One week to go!

We have one more week before leaving for Belize, via Miami. The last two weeks have been filled with fun and adventure. Instead of describing everything I'll just make a list in chronological order starting on July 30:

July 30

We cleaned our apartment out and left for California to see my parents (with a car load of crap we wanted to keep) at 10:30 pm.

July 31

Slept in the car around 4 am in central Nevada.

Met my parents in Nice California around 3 pm, hung out and threw the frisbee after dinner.

Aug 1

Spent a whole day near Mendocino California kayaking in a bay that has sea caves and blow-holes and lots of seaweed and divers getting Abalone and April even saw a seal!

Ate dinner at a fancy 'organic' restaraunt and drove back to Nice.

Aug 2

Went wine sampling nearby my parents hotel and even bought two cases of Rose' wine that is delicious and only cost $26 for both cases (the wine was made by the winery we went to for another company that was targeted towards the gay community, it is called Butch Blush and has a half naked farm-boy on the label).

Unpacked our car and loaded down my parents van.

Said goodbye to my parents.

Aug 3

Left Nice and headed towards the Bay Area, we got ourselves a really nice campsite at China Camp State Park near San Rafael Ca which is about 15 miles north of San Francisco.

The camping area had really nice mountain bike trails, so April and I rode them on our single-speeds, mine is a mountain bike but hers is a road bike. It was a lot of fun passing guys on $6,000 (I mean that) bikes with my thrift store find, some people spend too much time at work and not enough on their bicycles.

Had a good campfire and smores.

Aug 4

Packed up our camping gear and drove to San Francisco. We parked near the warf and rode our bikes down the Embarcadero, up Market Street and to the Castro District. We walke around the Castro and stopped at a specialty cheese store that I recognized from the television show 30 Days where they sent a middle American boy that believes homosexuality is a sin to live with a gay man in Castro, they had the guy get a job at the cheese store we went to. Next we went to Hot Cookie to get some of the best cookies I have ever had.

We rode our bikes to Haight Street and checked our Email at a coffee shop that had free wifi and I looked for a pair of adidas I wanted at a few of the trendy shoe stores there. Then we went back to the car and drove to Berkeley so I could check out the guide book for Lover's Leap near Tahoe at the Marmot Mountain Works.

We drove to Angel's Camp and stayed at a Hotel sort of thing that my dad got us for the night, with intentions to go to Yosemite the next day.

Aug 5

We got up late and dinked around the hotel room till check out time and decided to forgo Yosemite and headed towards Tahoe.

We stopped for lunch at Kirkwood ski resort and payed too much for lunch meat and cheese, but it was a good place to stop.

We stopped in Tahoe for some supplies and went to Lover's Leap to set up camp.

Lover's leap is gorgeous, a quiet campground with wonderful rock.

Aug 6

We got up early so we could try to do two big routes in one day, but after the first route we decided to hang out at this single pitch crag that had some really fun crack climbs that we could top rope after climbing this fun 5.9.

we arrived back at camp around 4 pm ate some food and went down to the river and sat in the cold waters, it felt great.

Aug 7

We got up packed up our camping gear, ate breakfast and headed back up to the wall to do Corrugation Corner, probably the best 5.7 anywhere! We decided to do the first pitch of Travellers Buttress to get us up onto the ledge that Corrugation Corner starts on, it was a fun but kinda burly 5.8. We climbed Corrugation Corner in three long pitches and hiked down to the car and headed towards Utah.

We stopped in Tahoe to eat some dinner and then drove straight through with stops for bathrooms and gas arriving back in Logan around 7 am on Aug 8.

So now we are crashing at my friend Brians house for the week. We sold our car on Friday, I posted it on Craigslist and had it sold within 3 hours of the post. I should have asked for more, but I thought we would have a hard time getting what we owed on it, but I under-valued what a Honda Civic in crappy condition would sell for. So now we both still have our bikes to get around town, no big debt to worry about and just a few bags of food and the two bags each we are taking to Belize.

here are some pictures we took on our trip: