Category Archives: Road Trips

So day 3 of the road trip is over. I’m tired, in a good way; sitting in a motel room in Morro Bay looking at the results so far — 1900 images and counting. Tomorrow is another day around Morro; the harbor is full of loons, but the otters are being coy and distant, and as usual, early and late you’re dodging fog. But I’m not complaining…

Just starting to sort through the images, but here are a few that caught my eye… 

More soon.

Finally time to take some vacation, so I have no idea what I’ll be blogging on for the next week or so — of if I will. I’ve been chewing on various plans for the trip for the last couple of weeks, and sweating out the weather to try to minimize the chance that I’ll spend my vacation in a motel room watching it rain… Because of that, I decided not to go up the Oregon coast, although I’d love to spend some time up there.

I decided I just didn’t want to do more driving than exploring, so I decided not to head down into the desert this year (again) — Salton Sea would have added 350-400 miles to the trip, and I just felt that was overkill. Since the knee still isn’t hot on lots of off-pavement hiking, that also made me decide to keep it simpler, so no death valley or Anza-borrego or Joshua tree. the combination of not knowing the areas (sad to say, it’s been 35 years since I’ve been to Joshua tree, and I have never been to death valley) and the distance involved and the days I wanted to spend just seemed to not make it worth it — I didn’t want to spend all my time scouting and little time shooting, or finding the things I wanted to do my knee wasn’t up to. so I have to focus on getting in better shape, and commit to a longer time in the area to allow for both scouting and shooting without being rushed.

So I’m headed to the central coast, planning on a day and a half or so in Carrizo, and then a day+ around Morro Bay to do some birding and relax. Then down to Orange County to visit mom and do some more birding, where I’ll probably hit Bolsa Chica and a couple of places and spend some time down on the coast. Really low key, more emphasis on — gasp — relaxing than running around doing things, and covering more familiar territory (my entire history at carrizo is half a day in 2008, but at least it gives me some context).

After that, back to work for a week, then taking a second week off. which some co-workers think I’m insane to do it that way, but — that second week will involve some time in Yosemite, and so I get to come home and be with laurie and do laundry and catch up on email, and I’m hoping waiting an extra week means I’ll get in on some early spring and dogwood action when I go visit the valley… So I expect to spend 3-4 days around Yosemite just at the end of the month.

I’m keeping this really fluid — between weather and some potential complications, things may still change. but so far, it seems to be coming together well, and it’ll be nice to see mom and spend some time with her. And I saw a report that the first western kingbirds of spring have hit the Carrizo area…

So we’ll see what happens next week while I’m on the road, and get back on a blogging schedule once that’s done..

(don’t forget to check out part 2.)

So a couple of weeks ago, I went down to SoCal to visit family and spend a few days at the old homestead. I arranged things so that I could take a couple of days on the way back and go a bit of a road trip and relax and do some photography.

I’m trying to turn these trips into challenges, to use them to stretch my photography and to explore new areas or new techniques (or preferably both). One thing I’ve realized is that I’m very comfortable (and pretty good) at shooting the type of work I normally shoot but really uncomfortable away from those specific styles. Not a huge surprise, most folks are like that — but I feel that to really take my photography to the next level, I need to widen the types of photography I do and become capable and comfortable in a much more diverse set of photography formats. Push myself way out of my comfort zone, and then get comfortable there. (at the SAME time, honestly, photography is still one of those things I do to relax and recharge the batteries, and so there’s a tension here between never relaxing and never growing. These days, with everything that’s been going on, the needle is pointing further towards relaxing, but I need to change that up a bit).

I purposefully didn’t plan the photo trip until I got to SoCal, because I wanted to spend some time researching options and deciding what to do on the fly. With only two or three nights in a hotel, the options were somewhat restricted (no Bryce or Zion, for instance, because I’d spend too much time traveling and too little time on site). Part of the exercise here was to treat this as a photo assignment and do the research, choose the venues and the shooting plan — and then do it and see how the plan and the results match out and how well I adapt the plan to the conditions. It’s an attempt to simulate getting an assignment and then being able to understand how to carry it out.

