Made it all the way to Red Bluff on Friday night, and now we’re in Weed. Because I know you’re thinking it, Wikipedia says:

The town of Weed gets its name from the founder of the local lumber mill and pioneer Abner Weed, who discovered that the area’s strong winds were helpful in drying lumber.

It was raining pretty much the whole way from Red Bluff to Mount Shasta, until we got to Dunsmuir when the rain became snow. Apparently we’re in the middle of a pretty big snowstorm, with 1-4 inches expected by the end of the day, and up to 10 inches tomorrow!

So the downside is we won’t be taking any stunning photos of Mount Shasta (the mountain), but on the upside, we’ll have lots of fresh powder to go tromping around in tomorrow. We’d planned to do more today, but the rain and snow made the getting here slow going, and well, it’s vacation. We slept in today. So after getting the skinny on snowshoe rentals in Mount Shasta (the city), we ended up heading to the movie theater to see Coraline. And tonight we’re in Weed for its lovely Motel 6.

Once again, in less than a month, Stephanie and I showed up to work with our backpacking packs, stuffed to the gills. Whereas Lassen was more of a dry-run—they were just convenient hands-free suitcases—this time we were really going backpacking.

The plan was simple, if not a little crazy. Here it is in list form:

1. Fly to Phoenix on Wednesday night after work
2. Pick up rental car and drive to Flagstaff
3. Spend the night at a hotel
4. Wake up early Thursday morning and finish driving to the Grand Canyon
5. Hike down the South Kaibab Trail to the Bright Angel Campground at the very bottom of the canyon
6. Camp for two nights
7. Hike out Saturday via the Bright Angel Trail (which I had hiked down part-way in 2005)
8. Drive all the way to Phoenix
9. Stay at a hotel outside of the airport
10. Fly back to San Francisco midday Sunday

And that’s just what we did. It’s probably going to take several posts to digest all the amazing sights and little stories we experienced along the way. But I do want to start things off with what I believe is surely one of the most aesthetically beautiful road signs ever (and at the same time the most horrifying—if you’re driving at night).

That’s an elk folks. With the meanest looking antlers this side of the Arctic Circle. And we were in a convertible. Visions of Tommy Boy danced in my head. These signs were everywhere.

Ok well, I can’t just leave things hanging like that. Here was our first glimpse of the canyon from the South Kaibab trailhead.

The South Kaibab is the same trail my dad hiked 2 years ago, overcoming his fear of heights and fulfilling one of his childhood dreams.

Over the holiday weekend Stephanie and I traveled to Seattle to visit two friends from grad school, Patrick and Christy. The last time I visited Seattle, which was also my first time, I went to catch Gillian Welch in concert with Christy and her daughter Chloe. At the time Patrick was still in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, but now with them both in the same place, it only made sense to visit them together. As it happens, Christy and Chloe would be taking part in the Tall Ships festival in Tacoma, providing us all with a built-in 4th of July event.

We arrived Thursday night. Patrick grabbed us at the airport, brought us to our hotel downtown, and then we wandered towards the market for a place to sit down, have a drink, and catch up. The next morning we had a filling breakfast at one of Patrick’s favorite spots, Atlas Foods, before heading down to Tacoma to meet up with Christy and Chloe.

Of course by “meet up” I mean find their tall ship, the Yankee Clipper. Only recently the boat was owned by the Boy Scouts of America and used for their Sea Scouts program. When the Boy Scouts decided it was time to divest themselves of the boat, Christy along with Daniel Joram, the boat’s captain, expanded the role of the Yankee Clipper Foundation to take ownership of the boat and continue to maintain it for the Sea Scouts. Or at least that’s how I understand it.

Update: Christy wrote in to tell me:

Also, while we host a Sea Scout crew on the YC, we have launched a non-scouting youth-maritime training program to provide equal access to interested youth, without discrimination. Our new website is:
www.tallshiptraining.org

What this all means is that Christy, Chloe, Daniel, and a number of teens have been living and working on this 40 foot sailboat for the past several weeks, as well as a few to come. And by “living” I mean navigating, sailing, sleeping, cooking, eating, and of course going to the bathroom. It sounds kind of like Outward Bound on steroids. For teens. When we found them, Christy was below deck kneading dough to make bread. Once the dough was set to rise, we got off the boat and explored the festival a little bit more. Periodically the boats went out for little cruises with passengers. We’d hoped to do the same on the Clipper, but their launch times ended up a too late for our schedule.

We let Christy get back to her dough (and her boat) and then the three of us went over to Patrick’s parents’ house, where they’d prepared for us a veritable feast of smoked ribs, marinated grilled chicken, and sausage. I was in barbecue heaven! After a lovely dinner in their backyard garden, we returned to Seattle with plans for a hike Saturday on Mt Rainier.

