San Francisco

As we got closer to San Francisco we found a rest area to plan our day in San Francisco. While we were looking for information about the Golden Gate Bridge, we learned that we could park at one end (we weren't sure which) and walk across the bridge for free. If we wanted to drive across it would cost us $24, according to Lauren's calculations. I thought that the number seemed outrageously high, and so Lauren tried to defend her point. She told me the toll was based on how many wheels your vehicle had and that because our jeep had four it would cost us $24. She must have realized her mistake as she was talking because she suddenly went quiet and said out loud to herself, "wait we only have 2 axles, and the toll is based on the number of axles we have"! The cost of the toll ended up being only $6, a much better deal to cross the bridge for! We drove west on Highway 1 for about 15 minutes until we got to a very curvy section of the road and camped in  a pullout in Muir Woods National Monument. We woke up the next morning and began our drive into San Francisco. I am sure that many San Franciscans expected the morning to be cloudy and foggy, but we were really hoping to get some great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and walk along the bridge. Unfortunately the morning was foggy and while Lauren was busy frantically searching the internet to find the public parking, the concrete highway suddenly turned into a bridge deck. Two huge columns of steel rose from the mist as we raced across the bridge carried along by the rush of morning traffic. About halfway across the bridge Lauren discovered that the public parking was on the north side of the bridge...the part we had just crossed! Oh well, it wasn't like the weather was cooperating anyway. Even if we had walked on the bridge we wouldn't have seen anything. We continued on our way, and I promptly got us lost in downtown San Franciso. Lauren located a Big O tire that we could take the Jeep to and have the tires rotated and our oil changed. Our plan was to have the oil changed and leave it there until we were done sight seeing in the city. It would have been a great plan if the Big O had a parking lot! They didn't and now we were stuck in the middle of a very crowded city with no where to park our oversized vehicle! The Jeep was not exactly equipped for city life. We drove around until we found a parking lot with a reasonable price. We parked it, paid the attendant, and began our trek towards pier 39! We stopped for coffee as we toured the capitol building and then continued on through chinatown and the iconically steep city streets.

Capitol Building

St. Mary's Cathedral

When we got to Pier 39 there were a bunch of sea lions resting on the boat docks, barking up a storm and clambering all over one another. We watched them for a while and then walked around the pier until we found a good place for lunch. As we were getting ready to leave the pier a man stopped us and gave me a ticket for not holding the hand of such a pretty woman in San Francisco! He was right how could I have been so foolish! He also gave me a second fine for attempting to grow a beard and mustache without a permit; my penalty was to give a couple dollars to the local food bank so we paid our debt and continued on our way! Lauren received a sticker for having such a beautiful smile and I got a sticker of a cable car.

Alcatraz

We walked, hand in hand to ensure we would not receive another ticket,  along the business district of San Francisco and saw the Dragon Gate that served as the entrance to Chinatown. When we got back to the parking lot we hopped in the Jeep and began driving down to Santa Cruz via California 1 to visit Lauren's second cousin Mike.

 Along the way we decided to stop at an area we thought looked really pretty. The surf was breaking on some sharp coastal rocks, and as we observed the ocean more closely we noticed that a group of seals were eyeing us suspiciously from the waves!

We got to Santa Cruz just as the sun set and met up with Mike. He offered to treat us to dinner at his favorite restaurant in the area. It was called Tyrollean Inn. It served great German beer and food. We both thoroughly enjoyed the evening and catching up with Mike. Afterwards we all went to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park where he paid for a camping site. The three of us camped there that night and in the morning we made breakfast before Mike had to leave for work. Mike noticed that morning that our bike lock had been cut and one of the tire fasteners were undone! We concluded that someone in San Francisco had tried to steal our bikes and did not realize that they actually lock onto the tire carrier, luck for us! We said goodbye and continued down California 1 towards Monterrey Bay.

