of the state and not take a walk in perhaps the world’s most beautiful redwood grove. For anyone who hasn’t visited Muir Woods, it can be infuriatingly crowded on summer weekends, but on a random Wednesday in September there were parking spots available and a relatively small number of visitors, so I actually got to enjoy the silence under the giant, thousand year old trees. In addition to the boardwalk trail I headed up the Fern Creek trail, and learned that not only were the granite foundations at the top of the trail part of the now-burned-down Muir Woods Inn, but that there also used to be a railroad that brought early visitors to the grove.

This evening I’m spending the first of two nights at the romantic Olema House near Point Reyes; I have a long history of making solo visits to romantic bed and breakfasts, much to Audrey’s chagrin. Dinner was fish tacos and a plate of local oysters that were mighty tasty, although Get Shucked in Tasmania still easily retains its crown as my favorite oyster stop. Tomorrow I’m going to do some hiking in Point Reyes, then Ma & Pa Holliday will be meeting me in Sebastopol for a couple of days of eating crab and exploring the very pretty Northern California coast.

It’s been nearly fifteen months since the end of the Great Australia / New Zealand Adventure, which is far too long to go between vacations. This year’s escape is shorter and less ambitious than trips in the past, with a few stops planned in California over a two week period.

The trip started yesterday with a drive up Highway 395 through the Eastern Sierra. It’s one of my favorite routes in the state, but not one I’ve done many times in summer months. Temperatures were in the high 90s on the way up, but this surprisingly made it easy to find the elusive herds of Tule elk that inhabit the area. Harking back to the days when our parents set up sprinklers during hot weather so that we could cool off, the elk had similar ideas and had apparently found every farm field with irrigation, and were clustered under the spraying water. After spotting one herd, it was almost a certain thing that there would be another a few miles up the road at the next irrigated field.

Today’s adventure was hiking in Devils Postpile National Monument. Despite living in California for nearly thirty years, this monument has eluded my attempts to visit it due to its short open season; with the park road reaching up to 9,000 feet elevation it’s covered in snow most of the year and may only be accessible from late July until early October. Entry for me was by shuttle bus, but the park is in the heart of the Pacific Crest and John Muir trails, so I encountered a fair share of people in the midst of multi-week or multi-month hikes; it’s a humbling experience to feel like a badass for hiking ten miles through the High Sierra only to then meet a half dozen people who are on day 120 of a 200 day journey.

Humble pie aside, the park is a great place to hike. The Devils Postpile is an intriguing series of basalt columns that forms a cliff next to a river, while further downstream the impressive Rainbow Falls tumbles a hundred feet straight down over similar volcanic rocks. I also made a visit to Sotcher Lake, and any time spent at a high mountain lake surrounded by granite domes is time well spent. The day wrapped up with a hamburger at Reds Meadow, an old camp in the mountains used by through-hikers to resupply. I’m told the taste of the burgers improves dramatically depending on how long you’ve been hiking, so while I thoroughly enjoyed mine I can only imagine what the folks who had been trekking for months must have thought.

This journal entry was written in October but not published until January.

The theme of visiting new places continued today; I started out with 2000 year old sequoias in the Tuolumne Grove, one of Yosemite’s three sequoia groves and the only one that I’d never been to before. After spending a couple of hours among the ancient giants I enjoyed another scenic drive along Tioga Road and through the High Sierras before heading south towards home on Highway 395.

I’ve mostly only been able to visit the Eastern Sierra in winter or spring when snow closes the high passes, so this autumn trip finally afforded an opportunity to make the side trip up to the White Mountains and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Located at 10,000 feet elevation, this area is home to the world’s oldest trees – at more than 4,000 years of age, these tiny, gnarled trees made the 2,000 year old sequoias look like babies. The road to reach them was a classic western road – narrow, bendy, and traversing impossible terrain with awe-inspiring views of incredible scenery in all directions. After arriving at the Schulman Grove, a 4.5 mile trail led through the old trees and onto ridges with dramatic views of the Sierras and Death Valley. Spending an afternoon free of other people among trees that were around while the Egyptians built the pyramids was an excellent way to escape from the world’s current troubles.