On the way back from Italy we stopped off in Monaco, like you do, went to the castle, saw the exotic garden, stumbled upon the changing of the guard, and walked through the church.

Panorama of Monaco’s harbor and waterfront

On Thursday we had lunch in Saint-Laurent-du-Var with two of Stephanie’s friends from high school, both of whom she’d reconnected with via Facebook. Then we had a lovely dinner with Stephanie’s mom and aunt prepared by her momma. Tomates à la Provençale, gratin dauphinoise, and longe de porc au miel (braised pork loin with a honey-shallot glaze). I took pictures.

To get from Nice to Cinque Terre last Monday, we hugged the coast and headed east on the A8, which became the A10 in Italy, and then we took the A12 in Genova all the way to La Spezia. But I wasn’t doing any of the driving—Stephanie’s mom’s car was a manual, so it was between her and her mom to get us to Italy. It’s worth pointing out that the Mediterranean coast of northern Italy is very mountainous, so the entire autoroute/autostrade was essentially a continuous series of tunnels and bridges.

Where things got interesting was just east of Genova, at about the half way point. Stephanie had been driving thus far, and there had been multiple signs warning of a possible traffic slowdown due to an accident east of Genova. We’d been warned so far in advance, we figured the problem would be cleared by the time we got there. We were wrong.

In the tunnel just before the Genova East exit, we saw traffic slowing down. And then it stopped. Completely. In the middle of a 1.7km long tunnel, just wide enough to fit two lanes traveling in the same direction. Some of the cars and trucks in front of us had turned off their engines. Some people were standing outside of their cars. We couldn’t see the end of the tunnel in front of us. I thought to check the time. It was 14:30. I snapped a blurry photo of our predicament.

At this point it’s probably worth mentioning that Stephanie doesn’t like tight spaces. Especially when they’re filled with lots of other people (like crowded concerts, backs of airplanes, tight elevators, etc). Initially she seemed ok, but fifteen minutes later she was feeling pretty claustrophobic. She did not want to be stuck in the car in the tunnel any longer. I opened my door and could see the end of the tunnel in the distance between the two lanes of stopped traffic. I’ll admit I didn’t like being stuck there either.

In retrospect, I wish I’d just suggested she do the same: get out of the car and glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel. But we had no idea we’d be stuck for so long, and the tunnel air was full of exhaust fumes, so we didn’t want to open the doors. Instead I suggested we walk out of the tunnel. Stephanie’s mom was feeling fine, and said she’d just pick us up somewhere at the end. Stephanie agreed, so we started walking out. Immediately I could see she her feeling better. And we could both see the end getting closer (though you couldn’t tell that from the picture I took below).

Not more than 5 or 6 minutes into our walk the cars in front of us started moving. And then the traffic completely cleared out in front of us! Behind us people were getting back into their cars, turning them on, and slowly accelerating out of the tunnel. We happened to be standing next to a crossover tunnel between the two tunnels that made up the freeway, so we waited there, hoping Stephanie’s mom would see us with enough time to pull over and pick us up.

I have to admit I was a little nervous. We were on the left hand side of the road, safe from the traffic, but we’d told Stephanie’s mom to pick us up on the right. As fate would have it, she was in the right lane, surrounded by cars and unable to stop when she reached us. We saw her drive by, and she saw us, and then she continued out of sight.

So now it was up to us to get out of the tunnel. When the cars were stopped we could walk on the road, but now we were trudging through the slippery muck in the nonexistent shoulder between the round tunnel wall on one side and the moving traffic on the other. And we still had a ways to go.

Finally we emerged from the tunnel, shaken but unscathed, only to face another obstacle. Inside the tunnel we had at least a foot or two of margin between us and the traffic, but outside there was a grassy divider between the two sides of the freeway surrounded by a metal barrier with less than a foot between it and the lane. We were still on the left side of the road, and we could see Stephanie’s mom parked on the right side margin three hundred feet in front of us. So we hopped over the metal barrier and hiked closer to her through the thigh high grass.

We walked until we were just across the highway from the car. Between us was the metal barrier, and two lanes of evenly dispersed highway traffic. Luckily we had time. No sense in risking our lives at this point. As I was psyching up Stephanie (and myself) to run across the highway, I looked back at the tunnel and noticed there was a gap in the cars. “Ok, now, go go!” I said, surprising Stephanie.

We scrambled over the barrier and ran across the road as fast as we could, opened the doors and jumped back into the car. I checked the time again, it was 15:06, almost 40 minutes after we’d first stopped.

A few hours later we arrived in Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the 5 villages that make up Cinque Terre. Here’s our first view from the terrace outside the apartment we’d rented for two nights. Well earned, I’d say.

Continue reading: Cinque Terre!