When we reached the town of Monterrey it was about 10:30 am. Crystal, Lauren's parents neighbor in Castle Rock, had an annual pass to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and they were letting us use their guest passes for the day. We spent the afternoon at the Aquarium visiting all the exhibits. We love aquariums, especially Lauren, and to visit one of the best was a real treat! Thank you Kanabers! We had to stop around noon for Lauren to get a snack, because she told me she could feel the grumpiness coming on! While eating in the cafe that sat against the open ocean. There we saw a seal and sea otter swim by, and earlier others had a humpback whale! The touch pools were probably the coolest, because you could stick your hands in the water with ray fish or pet crabs and starfish. We spent the most time at the sea otters exhibit for obvious reasons! We also got to draw our own Jellyfish and send them into the ocean on the TV screens in front of us! It was a very fun day.

When we finished with the aquarium we went to a small pizza place that made custom individual pizzas and we split one for a late lunch. We left around 2:00 to go to Turlock to visit Peter Frost!

California Dreamin'

We arrived at Diamond Lake on Wednesday around 11:00 in the morning. Lauren found several hikes in the Diamond Lake area from a book we looked at from the library in Bend. We decided that we had enough time to climb one of the more challenging routes up to Mt. Thielsen. It was a 10 mile out and back that summited the extinct 9,183 foot volcano. The first 3.8 miles was a very gradual ascent of 1900 feet. The last 1900 feet ascended very steep scree to the base of the summit. The last 80 feet were accomplished by climbing the sheer rock face to a summit no bigger than 10'x10'. The views were astounding! On two sides of the summit we were able to look down on a staggering drop of approximately 2000 feet! Neither of us have ever climbed a mountain like it! Even though it is much shorter than any mountain we had done in CO, the elevation gain was the same, but we had never had to utilize rock climbing moves to reach the summit! It was very exhilarating!

We climbed down the scree and Lauren put her hand on a soft squishy rock. Just kidding, it was a dead mouse curled up on a rock on the side of the mountain! There were no cliffs around and there was no way she could fall, but her scream was so blood curdling that Chris assumed she was falling to her death! He turned around to find her frantically wiping her hands on her pants, she was hopping around, whimpering and whining like a little puppy who needed to be let out! Lets face it, the only one who really suffered any damage was the poor mouse! Lauren was fine, Chris was fine (after the ringing in his ears went away), but that little mouse would never breathe again and had probably suffered terribly as it starved or froze to death high up on that barren spire of rock. Chris scooted the mouse's body under a rock so Lauren would not have to look at it anymore. After that episode we climbed down and found a picnic table to make our dinner. Chris built a fire, our first one since Buffalo Wood National Park in Northwest Territories! He spent an ample amount of time cutting logs with the hatchet and stacking a neat pile of firewood beside the fire pit. Lauren prepared dinner and then began cutting up some of the pears we got from the orchard to make pear sauce, yummy! She decided to not tell Chris that we couldn't camp there for the night, and assumed that he had read the sign saying only horse camping was allowed on the premises. After Chris successfully lit a small fire he added his wet wood to the pit and covered the whole picnic area in a smoke choked cloud! He spent a lot of time trying to keep the fire alive and placing the wet wood around the fire to help dry it out, when Lauren decided that it was time to remind him that we were not camping there for the night...awesome. Chris put out the fire (it didn't take much time since it was too wet to have any good coals) and we drove to an empty parking lot to spend the night. The Government finally ended the shut down and the next morning Crater Lake would be open!!!! Hooray!!!!

We got up early and drove to Crater Lake, which was maybe an hour and a half from where we camped. Most of the rim road was closed, unfortunately, except for the visitor center and lodge parking lot at the south end of the lake. We hiked to the top of Garfield Peak to get the best views possible for that day, and then also did a small hike to Discovery Point where John Wesley Hillman was the first white man to see Crater Lake and called it the Deep Blue Lake.

