Nature
Tour d' Naturwelt
For better or worse I was raised outdoors. My family has, from the start, always been active. Over the years I’ve picked up a wide variety of interests, and ventured into a numerous range of places across the American continent. In particular Skiing, Camping, Volleyball and the Beach have been big parts of my development as an adult.
I think my first camping memory was going to Anza Borrego State Park.. I remember shooting stars and an incredibly windy valley at night… the tent was blown flat on top of us and I was scared… Felt like a tornado was going to sweep us away!
A large part of my outdoor experience is from Scouting… Yes, I was a Boy Scout, and even got the honorary title of “Eagle”… I don’t like talking about scouts that much… I’m not ashamed, or anything, I just grew and matured away from the environment…
Bottom line is: Scouting gave me tons of personal and outdoor skills that I use to this day…
After I exited scouting, my dad started to fill in the gap by planning family trips camping… This began a ratcheting cycle of upping the ante and intensity of camping and hiking adventures… I can’t even recall how many times he’s taken us skiing or camping in the last 10 years under the justification that “the family is running out of time before the kids (my siblings and I) move out and get jobs… and the logic isn’t wrong… But it hasn’t left much room for the kids to do their own thing…
“Plusses and minuses”…
Winter 2018
Capitol Reef | MOAB | Keystone Colorado
Winter 2017 was the most recent outdoor trip. It was combined with our yearly family tradition of going skiing… One week of camping and road-tripping through State and National Parks in Utah, and one week of skiing in Keystone, Colorado.
As I recall, we gunned it all the way from LA to Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. I had been there before. We stayed at some bead and breakfast type of arrangement with some cattle-ranching family. There was a family of Chinese people there, and some other Americans as well.
I vividly remember sitting in the hot tub at night… stars were bright and the air was silent but with a slight breeze. I was checking my phone and drinking some Kirin Ichiban, Japanese Malt Beer, when I looked up and saw a HUGE streak of light heading straight down from the sky, not like your normal shooting star high in the atmostphere, this one was heading straight down to earth. That was a definite highlight of the trip.
After Captiol Reef, we passed through Goblin Valley on the way to MOAB Utah. Crazy formations in that area. Very Tatooine-esque. All water-erosion formed. Hard to imagine that eons ago there was an ocean covering the ground we stood on.
We touched down in MOAB into a Hotel during night-time. The air was cold, it was Winter after all. We ventured over into Canyonlands for a 2-4 mile hike to a Cliffside with amazing vistas… It was cold and the sun was going down, so we literally jogged back to our Nissan Pathfinder. If I remember correctly, we had Thai food that night… Since then my dad’s picked up how to cook a couple dishes inspired by Thai cuisine…
At some point, we hiked the Corona Arch again. Quite a sight! The arch is worth the couple mile hike…
Anyway, the next day we jumped over into Arches National Park. I had been there before, and we did even less than the last visit. We did do the Delicate Arch hike, which I hadn’t done before… again while the sun was going down…
I was doing music listening “homework” all throughout the trip… listening to Drake, Logic, Travis Scott, and Lil’ Yachty… I’ve been trying to catch up to what’s hot in music nowadays… Hip hop and rap isn’t necessarily my style, but it’s at every party, every club, and every music fest… So it was high-time I studied up…
More about that on my “Introspective” blog page…
The next day, we drove up the 128 toward the Fischer towers, and my sister went on a 1 on 1 horseback riding tour. There was trepidation about spending a bunch of money and going alone, but I’m super glad she did it. I know she had a good time! It makes me happy to see her do what she loves. We did some local hiking in the meantime to kill the hour or two she was gone… One of the best and pristine views of the Colorado River in that valley…
From there it was straight on to Colorado, and the skiing half of the trip.
