Hoppas du har en fantastisk resa

My good friend and assistant editor Karol Andersson is headed to Sweden for a big adventure. Lycka till. Tja saknar dig!

Music on the bay

On Thursday evenings during the summer there are live bands that perform on the waterfront in Old Town Eureka. Last night, The Goddess and I decided to listen to the music while kayaking around the harbor.



The bands perform right up there. Last night some blues band played. They were pretty good.



We launched from across the water at the Woodley Island Marina. At one point, we parked our boats on a dock and walked over to a local watering hole for a refreshing adult beverage.




We then explored the waterfront, and I took lots of blurry photos of godwits.

Coast Redwood Tour 2009

Last week I travelled with The Goddess on a six-day camping trip from Humboldt County to Morro Bay and back. I only photographed small portions of the trip, so this is an incomplete pictorial account of what we saw.




Just north of San Simeon, we came across a beach full of elephant seals.



We watched bulls fight for supremacy.



I could relate to this fellow, who just soaked up the sun.



We weren't the only ones enjoying the ocean view.





On the way home we stayed at a campground in Big Sur and came across an albino redwood.



We hiked up the Big Sur River with Hula, who had a blast the entire time.



On Friday night we camped at Samuel P. Taylor State Park, located east of Point Reyes. This photo shows the AdventureMobile, which was outfitted with a canoe and my fixed gear bike.



On the way home, we stopped at Fort Ross. In the early 1800s, the Russians built a settlement and a fort at this location. Below are various images from the fort.







Kim took this photo of a design on a trunk.



Kim took this photo of the harbor at Fort Ross.

Camping on the Smith

Last Thursday morning we headed north for a three-day camping trip on the Smith River.



The Smith is a pristine, undammed river. The water is crystal clear. We camped at Grassy Flat. which is near where this photo was taken.



We brought our bicycles – my vintage Schwinn newspaper bike and Kim's Trek Navigator. The Schwinn has the mother-of-all baskets on the front, and was handy for hauling essential supplies like food, wine coolers and lawn chairs down to the river.



In the evening we played Canasta, cooked over the campfire and stargazed.



The Goddess worked her magic.



We enjoyed our own kind of fireworks.







The next morning we went on a hike and visited a serpentine bog with a rare plant called a Darlingtonia, aka a Cobra Lily.



Because there are few nutrients in a serpentine bog, these plants eat meat. Flies and other bugs are lured into the large bulb with a nectar. They're then slowly sucked down into the plant and consumed. This raises an interesting question: Assuming such a plant were edible, would it be kosher for a vegetarian to consume it?



Nearby we inspected a "mine test hole," probably dug in the 1930s.

There were many other interesting photo ops, but I was relaxed and lazy most of the time and didn't bother. I soaked up a lot of sun and read an adventure involving Navajo officer Joe Leaphorn, a double homicide, a heist, a stolen helicopter, a woman corrupting a priest, a militant American Indian outfit and a cave wired with dynamite and full of scouts. Damn, that's a lot of plot twists to pack into a little paperback!