Yosemite

Finally getting back to going through my road trip pictures. They’ve been sitting on my camera for two month now. These are from Yosemite. When I first arrived in Yosemite, I was a little turned off. There were about a billion tourists there and it just seemed like more of the same mountains, rocks, and trees that I’ve seen a lot of as of late. I had left early that morning from San Francisco, and I was in a mad rush to get to the first come first served campground that I wanted to stay in.

There was road construction that slowed me down a bunch, but luckily I got one of the last spots that was left. I then rushed back down to the valley back through the road construction to start actually seeing things in the park. I explored and took in all the beauty of the amazing waterfalls, El Capitan, and near perfect sunset. I waited through the road construction for the third time (this time for almost an hour, ugh) and made it back to my campsite to enjoy a dinner of cold canned ravioli, mmmm. I woke up early the next morning since I was headed to LA that day and I wanted to get up to the glacier point, the big lookout over the valley. I could have sat at Glacier Point all day and just taken pictures. It was absolutely breathtaking. The last thing I did was hike around the giant sequoia grove which was not quite as cool as it would have been since I had just seen all the giant redwoods a few days before, but it was still pretty awesome.

I realized as I was leaving the park that this short 2 day visit was only long enough to see everything that I wanted to do in Yosemite. I need to go back and ride my bike around, climb half dome, raft down the river, and a lot more.

Here are a couple of the pictures I took in the short time I was there.

Want, want, want

This thing just looks amazing. I really wanted to go with a full frame body when I finally upgrade, but for this price and these features, this may be too good to resist.

I could live here

Sorry, time for more road trip pictures. These are from southern Oregon as I was making my way down the PCH. I know a bunch of the pics are really crappy through the windshield quality, but it gives a sense of how awesome it is as you are driving down the road with the water right next to you. I wish I could have stopped for longer at the beach and just sat there to take it all in for a couple hours. Unfortunately I was trying to get to the California border to find a campground before nightfall. I want to go back here already.

Mindless Action

This was one of the movies I was most excited about this summer. I love over-the-top action movies, especially with Stallone. His latest Rambo movie was one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen. And here he is now with almost every big action star of the last 25 years all in one movie. Sure the plot is weak, the dialogue is laughable, and some of the acting is pretty horrible, but when Terry Crews comes out with that huge automatic shotgun and blows away about 30 anonymous henchmen in about 10 seconds, I couldn’t help but laugh and cheer. It is gratuitous, mindless, cheesy violence at it’s best with more explosions, bullets, and knives to the neck than all the action movies of the last 5 years combined. The shootout in the last 30 minutes (and it really does last almost a full 30 minutes) is just epic. It is well worth suffering through the sad attempts of story and character development (which isn’t very long) just to get to the next action scene.

So if you want to see a “good” action movie, go see Inception for the fourth time, but if you don’t want to have to think about what you are watching on the screen and you have been missing Dolph Lundgren, keep your expectations low and go see the Expendables.

I need to see this

Time to take a break from road trip blogging and share a trailer for a movie that I cannot wait to see. Zack Snyder + samurais + guns + WWII dogfights = awesome.

No Cal

Last fall I had the pleasure of driving to the lower 48 from Alaska. It was a road trip of epic proportions and would have been even more epic-er, but unfortunately I ended up getting an awesome job for the Sundance film festival that started just a few short days after I crossed the border in Idaho. Me and my friend Stephen had a plan to continue the road trip and head over to Vancouver and go down the west coast to LA while stopping at all the cool places along the way. That didn’t happen though, so we ended up just exploring the northwest for a couple days. It was a great little trip, but one of the things I wanted to see the most was the Coast Redwoods in northern California.

On this trip I finally got to drive through Redwood National Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and a stretch of road appropriately named the Avenue of the Giants. Basically anytime I saw a sign that said scenic bypass, I took it. I was in no rush to get anywhere so I ended up pulling over a lot and taking pictures of anything that looked interesting which in this case was everything. I just love the dark, lush, green woods in the Pacific Northwest. It is nothing like the woods that I grew up around on the east coast, and to me it feels like I am in back in time, in the jungle with dinosaurs roaming around. I also ended up using the timer on my camera a bunch for self shots so that I had some type record that I was there. Here are a couple of my favorite pics.

Back

After 15 days, 2,999 miles, 4 national parks, 5 friends houses, and way too many meals at Taco Bell, I am back from my road trip. I wish I had been able to do more updates along the way, but I had limited internet access and I was running around seeing amazing things most of the time. At first I was a little worried about going solo on this trip, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. I didn’t have any type of set itinerary, so I was free to wander around to wherever looked interesting.

I went from Salt Lake to Portland, Redwood National Park, San Francisco, Yosemite, LA, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree National Park, Las Vegas, Zion National Park, then back to Salt Lake. It was a lot of driving but so awesome to be able to see some new places and familiar faces. I have a ton of pictures to share over the next couple of posts but for now here is one of Nancy (my car) pulled over along the Pacific Coast Highway in southern Oregon. It was so pretty there.

The PCH

Over the last 2 days I’ve been heading down the PCH from Oregon. After I left Portland, I took the highway down to Eugene then headed for the coast. It’s long and windy but beautiful for sure. The southern Oregon coast is just amazing. I want to go back when it’s not quite so foggy though so I can get some better pictures. Next time maybe…

Today I drove through more state parks than I can remember and saw the amazing ancient costal redwoods for the first time. So amazing! Pics are on the way.

I’m almost to San Francisco now where I’m going to spend a couple days hanging out with friends. Thanks Burger King for the $3 dinner and the free wifi. Time to get back on the road.

Oregon

Today I left for a west coast road trip. 13 hours in the car and I am now in Portland staying with a friend. I can’t wait to have a couple days to actually see the city. Last time I was here it was only one afternoon. Updates to follow.

Oh yeah as I was taking out my contacts tonight, I got this little reminder that I’m back at sea level.

Arches

I just remembered that I hadn’t posted any of these pictures on here. I visited Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park a couple weekends ago. Here’s a couple of my favorite pics.

This park is just amazing. If you’ve never been, make it a point to come out to Utah and check it out. You will not be disappointed. I already want to go back and do some more hiking and take more pictures.