Oregon Cascades Travelog #15
Bend, OR - Thu, 3 Jul 2025, 8:30pm

We're back from another fun day of vacation in the Oregon Cascades. Though today we weren't really in the Oregon Cascades.... Instead we headed east from Bend into the high desert volcanic scrub land. Along the way we explored mountains of glass, hiked a volcanic fissure in the ground... oh, and saw about 100 hawks.

We saw the first few dozen hawks as we were driving east on US 20 out of Bend toward Glass Butte. The hawks were perched on power line poles along the side of the highway. At first we didn't see any raptors. Then we saw one or two. "Huh, I'm surprised there's food out here for them," I thought to myself. The we started seeing them every half mile. There must be plenty of food for them! I've only seen this density of birds of prey in the wild twice before.

We arrived in the area of the Glass Buttes and turned off the highway. From there we'd see only dirt and gravel roads for the next few hours. Yay, choosing to drive our own car (4x4 SUV) instead of flying and renting a car! We drove around to sites specifically where Hawk could rock-hound for different varieties of obsidian. She filled a canvas tote bag.

After rock-hounding and eating a trail lunch in the car we drove back out to the highway and backtracked a bit to the west before leaving the highway again to traverse gravel and dirt roads for most of the next 50 miles to get to Crack-in-the-Ground, an interesting volcanic fissure. From there we parked the car at the trail head, strapped on our packs, and hiked over 2 miles, much of it in narrow a chasm up to 70 feet deep. As with yesterday's summary I'm skipping over sharing photos (and video!) for now to keep from falling too far behind in writing about this trip.

Oh, and we at least a dozen more hawks on the drive to Crack-in-the-Ground. Plus another dozen more as we drove to the remote little town of Christmas Valley afterwards for a light dinner. Yes, it was already after 6pm! Then there were lots more hawks as we drove west toward Fort Rock and Hole in the Ground.

Yes, there's a Hole in the Ground in addition to Crack-in-the-Ground. We didn't get to see the hole, though, because it was raining by the time we got there. It was raining— pouring, really, with occasional lightning in the sky— as we passed by Fort Rock, as well. These both would've been fun to see. Alas, maybe on a return trip to Bend a few years from now!

Update, 11pm: the rain and lightning hit us in Bend later in the evening, spoiling yet another part of our plans for the day. Having gotten back to our hotel around 8:30pm we looked forward to soaking in the hot tub before it closes at 10. Well, at 9:15 or so when we were ready to go, WHOOSH! rain started to fall. We thought maybe we'd wait it out but then CRACK! lightning. And the rain lasted for 2 hours. It's a bummer we didn't get to use the hot tub. My sore muscles would've appreciated it.

Georgia Travelog #15
Three Forks - Friday, 11 Apr 2025, 2:30pm

Our second hike today was visiting Long Creek Falls in the Chattahoochee National Forest. It seemed like it wouldn't be that far from our previous hike at Cane Creek Falls but then we realized our route involved 12-15 miles of driving on Forest Service roads. I..e, dirt roads. It's a good thing our rental vehicle is a crossover with AWD! Though in the past I've driven similar roads with front-wheel drive sedans.

Then again, things started getting a bit tougher on the drive to the trailhead when it began to rain. It was mostly just scattered drizzle while we were driving, but that turned into a steady pour as we arrived. Then it turned into a downpour as we started hiking. It's a good thing we brought our rain jackets today! Indeed we passed some hikers heading back to the car who'd bailed out before reaching the falls because they weren't prepared to hike in the rain.



Long Creek Falls is about a mile in from the Three Forks trailhead. It's a mostly gradual uphill hike the whole way. On the way in we saw a few other smaller falls on the creek with faint unmarked paths leading toward them. We wondered if one of those was our falls. Nope; the spur trail to the main falls was marked with a sign and blazes.

As we got to the falls there were about a dozens teens with a few adult chaperones there ahead of us. My first thought was Ugh. Teens can be noisy and chaotic and often don't care about the thing they're standing in front of. Frequently they're there because their parents forced them. These teens turned out to be fairly well behaved, though. They were part of a church group, and those who came on this trek did so because they wanted to. Thus they weren't doing things out of abject boredom like throwing every loose rock into the water and holding contests for who can scream the loudest. They also weren't whining incessantly about the rain. Though I think partly that's because they'd already been through way worse.... This church group wasn't day-hiking like us; they'd done an overnight atop the mountain. An overnight in a shelter while rain and sleet pounded with thunder and lightning last night! Thus when we arrived at the falls and wanted to take pictures, they politely made room for us.



