The short, factual version

I uploaded 200-some photos to flickr last night, titling the set "boring pictures of beautiful places", but, in fact, some of them turned out quite well. The six rolls from my film camera, especially. Only five are from the trip, but I find them gallery-show worthy. (/humility) ((/sarcasm))

Not all the uploaded photos are titled or tagged, and very few are described. I hope that once I reach Maryland I'll be interested in fixing that.

Tuesday morning I set of to drive to my first camp spot, Lake Folsom, near Sacramento. I stopped for lunch near the American River



and took photos of flowers and thistle fields.



The campground had wild turkeys and rabbits. I wandered around and took pictures.



The next day (wednesday) I navigated by intuition and picked a neat looking highway (CA-36) to take me to the coast. It was long and hilly and an absolute blast to drive. Lots of road-winding-into-the-scenery photos came of it.



I only stopped once in that 140 miles, when my engagement ring fell off in the car and I needed to find it. Also took some snaps while I was out of the driver's seat.



At the end of it I had to hustle to find an alternate campground, and pitched my tent as the sun was sliding into the ocean.



The next morning I took a long, frigid walk on the beach. It was amazingly productive from a photographic standpoint.



All day was spent driving north on the 101



Then another photo session on the beach after making camp.



My air mattress was mostly-empty when I woke up Friday morning, so I got an early start. Made it to Redmond, had a joyful reunion with Clarie after she got off work. Saw the local community theater put on HMS Pinafore, then chatted long into the night.

Puttered around Saturday morning, dropped off film to be developed. We decided to go on an impromptu road trip to Forks, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. Neither of us think the Twilight books are good, but we've read them and observed the hullabaloo around them with interest, so decided to roadtrip it up, departing around 6pm

After we took the ferry along the "quickest route"



we found out the ONLY BRIDGE to Olympic National Park was closed, so had to drive an extra 100 miles, arriving well after midnight at our overnight accommodations...



A charming place. Hot breakfast in the morning was included in the low price of our room.

We spent a good chunk of time clamoring over huge piles of driftwood at La Push



Before returning to Forks in broad daylight...



Mostly just cruised around town, talking about tourism, seeing the logging memorial, looking at the houses and discussing how we imagined Charlie's house. Snapped a few shots of twilight signage before heading back to Port Angeles for lunch and bookstore browsing.

Then the long drive back to Redmond. Now I have most-of-a-day to get ready to hit the road again tomorrow!