From the Mind of Trevor Stone

I spent several weeks in June and July on a road trip to California and back. Covid uncertainty means "drive around and camp" has significant advantages over "fly and hotels." If you get sick before you leave, cancelation is releasing a couple campsites and you get to save money on gas. If you get sick while traveling you can either sit in a camp chair in the woods feeling lousy for a few days or drive home early. So last year I decided to visit my brother and a friend on the west coast and check out the Fourth of Juplaya, an annual event where a bunch of Burners go to the Black Rock Desert and do things you can't do at Burning Man.

This year my sister-in-law suggested we take my nephew on his first camping trip. In mid-February I booked what I think was the last available coastal campsite between the Bay Area and Mendocino County for the last week of June, which feels like one of the more absurd facets of modern life. "What will the weather be like in five months? Will we still feel like going there? Does our tent even fit? I hope that part of California won't have burned down by the time we get there."

Plans didn't change, so we headed westward as planned. We stayed the first night in an old hippy bus at Mystic Hot Springs, where we had to book a 2-hour soaking window in advance. This felt like an even more absurd aspect of modern life. "Schedule your bath time weeks in advance!" We spent the following night at a campsite outside Mammoth Lakes, which I was glad to see could be reserved on a Sunday night with just a few days notice. Driving through Yosemite before 4pm also requires an advance timeslot booking. These were sold out, but we had a grand ol' time dawdling at Mono Lake and the Upside Down House and Mono Basin museum that we cruised up Tioga Road at a leisurely pace in the late afternoon.

We spent a few days with two friends, two kids, and two cats in too-hot Fresno. We made paintings, cut solstice decorations out of construction paper, went swimming, played monsters for kids to attack, and ate garden-fresh produce. I think these kids will be alright. Then off to the Bay Area, hugging a bag of ice across the Central Valley because my car's AC wasn't working. In San Jose we tried to help with the chaos of a toddler, an anxious dog, and two working parents, with perhaps a modicum of success. I also led a Colorado congressional lobby meeting from a California back yard.

Salt Point State Park didn't burn down in the five months since making a reservation. I discovered that our site had a large tree stump in the middle, making the placement of our 10'x14' canvas tent that must be staked down lest it fall on your head a tight dance of geometry. The weekend was overcast and misty, as Northern California is wont to do, a welcome reprise from the 100° in the rest of the west. Our nephew had a grand time playing with trucks in the dirt and pushing his dump truck up and down the trails. My Mendocino County friends came down for a day with their toddler who was born the same week in 2019. The boys played quite well together, considering more than half their lives has been in the age of Safer At Home. I set up my ham radio and tried to join in on the fun of ARRL Field Day, but the only good tree options had my antenna running north-south and thus sending peak power west across the ocean or east right into the Coastal Range. I managed to make all of one successful contact; a few other folks in the Pacific Northwest could hear snippets but couldn't get my full callsign.

As I took the scenic California Highway 1 home a Point Reyes National Seashore police officer pulled me over and told me he was impressed that my license plate had been on my car so long that the letters had faded to the point of illegibility. I'd always assumed this was dirt that I didn't bother cleaning off, but upon later inspection I noticed that that the paint on the plate was starting to peel off. He told me to get replacement plates when I got back home but (foreshadowing) I don't actually need to worry about that problem.

Kelly flew home after the camping weekend to get back to work while I headed east towards the desert with my car and all our stuff. I opted to cross the Sierra Nevadas on highway 108, a lovely drive with a great overlook of Donnell Lake and a Stanislaus River valley. I spent the night at Buckeye Campground which had plenty of no-reservation-required campsites, probably on account of it being a Wednesday. I had significantly more luck with my ham radio setup, thanks to some fortunate band conditions. I talked to a guy in Mozambique via the gray line on 40 meters and a guy in France on 20 meters which is normally a "daytime band." In the morning I made some more Parks on the Air contacts, this time just in the U.S. The camp host noticed my setup and chatted for a bit, noting that another camper had also set up a ham radio antenna the previous night. I met him a little later, and then a third ham in the campground who didn't have an HF antenna up (he was fishing for Parks In The Water rather than broadcasting for Parks On The Air, I suppose). I then headed a couple miles downstream to Buckeye Hot Spring where I met two more ham operators and enjoyed a great soak. Buckeye might be the best side-of-a-cold-river hot springs I've had the chance to enjoy. I also checked out the nearby Travertine Hot Spring in its colorful geologic splendor.

Stay tuned for part two, where things stop going according to plan.

Since I got a SLR camera a year and a half ago, I've taken a lot more pictures, many of them not particularly good. I (try to) care about the attention span of my digital followers, so I committed to selecting only a representative sample of interesting photos to post on the web. This year, I've tended to let a big pile of pictures accumulate before I devote the time to compose albums, leading to multi-month delays. But lo, I've examined, selected, and posted the remainder of 2009!

My photographic highlights of last year:

• January started with a snowshoe trek and had a few more good shots, both frozen and thawed.
• February had a few good pictures from city park walks, plus a bunch of pictures from the U.S. olympic curling trials.
• March was mostly about finishing up at work, but I took a few nice fire spinning pictures and some shots around Confluence park before the show began.
• April through June were dominated by a trip to Guanduras with mollybzz. I returned with nearly 3000 pictures, but pared it down to 475 I wanted to share with the world. Molly's selections (pre-camera death at Travesía) are on her Guanduras page.
• I did take a few good pictures in April and June that I was in Colorado.
• July featured trips to Dreamtime, Yellowstone and Glacier.
• August has a few nice pictures of fire spinning and jumping before my tripod got knocked over, cracking the filter on my lens (fortunately it's a pretty cheap part with cheap repairs). I also took some nice pictures at the last Dragonfest held at Wellington Lake.
• Burning Man wasn't a big picture-taking experience for me. I spent a lot of time at the temple and took a few nice pictures of art. I was pleased to see someone did a Playa-worthy to-scale solar system, though the un-Playa-worthy version Michelle, Zane, and I did was more educational.
• In September I learned an important protip: If your camera's been sitting in the cold desert night air, don't dance right next to the giant hot fire: you might get condensation in your lens and be unable to take a crisp photo. I played around with the new involuntary soft focus effect and got some nice pictures of people and things.
• October is a perfect time to have a soft focus lens, lots of light, and colorful trees, bushes, flowers, and street signs.
• I spent much of November inside, but I took the occasional interesting picture on a few walks.
• I started December at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA. I visited mollybzz in Mendocino County and we wandered around her ancestral woodlands, chatting about life, gathering mushrooms, admiring trees, exploring a sinkhole, standing on the seashore, and dealing with unexpected interpersonal drama.