Category: Around The Globe

Yosemite National Park!

My legs…. HURT!

I’ve been in Yosemite park since Wed and I have had so much FUN! That place is just gorgeous! I wish that I could spend months there camping and hiking through the back country and just sitting on the rocks overlooking a waterfall and reflecting on life. There were many times when the beauty of that place brought a tear to my eyes.

Wed night Christian came over and brought all his shit, we hung out that night and finished getting the group stuff ready and had a few drinks. Got up Thursday morning and picked up the rental truck and then everyone showed up at my place around 9. We loaded up and headed out. The drive there was pretty easy really, we only stopped once, but got LOST in the town that we were in and could NOT find the way back to the freeway! Once we got into the park I was so excited to just get there. I love flying around all those curvy roads, the people in the back seat though were getting sick. Opps! We got into the park about 3:30ish and quickly unpacked and then did a quick 2 mile hike up to Mirror lake. I fell in. 🙁

Friday morning we got up early and cooked breakfast. We were going to do the Panorama Trail so went up to the lodge to get tickets on the shuttle bus but they were all sold out till 1:30pm! Decided not to do that and went on the Upper Yosemite Falls trail instead. The sign said it was only 3.2 miles, so we figured it’d be pretty easy, little did we know that in those 3.2 miles you gained 3,000 feet in elevation! It was very hard for most of the group. Half of them turned around about half way to the top. Even I had lots of problems the last 3/4 mile. Between the steepness of the trail and the elevation I could hardly breathe! But it was really worth all the work to get to the top and see this amazing waterfall just flying over the edge of the cliffs. We hiked a little bit past there, then stopped at the river bed and filled up our water bottles for the hike down.

Got back from that and made dinner then a few of us went to a talk given by Ron Kauk where he showed Return to Balance: A Climbers Journey which had some amazing shots of him climbing and of Yosemite in general. It was really neat to see. I talked to him after and got some pointers for my next trip up to Yosemite where I could do some easier climbing. After that I had to run to the Village to do some work and then back to the campsite for bed.

Saturday morning we got up VERY early because our bus for Glacier Point left at 8:30am! We got everyone up and breakfast cooked and on the road just in time! The bus driver was really funny and was telling stories the whole way up there. We got there and looked around a little bit and then started our hike down Panorama Trail. This one ended up being around 10 miles total and 5,100 descend and about 1,900 ascending. We got to see some amazing views of the falls throughout the park. Some of which were Illilouette Fall, Nevada Fall, Vernal Fall and ended along the VERY steep but wonderful Mist Trail.

Part of the group turned back once we hit the mist trail. Which was probably a mistake, because they then had a 4 mile hike ahead of them, instead of just the 3 very steep miles that we had. The Mist trail was just amazing though! We got back an hour before the rest of them did. That night Nick and I headed up to Tuolumne Meadows to watch the sunset… The meadows are at 8,600 feet above sea level, it was 41 degrees when we got there and there was still pockets of snow! But we were crazy and went SWIMMING in the river! 🙂 Ok, I was in the water for about 1.5 seconds before I jumped out screaming like a little girl. Nick was more manly and was in for about 4 seconds total! It was wonderfully refreshing though after the long day of hiking we had. We spent a few hours in the meadows and really enjoyed the sunset. It was just amazing.

Got back to camp late that night and we all sat around drinking and talking and having a great time… Got up about 7 on Sunday morning and Sirin made breakfast for everyone which was delicious. Packed up camp and we were out of there by 10am! Got back to LA around 3:30 and unpacked.

It was so wonderful being up there, sleeping out under the stars and just hiking and enjoying nature. I cried a little bit as we left, and then again as we were coming over the pass into LA and seeing all the smog and the cars again. I hate smog and cars. I just want to sleep under the stars and enjoy nature!

All the photos are available here. And you can view our google earth tracks/photos here.

Const is in Houston!

Road trip to Houston!!!

