Yosemite in November

Catching up on some old trips. For Thanksgiving this year we went down to Southern California to visit some family, but not without stopping on the way to spend a few nights at Yosemite with it covered in snow.

Winter Paddle

Here's a little video of my seven year old daughter Megan and I paddling around Willow Creek on Lake Natoma in late December. There are perks to living in California.

Sawyer Stingray Paddle

The first paddle I bought was a Bending Branches Arrow, and that was fine for starting out.  It was starting to show some wear though (some of the wood grain was splitting on the shaft) and it isn't really cut out for white water paddling, which is what I'm starting to get into.  I wanted my next paddle to be really nice (and really durable).  It was a tough choice picking a good paddle for white water, that I also wouldn't mind using on the flat waters that I frequent.  I pretty much had it narrowed down between a Mitchell Premier, which is what just about everyone I paddle with uses, or a Sawyer Stringray that I ran across on Sawyer's website.

Daddy - Daughter Canoe Camping Trip

I spent two nights last weekend canoe camping with my soon to be seven year old daughter Megan. We had a bit of a rough start, but ended up having a wonderful trip.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Finding yourself depressed in late July as the wild flowers are gone, the heat has sunk in, and everything is turning brown?  Head on up to Lassen Volcanic National Park where Spring is just kicking into gear.

My family and I did just that, deciding to embark on our longest straight camping endeavor with the family totaling six nights.

Utica Reservoir

My wife and I had our first opportunity to get out for a few nights without the kids to get a little sanity time. We talked about everything from backpacking to staying at a B&B someplace, then the idea came up to get out far enough away from people like backpacking and yet take some of the comforts with us. This is made possible by traveling in a way that natives people have done for thousands of years. By canoe.

Desire to Create

I feel strange today. I have this desire to create, but I have no vision. I feel really disconnected from my artistic side yet I yearn to get it back.

I was going through some images I have created and this one seemed to reflect my mood. It's inspired by an Arno Rafael Minkkinen image done in the same pose (though much better than mine). Sometimes all we can do is marvel in the creation of the masters and hope to glean a spark of their imagination.

Camping at Lake Britton

My family and I spent Memorial weekend car camping at Lake Britton and exploring the area. It was kind of a last minute decision (within a couple of weeks) to go camping over the holiday weekend, and as expected just about every place we looked into in the Northern California within 3 to 4 hours of Sacramento was all booked up on reservations. This led me to start looking for "first come first serve" spots, and it turns out that PG&E has quite a few of them. I narrowed my search to the Hat Creek and Burney area and decided we would just go from campground to campground until we found a spot. First stop, Lake Britton where the majestic McArthur Burney Falls pours in to.

Lost Coast Again

I've been real quiet in blog-land, but I finally got out on another adventure; this time back to The Lost Coast. This year I decided to just do a portion of the trail so that I could explore some of the ridges above the beach, and so that I wouldn't have to pay for the shuttle (which is reasonable if you must do the whole 25.5 miles, but still $200 is a bit expensive). I got a hold of my nephew Josh and he readily agreed to accompany me on a few night stay. 

My Mean Face

I've found it fascinating for quite some time that by far my most popular image on flickr is the the one above featuring "my mean face". This image has been viewed over 5,000 times, well above any nature image, or beautiful child portrait that so much of my stream features.