Blogs from Marin, California, United States, North America - page 3

Thursday, May 21, 2009 Point Reyes National Seashore, California If you leave Oakland by 7 am you can have your feet in Drake’s Bay before 9. The traffic has to be in your favor of course. The 880/580 commute, the Richmond Bridge, and Sir Francis Drake Boulevard can throw a monkey wrench into that plan real easy. But today they didn’t, and so there I stood at 9 with wet, sandy pant legs and nobody within view for miles. The experience would be completely my own today. I was the wandering shaman. Point Reyes National Seashore is a chunk of Southern California which was transported north by the San Andreas Fault and now juts out into the Pacific Ocean off the Northern California coast. The Fault itself is blatantly visible to this day, having gouged the ... read more

The Cataract Trail is located just a few miles North and West of the summit of Mount Tamalpais. You can clearly see the summit of Mount Tam along the drive to the Cataract trailhead, but along the trail itself there are too many trees to be able to see it. The trail is pretty steep in parts, but is a good workout, and you can continue hiking for at least another mile after you reach the Laurel Dell at the top of Cataract. You might even be able to hike all the way to the top of Mount Tam from Cataract, but that would be a several hour hike if it is in fact possible. I highly recommend this hike, especially if you are in need of some exercise.... read more

As of Monday March 9 at 5 am FOUR people have successfully answered a "Qs" (Question On MM's Blog) correctly. They are: Cheryl (2 correct answers) Cia (1) Dixchief (1) Liz (1) The current questions can be answered up until Saturday, March 31, at midnight. I'm off to Denver MM... read more

On this Saturday I made the drive up highway 1 from the Muir Woods area through Stinson Beach on the way up to Point Reyes to see what I could of the Gray Whale migration. It was a great weather day, lots of sun, wind was mild, visibility was great (you could see the Farallon islands quite clearly), and thus kind of a fun day to stare into the Pacific. That day there were some 88 individual Gray Whales spotted heading North, but only a handful of them came close to the lighthouse while I was there. Of course, the majority of them were females with a calf, and thus they weren't breaching or anything nearly that exciting. I saw a lot of spouts when they surfaced to breath, but that wasn't worth hanging around for. ... read more

My Blogger of the Year Acceptance Speech After 4 months of traveling there are so many people to thank, in no particular order, thank you, all of you. Tara and I appreciate all of you. And thanks to everyone who read this stuff, it was actually a lot of fun to write. Rob and Carl- Dublin became our home base for family, planning, and learning about Ireland and Europe. It was always nice to have these two guys take us in periodically and do everything they could to help us stay healthy, happy and on track. You guys are good friends. Eurail- Eurail though we had our times, was the cheapest and most effective way to experience and travel through Europe. Choo Choo baby. Lonely Planet- This book was key to the cheapest living and always ... read more

Anarchy Train, Teen Wolf, and Thanksgiving We met this guy named John from Ireland at our Bruge hostel and he told me the story of, “The anarchy train.” In certain countries and certain cities/towns in Europe, during football games people were able to rally the entire town together and storm a train. They wouldn’t pay and they wouldn’t follow any of the rules of the train. They would destroy the insides of the train, go watch football and then do it all again when it was time to go home. The police couldn’t catch everybody, so there was always a chance you were going to get busted, but for the most part, how do you stop and an entire town from storming a train and taking over? Why not just stop the train? Because the beauty ... read more