Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Today we headed out to the Pinnacles— Pinnacles National Park— to hike. It's a day-adventure I've been looking forward to for a while, and finally today our schedules and the weather aligned. And oh, what nice weather it was. The park had a high temperature of 78° today, warm enough to feel, well, warm but not so hot that we'd regret being out in the sun. I mean, in the summer it gets really smokin' out there, like 100+. Thus a clear day in early spring is really the perfect time to visit. Like today!

We got off to a late start today. It wasn't until around 9:30 that we left the house. I'm not too proud to admit that I had some cold feet this morning about the hike, after planning it for the past week. The problem was I slept poorly last night. I considered whether I wanted to take an "easy day" today. I'd still go hiking somewhere; but somewhere shorter and easier. Intellectually I knew that I'd be happy once I got to the Pinnacles, but it took some pushing to get through the blahs.

The drive down to the Pinnacles was enjoyable. At 9:30am on Easter Sunday there wasn't a crazy amount of traffic. I mean, all 4 lanes in both directions on US-101 through San Jose were busy, just not bumper-to-bumper at 60mph like it sometimes gets.

42 miles out from home we reach the town of Gilroy. This is the southern end of what anyone could reasonably call the Bay Area or metropolitan San Jose. Though people do commute in from farther out than this. 😳 Beyond Gilroy US 101 narrows to 2 lanes in each direction and becomes a bit of a country highway as it traverses, well, countryside into Central California.

At 48 miles we reach the San Benito County line. Yes, 48 miles and we've just left the county. Where I grew up on the East Coast I could drive 48 miles and it'd involve 3 states. Welcome to the Western US! Government boundaries aside, we're happy to note as we cross the county line that the mountains around us are all still green.

At around 60 miles we near Prunedale. The only nice thing I have to say about Prunedale is that they finally allowed Caltrans to widen and straighten US-101 through their community so it's no longer a traffic bottleneck. Now it's a pleasure driving through the short mountain range here and dropping into the Salinas Valley on the other side.

At 67 miles we roll into the north side of Salinas. We're hungry so we stop for brunch at a couple of fast food restaurants. I eat at Carl's Jr.; Hawk gets Sonic Drive-In across the street. Then we get donuts for dessert from a nearby shop.

While in Salinas I have a... wardrobe malfunction. A seam ripped in my hiking shorts. I briefly consider a) just hiking for the day with a hole in my pants or b) just going home because I'm so pissed about it. Hawk points out we're literally right in front of a Wal-Mart, and almost certainly they have something inside I can buy and wear. I grumble about Wal-Mart fashion before, to my surprise, I find not one but three items of clothes to buy there!

South of Salinas 101 is a chill road. It's straight and level as it traverses farmland in the agricultural Salinas Valley. There's a Steinbeck museum here. He was born in Salinas and used it as inspiration for many of the settings in his books, including it being featuring literally in his classic, The Grapes of Wrath. I've read Salinas people are so pleased about it they've held book burnings in his honor.

At 97 miles we're finally in Soledad. This small town is where we turn off the highway and head up into the rugged hills of the Gabilan Mountains. You probably haven't heard of the Gabilan Mountains. But one thing interesting about them is they're so remote they're crossed than fewer roads than the Sierra Nevada range with its 14,000' peaks. And even state highway 146, which leads to the park, doesn't cross these mountains. It stops halfway across. It stops halfway across, in the park, then picks up again on the other side! The only way across Pinnacles National Park is on foot. That's how you know you're in a hard-core hiking park.

Georgia Travelog #23
Helton Creek - Saturday, 12 Apr 2025, 6pm

Today has been another day of driving around the Appalachian Mountains of north Georgia, but unlike yesterday— when it rained on us most of the day— today has been beautiful. As a result we've had a fairly packed day.

Once again we started out from the Holiday Inn Express in Dawsonville— except this morning we checked out. Tonight we're not done 'til we get to Atlanta! But first there was so much else.

Today our first stop was in Helen, the over-the-top charming kitschy shrieking tourist trap of a town made up to look like a German alpine village. We thought it might be a good place to get some morning eats! Alas the German bakery we'd spotted yesterday was really a German confectionery. Meaning, most of what they sell ready-to-eat is sugary sweets. I didn't feel like a Bavarian cream donut with a side of cheese danish for breakfast, so we sulked back out to the car where I ate a protein bar as we continued our drive.