I ended up having to decide on two ideas. One was to work up the 395 along the eastern Sierra and explore the Bishop to Bodie region (tioga pass, mammoth, bodie, etc). The other was to head up the coast and do some coastal shooting.

I ended up opting to stay on the coast for two reasons; first, I felt that a couple of nights in the eastern sierra was just too short for what I wanted to cover and I reducing the scope to fit the time available just made no sense. Since it’s been decades since I’ve been in that area, I’d need time to explore and scout as well as shoot, and I just felt I was trying to cram too much in (instead, I’m hoping I can take a trip out there for a few days after labor day. maybe. we’ll see. If not, it’s on the short list. But then, a birding trip to Salton Sea has been on my short list since 2006 and I still haven’t gotten there…)

I didn’t, however, want it to turn into another trip to the same places in Morro Bay, I knew there was a place in Pismo I wanted to go back and shoot, so I decided to overnight further south on the coast and then spend a full day shooting from the starting point into Morro bay, and then a second day in Morro and then take highway 1 home and stop in Point Lobos for a few hours of shooting.

One complication — a feature — is that along the coast, this time of year, it’s often foggy, grey and misty. In all, potentially a challenging shooting environment. That sealed the deal, let’s go find new stuff and go shoot it in the fog!

I ended up holing up for the night in Santa Maria, which was far enough north to minimize the travel needed before I started shooting, but far enough out that I was able to cover a fair amount of ground I’d never explored before hitting Morro Bay and more familiar territories. I chose two locations to explore: Guadalupe Dunes park for the possibility of some interesting dune formations, and Oso Flaco lake, because it’s a fairly well known birding site and I could accomplish a couple of things at the same time (perhaps). Adding in Pismo, that gave me two areas I’d researched but never visited, a third I knew about but had only visited for a short time a few years ago, and whatever caught my attention in the meantime.

I arrived near dinner time in Santa Maria and checked in and grabbed food — Santa Maria isn’t the most diverse culinary city in the universe, so I ended up at a Red Lobster (perfectly acceptable) followed by the starbucks for a coffee for dessert. And then went on a scouting drive. I drove about 40 miles E up the 166 towards the central valley looking for interesting stuff. One project I’ve been thinking of kicking off is a series on the california oak, looking for especially interesting trees and the remains of the fallen warriors. I’ve done a little shooting towards this, but haven’t really dedicated a lot of time to it. the trees on the 166, to my eye, were younger and just not very grizzled and not really all that interesting. One or two possible candidates but nothing I’ll prioritize going back for soon. Perhaps the 95 degree weather affected my judgement (it being a major heatwave in the state at the time….). Still, it was an interesting drive and exercise to explore for a purpose. But I really need to start keeping a formal scouting journal and a list of candidate locations for variious projects and potential shots…

Next morning I got up really early and got on the road and drove into Guadalupe and off to the dunes. I arrived — to fog.

Expected, but heavier than I had hoped. Guadalupe dunes looks like a fascinating place, but at 7 in the morning in the fog, it was me, a ranger, some really insane surfers and the sand. I spent some time trying various things, but ultimately, I wasn’t really happy with the results. the fog was heavy enough that the surf was effectively invisible (did I mention the surfers were insane?), and shooting birds in the fog just makes them look grey and uninteresting, at least with fog that heavy. I spent most of my time looking for interesting shooting options with the dunes, but just not finding many.

The sand just didn’t have much in the way of interesting textures for close up work, and the wide angle stuff in the fog was just — boring.

I do feel like I continue to struggle with this type of shot in general; there are a couple of things I need to focus on here. My lens setup doesn’t go wide enough for my tastes (I’ve talked about that previously here) but rather than blame it on “not the right gear”, I’m trying to push myself to figure out how to take interesting shots with what I have before succumbing to the “new toys” syndrome, because I really see this as a lack of technique and what I need to do is force myself to practice and work on this; if I did buy a wider lens or two, what I’d end up with are boring pictures set at 10mm instead of 28mm.

After that, I drove up highway 1 to Pismo, where things got better.

