Camping Pinnacles
I skipped out of work a little early on Friday and drove down to Pinnacles National Monument with Stephanie and Marcia for a two night camping excursion. Let me just say, what a difference leaving on Friday makes to a weekend overnight adventure.
We got there before the sun set, set up camp and grilled some corn on the cob, pork chops, and peaches. On Saturday we woke up with the whole day ahead of us, without any pressure of having to travel back home. We cooked up some scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon for breakfast and spent the rest of the day hiking the loop Stephanie and I had taken just before New Years 2008: Pinnacles in a day.
That night we grilled some vegetables and sausages right on the coals, randomly stumbled upon a preview of the upcoming Kens Burns documentary in the amphitheater, and went to bed pretty exhausted. We packed up Sunday morning and got home surprisingly early, just after 1pm, feeling like somehow we’d squeezed an extra day out of the weekend. A pretty nice feeling.
I should also mention that I had a new camera with me, Pentax’s flagship DSLR, the K-7, which happens to be my first SLR, digital or otherwise. With it I had the Pentax DA Limited 35mm f2.8 Macro lens. It has a 53.5mm-e field of view, in other words, a standard perspective—very different from the wide fixed focal length (28mm-e) of my Ricoh GR Digital II. The DA Limited 35mm is the type of lens you want to take pictures of people with. And that’s just what we did.
Yay, Pentax! Umm click-for-full-size image please.
Ha! What counts as “full size” these days? I’m guessing not the original 4672×3104, 6MB jpeg…
All that was missing was myself and Callum, who would be happy to throw up beside the campfire so we could re-live old memories. ;-)
Ha, yes, our camping trip in Portola Redwoods was fondly remembered last weekend. I should have mentioned that that trip (which we took almost exactly 2 years ago!) was notable for being both me, Stephanie, and Marcia’s first self-initiated camping trip.
The makeshift cookware was pretty effective. No photos of you grilling porkchops in the dark on a piece of foil? :)
Marcia, nope, pictures of that only exist in your memory.
Ah good times. And for once, pictures of people! I actually really like that we forgot the cookware… otherwise, no scrambled eggs in a foil pan on the grill with manual handling of the stove underneath.
We make good MacGyvers!
Scrambling eggs in a handmade aluminum foil pan with a hand held camping stove is definitely something I will not soon forget.