If the teens were low energy because they were shell-shocked from laying awake most of the night during the violent weather (that's what one of their chaperones said) we were a bit low energy, too, because it was still raining and dreary. But still, waterfalls are waterfalls, so it wasn't hard to crack a legit smile or two while there.

You might wonder why the one falls pictures I've shared here is a selfie, especially after I included a selfie among other pictures from Cane Creek Falls earlier today and Amicalola Falls yesterday. Have I become one of those people who shares everything as a selfie? Haha, no. It's just a coincidence of a few circumstances.

One of those circumstances, a pretty significant one, is that I forgot my camera this trip. My spiffy, interchangeable lens camera, that is. Instead I'm taking all my pictures with my iPhone.

One of the things an iPhone (or any reasonable modern smartphone) does well is selfies. I like to explore the capabilities of whatever photographic tool I'm using. On some trips I shoot a lot of video when I'm using my iPhone. This trip I'm prompting myself, "Ooh, let's try a selfie here." So that's piece #2 of circumstance.

Piece #3 of circumstance is that a number of these selfies are simply good photos. When I review my roll of pictures after a trip I pick my favorites based on composition, lighting, focus, color saturation, mood, and story. Yes, that's a) a lot of factors and b) a mixture of technical and artistic considerations. Photography is a mixture of technical and artistic considerations. Selfies I've taken these past few hikes have been among the pictures I've liked best. And that's both technical and artistic. Technical, because the selfie camera on my new phone (6 months old) is way better than on older phones. It's able to deliver far better resolution, focus, light balance, and color saturation than selfies with older phones. In fact the selfie camera on this phone is at least as good as the outward facing camera on my previous phone. And artistic, because switching from traditional photos to selfies opens a new dimension of composition and story.

Long story short, I'm having fun exploring selfies, and I'm sharing a few selfie photos because they happen to be really good photos regardless.

Panama Travelog #11
El Valle, Panama - Tue, 24 Dec 2024. 10:30am.

Today's Tuesday, our second full day in Panama and our first full day in El Valle de Antón. We had a full day planned of fun hiking trips on trails around the northwest side of town. Emphasis on had. As in, we had plans. Now they've joined the maddeningly long, and still growing, list of plans that have gone to shit in less than 48 hours in Panama.

Two of the hikes are out a small road outside of town. As we turned off the well-paved road onto a road that alternated between concrete and gravel I sensed trouble ahead. The road descended a steep hill. "It's paved with concrete, though," I figured. "There should be no problem coming back up, so we I can always turn around later if it gets worse ahead."

Our rental car is a weeny piece of shit, I'd already decided, but I figured it could handle this road. I mean, there are houses on the road, and the hike is next to a school. If a school bus can pass this road at least twice a day, we should be able to, as well.

Nope.

We got stuck trying to climb a steep hill where there was only a concrete two-track surrounded by rocks. The car's shitty tires couldn't get enough traction on the concrete skids. I rolled back and tried again several times but couldn't coax the car up the hill.

Dejected, I turned around and headed back toward the fully paved road. Then trouble struck again.



That steep concrete-paved slope we drove down that gave me the first inkling of trouble? We couldn't get back up it.

Ironically the car did okay on the concrete two-track and cobblestone surface on the lower half of the hill. It was the concrete apron at the top where the tires couldn't get enough traction. The tires spun in circles as the car slid side-to-side. I backed up and tried a few more times, trying different sides of the road, including the grassy verge. Nothing worked.

A man in a pickup truck stopped at the top of the hill. It seemed he wanted to drive down. I rolled back down the hill and parked to the side at the bottom while Hawk went and asked him for help. Unfortunately he spoke no English. I walked up the hill and tried talking to him for help. My Spanish is a bit stronger, but it took me 4-5 tries to understand him.

"Back up and go fast up the hill," is what it boiled down to. (If all he'd said was that, I'd have understood. But he gave flowery instructions I couldn't follow.)

Holy shit, going fast worked. That bump where the concrete apron starts halfway up the hill hit hard, but the car had enough momentum to get to the point that all 4 tires were on the concrete. I think it was trying to pull the rears over that lip that the fronts didn't have enough traction for. The fronts still started spinning as I got up the last bit of the hill, but with aggressive throttle work I made it.

Well, at least the day's not totally ruined by having to wait out here for a freaking tow truck. And one of the hikes on today's list we already passed on the way in. That was #3-4 on the list... I guess now it's #1.