Laurie and I discovered Margo Dodd park in Pismo a few years ago when we were looking for a place to take a break during a drive back from visiting my family. It’s right on the water, a small grassy area with a few picnic tables — but it overlooks a wonderful rocky area, tidepools and some interesting vistas. I’ve always meant to go back and photograph there. it’s next to a rock where gulls and cormorants nest (and it turns out pigeon guillemots!) and I thought there were going to be some interesting opportunities. I also knew I’d run into brown pelicans, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, I can watch (and photograph) pelicans forever…

So I did. The fog was much lighter. it was late enough that the cormorants were fledged, but a few were still feeding young. I found a couple of fairly young gull chicks, but very little in the way of active nesting, it was all later than that. And pelicans flying everywhere in formation…

But that location was more than birds. Instead of closing off photography, the fog here gave me opportunities to create some interesting images. I especially like this one. If the fog were lighter, I think it would have been boring, it gave the tree just that right tough of mystery. If there were more fog, well, it just turns into a grey blog. This was what I was looking for when I decided to go up the coast and shoot in the fog.

Oh… astute readers will realize that I haven’t talked about Oso Flaco at all. When I arrived there, I realized that the location left my car a bit too exposed for my comfort level; with it fully packed and full of “stuff” and gear, I really wasn’t hot to let the car out of my sight to go hiking, so I aborted and filed it away for another trip, later. Especially given how foggy it was there…

So onwards towards Morro. And I’ll talk about Morro and the rest of the trip in the next posting.

Airports almost empty day before Thanksgiving | Venture Chronicles:

Case in point, we are talking about taking a family vacation to San Diego early next year (look out Kedrosky!) and decided that renting a minivan and driving down would be cheaper than flying and less hassle to boot. It’s a lot of time behind the wheel but no worse than trudging through an airport pissed off about having to pay $150 to check bags.

Whenever Laurie and I do our driving vacations — which we’ve done since before they made airports so damn painful — friends and co-workers have always wondered if we were insane. Now that airports have become so insane, people are starting to realize that plopping on a plane isn’t the only option, and in many cases, not the best.

We almost always drive vacations (and we never, ever fly to SoCal) for a few reasons: first, we tend to carry a lot of gear, including the computer stuff and cameras and etc. So under most circumstances, flying generates compromises we can avoid by driving. Second, driving is almost invariably cheaper. Third, in many cases, especially these days of three hour waits for connections and flight delays, TSA delays, baggage delays and rental car delays, it’s not significantly slower to drive. And finally, not only does it give us a chance to just sit and talk and be with each other, there’s a whole bunch of stuff between here and there worth seeing and looking at you won’t see at 30,000 feet. The journey CAN be the reward; hell, sometimes the destination is the excuse, not the reason.

When we did our Yellowstone trip this fall, I kept notes on costs and timing. Yellowstone is about the limit of what I’d consider reasonable for a “normal” vacation. Two days driving each way, with rational driving times each way. Silicon Valley is about 16 hours driving from Silicon valley; I prefer to keep each leg about 8-10 hours. That takes you through a lot of territory, though: from silicon valley, it’ll get you to Vancouver, Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Denver, Taos, and all points east. By limiting driving to 8-10 hours, you don’t have to play the “crack of dawn” patrol, you can stop and explore places of interest, eat without a drive-through window, and get into a hotel at a rational hour for a rational sleep. You’re not stressed or harried or exhausted when you get there.

(hint: it’s even MORE interesting to find spots along the way and make the entire journey part of the trip, but we wanted to maximize our time in the park, so we hustled out way each way; I did, however, flag four or five places as future photography locales… But for us, a typical trip to Victoria or Vancouver would involve a day or two in Portland and a couple of stops up and down the Oregon Coast, rather than putting all of our time into one place. Once you get into this “along the way” type of travel, lots of things open up, especially areas you’d have real issues getting to via an airport…)

Here’s a comparison of what it’d take to drive to Yellowstone, versus flying. In many ways, this is the extreme case: Yellowstone is about as far as I’d want to drive on a ten day trip (week off plus two weekends), so you’re spending the maximum amount of time in the car, which you’d think would benefit the airplane. Not necessarily.

For the driving, we left Saturday mid-morning, and arrived in Yellowstone around dinner time on Sunday, stopping overnight in Winnemucca, roughly half way. At the time, gas was headed down but we still paid an average right around $3.70 a gallon. The drive to Yellowstone is almost exactly 1,000 miles.

