Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
A short drive north got us into Oregon and our destination, Ashland. We walked around the town a bit and saw a musical at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
We did a short hike from one lake to another, and got great views of Mt. Shasta. We then spent the afternoon in town.
Our first full day around Mt. Shasta had us doing two hikes. One gave us a very close view of the mountain, and the other went between three waterfalls.
Another travel day. We met a friend I worked with at a previous job for brunch, then we drove to Mt. Shasta.
This was a quiet day for us, the first one of the trip. We walked along the Los Gatos Creek in the morning, met some friends for lunch, and hung out at a café in the afternoon.
We spent the day in San Francisco, going to SF MOMA and walking from Chinatown through North Beach and to the Embarcadero.
We headed out to the coast of the San Francisco Peninsula for the day, doing a walk along Half Moon Bay and looking at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse.
This was another travel day, but before going to San Jose, we went up Lassen Peak.
We did a shorter hike with the group and joined them for lunch by a lake. We then spent the afternoon in Shingletown.
The itinerary for this day was very fluid, and we ended up about half an hour behind everyone else. We went to Bumpass Hell, which is sort of like many features of Yellowstone in one area. We also did a driving tour of some of the other highlights in the park.
Our first full day at Lassen Volcanic National Park ended up being a piecemeal day, rather than the organized outings in Redwood National Forest. Things worked out, though, and we went up a cinder cone and hung out a bit with the group for lunch.
This was a travel day, but before heading inland, we did a short trail to a waterfall. On the way, temperatures went up about 50° then down about 15° when we got to our destination.
Another day with a longer single hike. This time we went to a fern-lined canyon, which was even more interesting than it sounds.
The day centered around a couple of hikes through groves connected with a long trail. For all the distance, we ended hiking at about the same time as the day before.
This was the first day that everyone on the Redwood/Lassen trip were together. We hiked in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, which itself is part of Redwood National Park. We did a couple of hikes among the redwoods, and had a bit of excitement both going to the trails and after the hikes.
We continued working our way south along the Oregon Coast. We saw sea lions, sand dunes, and a lot of sea stacks. After that, we made it into California and met up with a lot of other group members who took the direct route rather than the meandering down the coast that we did.
Melody and I started off on a road trip down to California, which will last three weeks. The first half of the trip will be with the hiking group, spending a couple of nights in Oregon, then going to two National Parks in California: Redwood and Lassen Volcanic. For the first day, we met a few people in Astoria, OR, to explore the city during the afternoon.
People often have father figures in addition to their actual fathers, and I was fortunate enough to have one in Al Evans, who passed away in mid-May. It’s been many years since I had seen him, but his influence on me never faded.
Melody’s brother and his wife are both professional musicians, so it makes sense that their kids are, too. Their son, Kenny, is studying music at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and we were able to go to his Junior Recital last weekend. We decided to make a mini-trip out of it and spent the night.