This journal entry was written in October but not published until January.

I’ve currently got two weeks of vacation, and it is glorious. Due to coronavirus I didn’t plan anything in particular beyond a visit to see my parents in the Bay Area and a couple of days with my brother at his place up in Truckee. After hiking around Tahoe I said goodbye to younger Holliday yesterday and took random backroads down to a very smoky Yosemite National Park – apparently smoke from all of the fires from the rest of the state is filling the air here. That said, the air doesn’t feel dangerous, so I got in a hike in Tuolumne Meadows yesterday before setting off on a more ambitious journey today. Sadly my number didn’t get picked in the lottery for Half Dome permits, so instead of a death march up one of the world’s greatest (and most tiring) trails I traveled up the first half of the trail before detouring onto a path I’d never taken before towards Glacier Point. Being outside again feels good, the trails were reasonably empty, and I may or may not have spent portions of the hike talking to the squirrels, jays, woodpeckers, junkos, and quail who I met along the way. Sadly, while my workout routine seems to have been sufficient to prepare me for the uphill portions of this journey, whatever muscles are involved in going downhill have atrophied to the point of uselessness, and after a two hour descent of several thousand vertical feet I’m not sure I was able to fully stifle the scream of relief when I finally collapsed into my driver seat at the end of the day. It was a good day, and there’s more to follow tomorrow.

The 2019 Man Trip concluded today after visiting some places I’ve wanted to see for a while. The day started with a trip to the Salton Sea, a place whose weirdness I described after my first visit in 2005. After roaming through empty lots in Salton City I made my way to Salvation Mountain and Slab City. Salvation Mountain is an artwork/ode to God that covers an entire hillside. It was made from clay and thousands of gallons of paint, and its creation took decades for a single man to complete. In an address to Congress regarding Salvation Mountain, Senator Barbara Boxer described it as “profoundly strange”, which is as good of a summary as any.

As odd as Salvation Mountain was, it paled in comparison to the nearby “town” of Slab City. I had first learned of this location from the book Into the Wild and have wanted to see it ever since. My best description is that it’s a bit like what you would expect if Burning Man was a town populated by people without any money. Every winter RVs converge on this spot in the desert, and folks settle in for the season, bringing a commune-like existence that is combined with equal measures of art, libertarianism, and plain old crazy. I spent ten minutes talking to one resident about conspiracy theories he’d heard on the internet, drove by an RV that was decorated in doll heads, and passed numerous spots that showed inspiration that might have put Andy Warhol to shame. All in all I left certain that this was the strangest place I’ve ever visited, and I’d actually like to go back again some day; my new conspiracy-sharing friend might have inspired a future visit when he noted: “there’s music every Saturday night, although if you come in the summer there are only three singers who perform the same five songs.”

From Slab City it was a roundabout route home, passing through Anza Borrego desert, into the mountains, through Temecula, and back to my home with a short detour to SpaceX headquarters to see the rocket, since it was on the way and rockets are awesome. Now I’ve got a couple of days of showers and warm beds to allow me to fully decompress before returning to work again.

I woke up just before sunrise a few miles from the Kelso Dunes, and started the day with a hike up the dunes to take in the Mojave National Preserve from above; not a terrible way to start a day.

Continuing this trip’s theme of visiting new places, I headed south from Mojave to Route 66 and the town of Amboy (population: 4), which is apparently located next to a massive volcanic cone, a huge lava field, and a giant dry lakebed that is now a chloride mine. Who knew that combination existed? Heading south from there I eventually got to Joshua Tree National Park, which is apparently WAY more popular than it was when I last visited a decade ago. Watching people park on the roads, walk off trail, and generally disregard all park rules I was reminded how much the other humans stress me out, so I found a mostly-empty lot next to a trailhead and hiked up Porcupine Wash until the only reminder that other people inhabit this planet was the sound of planes overhead.