We had our picture taken by an old couple we met visiting from Colorado. He was old fashioned as he liked to say, so even though his camera had a digital screen he still preferred to use the viewfinder. Our camera does not have a view finder but even so he screwed up his eyes real tight and pressed the camera against his cheek and asked if we were smiling (because as we found out he couldn't see us at all and had no idea what he was taking a picture of). He took a picture of us at Crater Lake, or rather a picture of the concrete we were standing on and us, but it made us laugh nonetheless! Crater Lake was phenomenal, it was small park but there was a beauty about it that was mesmerizing. It was so blue, so deep, and so majestically ringed by cliffs on every side that it was unlike any lake we had ever seen! After we left Crater Lake we headed to Redwoods National and State Park and to California...finally! Oregon was beautiful but it was good to feel like we were making progress again! We reached to state border and took many pictures. Unfortunately the camera we were using began to take blurry photos, so the california sign pictures did not come out very well.

We camped on the very edge of Jedediah Smith State Park (pretty cool name huh!) In the morning we visited the visitor center in Crescent City and made an itinerary for the day. We started by taking a drive through an old growth redwood forest on an old carriage road. We hiked a 5 mile loop on Boy Scout Trail. The trees were ENORMOUS! The tallest of the redwoods reach 370 feet high and can be about 26 feet in diameter. They can be over 2,000 years old and at one point before the loggers began clearing the land occupied 2,100,000 acres! Now old growth forests of redwoods only occupy around 100,000 acres! The forests are so beautiful, the trees stand so far above the undergrowth it starts to hurt your neck as you crane to look at the treetops. The understory is dark, cool, and moist. Rays of sunlight pierce the canopy and give the fern covered ground a prehistoric feel.

Once we finished that hike we drove to some overlooks but unfortunately the ocean was being fussy and decided to block out all the coastal views with thick fog! Boo to you fog! At least the sun was shining bright and warm in the hills! We saw a lot of elk on the coast which surprised us, but after the 4th herd the didn't phase us anymore. The next place we hiked was Fern Canyon. Scenes for Jurassic Park were shot in the canyon. When I said that the ferns and the gigantic trees combined with the misty air to give a prehistoric feel I was referring to the canyon! The walls were probably 30-40 feet deep and set at a 90 degree angle. No rock showed because vertical growing sheets of fern covered the wall from the top to the bottom. In the canyon ran a stream through a rocky bed that wound its way though the skeletons of fallen trees. Many had toppled over from the cliff rim and snapped in two, while others were lying like ladders connecting the stream bed to the forest above. It was absolutely gorgeous and all the light around us was tinted green because of the lush growth in and around the canyon. It was precisely the environment you might imagine a T-rex or a Stegosaurus in during the Cretaceous period!

 From Redwood State and National Park we went East towards Redding to visit our high-school friend Jessie Foley! We arrived to her house on Friday evening around 9:00. We ate a little and spent a few hours catching up with her. We slept in a bed again which is always an awesome thing! On Saturday morning she made us breakfast. Toast, eggs, freshly squeezed juice (orange, pineapple, grapefruit, and apple!), bacon, and coffee! Superb start to the day! She told us she planned to take us to a nice dinner at a beautiful vineyard with her boyfriend, Andrew and her friend, Steven. This vineyard had a dress code, and Jessie asked if we had anything nice to wear. We both looked down at our clothes and asked if they were nice enough, being that they were the nicest clothes we had brought on the trip. It was obvious that they were not, and Jessie said that she would help us find something to wear. After that we helped move some of her friends into their new house. It was great to meet the people that she spent so much time with and valued so highly. Everyone was very friendly and fun to talk with. We were helping to move Steven and his roommates. Steven was very nice and let Chris borrow some of his clothes to wear since the vineyard had a dress code and his travel attire was not going to quite cut it! Chris borrowed a nice button down shirt from Steven, which apparently didn't fit him anymore so he gifted it to Chris! It was a very nice gesture! From there we picked up Andrew and grabbed a pair of khakis, shoes, and dress socks for Chris and went to Macy's to find Lauren an outfit. Jessie bought her a beautiful dress and shoes. The five of us drove to Anselmo Vineyard for dinner. We arrived just as the sun started to set. The vineyard and views were outstanding and the food and wine were even better!