Last weekend we drove up to the Sierra Nevada for a day of driving, wheeling, and hiking. I've already posted a few blogs about it, most recently Hiking Lost Lake to the Nipple. Yes, we were hiking to a summit called The Nipple. But we didn't get there. The wind was so fierce we turned back part way up.

How windy was it? Here's a short video clip showing you how windy it was:



Yes, you can see how windy it was, with how much the camera is shaking— despite me holding it with both hands! And you can hear it, too. I recorded this clip with no narration so all you've got is the pounding wind. ...And this section of trail wasn't even the windiest I encountered. The windiest was so fierce that I didn't pull my camera out for fear I'd drop it & it'd be blown away!

After the hike we climbed back into our 4x4 to explore around the Lost Lakes (there are two of them). I shared a photo of Lost Lake already in Hiking Lost Lake to the Nipple. Here's a short video with scenes from wheeling around the lakes and a view across Upper Lost Lake:



After finishing at the lakes we continued on the Forestdale Divide Road. We continued south from the Lost Lakes. It's about a mile down a hill trail strewn with loose rocks to Upper Blue Lake. From there on out we'd drive paved roads home. But first we parked and explored around the shore of Upper Blue Lake.



From here we caught a great view of The Nipple high above us. The shore of Upper Blue Lake here is about 600' lower than Lost Lakes. The PCT passes over the flank of the Nipple and comes down here... though not exactly here but around the other side of the mountain, at similar elevation. The trail shown at AllTrails starts from over there and heads north up the mountain. The route we followed earlier in the day, hiking from Lost Lakes and going south, cut the distance by at least one-third and reduced the ascent almost by half.

What happens after a Friday Night Halfway? Say it with me: Saturday we go all the way. 😂 This morning we awoke in Auburn, having driven there last night and stayed in a hotel. I wish I could say knocking out 3 hours of driving last night (which was actually 4 because of traffic) helped us get an early start on our hike today, but I can't. I wound up sleeping in until after 8 because I spent a few hours in the middle of the night tossing and turning and sitting up, unable to fall back asleep. With breakfast and all, we didn't hit the road until 10am.

Checking for Fires

It used to be that when we plan a hike, we check the weather report. Well, we still do that, but now we also check the fire report. 😓 As of last night there was a fire burning in the north Lake Tahoe area, about 50 miles east of the Grouse Lakes Basin, but no smoke from it was drifting west. This morning we woke up in Auburn, even further west, and distinctly smelled wood smoke in the air. 😰 A quick visit to PurpleAir.com showed us the fire in Tahoe had apparently died down a bit but a new fire had appeared south of us in Placerville. The smoke we smelled in Auburn may have been from that. But air quality was still excellent near Grouse Lakes. 😮‍💨

Getting to the Carr & Feeley Lakes Trailhead

One nice thing about staying in Auburn is that it leaves us with only the nicest part of the drive up into the Sierras for today. We drove 40-ish miles up the mountain, heading east on I-80, then backtracked a few miles west on Route 20 past Spaulding Lake, then north on Forest Road 17 toward the lakes basin. The last 3 miles of the route are unpaved. The Forest Service recently put down a new layer of gravel so the unpaved part is more accessible to ordinary passenger cars. We probably could've taken the convertible but we're glad we drove our 4x4 just in case.



The Carr & Feeley Lakes trailhead is at the end of the road, around elev. 6,700' (2,040 m). And today it was crowded. The main parking area was filled to capacity... and the overflow area was filled, and maybe 20 more cars were parked along the side of the gravel road. This is about 4 times as many cars as I've ever seen at this trailhead before. I'm not sure what's going on.... Hedge Creek Falls was packed with 4-5x the usual visitation two weeks ago, now this trail at 4-5x. Did a bunch of our favorite out-of-the-way places suddenly become Instagram famous?

Keep reading: Starting the hike past Carr and Feeley Lakes (next blog)

It was time to buy new tires for "Gumbo", our Nissan Xterra 4x4. The old tires were getting worn down, and some of the tread lugs were chipping and cracking. Since we don't drive our own cars a huge amount— Gumbo has rolled only about 5,000 miles in the past 12 months— the old set of tires were ready to replace on the basis of age if not also wear. And this week seemed like a good time to do it as we'd just finished one road trip and were about to embark upon another— another that would involve  a few days of driving on dirt fire roads to get to/from remote hiking trailheads.



Alas the latter road trip, over this July 4 holiday weekend, got canceled due to extreme heat. It was a tough choice for us to make, but we concluded (reluctantly) it was the right one.