We drove 1,000 miles getting there, 1,000 miles around the park in the days there, and 1,000 miles coming back, spending a total of $400 for 107 gallons of gas. 2/3 of that gas was used in transit, so the fuel cost for travelling was around $250. Factor in car maintenance to be fair: $70 for the 3,000 mile lube, and some percentage of the 60,000 mile service and tire costs; practically speaking, that’s probably another $70, and I’m probably being generous (my last major service plus 2 new tires ran a grand. factor that cost into 30,000 miles, and you get about $70 for 2,000 miles).

So, the total cost of driving to and from Yellowstone is about $400.

Flying? I did some checks on flight costs at the same time we travelled. For Yellowstone, that’s either West Yellowstone or Bozeman. A typical flight to Bozeman at the same time would have cost you about $500 per person round trip and take 8 hours, flying through Denver or Salt Lake. I just checked, and today it’s about $400ish in December, but next June, we’re back at $450-$500 for a time when a rational person would take that trip. West Yellowstone is slower and more expensive, with only a couple of flights (totalling 90 seats) a day, and it’s seasonal. Then add in a rental car, which when I checked in September was averaging $130/week out of those cities.

So your travel costs end up running you at best about $1,000-$1,100. And if you fly to Yellowstone, you’ll arrive just in time for dinner Saturday — in Bozeman. It’s late enough you won’t actually get into the park until Sunday morning. Leaving? you either get the crack of dawn patrol for a flight out around 7AM, or a late flight out and get home at midnight on Sunday.

Net result? If you fly, you get a Sunday in the park coming in, and a Saturday in the park going out that you don’t get driving. And for the privilege, your cost goes from about $400 to $1,100, over 2X. I’m not counting hotel or food costs here because the same meals get eaten (only in different places) and hotel rooms get used — although most likely, the room on the road while driving will likely be cheaper (ours were about half the cost or more).

As to the hassle factor of driving? you can’t tell me that the joys of the TSA, of flight delays, of 3 hour connecting flight waits, of checking and retrieving luggage and renting cars — and airport food — is any great shakes. It’s all in the attitude; getting into the mindset that the trip is part of the journey and not just a way to the destination opens up many options. And, well, having time to unplug and just talk to the people you’re with? Or heading off a side road and exploring? (well, laurie calls it “getting lost again”, but I prefer to see it as adventuring into the unknown). Massive fun.

Flying options options; I wouldn’t want to drive to chicago or tampa, not unless it was part of a longer, extended trip. OTOH, a two day drive from where you live opens up many places — from silicon valley, pretty much everything west of and into the rockies.

And if you stop and think about it a bit, there is basically no way you can do an airport run from northern california to southern california faster than driving these days, not once you factor in the time getting to and from airports, TSA lines, renting cars, etc. etc. At best, it’s a wash. and driving’s much cheaper. I can’t see why anyone flies back and forth on that shuttle, honestly.

so for me, it’s car first. We’ve done flying trips to Vancouver and Victoria in the past (flying into Victoria directly, into Vancouver, and into Seattle and crossing the border), and you know what? Have fun in the plane (hah). I’ll just hop in the car. You may get there a bit sooner, but I’ll be relaxed and happy when I get there, and I’ll have all of my stuff. What did you decide not to bring to fit into the overhead and checkin restrictions, anyway?

What I don’t understand is why when airlines decided on what business model they were going to follow, they chose “greyhound bus” as what they wanted to be when they grew up….

Update: One of the commenters made an important comment:

It’s hard to argue with most of what you wrote, but flying does allow me to take do a trip like a 4-day weekend in Vancouver from time to time.

And that’s an important thing to keep in mind: the trade-off between time and money. If your time is short, then spending money to minimize travel time, but when you do, it’s knowing that you’re taking a more expensive option for speed. That’s fine; I certainly wouldn’t drive a 4-5 day trip to Vancouver.

