Colorful Keith

My brother and I took off up the river last week to see the fall color.
It was an absolutely beautiful drive, and of course, wonderful to see Keith again.

I can't help but laugh at how goofy he looks here, like a little kids doll. Sorry Keith, but its true!

The Clackamas river is really amazing any time of year, but fall can really blow your mind

vine maple and lichens!

Most of the yellow you see is big leaf maple

rapids

Keith!

Isn't it amazing?

Isabella Rose

Now that I am finally home (yea Oregon!) I get to hang out with my Katerina and her darling Isabella.
She is getting cuter and cuter every time I see her. How am I ever going to resist her?

More hot springs, then headed home

On our last day of driving, we found another hot spring. This one was more built up, but really fascinating.

The hot water came through these channels in the rock and over the end where people built up pools.

It was really fun.

Then we headed across the Sierras. This is a view from Monitor Pass.

And Ebbetts Pass

The sun was setting

What a spectacularly beautiful trip!

Bodie

Back to posting pics about my California road trip.

This is Bodie, a ghost town in eastern CaliforniaIt's an old gold mining town that had quite a reputation for licentiousness and murder.
The place was huge, and is now a state park

Most of the houses are amazingly intact (or what is left after some huge fire at the turn of the century)

Most people apparently just up and left everything

It was kind of fun to wander around and peek into all the windows.

The old church

A sawmill for firewood. Almost worth more than gold in this crazy place

An old car

Inside one of the old blacksmith's shops. See the giant bellows?

The general store

The school

a lesson

Max and Rin in the old mine elevator

The road to Bodie

Another cold night

After Mono lake, we found a camping site on road to Bodie. I have to say, I think this was my favorite camping site ever.

The view was spectacular

Then there was the whole god fingers thing

Pretty mountains
Max making dinner. We ate pretty well on the trip
The sunset got pretty spectacular as the night went on

The real thing was so much better, fingers of fire and all that

Morning was truly spectacular

Max took this pic of me and Rin

lovely

Mono Lake

Of course, one place worth visiting is Mono Lake

It's surrounded by a whole lot of desert

Panum Crater pops right out of the lake bed and has some pretty amazing views
a little volcanic zit
Pretty though

Mono Lake really is a picture perfect place

Tufas

Lots of pictures of tufas. Bare with me, I couldn't decide which to post

Alkalai flies

more tufa

Another hot spring, though not one you can get into

It wasn't actually boiling, but it sure looked like it with the air bubbling through

More tufas, a different kind

And the view driving away

Cold night

The next night was even colder, as might be obvious from the snow on the ground.

An earthquake fault

Morning frost. The waterbottles froze solid

Morning was pretty though. See the deer?
June Lake

Bristlecones

We made an unplanned (how could I have not planned this!?!) detour to the bristlecone pine forest. After climbing up to 10,000 feet, we got to watch a spectacular sunset.

a bristley cone
We took the short walk, almost running to beat the light.

Fun trees though

Although this is stating the obvious, those are some amazingly old trees!

It really does get to you

It was friking cold though. Max stole Rin's poop bag to protect his frigid toes. Lucky for him (or not, depending on how desperate you are), Rin didn't need the bag.

Sunset

Camping was rather cold at 9000 feet.

Max bought Rin his own sleeping bag. I think he liked it

The view in the morning across the valley

The White mountains, from the top (almost)

Another view of the sierras, this time from the top of one of our not so intelligent, but really fun adventures.

We decided to take the not so widely traveled way off the mountains: Silver Canyon Road

Rin thought we were nuts, or maybe I'm just projecting.

It was a spectacularly beautiful drive

We dropped about 6000 feet, on a very rough dirt road. It was so steep, and Max's car not so offroady, that we had to stop every few switchback to let the brakes cool.

Quite steep

Finally, after almost 4 hours (and we thought this would be a shortcut over doubling back on the main road!), we made it to the relatively level lower half.

Ah, level ground! We didn't plunge off a cliff and die!

This is what we came down

As a reward for our survival, hot springs!
Spectacularly beautiful setting, don't you think?

ahhhhh

Owens Valley

Headed north on 395

Here's whats left of Owens Lake, weee LA! (sarcasm, if you can't tell)Mount Whitney

The view from halfway up the Whitney portal

Owens Valley

The Alabama Hills. Why they are called that, I don't know. But they are interesting

Red Rock Canyon State Park

Our first night camping we stopped at Red Rock Canyon State Park.

This was an unexpected stop, but man was it pretty

The actual camping left a little to be desired though. The wind picked up in the middle of the night, and practically flattened our tent to the ground. Poor Rin took the worst of it though, since he was in the upwind side... fwapfwapfwap

The cliffs in the morning were still spectacular

As were the canyons beyond