Next up was Anna Ruby Falls a bit north of Helen. This falls blew me away. It's reached by a totally paved trail. It's steep but doesn't have stairs like Amicalola Falls (which we visited Thursday). Its tourist-friendliness isn't what blew me away, though. It's that up at the end of the canyon is a double falls. Two different creeks falls the back wall of the canyon and merge at the bottom.

After the falls we doubled back to Helen for lunch. Yes, we thought eating in the tourist trap town would be fun! We scrupulously avoided all the tourist trappy places, though, and shared a pizza at a low-key pizzeria. Then we went back to that bakery we skipped out of in the morning, because Bavarian cream donuts with a side of cheese danish.

Our next stop was Upper Chattahoochee Campground to hike to Horse Trough Falls. This is one where the drive to get there turned into an adventure. The Apple Maps piped through my mobile phone into the car's infotainment system recommended a slightly different route than the Google Map I've embedded above. Yeah, make your jokes about Apple Maps; but this is the first time they've steered me wrong. We wound up taking a much longer drive on dirt Forest Service roads than we needed to. And a few times it took interpolating between Apple Maps and AllTrails to figure out the right way to go. But we did get there, safely, and had a bit of fun making it an offroad adventure. In a rental car.

Once we got to the trailhead for Horse Trough Falls— and OMG, what a terrible name— we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. Maybe other people got a bum steer from Apple Maps, too, but couldn't find their way out of it like I did. 🤣

The falls were a mostly level 1/2 mile walk from the parking lot. It could have been even shorter but the actual Upper Chattahoochee Campground was still closed for the season... despite signs from last year saying it'd reopen March 15. Oops, maybe the people responsible for reopening the campground got sacked in one of DOGE's mass firings. 😰

Horse Trough was another falls that blew me away. It wasn't as epic as Anna Ruby but it was still way more than I expected out here, at what felt like the (horse's) ass end of nowhere.

After Horse Trough we switched gears a bit and did a non-waterfall hike. Instead of a falls we visited the top of a mountain. And not just any mountain, but Brasstown Bald, elev. 4,784', the highest peak in Georgia. It was late, almost 4pm, when we got to the visitors center a few hundred feet below the summit. I wondered if I should've dropped it from the list to save time for other hikes but I chose instead to trust in the continued sunny weather and sunset just after 8pm to give us more time to play. We had a good late-afternoon visit up there and still had time for two more waterfalls!

Trahlyta Falls wasn't so much a hike as a jump-out-of-the-car-and-take-pictures situation. Yes, there was a hike we could do, but it was in a state park that had a lot of construction going on. It was a headache to deal with. So we drove out of the park and back around to an unmarked pulloff on the highway where we snapped pictures from across the creek canyon.

Finally we made it over to Helton Creek Falls. It was only about 15 minutes from Trahlyta, though it may have taken longer as once more we had to drive a few miles on a dirt road to get to a falls. Once more, though, the falls exceeded my expectations. I was ready for a maybe 20-foot tall falls. Instead we got a 100' tall falls in multiple drops!

Georgia Travelog #10
Macon - Thursday, 10 Apr 2025, 12:30pm

Today we're shifting gears on our 9 day trip to Georgia. We left Savannah this morning after finishing 4-5 days of visiting my sister and her family last night. This morning we packed our bags at the hotel, I picked up a rental car at the airport— successfully this time— and we checked out of the hotel and hit the road by 9:30am.

We're off to northwestern Georgia for the next few days. We'll hike a bunch of waterfall trails in the southern Appalachian mountains. Today's a lot of driving, but we're planning to squeeze in our first falls hike this afternoon, at Amicalola State Park. And yes, it's a lot of driving: 325 miles or so to the park, then another 20 back to Dawsonville, where we'll spend the night tonight and tomorrow night.

Right now we're maybe halfway through the trip, in Macon. We've stopped for a quick lunch at a QuikTrip (QT) gas station. The trip so far has been pleasant. It's been made easier by a nice rental car assigned to us this trip, a Mazda CX-50.