This past week I have been on a road trip to Houston! Constantine has moved there for the next 6 months! 🙁

So Tuesday was not a very good day for me. I had a 4 hour meeting I had to prepare for, and I had to prepare to be out of the office for the next week and a half (I am in training this week). So I email all my clients and tell them that I will be gone, most of them were like. “Ok whatever”. Well one of them emailed me back and was all bitchy and was like. “I was expecting things to be done this week! blah blah blah. So I had to come pu with a way that I could work while traveling. I installed Windows 2003 on my external drive so that I could use Parallels, then installed MsSQL so that I had the DB. Then I had y 4 hour meeting which ended up only lasting 2 hours. Got done with that and it was noon and I wanted to go home. But As soon as I got back to my desk I had three clients IMing me wanting help with shit! UGH! Very annoying. I ended up getting out of the office at 2:30. Rushed home because Const said he’d be there in about 2 hours (when I talked to him at 2).

Get home and shower and pack real quick and what not… And then ended up sitting around till 6 when he finally got there. We went out to dinner with Sirin to Hennessey’s for burgers.

Got home that night and just hung out at the house and watched TV. Got up at 8 on Wed and had breakfast at this new Crepe place in Redondo Beach. We had a HOT french/russian/vietnamese waiter. He was really ncie too, we talked to him for a while and what not. The food was excellent! I would highly suggest going there and checking it out. It’s on the corner of Ave I and Catalina.

Got in the car and headed out after that. I plugged in my external drive (one of those portable ones that’s powered off USB) and worked away for a few hours. About the time I was finishing up, the hard drive suddenly says it’s been disconnected…. IT was still connected to me!!! So I unplug it and plug it back in… “Please initialize this drive”!

WTF! So I freak out because this drive has ALL my windows installations that I use for work, and training and playing and testing and everything else! PLUS It has ALL THE INFORMATION I need to be able to do work on this trip! VERY ANNNOYING!

The rest of the drive wasn’t too bad. 530 miles that day. Some VERY pretty wild flowers and stuff along the way. Got to the hotel and it was amazing. It was basically a HUGE apartment. Hung out there for a couple minutes and then went to dinner at an Asian place.

Thursday we got up at 8:30 again and we were on the road by 10. 550 miles that day. Lots of VERY VERY boring flat lands. Const spent hours calling all the apartments. I am SOOO jealous of these Texas apartments. 2 bedrooms with granite and hard wood floors and all this sweeeeet shit for WAY LESS then what I pay for a crappy 1 bedroom! Some of the places even have FREE starbucks coffee and fluff and fold service! UGH! That night we watched a comedian called Daniel Tosh. He’s very very funny. You should all go check it out.

Friday, 1610 miles later we MADE IT! 🙂 We got here and ate dinner at this very yummy Steak house called Smith & Wollensky got to the hotel and figured out plans for Saturday and then watched Americal Idol!

Satrday we got up at 8 and headed out to this place called Le Peep for breakfast. I got the blueberry pancakes which were not that good. But Const got bannana nut waffles which were delicious! After that we started looking at apartments. I think we went to like 10 different places. The second place we saw SMELLED soooooo fucking bad! GROSS! I wanted to puke when we walked into the stairwell to the apartment! The 4th place was just amazing! Very industrial with concrete floors and exposed duct work and what not. HUGE tub. It was SO CUTE! All the other places were really nice as well. At the end of the day we headed back to place number 4 to put down the money and what not. We get there and some guy is putting the deposit down on the apartment Const wanted. :'( So we went back to the third place which was also very nice and he got that one. I sure hope he will like it.

Saturday night we went out to a bar called “South Beach” which was tons of fun! Dancing and drinking and what not.

Sunday we slept in and then went shopping for stuff for his apartment. Got some really cute plates and what not from Pier 1. I think once I am back to LA I will go buy 2 more sets so that when he gets back we’ll have a 4some! haha. We went and saw the movie “Jumper” which was pretty good. After that we went back to the hotel and laid in the bed for a couple hours before my flight. I wanted to just bawl, but I held it back… I just realized that I forgot to get one last picture of us together there in Houston! Awwww. Anyways, we left the hotel and tried finding food on the way to the airport. That was one crazy adventure. We ended up in some GHETTO Popeye’s and got chicken. Seriously. I mean GHETTO! Got to the airport and it was very sad, but I held it together. I can’t wait to see him again.