Ditto a day trip to SoCal; if I had to go to SoCal and return same day for a meeting (first, I’d try NOT to, but that’s a different issue), then I might fly, because otherwise it’d be a really long day; in that case, sitting in a plane or airport might be preferable to driving. But if I could schedule it to drive down, take in the meeting, overnight, and drive back while stopping at, say, Morro Beach on a Saturday, well, sign me up…

So ultimately, NONE of this is absolute. And if your idea of a perfect vacation is to sit on a beach in Cancun drinking margaritas — that’s great, too. But heck, you could sit on a beach near San Diego and drink for a lot less, I bet, and have pretty darn good weather, too. Or Phoenix, for that matter.

it’s summer vacation time — and not suprisingly, we’re headed North.

if it’s Sunday, it must be Vancouver. We left San Jose about 10 Saturday, got into Portland in time for a nice Dinner at Stanfords, took off a bit after 8 sunday morning, and hit the hotel room about 3:30, and were sitting in Yaletown Brewing for a nice dinner at 5.

When we tell people we drive on these trips, we always get asked why. Vancouver is so far away — why not fly?

First, we like driving. It gives us a chance to unplug, unwind, and enjoy the journey. I used to do most of the driving; since buying the BMW, Laurie won’t let me drive now. I’d complain, but… I don’t mind.

Second, it’s really not that far. It’s about 1000 miles, 14-15 hours driving in good weather. That’s about twice the distance of San jose to Los Angeles, and it’s easy to do in two easy shifts — no marathons required.

Third, it’s a lot cheaper. gas: about $110 + hotel: $80. Travel time (start to finish): 34 hours. To fly? Supershuttle to SFO, $75 each way. Tickets to Vancouver: $350 per person each way. Throw in a rental car — about $225/week for two weeks. And an extra day in our destination hotel: $200. That’s, um, $200 to drive, versus flying: about $1700.

And if we fly? Out of SFO, we can either fly around 8AM, or about 7PM. If we fly out at 8AM saturday, we have to be at the airport 90 minutes before that, an hour’s drive away, and the shuttle will add in a fudge factor. So we have to get up at 3AM? or fly out about 7PM, not get to the hotel until close to midnight — room service time, if it’s still open. Flying’s been made so inconvenient — why bother? For an extra $1500, we get one extra meal in Vancouver and one more evening in the city. instead, we had a really good meal in Portland. (and this assumes we’re staying here. we’re not — we’re actually spending time here, Victoria, Seattle and Portland — in practice, at least three plan transfers (shudder) if we fly.

And finally — with a car, you can pack stuff in it and bring it home. Like, say, a case or two of good wine from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Try that in coach class. And since we aren’t spending all of that money on plane tickets, we can spend that money on wine instead. and good meals…

We end up saving $1500 or so; we lose about 8 hours net time in Vancouver, somewhat less time on the return trip from Portland (same day, no overnight), and actually gain time not worrying about the flying hassle on transfers to other cities. . Nice tradeoff.

Have you sat down and considered the tradeoffs on your trips? It might surprise you.

the drive north was almost non-eventful (which is nice). Highlight (or lowlight) of the trip was driving up 5 past Mount Shasta (a beautiful, if hot, place to visit) when we get passed by a car. Laurie goes “what is that hanging from his car?”

“That” turned out to be the hose from a gas pump, still inserted into the gas tank, On the other end, the connector (designed to separate if some idiot drives away from a pump without removing the hose) had died a hero, and was sparking its way down the road. Between the hose, the sparks and the fact that the guy was driving like a royal idiot (way too fast, way too aggressive) we made sure to give him a wide berth. We followed him at a good distance for a few miles, when suddenly he braked and made a mad dash for the side of the road (nearly going through the fenders of a car to the side of him…..), and stopped. when we went by, he was standing next to the car, staring at the hose.

one can only wonder at how this happened. And what the gas station attendant thought.

We made Portland (actually, Clackamas) in time for an early dinner at Stanfords, and a nice drive up to Vancouver on Sunday. It took us about 20 minutes to cross the border at Peace Arch, and arrived in Vancouver in the early afternoon, checked in to the hotel, and went off in search of food….

Hard to believe that only a couple of days ago, we were in Vancouver. We arrived back in San Jose this morning about 11, a few days early.