I rented an intermediate SUV, so this isn't an upgrade; it's what I booked & paid for. But within that category the manager on the lot gave me a choice of 3 vehicles: a Ford Edge, some Chevy POS, and this Mazda CX-50. She told me she thought the Ford would be the most luxe of the three, but a quick peek in the window showed it to be a base model. This Mazda is close to a base model, too; it's just one step up from base. But it has good standard equipment and a few tasteful upgrades— most especially heated seats, which make these long road trips more comfortable. I drove 2.5 hours straight before stopping here at the QT.

I picked the Mazda also because Mazdas are good drivers' cars in general. No, it's not a BMW— I know because I've owned several BMWs— but Mazdas can generally be counted on to have tight handling and a sporty suspension. They just don't always have engines that go... well, zoom-zoom.  This one's base engine is decent. On this trip I'm just out to knock down the highway miles comfortably, not set a Cannonball Run speed record while doing so. Thus I'm also getting a decent 30mpg on the highway at somewhere between 75-80 mph.



Another nice thing about this Mazda CX-50 is its capacious cargo area. It swallowed up our large suitcase (the gray one), a medium suitcase, a small one, and a few extra bags with ease. And look how much room there still is between that gray suitcase and where the hatch will close. Most comparably sized SUVs have way less cargo room than this. For example, when we did rent a Ford Edge a few trips ago, we had to put the smaller suitcases in the back seat because the big gray one basically filled the cargo area. And all this fits in the trunk of the CX-50 despite it looking and driving like no larger a car.

Every summer I write a variety of blogs featuring the slogan "Friday Night Halfway". It's my practice of driving a few hours on Friday night and sleeping in a hotel to get a leg up on adventuring on Saturday. Well, it's not quite summer yet... and it's not quite evening yet, either. Thus today we did Friday Morning ALL THE WAY.

I took the day off from work today. I've now caught up for working the weekend at a trade show a few weeks ago; I still need to catch up for traveling for work last Sunday. Well, I didn't quite take the whole day off. I worked from 7am until about 8:45. Then I took the day off.

A few weeks ago we booked a hotel room for tonight in Oakhurst. It's a gateway town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. We're not going all the way up into the Sierra Nevada; it's too snowy. There are a few waterfall hikes right around Oakhurst we enjoy. They're in the 3,000 - 4,000' elevation range, so we figured they'd be fine to visit at this time of year.

We set off from home at 9:47am. Yes, I checked the time when we rolled out of the garage. I like to know these things. I'd hoped we'd leave by 9:15— and we probably could have, except neither of us packed our stuff last night. We were too tired. But it turned out okay because we could throw things together this morning. It's not like it's a long trip; we're just going for 2 days/1 night, and it's just for hiking.

Keep reading: Rain & Shine on the Road Trip

Panama Travelog #25
La Chorrera, Panama - Fri, 27 Dec 2024. 12pm.

Here's another blog from my Panama trip that I pushed the side so that my blogging wouldn't get too badly backlogged. Well, once I pushed it to the side it, along with several others, got stuck there for a few weeks. I'm going to try unwinding at least a few of them now.

After spending 4 days in El Valle de Antón we're driving back to Panama City. We'll spend 3 days there before flying home. The drive to Panama City would be about 130km if we were driving the shortest route, but we're taking slight side trips to visit two waterfalls along the way. The first of these is in La Chorrera... which is Spanish for The Waterfall. ...And that's the name of the town, BTW. The waterfall itself is named El Chorro, which is Spanish for The Stream. 🤷



Getting to the falls was quite the little adventure. And by "adventure" I mean it really tried my patience. ...No, it wasn't a tough hike. The view from the edge of the falls above was a stroll of 25 meters from where we parked the car. It was getting through La Chorrera that was crazy-making. Driving highways in Panama is relatively easy— aside from the poor signage for turns/exits— but driving in city-center traffic is like something out of a Mad Max movie. Anyway, I've written about that elsehwere, so I'll get back to the waterfalls here.



From the top of the falls we found an overgrown path leading down to the bottom. We picked our way over the slippery rocks near the falls for a better view.

