San Francisco, California

Before I tackle my trip to India I thought I’d catch up on a fun getaway to San Francisco with my Mom and sister in February.   Despite a four hour flight delay, I was happy to get this shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, and the city just before landing.

San Fran’s City Hall

While visiting the gorgeous domed building we were entertained by some people attempting a new record for longest tin can telephone.  

Imitating the strangely knobby sycamore trees.

Getting into the craft beer scene and loving the flights of taster beers, in this case at the Thirsty Bear.

  

Wine tour through Sonoma Valley on a cloudy/rainy day.  We had the mini-bus all to ourselves and even got a bottle of champagne to split at the end!

                                                                         

Took a very windy boat ride back to San Fran at the end of tour to avoid rush hour traffic into the city.   Gorgeous views, funny signs, and lots of laughs as we tried to stay upright in the gale force winds.

Wandering around Fisherman’s wharf in search of dinner after the rain

Returning to the Embarcadero the next day for Kiran to get her fill of oysters.

Alcatraz, aka “The Rock”.  Former military garrison, military prison and legendary federal penitentiary now managed by the National Park Service. 

Looking back towards San Fran on a bright crisp February day.

A much more relaxed boat ride than the day before on our way to Alcatraz.

Guard tower

Sample cell in the isolation D-block.

I got “thrown in the hole” to see what misbehaving prisoners had to experience.  This shot is just before they close the door leaving you in total darkness.

  

Our best gangster faces.

Outlines of all the knives in the kitchen to easily spot if one if missing

   

I was fascinated by the escape attempts.  Alcatraz is 2.4 km offshore from San Francisco.  But it’s a dangerous swim in cold water and against strong currents to reach land.  Over almost 30 years there were 14 escape attempts made by 36 prisoners.  None were known to be have been successful; 6 were shot and killed during their escape and 5 remain officially listed as “missing and presumed drowned”.  Only one known successful swim was made by John Paul Scott, who was found clinging to rocks near the Golden Gate Bridge in Dec. 1962, too exhausted to even pull himself out of the water.

Another daring escape attempt (and my favourite) was the one by Morris and the Anglin brothers in June 1962. They created dummy heads made with soap, toilet paper and real hair, and left them in their beds to fool prison guards.  They escaped through enlarged air vents in their cells dug out with spoons over a year to reach a ventilator shaft to the roof.  They climbed down from the roof, over the prison fence, and assembled a raft made of prison raincoats and contact cement.  They were never seen again and are presumed dead….

Close-up of the dummy head and enlarged air vent

The only residents these days at Alcatraz are a large variety of sea birds as well as an impressive collection of flora in the garden.

  

On our last day in San Fran we rented bikes to tour the Golden Gate Park and hitched a ride on a street car to check out the famously steep streets.

Went from the far end of the park all the way to the ocean.

I hope everyone’s e-brake is working…

 

Kamloops, BC

This update is mostly just photos from my cousin’s wedding in Kamloops.  What a good-looking couple!  Glad my Mom and siblings could all make it too!

One of these is not like the others.  Dev where are your sunnies?

I love this shot of Steph, but I also like the guy with the mohawk in the background.

Just married!

The guests got to try out a few drives since the wedding was at a golf course.  I was pretty terrible; being in a dress didn’t help either though.

My pro-star sister with a good follow-through

My brother swinging in style

Rod giving me a few pointers

Loved having some time to hang out with my family, and to experience their crazy antics.

Aside from the wedding we had a relaxing time wandering around downtown Kamloops including breakfasts at Hello Toast (delish!) and visiting Riverside park.  To access the park we had to go over a bridge with almost comical motivational sayings plastered on each flight.   Having recently conquered the West Coast Trail, the support and encouragement for a few dozen stairs was pretty funny.

Rod and I also checked out Kamloops’ great desert-like disc golf course up on the hill. No water holes meant no lost discs for me! 

West Coast Trail, Part IV: The Sun!