It was a very fun evening and we talked a little more with Jessie once we got back to her house before heading to bed. Sunday morning we got up early to attend the 8:00 am service at Bethel. Once the service was over we grabbed some coffee and went for a stroll along the Sundial Bridge and across the Civic Center lawn. Jessie generously offered to buy us some groceries for our trip, so after the bridge we went to Trader Joe's and Safeway to buy groceries for us as well as the family dinner Jessie and her roommate were planning that evening for their friends. After shopping we got lunch at In 'n' Out and went back to her place. We hung out for the afternoon, and then began preparing dinner with her and her roommate, Holly. Holly roasted some vegetables, and a chicken in the oven while we made Pear/Apple sauce, and butternut squash with prosciutto! We had a dessert of strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce prepared by Jessie, and they were delicious! After dinner we chatted some more and then went to bed. Jessie went to work in the morning and we stayed at the house doing our laundry, and packing up the car. Once we were ready, we began our drive to San Francisco.

Why Can't We Be Friends

In our haste the week prior to reach Mt. Hood, we neglected to drive the historic Highway 30 along the Columbia River we decided to retrace our path and head West. We drove back towards Portland and saw falls, such as Multnomah (second highest in the U.S. at 620 feet!) and Horsetail. The highway was modeled after many of the scenic routes in Europe and was designed to provide a means of travel while both utilizing and preserving the most beautiful features of the land. 

When we reached the suburbs of Portland we chose a route thru to reconnect with Highway 26 and pass by Mt. Hood again. We stopped along the way at another historic monument. The Timberline lodge. Built during the Great Depression it was not only one of the first projects of its kind to use recycled materials but it was a part of the WPA. This was the program that Roosevelt created to put Americans back to work, and it gave work to many in the area who desperately needed it! The curtains were made out of old uniforms, yarn for the rugs were made out of old clothing, and the staircase railings were made out of old telephone poles. We toured the lodge and watched an informational video on its construction, and then continued on our way to Bend. 

For those of you who may be wondering at our progress, or lack there of, we are hoping that as we drag our feet through Oregon and the Northwest that our government will get their stuff together and reopen the National Parks! While this is most certainly a simpletons look at the crisis affecting our country, it is nonetheless the most pressing issue in our own little world! We camped by the road that night and in the morning drove down towards Smith Rock State Park. It is an extremely beautiful area and resembles the Garden of the Gods, except that it has a river and is less red! We spent the day bouldering close to the Crooked River far below the climbers that scaled the steep walls and spires of the park! It is a world class climber's paradise; especially if you are into sport, trad, or lead climbing! Bouldering is not that popular there as we found out when we visited the information center. The men there didn't even know what bouldering was or if there was any in the park. We searched online for something to go off of, and even though the park website said they had some bouldering routes in the park, the information they gave us about those routes was lean and scarce at best! We resorted to hiking around the river and scouting out some rocks to climb, we found quite a few, and so Chris headed back to the car to get the climbing pad and our gear. As he walked back towards the boulders several people gave him quizzical looks and said things like, "that guy has one too", apparently a lot of people visiting Smith Rock (not the climbers) had never seen a crash pad! Bouldering took the better part of the day and better part of our energy; as well as most of the skin from our hands! We only finished a few of the problems we attempted, but it was a successful day for a pair of climbers who had not climbed since sometime in early spring! 