You can see the interesting hexagonal pattern in the rocks we're standing on/next to at the near left. It's columnar basalt. Here's a wider angle that shows more of the rocks:



There were a few other cars of people at the top of the trail as we visited. Curiously nobody else came down to the bottom of the falls like we did, so we had the place to ourselves for the 15 minutes we spent down here.

Panama Travelog #8
El Valle, Panama - Mon, 23 Dec 2024. 3pm.

This afternoon we drove from Gamboa, Panama, the home of the Gamboa Rainforest Preserve, to Valley de Antón. It was a 132km trip. Along the way our only stop was a brief, foiled attempt to hike a waterfall.

Driving 132km, which is not quite 80 miles, can be quite an undertaking or can be a nothing-burger, depending on where those 80 miles are. In the wide open spaces of the western US, for example, you can drive 80 miles in many places without passing more than a one-blinking-stoplight town or two. Our route across a few states in Panama today wasn't that remote. We passed several towns, few of which were quite that small. We also had busy traffic a fair bit of the way, even on the 4- and 6- lane divided highways that made up about 2/3 of our route. It was seldom slow, but driving in traffic did require constant vigilance as drivers are much less predictable here than in the US. More on that below.

So, what's it like driving in Panama vs. in the US?

First, I've got to say, way more is familiar than not. You drive on the right. The basic traffic laws are the same. Road signs look familiar— things like Stop (though it says "High" in Spanish), One way, and No Parking. There's none of that British crap like a pictograph for "Road Turns to Bacon Ahead." Though green signs informing you which exit goes where are infuriating small, vague, and placed almost too late to make turns safely when driving faster than 40 km/hr.

Second, it's unclear what the prevailing attitude on speed is. Or, should I say, the prevailing attitude on speed is "Whatever". On a road signed for 100 km/h plenty of people are tooling along at 70-80. Including police cars.

I thought I'd just bought myself a ticket when I nearly overtook a police van cruising on one of the highways. I cautiously dropped back and matched his speed. Then I realized he was driving only 75 in a 100 zone. Plus, the van had a broken window and seemed to be full of flattened cardboard boxes, like a hoarder's car. Maybe it's the hoarder police. They write a speeding ticket, but instead of giving it to you they hold onto it.

On slower roads people speed excessively. 60 km/h zone on a highway? Count on seeing people driving over 80 and weaving lanes. And they reason they're weaving is to get around the people driving as slow as 25 in the 60 zone.

Between these differences requiring vigilance, and the poor seats in our crappy little rental, I was feeling saddle sore already halfway through this two-hour trip. That's unusual for me as I routinely handle drives 2-3x as long without fatigue. I got us there without stops (other than the abortive hiking one mentioned at the top) by force of will. If nothing else I figured I'll spend most of the rest of the day walking, standing, lying down, or sitting— in a better chair.

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #8
Linden, VA - Tue, 26 Nov 2024, 4:30pm

After visiting my niece Mattie and her boyfriend Kai over lunch in Front Royal today we refined our plans for the rest of the day. We already had plans to meet my cousin Matt and his family for dinner 30-45 minutes east, but Mattie needed to leave for work by 1:30 so several hours of the afternoon were unexpected free. I called and texted my middle sister, R.— yes, the one who's now grandma— to see if we could visit briefly or meet her for ice cream or whatever while we were in town. She didn't answer either one (typical) so we decided we'd visit a rock shop 30-45 minutes south while giving her more opportunity to respond.

No answer had come by 90 minutes later. We still had a 90 minute gap in our schedule, even factoring in travel time to Matt's place. We decided instead of arriving at Matt's 90 minutes early (which he said was okay) we'd take a scenic drive roughly in the direction of his place along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.



The Skyline Drive is part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road that traces the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains for nearly 500 miles through Virgina and North Carolina. We drove stretches of it a lot a few months ago in North Carolina just as a convenient— and beautiful— way of getting from hither to yon. And we drove parts of Skyline Drive that brought back childhood memories.

Late Autumn isn't the best time to see the mountains. The trees that had colorful leaves a month ago now have dead brown leaves or bare branches. And it's a bit chilly out to enjoy hiking. But that's okay; we took it mostly as a scenic drive. In beauty I walk... even when by 'walk' I mean drive. 😅



We stopped at a few of the roadside pullouts along the Skyline Drive. That's part of the beauty of the road. The road is so peaceful, and every two miles or so there's a tranquil pullout to see something. We nearly had the park to ourselves. That's the upside of visiting late in the Fall and late in the day: no crowds.