The last 2 ½ days of the trail were enjoyable despite our festering wet clothes and boots and tired muscles. Finally we had a break in the weather and even some sun!  When we reached Camper’s Bay towards the end of our 6^th day we immediately exploded over a huge driftwood log trying to dry our stuff out before packing it away for the night to avoid morning condensation.  Unfortunately even when it’s not raining it’s pretty humid right next to a temperate rainforest and not much drying-out happened.  But it was worth a shot right?

Camper’s Bay at twilight

 Putting on my stinky knee brace on for the 2^nd-to-last time on this trip.  I’m smiling, but man did I hate that thing by the end.  If you’re wondering about the duct tape, I scraped my other knee and duct tape seemed to stay on better than any band-aid.

Sunshine on our way to our last campsite at Thrasher’s Cove

Big grins for our last night, while Rod emulates “the Thinker”.

 Last kilometre sign!  We are so close!

And we finished!  Lots of good opportunities for goofing around while we wait for the others (showing off our championship belts, pretending to be monkeys and then lemmings, etc.) and then waiting for the ferry back to Port Renfrew.  I was so excited to be done I forgot to take off my pack!

  

There were a few casualties, namely Jason’s ankles and trekking poles.  With the blisters I can't help but put some blame on him since he broke in his hiking boots by "sitting around drinking coffee and driving his truck" instead of doing some real hiking!

Unfortunately that week on the West Coast Trail there were a lot of evacuations and injuries.  I believe the count was closer to 40 when we started the trail the week before…  We heard a few rumours of people falling off slippery ladders. This number doesn’t even count the people who decided to pay a lot of $$$ to get taken off the trail by boat at Nitinat Narrows (we talked to at least two groups who lost a member there).

What an adventure!  It will be a while before I attempt that one again, somewhat because of the mud pits, tree roots and rain, but also because there are a lot of other trails to try first.  Let me know if you are looking to do the trail and need any tips!  Or if you have any suggestions for what my next trail should be.

And what trip away from civilization and showers would be complete without a fast food binge at the end?  I was thinking about these A&W onion rings since day 2.

West Coast Trail, Part III: The Flood

Apologies for a much delayed post on the continuing West Coast Trail adventures.  Some knee surgery with complications made it rough to even get to my computer for a while, but thankfully I’m doing much better now and am well on my way to playing ultimate again next year (fingers crossed!).

Back to the trail, the rain continued on and off, and we tackled even taller ladders, a long suspension bridge (I thought that was fun) and a chilly river crossing.   We managed to ride out one particularly nasty horizontal rain spell with burgers and hot cocoa at Chez Monique’s, a welcome food haven on day 4.

Lots of beautiful scenery.

Dev and Jason not impressed by the size of their supposed 2-man tent.

My “it’s not raining!”  smile.

 The toughest part of the trail came the evening of day 4 while camping at Walbran.  We dragged ourselves into camp at close to 7 pm and there were few potential camp sites left.  We made sure we were well above the high tide line and set up our tents just as a major storm rolled in.    As the winds whipped up and the rain fell harder, Dev couldn’t keep the flame going on our little camp stove.   The others still like quoting my cry of “Deeeeeeeev!  Screw dinner!” as we all retreated to our tents sustaining ourselves on trail mix and builder’s bars.   Even worse was the realization that I had forgotten to stow away our food before bed and had to take off my nice warm pajamas, put my stinky wet clothes back on again and struggle through the wind and rain to find the bear cache for our food bags.

We all settled down for a stormy night and I was just about to turn my headlamp off for the night when I noticed my hiking shoes in my tent vestibule were floating.  Apparently the storm sustained 50 mm of rain / hour for a short while which was enough to flood the nearby river and our campsite.  We frantically moved to higher ground in the middle of the night and thankfully managed to avoid completely soaking our down sleeping bags.  That night we played the game of “how much money would you be willing to pay right now to be magically transported to a warm, dry room with a bed?”.

Here I am standing where our tent was the night before.  By  morning the river had already retreated back to its normal banks.

 The day after the storm dawned cloudy but no rain.   Our luck was changing!  Stay tuned for our triumphant, sunny finish.