A fabulous little rock grotto at the bottom of the Cleveland Dam. If you click on this picture, you will get to my Flickr photostream, with some other new photos and comments from my second day in Vancouver.

This is the view two blocks north of where I’m staying in Vancouver. This photo was taken with my crappy phone cam, and may end up being the only photo (of many) I took today which I post. I think the news of a cyclist’s death in Portland this morning has taken the wind out of my sails a bit. OR, it may be that all the rest of the photos really do suck! Hah!

Dear Portland,

This is how it’s done.

Your friend,

Vancouver, BC

Yesterday morning I went for a long walk from where I’m staying, through downtown and back.

If you’re interested, you can click this link and you will see a map of the walk. Wondered why I was so wiped out come the end of the day. Well, because it was a long freakin’ way, that’s why!

On my way, I noticed something amazing. If you look at this photo, you will see a tiny red dot in the middle of your screen, in that middle lane, all alone. It’s a cyclist. In a dedicated, protected-by-a-concrete-median bike lane across one of the major water crossings to get to and from downtown Vancouver. Mayor Sam, I think we have some things we could learn about bike-friendly from Vancouver.

PS if you click the image above, you will get to my photostream on Flickr, where there are a bunch more photos from my trip.

While I did bring my camera, my first priority was to just experience the trip without too much emphasis on capturing everything on pixels. Thus, there are less photos per day on this trip…but there are still some good ones I think.

The photos in this first post are not going to be in any particular order.

Here is sunset on the third day of my trip, as seen from the Redwood National Park scenic coastal drive, near Klamath CA:

Here’s what I did according to Google Maps:

View Larger Map

If you click the “view larger map” link right there at the bottom left, you will see my route.

You people are totally going to think I have an obsession. Yes, I saw yet another herd of elk. The sun was on his way down, so this critter was kind enough to pose during the “golden hour”:

I stayed several days at the International Hostelling “Redwood Hostel“, which is right across the Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean. I had been meaning to do this for years, so finally got one more check mark off the list of things to do before I die! There are several fun “oh my god where did this person come from” stories from that time. But additionally, there are a lot of great hikes that are readily accessible from this place. One of those hikes was in what’s known as “Stout Grove”. I thought when I heard the name that it was referring to the girth of the trees…but no, this grove was named after a guy called Stout.

A photo of me, standing in the Stout Grove. This was taken by a German woman (whose name is escaping me at the moment) who was staying at the hostel. I kept running into her and her friend at several different hiking locations.

Big trees! Hooray!

I went on a long hike that same day during which time I didn’t take any photos at all…well, no keepers anyway. I took four of a woodpecker that didn’t turn out. Ergh. Carried the damn camera 2 hours in and 2 hours back, and turns out I coulda left it behind. But, good news is I got the idea for a new song during that hike…which was part of the idea behind getting out of town anyway.

And one more, this one of the lovely Klamath River. I took a different route down to the redwoods this time, and most of the third day’s drive was a lovely winding road along this river. I think it’s called the Klamath River Highway.

There are some good stories from this trip…those will be coming soon.

Last picture post, I left you with a photo of Hecata Head Lighthouse. Here’s another, from a slightly different vantage point:

Next place we camped was called Elk Prairie Campground, which is near the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Though I have no pictures of it, there was a billion year old redwood in our campsite. Cool. (Well ok maybe it wasn’t quite a billion years old…but it sure was huge.) There was also a creek running right behind where we pitched our tent. A peaceful way to fall asleep!

In the morning, we struck camp and headed out for a hike through the old growth redwood forest, which was the whole point of the trip in the first place. It was 5 miles out…up a ridge…through the forest…to the Pacific ocean…and 5 miles back…through the valley. On the face of it, that really doesn’t sound so bad…except that the outbound leg felt like it was all straight up…and that I was wearing old shoes and my feet hurt just getting “out”, forget about coming “back”! Took my camera (of course) and captured a few things worth sharing…what a beautiful hike!

This is what the Redwoods look like:

I know, it’s silly. Futile, really, to try and communicate these trees via these tiny little photos.

Here’s another attempt at giving you an appreciation for the scale:

Next time, I have some critter pictures!