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.

Here are three pictures, taken from Mount Diablo as the sun was setting on Saturday. We had a nice wooded site at the Juniper Campground, a short walk from the Diablo Valley Overlook. Hard to believe it was only the second time we were able to sleep without the rainfly. Perfect weather.

Stephanie found a last minute camping spot at Mount Diablo State Park this weekend (pictures forthcoming), which was particularly unusual because every other campsite in the state of California appears to be booked solid on the weekends through mid-September (when the kids go back to school I guess).

Anyway, we hadn’t been camping in a while, and we really didn’t want to stress ourselves out packing for it, so we just threw some things together Saturday morning and took off. Well, we had everything we really needed, but we forgot a few things that would have been nice, had we remembered. So I decided to make a list of the essentials, outside of clothes and food, just to jog our memories for next time.

The Obvious Stuff

• tent
• sleeping bag
• sleeping pad
• pillow!
• earplugs! (don’t forget these)
• wood/charcoal/newspaper
• lighter/matches
• head lamp!
• lantern (candle/rechargeable)
• book

Cooking and Eating Stuff

• cooler, ice/cold packs
• lots of water
• stove, gas
• pots, bowls, utensils
• mug
• garbage bags
• salt/pepper
• tea, cocoa
• paper towels

Bathroom and Health Stuff

• toothpaste, toothbrush
• all-purpose soap (a la Dr Bronner’s)
• moisturizing lotion
• sunscreen
• allergy pills, sleeping pills
• camp towel!
• bug repellent
• birth control pills!
• first aid kit
• freshette
• pee bottle (empty gatorade, vitamin water works best)

Optional Stuff

• folding chairs
• reusable shopping bags!

Hiked across the Golden Gate Bridge today and got some nice shots of it interacting with the summer fog.

After two nights in St. Mary, Montana, we packed up on Saturday, June 20th, to begin the long drive towards Spokane, Washington. But first we planned to head south around the park and re-enter it from the west, in order to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the other side. Only 12 miles were accessible from the east, which we drove the night we arrived, whereas 29 miles were open from the west.

Two parts of the road in a switchback were destroyed by an avalanche over the winter, rendering the already narrow road a frighteningly narrow single lane wide. I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed the destructive after-effects of an avalanche before. It basically looked like the mountainside had been combined in a blender, tree trunks, boulders, soil, snow and all.

It took us an hour to make it up to the point where the road was closed, just passed a section known as the Weeping Wall. We parked for a bit, had a snack, saw a family of bighorn sheep, and watched children horseplay precariously on the mountainside snowpack. And then we really began our drive home.

We opted to take US-2 west rather than I-90, and so meandered through Kalispell, MT, Bonners Ferry, ID, and Newport, WA on the way to Spokane. We were so exhausted after driving all day long, we had Indian food delivered to our hotel room, and collapsed.

And that was it. We woke up late the next morning. We went to Huckleberry’s, a local organic grocery store, for a well-deserved brunch. And then we headed over to the airport to catch our flight home to San Francisco.