Sacramento / Karoline’s Wedding

18x beer tasting at the legendary Russian River Brewing Co.

Kristen’s sister Karoline before her wedding

After 6 weeks of coast-to-coast travel, we stopped at our ‘home base’ – the Burrall house in Sacramento.  We intended to stay for ~2 weeks, in order both to relax and recharge, and to help prepare for (and attend) Kristen’s sister Karoline’s wedding.

Karoline and her fiancee (now husband) Wentao had planned their wedding in the Burrall’s backyard.  Many of the preparations were made by the time we arrived, but there was still a lot of work to do to get the house straightened up and figure out the final details.  The entire Burrall family (and many friends as well) pitched in to make sure the day was equal to Karoline’s vision.  Kristen, of course, acted as the organizer general, assigning tasks and making lists.

The day turned out perfectly.  Worries about heat and rain never came to pass, the food and music were fantastic, and everyone (especially Karoline) seemed to have a great time.

The time was not all wedding preparations, though.  Kristen and I set up our road bikes and rode nearly every day (including a few 40-60 milers).  We took two trips back up to Napa/Sonoma – one for Kristen to get Keratin put in her hair, and one with our friend Matt.  Both times, we stopped off at the Russian River Brewing Company for beer tastings.  Russian River Brewing is probably one of the best breweries in the country, with a couple of beers rated the ‘best in the world’.  Needless to say, that place is awesome.  Literally, inspires awe.  They always have 18 beers on tap, generally in styles I’d never seen or had before.  I think we’ll be going back in the future.

In all, the two weeks in Sacramento were not as relaxing as we expected, but they were certainly fun.

Napa

We finally made it to the Pacific!

Us at the B&B in Napa

After leaving Crater Lake, we drove over to the California coast to take the 101 South toward Napa.  I sort of can’t believe it – after almost a month and a half, we’ve completed the crossing of the continental US, and come out at the Pacific.  We stopped to spend the night in Eureka, CA, and then headed down to Napa for our anniversary on July 11.

Kristen’s dad had recommended a few wineries for us to try on the way into town, so we stopped in at the tasting rooms of Dutcher Crossing and Dutton Goldfield.  Since I was driving, Kristen drank most of the tasting glasses they gave us.  That, plus the small bottle of champagne the B&B hosts left for us, probably amounted to about 2 full glasses of wine over 3-4 hours, so of course Kristen was totally drunk (yeah we’re the worst drinkers ever).

And then, food.  We had a fantastic dinner at Celadon in downtown Napa, went to sleep stuffed, and then woke up the next morning to see that our B&B hosts had cooked a huge meal of french toast, bacon, croissants, and assorted fruit.  There was no choice but to polish it off.  Needless to say, we then immediately went for a 2 hour mountain bike ride to balance things out, as is our MO.

And so ends the first leg of our trip.  We’re now safe, sound, and resting in Sacramento with Kristen’s family for the next couple of weeks.

Pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552881478/

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552800456/

Crater Lake

No description necessary

Wizard island

This post doesn’t need much.  We went to Crater Lake after leaving Bend.  It was gorgeous.

One thing though – we stayed at the massive campground in the park.  There were big signs that said “There are Bears in this Campground”, and there were bear-proof metal boxes at every campsite.  Despite this, the people at the campsite next to us picked up a large pizza for dinner and ate it in their tent.  WTF.  I guess we’re used to staying at more remote campsites where people actually know what they’re doing?  We were shocked.  (We gently suggested that might be a bad idea, and they were genuinely surprised to find out there might be bears around).  I guess we now know why Yosemite has such a bad bear problem.

Photo album here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552853556/

Bend

Lava Lake at sunset

Mountain biking in the Cascade Lakes area

We shook our trip up a bit recently – shortened our time in the Wallowas, and blew up the next week or so.  We decided to target spending our anniversary in Napa, CA, and hit a few other places along the way.  Bend, and the Deschutes forest, were a top priority.

We left the Wallowas and drove all day through central Oregon en route to Bend.  Honestly, our time in Oregon to this point didn’t feel much at all like the Pacific Northwest.  We’d seen some high alpine peaks and some dry, extremely hot desert.  But as we snaked our way West on I-84 along the Columbia River, we rounded a bend and BOOM there was Mt. Hood, dominating the horizon.  For me, that was our introduction to the Pacific Northwest.  From there to Bend, we had view after view of amazing volcanoes – Hood, Jefferson, the Sisters, and Bachelor.  Wow.

We stayed the night at the Lava Lake campground in the Cascade Lakes region, just West of Bend.  We had a fantastic sunset with Mt Bachelor as a backdrop, and cooked a nice pasta dinner with some canned chicken.  Kristen later remembered that she had bought the canned chicken while in college, and she promptly got a stomachache.  It was probably fine, but yuck.

The next morning, we went for a fantastic, flowy mountain bike ride in the Cascade Lakes region, and then stopped off in Bend for an all-you-can eat Indian buffet lunch and a fancy coffee.  Bend is an extremely nice town, and again we thought it would be a great place to live if it wasn’t in the middle of friggin’ nowhere.

Picture album here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552813280/

Wallowas/Ice Lake

The Wallowas viewed from the West Fork of the Wallowa River

Ice Lake

The Wallowas are a picturesque mountain range in Eastern Oregon that nobody has ever heard of.  It was recommended to us by my friends Brian and Ben, but I’m not sure how they heard of it, either.

It’s a very well-kept secret, probably because it’s 300 miles from anywhere.  We met almost no tourists from outside Oregon, despite the fact that the place is called “Little Switzerland” because it looks like the Alps.