Napa Valley Trip!

I love three day weekends…

This past weekend we had a great time. First was Jason’s birthday party on Friday. We had a great time, but left early. I felt bad about leaving so early, oh well.

Saturday morning we got up early and headed out to Napa Valley. On the way up there we stopped at Pinnacles National Monument. The drive from the freeway to the monument was tons of fun. But we only spent about an hour there. It was pretty and I’d like to spend a little more time there.

Got up to Napa late that night, went out to eat and while we were
eating this girl next to us saw that we were looking over maps and stuff and talked to us about the winery she worked at called Mumm Napa.

Sunday morning we got up and headed out at 9ish. Our first stop was a few parks and what not. First was Bothe-Napa Valley SP. It was a nice park, but nothing exciting. After that we headed to the Old Faithful of California. That was also fun, but again not that exciting. It was neat to ee though. Then we headed to the petrified forest. Here’s a pic of Const at the Petrified Forest:

From there we headed out to the winery’s! First was Sterling, which was probably my favorite in terms of the overall experience. First you arrive and take a tram ride up the side of the hill to the top of the winery. You are greeted with your first wine tasting and then you go on a self-guided tour of the winery. Here’s a shot of the HUGE wood barrels they ferment the wine in:

As you make your way through the winery you get to try a few different wines, on the balcony you get some wonderful views of the valley and you can just chill and talk and drink your wine.

Once you get through the winery you can take a seat in the main building and you get to try three more wines. On the day we were there they had some AMAZING Truffles there as well from a company called Truffle Gateau. I HIGHLY suggest going and buying some of them!

After this place we headed out and and drove to Burgess Cellers. Apparently you needed reservations or something, because the guy seemed very confused that we just walked into the door that said “OPEN”. So we just left. Headed from there to Sutter Home, which we went to because I really liked the building. Tried a few wines, but nothing I really liked.

Headed from there to V. Sattui Winery. This was another GREAT winery. But only because of all the foods and cheese they had at the shop. Oh my god. The cheese was wonderful! We also ended up buying 6 bottles of wine from them. From there we headed to Mumm beacuse of the girl we met. We didn’t taste anything there, but saw the art gallery and bought two small bottles of wine just for the hell of it

Our last stop of the day was Peju (only because it was basically the only one open past 5). I really enjoyed the modern art they had outside, inside we found this great pic which is just exactly like Tuxedo!! How cute:=

We got a great guy to taste with and basically a private tasting room because they were so busy! We bought two bottles of the Provence wine which was really good.

But this whole wine tasting thing. I really don’t get it. “In this wine you’ll taste hints of bannana and mango and this and that and the bottom half is a little bit sassy!”. Umm, really!? WTF!

We went home and were just so tired from all the tasting that we went to the hot tub and then just ate dinner and hung out at the hotel for the night.

Monday we headed home and stopped at the Golden Gate bridge for some pics.

From there we headed south to the Winchester Mystery House. This place was really cool. Very crazy stuff.

Of course, you can download our Google Earth Tracks here or you can download our GeoTagged photos here.

And photos of the trip are all here.

Rustic Canyon Nazi Camp – Winona Stephens Complex

This past weekend Constantine and I explored a few different areas of abandoned LA. First we went to the Griffith Park Old LA Zoo. On Sunday we went to the Rustic Canyon Nazi Camp up in Pacific Palisades.

In the early 1930’s Winona Stephens, a heir to a mining fortune created the Murphy Ranch on 50 secluded acres near what is now Topanga State Park. The person in charge of building all this was a Nazi spy named Schmidt. Herr Schmidt persuaded Stephens to invest more than $4 million to create a self-supporting community where a chosen few would live until the day anarchy fell on the United States after a presumed Nazi victory over England.

