June 13, 2008
California Trip: Yosemite
So I spent last week in California with A, going to Yosemite, then up to Sonoma, then San Fran and back to LA. It was a long trip but very awesome. I got to catch up with my friend Mike, but sadly missed the other West Coasters. I also got to abuse my CHDK (Canon Hacker Developer Kit) scripts to take some HDR shots, which I'm still tweaking but seem good.
Yosemite was insanely crowded and also wet; which sucked. Fortunately once you get out from the vehicle-accessible spots, the crowds die down immediately, so it wasn't a disaster, and the weather improved a bit. Besides, the clouds make for dramatic HDRs:
(viewing those at full size is much more awesome)
The redwood grove was nice, but I remember Muir Woods as being more dramatic overall, but lacking redwood cameltoe and snowplants:
We hiked to the fissures near Glacier Point, and had to deal with lots of snow; for which I was not really well prepared for.
But the clouds did mask the really really really long way you fall if you misstep there. Which was nice. This was about as clear as it got:
(that's half dome in a cloud)
Sonoma was nice, but parallel to Yosemite you had to get out of the town, which was itself quite the tourist trap full of.. well, tourists. We drove up to the Russian Creek Valley and had a great time -- basically hitting the wineries I didn't make it to last time I went winetasting in Cali (on a bike)
San Fran was challenging because we really hadn't planned it and A was having a problem with her hip making it hard for her to walk a lot. We managed to walk most of the Embarcadero/Chinatown/Nob Hill area and used some MUNI bus/subway/things. We still managed to have some awesome food (tho my attempt at Mexican food was thwarted, we stumbled on to an amazing Italian Place, Caffe Delucchi) The Sushi place (Koo) was good, but not life-changing.
Posted by griffjon at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)