Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Pinnacles (good for the soul - bad for the stomach)
Woo Hoo! [ouch - shhh] I finally made it to Pinnacles, but my body still feels like it was in a street fight. I wish I could say it was from jumping from rock to rock, but the sad reality is that I think I got food poisoning on Friday night. Bummer.
Day 1: Friday.
Michele got stuck in traffic, so by 6 pm, I decided that I'd better be going so I wouldn't have to set up the tent in the dark. I made it to the site alright and bought two boxes of "good wood", a silly non-sparking kind of wood that sorta looks like it got created by a really big play-doh press. It actually burned pretty well, and I was able to get the tent up before nightfall. I waited until around 9:o0 (+/-) when Michele finally arrived. Wow! Did she ever get stuck in traffic. I started dinner and everything was going along pretty well, when one of these lil' critters started getting closer than I really feel comfortable having them.
Soon, there were more. One would distract by pretending to take the marshmallows and another would swipe the raisins. It was orchestrated tag-teaming. We made a bunch of noise during quite hour, but really had a hard time with how aggressive they were.
We talked for a few hours - mostly about divorce and how we were doing. Any stranger listening in would have thought we were wierdos, but it was a very healthy conversation, without interuption by people who haven't been there. Thanks Michele.
Day 2:
The next morning, I wasn't feeling 100%. I thought it might be my continued lack of sleep punctuated by the howling and other noises of nature or the uncomfortable pad. Either way, I was still very tired through breakfast, which was country scrambled eggs, thick bacon and dang strong coffee you could chew. Oh, and roasted bear claws, M m m m m.
P.S. The Stellar Jays are just as gutsy as the raccoons, but also pretty stupid when it comes to landing on the bbq grate. Good thing their legs are made out of airplane aluminum.
Around 2 pm, we finally made it to the start of the hike. Did I mention that neither one of us was in a really big hurry? I knew that at 2 o'clock, we weren't going to see any wildlife, but that was o.k. since we'd seen so much the night before. We toughed out just over 3 hours of hiking, and I was spent. Exhausted. Through.
The first shot is our "prom pose" - oh yeah, we went to the prom. Rob took Lydia. Susi and I had broken up. (P.S. Susi's fine, Anthony came home from Iraq a few weeks ago)
So, about Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are basically the remains of an extinct volcano. The absolutely huge rock formations left behind do not scale well, but here are the pictures anyway.
Then, there are the caves. The big bat cave was closed to the public when we got there, but the Balcony caves were pretty darned impressive. The most amazing thing was the sheer walls in a V shape holding up the spherical balls of a boulder. These things are just HUGE!
Day 1: Friday.
Michele got stuck in traffic, so by 6 pm, I decided that I'd better be going so I wouldn't have to set up the tent in the dark. I made it to the site alright and bought two boxes of "good wood", a silly non-sparking kind of wood that sorta looks like it got created by a really big play-doh press. It actually burned pretty well, and I was able to get the tent up before nightfall. I waited until around 9:o0 (+/-) when Michele finally arrived. Wow! Did she ever get stuck in traffic. I started dinner and everything was going along pretty well, when one of these lil' critters started getting closer than I really feel comfortable having them.
Soon, there were more. One would distract by pretending to take the marshmallows and another would swipe the raisins. It was orchestrated tag-teaming. We made a bunch of noise during quite hour, but really had a hard time with how aggressive they were.
We talked for a few hours - mostly about divorce and how we were doing. Any stranger listening in would have thought we were wierdos, but it was a very healthy conversation, without interuption by people who haven't been there. Thanks Michele.
Day 2:
The next morning, I wasn't feeling 100%. I thought it might be my continued lack of sleep punctuated by the howling and other noises of nature or the uncomfortable pad. Either way, I was still very tired through breakfast, which was country scrambled eggs, thick bacon and dang strong coffee you could chew. Oh, and roasted bear claws, M m m m m.
P.S. The Stellar Jays are just as gutsy as the raccoons, but also pretty stupid when it comes to landing on the bbq grate. Good thing their legs are made out of airplane aluminum.
Around 2 pm, we finally made it to the start of the hike. Did I mention that neither one of us was in a really big hurry? I knew that at 2 o'clock, we weren't going to see any wildlife, but that was o.k. since we'd seen so much the night before. We toughed out just over 3 hours of hiking, and I was spent. Exhausted. Through.
The first shot is our "prom pose" - oh yeah, we went to the prom. Rob took Lydia. Susi and I had broken up. (P.S. Susi's fine, Anthony came home from Iraq a few weeks ago)
So, about Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are basically the remains of an extinct volcano. The absolutely huge rock formations left behind do not scale well, but here are the pictures anyway.
Then, there are the caves. The big bat cave was closed to the public when we got there, but the Balcony caves were pretty darned impressive. The most amazing thing was the sheer walls in a V shape holding up the spherical balls of a boulder. These things are just HUGE!