Once we got back to the car we drove to a post office to mail in our speeding ticket. From there we drove to Bend, did some grocery shopping, and found a place near where we would bike the next day to spend the night. In the morning we went mountain biking near Phil's trailhead (the same place we went with Da(vi)d when we met up with Lauren's parents in September). See, we really haven't gone far in a month! We didn't pack any food so after riding for 20+ miles we got back to the car famished! We ate a big lunch and then found a Starbuck's in downtown Bend to read and blog! Chris attempted the log ramp again and this time was successful, but no one saw it so you will just have to take his word for it!

This is Chris's first attempt when we here last time. This is as far as he made it.  Big improvement! 

Sunday morning we drove about an hour south to mountain bike on the crater rim trail. We did not realize until we had arrived that this trail was in Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Yellow tape was spread from tree to tree to block cars from going into the visitor center parking lot, trash bags covered the signs and posts, dumpsters were tipped on their sides, and all facilities were locked. There were a couple lots that were still open and no signs indicating that the monument was closed to visitors so we debated if we should bike or not. We decided not to, but mainly because of the weather. Clouds filled the sky, the air was chilly at 37 degrees, and it was snowing all along the craters. So we turned around and headed back into Bend to ride around Tumalo Falls. This was on National Forest land, but was still open to public just not being maintained, which became obvious to us on our ride. The ride uphill was great. As we rode we were able to have great views of Tumalo Falls and six other waterfalls!

Happy Birthday! 

Surprisingly, we biked through quite a bit of snow on the trail! As the downhill section approached and our excitement grew we suddenly had to stop in front of a large tree that had fallen and blocked the path. We got off our bikes, climbed over the tree, and got back on to ride and was stopped short again by another tree. This went on for the next two miles and we hauled our bikes over at least thirty fallen trees. It was a very frustrating two miles! Finally, with no fallen trees in sight we made our way back to the car. The remaining three miles were worth the hassle. We had great views of the Three Sisters and it was a fun ride! 

After biking we headed to a coffee shop to relax for the remainder of the afternoon. Chris made quite a few phone calls, one in which he had learned that Daniel, his brother, had tried to make a pumpkin pie and after putting it in the oven realized he had forgotten to add the evaporated milk! He quickly retrieved the pie and tried to pour the filling back out of the pie. In doing this the whole crust came with filling. He then proceeded to try and pick the crust up, which to his dismay, quickly dissolved and crumbled into the rest of the filling. He was not about to give up yet. He grabbed a strainer, and tried to strain his pumpkin pie and retrieve the crust chunks that were still left. Only person I have had heard of straining a pumpkin pie, but this guy does not give up! After a couple of hours our stomach rumbled and we left to go to Izzys for dinner. What is Izzys? It is a salad, dinner, and dessert buffet with an extra side of grease to go with it! This is the restaurant Chris had chosen to celebrate his birthday! I probably would have chosen differently, but who am I to not let the man eat five or six plates full of pizza, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, meatloaf, and other comfort foods on his birthday! Food, an abundance of food, is definitely the way to that mans' heart! Chris turned 25!  Woohoo! Monday was a very uneventful and low key day. We stopped to pick up a few things at Safeway and Trader Joe, and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the Deschutes Public Library. 

On Tuesday, we got up early to find the Jeep covered in an icy frost! The morning was very cold to say the least but we became warmer as we busied ourselves with breakfast and re-packing the car. From Bend we drove west towards Sisters and did an 8 mile hike up to black crater. The landscape surrounding Sisters has all been transformed by volcanos and their respective lava flows, and the crater we climbed was no exception! It was littered with past volcanic debris and cinders. The hike took us to an amazing viewpoint. We were surrounded by mountains. The Three Sister Mountains, Mt. Washington, and Mt. Jefferson. 

We planned to do another easy 6 mile loop around Matthieu Lakes but after taking a wrong turn and hiking 3 additional miles we decided to return to Bend. We went back to the library to read and blog...hooray! We are headed to Diamond Lake, which is just north of Crater Lakes National Park, tomorrow in hopes that the government will reopen in the next couple of days. We will see!