It was just as well we canceled that trip because the tires we bought a week earlier and had sent to shop for installation on Monday weren't ready. ...Well, three of the four tires were ready. The fourth tire was mislabeled at the warehouse and was the wrong size. 🙄 The shop ordered another one and suggested we could come back on Friday to have it installed. That would've been a day and a half after we left.

I pressed for the second appointment sooner on general principles. The shop had appointments Wednesday afternoon, so I took one. It was a pain having to waste our time going back a second time for what should have been one fix-it visit, but Hawk drove a bargain with the shop manager to comp us one of the tires. Saving a few hundred bucks sure softened the blow.



"Why 'Gumbo'?" you may ask. Well, it's a Nissan Xterra Pro 4X.... That's a lot of Xs, so we decided to name it after one of the X Men. I wanted to go for Professor X— it's kind of like Pro four X— but Hawk wanted something more physically capable since it is our all-terrain SUV. So we went with Gambit. Nickname Gumbo.

As for the tires, we've been running BFG AT KOs for as long as we've had the car. This time around I switched to Goodyear Wrangler Ultraterrain ATs. They're in the same category of tire, fairly aggressive all-terrain (AT) tires but not mud-terrains (MTs). BFG ATs have a great reputation in the offroading community. They're pricey, though. The Goodyear ATs were significantly cheaper at regular retail price and were on sale. The price difference worked out to around $400 for the set even before we got one comped for the warehouse's screw-up.

How are the new tires? Well, I've only driven them a handful of miles, and all on paved roads, but immediately I'm impressed by how they ride so much more smoothly and quietly than BFG ATs. I'll see how they handle dirt trails as soon as the heat cools down and we find free time for our next roadtrip.

Alaska Travelog #23
Outside Seward - Tue, 18 Jun 2024, 4:30pm

Today's been a day of shorter hikes and visits around Seward. We started with a milder hike to an overlook of the Exit Glacier ("milder" being in comparison to our butt-kicker of a hike partway above the glacier on Monday), followed by a bit of gentle 4x4ing on the river bed. Now we've driven around the far side of the bay to Fourth of July Beach.



From here we're actually looking across Resurrection Bay to Seward on the opposite shore. We're technically still in Seward, though. In Alaska city limits seem to stretch miles away. For example, when we were in Anchorage we stopped in places 100 miles apart that were all called "Anchorage".

But hey, it's a beach! Er, gravelly shoreline. And the high temperature today is... 57° F. And there's a blustery wind. So, not exactly what you think of when you think "beach" in the summer. Oh, and it's next to an industrial site. In fact I had to employ some creative direction-finding to find public roads around the industrial complex and its many "No Trespassing" and "No Parking Beyond This Sign" signs to get to this public beach.

Back on the road— "road" being generous here, as named streets in this part of the city are gravel—I drove inland a bit to try seeing Fourth of July Creek. There's a gravel road that parallels it for a bit. When I saw a dirt two-track going off through the hedges toward the creek I tried exploring it in our SUV.

I marveled to myself at how there was such solitude here... until I rounded a bend and saw a truck parked in the path ahead of us. Then, as we got closer, I noticed that the truck was abandoned... and wrecked. 😰 "Well, that's a little bit scary," I said aloud.

We didn't let the wreck deter us from exploring further on foot. ...Yeah, that's exactly how horror movies start. 🤣



The wreck was about as far as we'd have been able to drive on the trail anyway, so it didn't cost us anything in terms of access. We picked our way around it then across the tumbled river rocks. If this creek looks like the glacial outflow from Exit Glacier it's because it is a glacial outflow. Above us in those mountains is Godwin Glacier.

Los Cabos Travelog #17
Baja California Sur, Mexico - Wed, 8 May 2024, 3pm

Today we went ATV riding in the Baja desert. It was another of the A-or-B activities arranged for my company club trip. I think the "B" activity was a spa treatment, so yeah, I was totally going with Option A. Hawk, too.

A bus took us to a spot over an hour away. Fourteen of us were aboard for the activity.

After the difficulty I had with snorkeling yesterday you might wonder if I'd want to try another physical activity. Hell yes! It's not the physicality.; it's my familiarity with the equipment. While I've never driven an ATV before I have been driving 4x4 vehicles for 27 years. I'm very confident with reading trails and picking the right line through obstacles. As I took the while after a quick briefing on the controls, I thought to myself, "This is like a Jeep and a lawnmower had a baby."