Tonight I was actually debating heading home to take a shower, but decided that was nuts since I so rarely get time to take a road trip, so I sprung for a hotel room, washed several layers of stink and pain off in the shower, and will sleep in a warm, comfortable bed for the first time in a few days before getting up early to conclude this little adventure tomorrow.

Day two of the man-trip. I got up just before sunrise and headed up to Zabriskie Point to enjoy the start of the day, then took the 4.5 mile Gower Gulch trail through Golden Canyon to enjoy some alone time on a trail that I’ve never hiked before. From there I took the West Side Road south towards the park exit, a rough dirt route that travels 36 miles around the Badwater Salt Flats and provides a less-traveled alternative to the main park road. I had been warned by a ranger that the road might be in poor shape following recent storms, but after an hour and a half I’d made it almost back to the main highway without encountering any issues, only to discover the normally-underground Amagorosa River flowing across the road. The water only looked like it was about six inches deep, so I rolled the dice that I wouldn’t get stuck in mud and roared through it, luckily emerging unscathed at the other side.

My original plan for this trip had been to roam around the northern part of the park, but since storms apparently made a mess of the backcountry roads I instead decided to leave the park and head south, ending up in Mojave National Preserve for the night. The Milky Way is shining overhead, but surprisingly the lights of LA (150 miles west) are hiding stars on the western horizon, while the lights of Las Vegas (100 miles east) fill the opposite horizon.

After missing out on my annual post-Christmas road trip last year, I managed to procure a week off to embark on what Audrey calls the “man trip”. These trips are always spontaneous, and since Aaron and I wanted to get lunch together the day after Christmas, this year’s trip started in Sacramento and continued to just outside of Reno before day one came to a close. Today was day two, and things really got going:

• I woke up at about 6:30 and made my way over to Tesla’s Gigafactory where I got a view of what will eventually be the world’s largest building.
• From there I headed southeast and saw what I assume were wild horses up on a ridge. I have no idea how to distinguish wild horses from domestic horses, but if this was a domestic herd then they were roaming unfenced grasslands miles away from the nearest ranch.
• A dot on the map had caught my eye when I set out – “Naval Air Station Fallon” – and after detouring to see what was there I got to watch fighter planes take off and land from just beyond the end of the runway. Since it makes perfect sense that a naval air station would be located next to 5,000 year old petroglyphs I also got to see prehistoric rock art in between fighter launches.
• Continuing south along rural Nevada 95, I hit Walker Lake, the remnants of 8,500 square mile prehistoric Lake Lahontan. It was at this point that a herd of desert bighorn sheep showed up near the road, so the next hour was spent making their acquaintance.
• Just south of the lake was the massive Hawthorne Army Depot – apparently the world’s largest ammo depot. There were literally miles of bunkers across the valley floor.
• By this point it was only noon. It was inevitable that the day would slow a bit, and most of the remainder was spent meandering south through old mining towns that littered the wide open expanses of Nevada. I passed a herd of what I assume were wild burros at one point, and arrived near sunset at Death Valley.
• After arriving at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center to buy a new park pass I saw a kid standing outside with a shirt that read “I paused my video game to be here”; it’s unclear if he was just a cool kid or if he has parents with an awesome sense of humor.
• Sadly a storm came through Death Valley yesterday and made many of the more interesting roads impassable, so instead of spending the night alone up on a ridge under the stars, I’m in a campground sharing this incredible view of the Milky Way with a hundred other folks who I can only hope will recognize that quiet hours start at 9.

I’m pretty sure that the entire San Joaquin Valley reeks of cow manure. Someone really needs to look into it, because it can’t be benefiting tourism to have things smelling poopy.

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, an hour before my alarm, since the universe likes it when you see the sun come up. Merced National Wildlife Refuge was the sunrise destination, and Kern National Wildlife Refuge was the sunset destination, and both were chock full of birds and people shooting at birds (duck stamps help pay for wildlife refuges). Wedged in between those two visits was a giant biscuit at the Black Bear Diner, because it wouldn’t be a man trip without a manly breakfast.