And for once I don’t mean my socks! Now would be a convenient time to catch a cold and lose my ability to breathe through my nose. I’ve been forced to spend a lot of time the past two days in various Starbucks establishments, and the coffee stench is getting worse by the minute…On the upside, I am getting closer to an update…I have twenty-two photos left to post-process, and that’s including the best stuff from this morning’s sunrise at Asilomar State Beach…Soon!

And I am making progress, but not fast enough…time to leave Santa Cruz (goodbye Panther Beach, sniff sniff!) and head for Monterey. I do at least have a fully charged laptop battery now and will continue editing tonight, and should be able to post on Tuesday. Sorry to disappoint, blame it on the good clouds!

Oh, and while the thought is crossing my mind…my friend Kathi, from Green Bay, sent me this link the other day….

I’m Driving Around The World

My trip is nothing compared to this guy, who will be spending a year driving around the world. Too bad he has a girlfriend…

Not that that’s a bad problem to have, but I’ve had a great couple days on the coast and am up to my eyeballs in photo editing…and at the rate I keep acquiring new photos that I want to edit, I’m not making any progress whatsoever. Doing laundry now (I love laundromats with wi-fi, all I’m missing is a power outlet!) and then I’ll head to the library before I find myself somewhere to shoot sunset. I’m loving Santa Cruz. Stay tuned, I’m hoping if I work my butt off, and hang out in places with electricity, I can post a ton of new photos and a blog update tomorrow…

Greetings from the Point Reyes National Seashore! I think it’s a sign that I’ve been gone too long when I sit down to write my blog and find I have absolutely nothing I want to say. Although I might just be cranky today…The weather continues to frustrate me. Yesterday was beautiful – warm and sunny in a boring, cloudless sort of way, but definitely nice nonetheless. And I had scouted out some places that would have been great for sunrise this morning, no pretty clouds needed, just some good light. The Weather Gods apparently prefer that I listen to the wind howl and type with cold fingers, because I woke up this morning to a sky full of flat gray clouds, and the temperature dropped a lot overnight as well. Blah.

The last few days haven’t been completely wasted by any means, and even if I sound highly frustrated and whiny at the moment, there have been a couple high points since leaving Oregon. I hiked part way down the Damnation Creek Trail at Del Norte Redwoods State Park and was reminded how much I love the towering Redwoods, even in the rain. Oh, and speaking of rain…here it comes. (Insert string of expletives here…wait, it might only be sprinkling…). I’m sure this is because I’m getting close to San Francisco…I had a lousy time in San Francisco in 2006 as well, I wound up hopelessly lost, missed my Alcatraz reservation, had a major meltdown while on the phone with my mom, and was ready to say to hell with the entire trip and just go home. Odd, I’m having that same sort of feeling today…

But anyways, back to the Redwoods. They were lovely, and “majestic” really is the best word to describe them. I was more pleased with the way the photos looked on my camera’s LCD screen than the computer, but so goes life. I had intended to spend more time near Crescent City, but with the rain and gloom I opted to head south, and wound up catching sunrise at the Cabrillo Point Lighthouse Sunday morning instead. It was under restoration when I stopped there three years ago and not particularly photogenic at the time, but it was beautiful on my most recent visit with that warm golden sunrise light, and a hint of fog around the lighthouse every now and then. It wound up being a good day in general. Salt Point State Park had some really strange rock formations, including one that looked like a huge crab claw (or a wrench), and lots of what I think of as “eye socket” rock, which fascinates me for some reason. I suppose “honeycomb” might describe it as well, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Even better, I had a smattering of clouds with my bizarre rock formations, and an actual sunset as well, go figure!

Unfortunately, Bowling Ball Beach wound up being a bit of a disappointment. I had to work hard to find the place, and then even once I knew where it was, I had a difficult time getting there, and wound up crawling over kelp-covered rocks to get to the other beach…only to discover later that there’s a path that leads down the bluff to the beach, the top of which was visible from where I’d parked my car. I hadn’t known how low a tide I needed in order to have the rounded rocks exposed, so I’d timed my visit to coincide with my lowest sunset tide, which turned out to be too low, and all the kelp in between the rocks was visible, making for a rather ugly scene. I took two or three pictures and said forget it.

Point Reyes has been lovely, or was, until this latest weather moved in. I hiked along the beach yesterday afternoon, and then caught sunset from the cliffs along the Chimney Rock Trail before hurrying over to the Lighthouse to catch the last bit of color. I had intended to take some shots of the lighthouse by moonlight, but after waiting an hour in the semi-darkness at a rather remote overlook, the moon was just starting to shine over the ridge above the lighthouse, and I lost patience. That, and I was freaking myself out and still had to hike a half mile back to my car. Silly, I know, since it was plenty light out with the full moon, but it was rather eerie being all alone out there, and we all know that I’m a wuss…

On that note, I’m going to brave the wind and hike back up to the lighthouse (it’s no longer sprinkling) before I give up on Point Reyes and head down to the Inverness library so I can post this update. From there I’m off to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and then I’ve got Alcatraz tomorrow. I’ll be spending a few days in the Santa Cruz area after that, where doing some laundry will be a major priority. My poor feet roasted yesterday when I had to wear a pair of thicker hiking socks, all the others were well beyond the tolerable stench level, even with having been hung out to air for many hours on the side mirrors of my car. It will be nice one day when my 4Runner no longer smells like dirty socks. I’ll post my next update from Santa Cruz as well, though I can’t recall exactly when. I imagine the weather will decide that more than my itinerary will anyway….

New photos have been posted in the Redwoods and California albums.