Road Trip, Week One

I just returned last week from a great three week road trip with some of my best friends. More than seven months in the planning, "The Greatest Adventure, Year 2008" was truly an epic adventure, though it probably has a slightly inappropriate name when placed in the form of an acronym. I'm gonna try to do a three-post installment highlighting the best bits! First: allow me to introduce the gentlemen...

Jeff Hodgson, one of my best friends, is on the far left -- he and I went to Lake Washington High School together many moons ago, but we really didn't know each other until UW. Next is KB Baby, Kyle Bjorback, who has been a good buddy since we met at a Phi Kappa Tau "BMC" Weekend our freshman year, and who is getting married in two weeks to the beautiful Lisa Dubbs!! Third from left is the one and the only Jason Boyett, an old friend from Crossroads Bible Church and the fraternity. We used to ride the buses to Bellevue together and talk about girls. We still do the latter. :)

We woke up early on day one and hit the road for Crater Lake, and stopped for lunch at Burgerville, which is Oregon's rip-off of In'n'Out or Dicks. We got camp set up in time to take a hike up to the top of nearby Mt. Scott to watch the scenery -- our first of many hikes to come, and a good warm-up. This is a pic of Kyle and Jason near the top.

We left in the morning for our next stop -- Redwoods National Park in Northern California! The drive was pretty sweet, and I was able to drive along the coast for at bit on Highway 101, then through ancient redwood trees on a scenic drive through the park. The trees in this part of Northern California are really ancient and humongous, in large part because it does not so much rain as constantly "mist" in the forest.

Our campsite was right on the ocean and only a mile or so South of Fern Canyon, which is an amazing gully where they filmed a famous scene from Jurassic Park II. Our campsite neighbors turned out to be an old Christian couple named Jon and Joan Archer - Jon is a pastor and was a High School teacher for many years, and knew the park inside and out. It was a joy to meet them, and a privilege to spend time with them touring the canyon and learning about the history of local indian tribes. Above is Jason, walking through Fern Canyon.

After another night in Redwoods we drove down to Chico State University, where we were grateful for the hospitality of our Phi Kappa Tau brothers there. It was cool to drive through some serious forest fires on the way down -- at times the sky was red and the sun was hidden behind billows of smoke.

Yosemite was the next stop -- we spent three nights on the river just outside of the park there, and on our first full day we hiked up to Glacier Point along the "Four Mile Trail," which is actually 4.8 miles, and which has a 3200 foot elevation change from bottom to top. There are some seriously beautiful outlooks on the way up, and the view from the top would be worth it by itself. Here is the view from Glacier Point, which you can just drive up to if you like, but which is far more satisfying when earned. Then a pic of Jason with the rest of the valley behind him.

Our next day was a hike of Half Dome (you can see the dome in the above picture on the right), which was about an 18 mile day. Doing a 10 mile hike the day before might not have been the brightest thing ever, but we at least learned that we would need to bring about three gallons of water! At the top of the hike you have to climb up a super steep granite face along some cables, which were really busy on the day we went up (a Saturday). Here is a view from the top: you can't tell here, but Kyle and I are sitting next to a 1,300 foot cliff. I probably shouldn't have dangled my feet from the edge, but you only live once, right?