California

The good news is I got the job, and I was going to be back in Reno starting Oct 9th. So Mallory came with me for a last adventure before the real world. We started by meeting up with a couple friends on an annual fishing trip in the Carson Wilderness. After a summer of seeing how lite my pack could be, it was fun to do the opposite and see how much I could carry. We packed in wine, vegetables, canned beans, fruit, almost nothing was dried, and it was delicious. Mallory and I shared a rod and our first day we didn't have much luck, but the second day we had it done and were pulling fish out. There's nothing like walking a river, feeling a bite and pulling out a fish. We had a great time.
Mallory was the chef de jour on the trail. We ate like kings and wore out the dogs. From there we drove up the west side of Lake Tahoe, past Lassen NP and around to the Red Woods of Humboldt county. It was about 400 miles on nothing larger then a two lane road. We stopped to check out the trees that are always impressive. We did the scenic tour of the Avenue of the Giants with the windows down. It was us and lots of retired folks enjoying the leisurely drive.
From there we went down and said hi to my old friend Justin and got some notes on hiking the lost coast. The lost coast is the most unique piece of BLM land that I know of. A couple years ago I did a couple day backpack there with Justin and Dave. Mallory and I set off from the parking lot and hiked up the beach 3 miles. We found a spot up off the beach and had a great view of the sunset.

We hiked back to the parking lot, dodging the incoming tide, and back on the road. We headed south, staying the night in Santa Rosa because we couldn't find decent camping along the coast. The next day we went to Point Reyes. I'd always seen it on maps as this large park area off the coast. When we got there I was a little let down to see all the historic cattle ranches around, decimating the environment. The nothern tip was still a preserve, which was beautiful and we saw the local coastal herd of elk, but it was painful to think of the entire peninsula could have been so scenic. From there, we carried on south and to the Golden Gate! It was quite the weekend to be in San Francisco. Reports said there were a million visitors in town that weekend. There was the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Navy Fleet Week, America's Cup Regatta and probably something else. Our first stop was to check out the bridge before heading into the city. That was the first time we saw the Blue Angels flying around. We were buzzed as we crossed on the bridge. We drove down through the Presidio and around to the Armory, directly under the bridge. I'd never been there before and it was a neat view of the bridge. They were having an art exhibit of the history of the bridge on different rooms and floors of the armory.

From there we drove past the Americas Cup setting up in Chrissy Field and to the Palace of Fine Arts. I've always seen pictures of the building, but never actually knew where it was. And with all the commotion it was not an easy street to get on to. The next day we headed down to the SFMOMA. I always like going to see what they have on display. We met up with a friend of Mallory's, Porter, who was in town. The coolest thing at the museum was a 3D light display. I had seem something by the same artist at Burning Man, with just patterns moving through lighted ping pong balls, but this was a cube of balls that were animated to show a choreographed dance. From the SFMOMA, we walked across the pennensula and up a lot of hills to Coit Tower. Up and up and up. There was a crowd up there and we didn't think much of it. But as we were heading down to fishermans wharf, the Blue Angels came roaring about 150 feet overhead. I screamed like a 10 year old. It was awesome.
After the Blue Angels finished, we went down to the wharf and checked out the sea lions on pier 39. From there we had a good view of the America Cup Regatta, but it was hard to tell exactly what was happening. We said by to Porter and were leaving the pier when we saw the Navy Band. We stopped for a second and ran into my college friend John who is a drummer in the Navy band. We made plans to meet up later that night. We walked from there through the Chinatown market during rush hour. It was like going to a different country. Everything was in Chinese and I was the tallest person around. I had a great time taking street photos.
For dinner we met up with another college friend of mine, Adam, and then went over and met John out with his Navy friends. The next day we walked past the Painted Ladies, but it didn't look anything like Full House. We had breakfast and headed over to Hardly Strictly, the original goal of the trip.
The highlights were were seeing the Lumineers and Robert Earl Keen. Justin always stakes out a spot in front of the Rooster stage and is there for the day. It was great to have a little space saved for us to come invade. The other amazing thing was the lamb poutine with feta. I'm hungry thinking about it. We also met up with my friend Josh from high school for a drink, and found Matt and Carlos at the festival to watch a few shows together. On the last night we met up with a couple childhood neighbors Ben and Mike, from back in Dallas for dinner. Ben is a tour guide in town and it was great to recap all that we did while we were in town. Our last morning we went up to Twin Peaks for the view of the city. From there we could look over everywhere we had been in the city. It was a busy action packed week in the city. A great bookend to a summer of travel and back to work in the real world the next day.
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