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Moving On

Farrah and I are going to be leaving the Tahoe area today. It will be difficult to leave the perfect weather and beautiful vistas but I’m ready to move on.  We’ll be driving south down highway 395 and we’ll stay at Mono Lake in California for a day or so before heading up Tioga Pass to Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite.   I’m excited to experience the beauty and grandeur that I’ve only gazed upon in photographs and films.  We’re planning on a few days of backpacking and some climbing.  I’ll be turning 33 years old while we’re there and I can’t think of a better place

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Monsters in the Forest

I’ve been out and about a bit searching for good boulders to climb and I’ve found some fairly large and daunting lines to climb.  Here’s a few pictures that I’ve taken.  Usually when I’m bouldering I’m by myself and the size of some of these stones leaves me wishing for a spotter and a few extra pads. “Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” ―    Jim Morrison

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Burning Week

Wow.  That’s the best I can say to describe the previous week.  Farrah and I loaded up the van for a week in the barren wasteland outside of Gerlach, Nevada.  They call it the Playa because it is flat, dry desert for miles and miles.  Most of the year there is absolutely nothing there.  Just sun, wind and dust.  Of course we were going there to visit a city that springs up for  a week once a year and then disappears again shortly after.  Black Rock City is the home to the Burning Man festival.  I’m sure most of you have heard about

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Desert Absence

Hello! It’s been over ten days since my last post.  I’ve been mostly off grid as Farrah and I spent some time hiking in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.  Then we made the long drive through the desert from Jackson,Wyoming to Lake Tahoe, Nevada via Salt Lake City.  I’m sad to say that my feelings about Salt Lake didn’t change the second time around.  I’m sure it’s a wonderful place but the wonder eludes me.  The drive across the desert is long and hot with vast stretches of nothingness punctuated by the occasional rolling hill or random desert rock

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Places and Perceptions

It’s interesting how things change as you travel from place to place.  Sometimes its transparent and sometimes it’s drastic.  I’m not talking about scenery or climate or the way the air feels.  I’m addressing the overall feeling that is created by the residents of the area and the overall social environment you’re in.  As we’ve moved from place to place I have begun to pick up on the differences and how each area has a unique feel to it.  At the beginning of our trip we travelled through Northeast Washington and the towns of Mazama, Winthrop, Twisp, Okanogan, Tonasket,

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Musing

  “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ”  ―    Henry David Thoreau