The photo above/right of me in my gear is the only one I have from this activity. The guides told us multiple times not to try using phones or cameras during the trip. "You'll need to keep both hands on the wheel and pay attention to driving," they advised us. Which was totally reasonable. But it was also because they were taking pictures for us to sell at absolutely hideous prices. How hideous? Over $100 for a digital download of 20 or so pics they made. $72 for single photo printed as a souvenir. Fuck no.

The ATV I drove was a two-seater, front and back. I had wanted a solo ATV but Hawk didn't want to drive. Thus she rode as my passenger for the full hour.

While we were out on the trail we saw other groups in the same area. Other outfitters offer ATV rides, too. And some offer a much more classic 4x4 way of traversing the desert....



I was amused we saw camels in the same area as Hawk had spotted beach camel rides a couple weeks ago when we were planning activities for our Los Cabos trip. I was way more interested in ATVs than camels, though. "Compared to ATVs," I warned, "Camels are stinky and mean."

Australia Travelog #16
Robertson NSW - Wed, 27 Dec 2023, 3:30pm

After hiking Fitzroy Falls and eating lunch in Kangaroo-less Valley we drove on to our next destination for the day, Belmore Falls. It's close to Fitzroy Falls. That's part of how we picked it; we looked for a cluster of places to visit, to keep driving back and forth today to a manageable level. (Don't worry, it'll still be ~400km by the time we're done.) The other part of how we picked it is that, well, it's huge. More on that in a moment.

One odd thing is that despite being such a large waterfalls, Belmore Falls is really remote. Unlike Fitzroy Falls it's not part of a designated park, let alone a national park. It's out on a dirt road at the end of a country lane. There's even a water crossing to get to it.


Link: View video on YouTube

In the video I refer to our rental car as a "fake SUV". That's because this Renault Koleos looks like an SUV but doesn't have any of the features you expect of an SUV, particularly AWD or 4WD. I determined that when I shifted to the side of the dirt road when another vehicle and I passed, and we almost got stuck in a not-very-deep ditch.

Once we got there— for small values of "there" as little marked the location— we parked, hopped out of the car, and walked along a path on the edge of the cliff.



Like Fitzroy Falls (previous blog) Belmore Falls plunges off the edge of a plateau into a canyon. Also like Fitzroy Falls, Belmore Falls drops in two or three tiers.



Depending on how you count it, Belmore Falls drops 77 ~ 130 meters (253 ~ 427 feet). That's what references state, anyway. I presume that range indicates the height of the highest, uppermost falls versus the overall drop of all the tiers.

On the way out from the falls we stopped by the water crossing on the road. On the way in we'd seen a few trucks parked alongside the road there. The crossing is actually really close to the top of the falls; we figured there was a path there to reach a lookout point. Indeed there was. It was a very short path but it was flooded, probably from recent rains— like the rain today.



The trail led, predictably, to a perch just above and to the side of the falls. The view here is both limited and boggling. Limited, because you can only see part of the falls and can't appreciate how tall they are overall. But also boggling, because you're looking pretty much straight down a drop of more than 250 feet.

In beauty I walk.

Last weekend I visited Robb's Hut in the Eldorado National Forest. It's one of those things you probably wouldn't find except for SMUD's nice map of the Crystal Basin. Getting to Robb's Hut, which is an old cabin next to a fire lookout atop a peak, entails a drive of about 3 miles up a 4x4 route then hoofing it for the last .5 to .6 miles past a locked gate.

For this chapter of the trip I've prepared both a video and a few pictures. Watch the video in the frame below or click through it to see it in 1280x720p resolution.



Once past the locked gate, on foot, it was both easy and tough going to the top. Easy, because the road is still a dirt fire/access road. But also tough, because it's up-up-up to a summit of almost 6,700' (2,042 m) and I don't have any acclimation to the altitude. Thankfully he views along the way provide ample excuses to stop and catch one's breath while appreciating the scenery.



Initially I misremembered this trail as being 1/4 mile on foot. Nope, it's more like 0.6 miles (1km). But hey, I need the exercise. 😅

Soon enough the peak comes into view.



The photo above shows the fire lookout. That's not actually Robb's Hut. The hut is just below it on the far side.

From atop the fire lookout there are views in all directions. To the west, you can see across the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the California's Central Valley. It was hazy when I visited, though, so I didn't try taking photos. They wouldn't have come out well. To the east are views up into the Crystal Range of the Sierra Nevada, as shown in the previous picture. Beyond the Crystal Range is the Desolation Wilderness and Lake Tahoe.