By 1940, they had built a garage with living quarters overhead, a huge concrete water tank, a diesel fuel tank and a dual-generator power station. Stephens, Schmidt and 50 other future master racers lived on the site, cultivating a vegetable garden and waiting for the New World Order. Guards stood at the gates, and the sounds of military drills often rang through the canyon.

The day after the United States entered World War II, Schmidt was arrested by the FBI and the community soon began to disintegrate. Now the buildings lie in ruins, littered with the remains of bonfires and plastered with graffiti, including swastikas. The canyon walls above are cut by four staircases of crumbling, treacherous concrete.

To get to Murphy Ranch, park at the corner of Capri road and Casale. Hike down the dirt/paved fire road which can been seen google maps here. You wil have to go around a gate to Camp Josepho.

The main gate to the complex is about a mile up the road from where the fire road starts, however if you keep an eye out you will see a set of stairs heading down into the canyon about 7tenths of a mile from the start. You can either take these or continue on to the main gate. You can easily walk around the gate and follow the road down behind. About .2 mile down the road will split. You can take either direction to get to the camp. We went to the left which lead to the main pumping/power station and an old garage/house.

You can still see many of the flowers and trees which were planted by the group back in the days. They continue to bloom on their own each year. It really is pretty amazing how well this is all being preserved even though it’s open to the elements and human destruction. The power plant is COVERED in graffiti, and the pits where pumps were once housed are now home to mounds and mounds of trash and empty beer cans.

Someone has even gone to the trouble of creating an artistic sculpture out of a bunch of old trash and building parts. Continue following the small trail past the old garage and once it ends, follow the river for a while. You will come across a very well preserved building which is enclosed in fencing. Here you will find the other end of the main gate’s road. You can either take this back up or continue to explore.

We didn’t have any more time once we got here, so we headed back up the road. But you can be sure that I will be back there soon to finish exploring this huge Nazi complex!

You can download or tracks for Google Earth here, and see just how easy it is to see. This is easily a 3 mile hike, but you could make it much much more. Take your time and enjoy it. We even saw a few people having a picnic down there!

Our pictures of the Rustic Canyon Nazi Camp are here. Or you can view the GoogleEarth GeoTagged photos here. Lastly you can view the other hard data from the weekend here.

Here’s some more references:
Nazi Commune Ruins
Rustic Canyon Local Hikes
I Hate Illinois Nazis

Old LA Zoo – Griffith Park

This past weekend, Constantine and I set out to go exploring a few different abandoned areas of Los Angeles, we started out with the one we thought would be the easiest to find and sure enough it was.

The Old LA Zoo first opened in Griffith Park in 1913, the zoo didn’t do very good and had many animal escapes and was poorly funded, during world war I many of the animals died due to food rationing. In 1965, the zoo was moved to it’s present location just south of where this one is located. This past year during the Griffith park fires, the old zoo was nearly destroyed, thankfully it survived the fires and is still amazingly well kept.

We headed up the I-5 early Saturday morning and got off at the first Griffith park exit and parked in the Merry-Go-Round parking lot. Head back across the street and up the road (away from the merry-go-round). Here you will find a trail that heads to the right along the ridge and through some trees. Go up the trail just a little ways and you will find the first group of buildings. It’s really very easy to get too. This is the back side of what appeared to be the Lion cages. There were plenty of holes in the fence that you can get through to climb around. In fact the day we were there there was some group filming a movie, which included a large fake tiger!

We continued to hike around for a while and found a few different ways to get there. In fact if you don’t want to go through the hiking part, you can actually get to the front of the zoo by going around the Merry-Go-Round to the right of the parking lot and then just follow the larger parking lot to the left.

You can download or tracks for Google Earth here, and see just how easy it is to see. You could easily spend 30 minutes or a few hours exploring this old compound and the areas around it.

Our pictures of the Old LA Zoo are here. Or you can view the GoogleEarth GeoTagged photos here. Lastly you can view the other hard data from the weekend here.

Here’s some more references:
Marilyn Carolyn
Boing Boing
Zoo Zoo Zoo

On the way home we saw this cute little PokeMan bug… Crazy LA people:

(Notice the mini one on the dashboard!)