We had originally planned a 4-day backpacking trip, but as our feet were still sore and our mosquito bites still fresh from the Uintas trip, we decided to lower our sights to a grueling, 16 mile, 3500ft vertical day hike to Ice Lake.  It was pretty much 8 solid miles of switchbacks in either direction.

Ice Lake lived up to its name, as it had just recently melted out and was still surrounded by snow.  (Unlike CO and UT, Oregon and Washington had near-normal snowpack this year).  It was fantastically gorgeous; for me it was tied with Amphitheater Lake as the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen, and it was certainly up there for Kristen as well.

Eastern Oregon was also the first time in 4 weeks we encountered humidity.  We slept two nights at a Forest Service campground near a creek outside Joseph, OR (which is a nice little town, by the way) and our bed was clammy and cold all night.  Not that it mattered after 6 hours of hiking straight up a mountain.

Picture album here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552895626/

Boise

Jeff in the Boise foothills

Kristen in the Boise foothills

After our backpacking trip in the High Uintas, we planned to take a week ‘off’ – set up the big tent at a campsite for 5 straight days and relax.

Kristen still wasn’t feeling great from her Guatemalan virus, so we mostly hung out at coffee shops and ate at local restaurants whenever Kristen was feeling well enough.

Boise is actually a really nice place – it has a bit of a college town feel and is very outdoorsy, sort of like a more remote version of Boulder.  Not that we weren’t expecting it to be nice, but not THIS nice.  We had some fantastic meals (including one at a shop that specializes in french fries – 6 different types of potatoes in 5 different cuts), spent hours at the local hipster coffee shop (Flying M), and everyone we met was extremely friendly wherever we went.

Our campsite was about 40 minutes outside of town, in the country.  It smelled a little like a farm out there, but the open land and solitude was nice.  On the evening of July 4th, we drove up into the foothills near our campsite for a panoramic view of the fireworks displays from the surrounding towns (including Boise).  We saw around 8-10 different displays on the horizon, though they were all so far away we couldn’t hear the booms when the displays were going on.

By the end of the week, Kristen was finally feeling well enough to go for an easy mountain bike ride in the foothills outside of Boise.  The city maintains a large network of singletrack, and we had a great 1.5hr ride with some decent climbing and smooth descending on Shane’s Loop.

We were so impressed with the city that by the end of our time there, we decided it would be a great place to live.  If it weren’t in the middle of friggin’ nowhere.

Red Castle

Kristen at Red Castle Lake

Jeff and dinner

We closed out June by spending 3 days/2 nights in the High Uinta mountain range in Northern Utah.  The High Uinta is just that – really high.  The trailhead is at 9,500 feet, and our campsite at Lower Red Castle Lake was at 10,800 feet.  We chose this hike because it’s remote enough (3-4 hours from Salt Lake City) that we’ll probably never go anywhere near that part of the country again.  That’s what this trip is for!

Our destination was the Red Castle area – 3 terraced lakes flowing into a mountain river, set around a gigantic sandstone formation called Red Castle that looked like, well, a red castle.

Day 1 we hiked from the trailhead at China Meadows to Lower Red Castle Lake – a distance of around 9.5 miles with a total elevation gain of 2,000 feet.  Not a super hard hike, but we were pretty exhausted and blistered by the end nonetheless.  After we made camp, I tied a spinner on to my new fishing rod and went over to the lake to screw around.  After failing to cast the thing in Jackson Hole, I had watched a youtube instructional video about spin rod casting, so I was ready to go.  On my 3rd or 4th cast, I had a bite!  I reeled in a ~12” trout.  We were thrilled – fresh fish for dinner!  Then we realized we had no idea how to clean it.  After some discussion of where to cut and how to pull out this and that, we ended up with two mostly whole fillets and some bits that looked like they got caught in a meat grinder.  But it was delicious, and a great reward for our hike in.

Our first night was interesting.  The mosquitoes were awful (hello hiking in June), and at around midnight we heard heavy footsteps and rocks rolling around near our tent.  Something big was out there, and nobody else was camping at the lake, so it wasn’t people.  Was it a bear??  We were both too scared to find out what was out there (though the ranger told us there hadn’t been much bear activity up there lately), and ended up with a mostly sleepless night.

Regardless of what it was, there was no way it was getting our food.  We had done the single greatest bear bag hanging job ever.  11-12 feet off the ground, at least 5 feet away from the tree trunk on a branch that could support no more than the food weight.  It was a beautiful sight, so please excuse our self-congratulation.

The next day over breakfast, we debated hiking back out to avoid another sleepless night.  However, a couple other groups of campers showed up, one with 7 horses.  We were comforted that bears probably weren’t going to mess with our area with so many people and pack animals around, so we sucked it up and went for a day hike to Red Castle Lake, situated at around 11,300 ft.

I don’t know what it is about altitude, but it seems like there’s a very distinct breaking point where you’re fine below it, and get the effect above it.  For some reason, our day hike to Red Castle Lake did it.  It was only an additional 500ft gain, but we were both drowsy and slightly lightheaded up there.  We attempted to hike to Upper Red Castle Lake (11,800 ft) but there was no real trail, and the slow slog over a loose boulder slope was just too much in our altitude-tired state.  We hiked back to camp and had a nice afternoon of failing to catch anymore fish.  Looks like the first day was beginner’s luck.

Our second night was uneventful, and we packed up camp the last morning relatively quickly.  Kristen was not feeling well – it was looking like her week in Guatemala was finally catching up with her – so she didn’t eat much of anything for breakfast (or dinner the night before).  She started to bonk part way through the hike out, but eating was tough because she was nauseas.  The last few miles were tough – we re-arranged the packs to transfer most of the weight over to me, Kristen forced down some energy bars, and we finished it off.

Needless to say, we were VERY happy to spend the night at a hotel and get some sleep.

Picture album here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552686348/