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #4
Martinsburg, WV - Sun, 24 Nov 2024, 5pm

This morning we got in the car at our hotel in Falls Church, VA and drove out to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Yes, it's a bit of a haul; about 63 miles by shortest route. While that would be a terrible commute it's fine for a day-trip. We made the drive out there in 90 minutes even with some traffic on the near end.



Why Martinsburg? It's where one of our nieces lives with her partner and their 6 month old son, Dean. One of our other nieces joined us out there. Her partner would've come, too, but he's getting over an illness and didn't want to risk infecting the young child. Dean is just 6 months old.



Dean is a very mellow child. He falls asleep easily and is happy for anyone to hold him. Our niece passed him first to Hawk, on whose shoulder he quickly fell asleep. Then when she needed to get up she passed him to me. He woke for a few moments and happily went back to sleep. BTW, in the photo above I'm not asleep, too. I'm just mocking Dean for how mellow he is. 😂

Visiting family made for a great day. But seeing Dean reminded me that I've just gotten a generation older. Dean is my niece's child. That means Dean's grandmother is my sister. My younger sister. 😳 My younger sister, in her mid 40s, is a grandma. And I'm older than her. 🤯

PA Anniversary Trip Journal #3
Camp Hill, PA - Fri, 8 Nov 2024, 9:30am

Finally we got to my inlaws' house last night. I say finally because here I am, at journal number three (maybe technically number 4) in this series, and this is the first one in which I'm actually here.

The drive up from Arlington, VA went smoothly. We hit the road in earnest after an unexpected anniversary dinner of our own. The upside of stopping for dinner when we did is that rush hour traffic cleared out. By 8pm there was one minor slowdown on the Capital Beltway. We covered about 120 miles in 2 hours of driving. With a stop along the way for drinks and snacks (as if dinner wasn't enough!) we got in around 10:20pm.

It's been nearly a year since we saw Hawk's parents so we had a lot to catch up on. We didn't get to bed until 1:30am! Staying up late was little problem for us as we started the day 3 time zones away. And it was little problem for the parents as they routinely stay up past midnight anyway. That's something that always surprises me because it's so different from my own parents years ago. When I was younger, it always took planning if I wanted to call them at 11pm, when long distance rates were cheaper. (That's another memory lane trip— who else remembers waiting until 11pm to call people when the rates dropped?) Now if Hawk and I are discussing something at 9:30pm in California and we agree, "Let's check with your parents," she just calls them, at 12:30am their time. They're still up.

Well, maybe Hawk's mom doesn't sleep much anymore, but I still need my rest. As a result of staying up past 1:30 I swatted off my 6:45am alarm and then slept in until 9:30. That was unfortunate as today's actually a work day for me. I'm working remotely from a desk upstairs in "our" bedroom. At least for the 9am hour here, 6am Pacific, I'd only planned to work on some reports that aren't due until next week. I can finish them up over the weekend. For the rest of today I've got several hours of meetings. At 6pm local I'll be done and I'll head downstairs to meet various other relatives are flying & driving in, some from overseas, to help my inlaws celebrate their 60th anniversary.

This morning we started from our Friday Night Halfway point in Jackson, California— and yes, I slept well after the power came back on at the hotel—and headed up into the Sierra Nevada. Our ultimate destination for today is a hike to a mountain called The Nipple. It's high up above the Carson Pass. But first we stopped just below the Carson Pass at Silver Lake.



Last time we were up this way, just 5 weeks ago, we also stopped at Silver Lake. So often in the past we powered straight past this beautiful lake at 7,300' elevation. I think now we might make it a regular pit stop whenever we drive up Route 88 through the Sierras.



The difference between 5 weeks ago and today is subtle but noticeable. The water level is about 3 feet lower! That shows up in places like where I remember balancing on a log to cross an inlet of the lake and get out to a near island. Now that log is high and dry.



With the water level lower now we could explore further out into the lake, walking across to what were islands earlier in the season. If we come up here next year really early in the season— and "really early" might be July— it'll be interesting to see how much bigger the lake seems.