One of the joys of winter travel — weather changes plans. On the other hand, in all of the years we’ve driven into the northwest on off-season trips, this is the first time we’ve significantly changed an itinerary or cut a trip short. But as we left Vancouver for Portland (border crossing: 18 minutes), we knew the weather was degenerating badly. Long before we got to our hotel in Portland, we’d decided it was a good time to cut and run. So we cut our reservation there to one day (to the encouragement of the hotel staff, I’ll note).

And as the portland blog entries show, that night, it snowed. I have to admit I was impressed watching Portland dig into action with the snow — for a city that sees it intermittently, they sure seemed to have their act together. we got up early on New Years Eve morning, trudged through the slush to pack the van, and ran for the border.

South on I-5 to eugene, where we stopped for coffee’s (near our portland hotel was a coffee place advertising the Mordor Moka: ‘one cup to rule them all’, but our wish to get the hell out of there overrode our desire to figure out what they were doing), then south to the 38, and out we squirted to the coast. the 38 hugs the river; there’s no pass to cross, so it’s a nice getaway to know about if you are trying to avoid I5 south.

It worked, too. Popped out at Reedsport and kept driving. Finally gave up about 8PM last night in Ukiah, after we got out of the 101 mountains. Pretty much rained most of the trip south, but rarely heavily. Once we hit Ukiah, I decided that was enough — it was tempting to head for home, but I felt discretion was the better part of valor, so we found a motel, crawled in and crashed. We we’re both out by 10:30.

I do have to give special thanks to our temporary neighbors who felt it necessary to have their kids celebrate news years at midnight in the parking lot of the motel. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to be awakened by this. Oh, and I sure hope that our turning on the TV at 6:30 this morning and dragging all of our luggage out to the car didn’t wake you up. damn, I was clumsy this morning, kept whacking the door with bags and all that.

I’m very glad we hauled to Ukiah, given the driving today. Lots (lots!) of rain, very wet roads, and lots and lots (lots!) of nasty wind. In a van. crosswinds are not my best friend. We saw four or five accidents on the way in, fortunately, none of them involved us or came close to it. The advantage of being middle-aged, a slow driver, and in no bloody hurry. Still, we made it in before noon.

And boy, am I glad we bailed. According to news stories, from the Northwest media, if we’d tried to get out today, we wouldn’t have — chain requirements from Portland to Ashland on I-5 (300 miles of chain requirements), and the only reason it stopped there was because they closed the passes. Basically, I-5 was closed from Ashland to Redding, at best, with limited travel and chain requirements.

This is why we’ve always planned to bug out via the coast. It’s slower, but it works. If you try to sneak out the pass and guess wrong, you can spend two or three days in beautiful downtown Weed or Yreka or some other garden spot (hint: the best restaurant in Yreka is the deli counter in the Raleys. honest)

With the chain requirements, even getting to the coast today would have been problematic. Many of the coastal routes were closed; the 38 that we used was closed today by downed trees. Portland itself basically shut down, and they were telling everyone to not leave their houses.

Not fun. At some level, I’m sad we missed our time in Portland, but hell, our time in Portland was going to be spent in a hotel room watching the news people say things like “don’t drive! whatever you do, don’t drive!”. That — we can do here in the comfort of our place…

So I don’t regret it a bit, although it was a long, fairly technical drive for both of us. and we’ve already agreed to re-celebrate new years this weekend at something other than a taco bell (only thing open) and a noisy motel…

The border crossing took 18 minutes or so. Not bad, given the color orange. But it helps to cross at 8 in the morning…

We’ve made it to Portland. Given how the weather is turning, we plan (assuming we can) to get out of here and cut things short, crawl down to Eugene and then cross over to the coast and make for Eureka. Depening on weather and how long that takes, we may or may not try to make it home tomorrow.

In all of the off-season travelling we’ve done up here, this is the first time we’ve hit weather that made us change travel plans. And having just looked out the window, Portland is a white mass of frozen water right now. It’s snowing.

Go figure. It’ll be interesting to see what the travel looks like in the AM. Even worse, the place we’re staying in, which we thought had real internet hookups, is still stuck in the dialup ages, so the powerbook is wired to the phone, and transmitting wireless to Laurie’s powerbook as a shared private network… Not fast, but it works painlessly…

snowing. Portland. jesus. who’da thunk?