Not much to say about it, but I skied hard for a few days, had quite a few drinks, played mahjong, sketched a bunch on cardboard and paper bags just for kicks… Summer Lost her phone… We walked down to the lake once or twice…
I’d say that my family is a set of intermediate-advanced skiers. We definitely fuck with black diamonds, but I myself don’t enjoy double-blacks or heavy mogul fields… My dad typically looks for back-woods and tree skiing… I myself find it more enjoyable and easy to get in the zone in those places anyway… You don’t need to worry about other people colliding with you… usually… BUT you do need to avoid the trees… running into one of those will kill you more easily than hitting a person will… It takes a degree of self confidence and fearlessness to navigate trees…
Summer left early out of Denver… It was a solid hour and a half drive… not too efficient… I had to take her into the airport and lead her to the security gate…
After that, my brother, dad and I skied for 2 or 3 more days and headed home… There was an approaching storm, so we decided to bug out before we got snowed in and roads were closed… We did get some precipitation on the way out, but I think the storm was a whiff and there wasn’t actually a heavy snowfall. We stayed in Cedar City overnight and headed home the next morning down the 15 through Vegas.
Oregon Coast 2017
NorCal | Oregon Coast | Portland
2017 Summer was occupied primarily by my trip to Europe in May to June… More on that in my TRAVEL page…
I did also go with my family to Portland again… Camping up along the coast.
I can’t remember the places exactly, but I remember this time we stayed in a YURT at some points…
Most everything along the Oregon and NorCal coast is homogeneous… rocky cliffs, succulents, wild strawberries and whales up and down the coast lines…
Lighthouses are worth the visit… I now know how to pronounce “Fresnel-Lens”
Didn’t amount to much in Portland again… Japanese & Rose garden again,
Tahoe-Mojave 2017
NorCal | Oregon Coast | Portland
Spring Break 2017 I had the chance to go skiing over in Lake Tahoe again. I sure jumped at the opportunity. I remember stopping by Berkeley first with the whole family and then stopping by UC Davis for a bit for my sister (WHO IS NOW A STUDENT THERE!).
Skiing there was pretty run in the mill. We’re always lucky with snow conditions at Tahoe.
I remember getting sushi at some point...
I remember dropping off my sister through a snow-storm out of Reno Nevada... It was an hour or so to the airport through the sleet... Putting on chains was a hectic experience as always... watching for cars
First night there I remember hitting up a dollar store and a sushi place for dinner.
We stayed at The Ridge Tahoe, as usual.
The interesting nature segment of the trip was on the way home from skiing actually.
Firstly, we stayed in Bishop for a night. There were some feral cats nearby as we sat in the hot tub of the motel, lots of kittens, I was fangirling out tbh. I like cats a lot actually. Not having them, just as a personality type.
Secondly, Along the 395 are some very nice pizza establishemnts called “THE PIZZA FACTORY” in Bishop and Lone-Pine.. It’s a chain throughout the back-ass places of california’s rural highways… I think there’s one in Fresno too… I LOVE eating there. It’s like a family tradition to stop by.
We stopped by Death Valley on the way down the 395 from Tahoe down the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On our first stop into the park ,we encountered a very low fly-by of some F-16s doing some high-G maneuvers into the valley. They must have been heading out of China Lake military base south of the Valley. At first I thought I saw drones hovering or a helicopter, but then I quickly realized that it was a fast moving aircraft!
I was lucky enough to snap a photo through reflex, and captured some awesome closeup photos from my crappy phone camera.
In one day, we visited an Oasis in the park, the sand dunes, Badwater Basin, and Zabriskie Point… All quite amazing natural wonders! It’s so funny, I had only just recently found out about Zabriskie Point from my WINDOWS HOME SCREEN!... and made an effort to be there for sunset once I found out I was going to Death Valley…
That’s not the end of the awesomeness…
We didn’t go back to the 395 to drive back to LA… instead we cut south through back roads through native American territory toward the 15 (the freeway from LA to Vegas)
On the way south we encountered a sand-storm… First I’ve ever driven through… I’ll never forget what that looked like… literally 0% visibility... driving in a cloud of sand… It was quite windy to say the least, when there was no sand blowing around…
TO MY SURPRISE, we ended up at none other than good old Baker, California… home of the Mad Greek and where my dad and I shared some fun car memories the year before… I can’t remember if we ate there or not but I do recommend stopping there on the way to Vegas if you get the chance.
The drive home was at night, I think we got home between 12 and 2…
End of Story.
