We had a great time building rockets, then spending a day launching them and watching hundreds of other launches. A handful of the other rockets we watched were special ‘demo’ rockets built and launched by experts. Our rockets were 38 inches tall and used F20 engines, much bigger than typical department store rockets.
We spent a couple of days at Yosemite. Great visit, really beautiful place. Kind of crowded on a holiday. Some of the taller mountains, like El Capitan, are around 3,000 feet of nearly vertical granite walls. It’s hard to believe they are really that big when you look at them. There are probably several climbers in this photo, some of them taking a week to complete the climb, but they are too small to see.
Melinda and the boys gave me a great birthday party, and Paula sent a magnificent fruit arrangement.
We had a great weekend, camping with the Cub Scouts. The weather started out rainy, then turned spectacular, and the friends were great, too.
We took some of our Coinstar money and spent the day in SF, first at Alcatraz and later on Fisherman’s Wharf. Alcatraz was nice. We used headsets to take a self-guided audio tour of the cellblock. Really nice, the audio was very well done, with sound effects and narrations by original convicts and guards. It was pretty sobering to see the size of a 5×9 cell, firsthand.
Paul and I went with Brian today on a whale watching expedition organized by his boy scout troop. We were told by the boat’s crew that we were exceptionally lucky in our encounters with humpback whales - statements made credible by the sight of the crew and captain themselves running around the boat, snapping pictures of their own.
It was awe-inspiring to be in the presence of the whales. They are so different from us, we might as well be from different planets, alien species eying each other for a few moments. Nevertheless, our worlds did briefly touch, and I know we communicated peace with each other; or at least that was my exuberant take on it.
The whales were so close to us, actually touching the boat at times, that they occasionally blew geysers of funk-breath water on us. Way better than the splash zone at SeaWorld. All in all, it was a magnificent day, no doubt our coolest nature encounter this year.
This is a nice park in Marin County. We went on a short hike Saturday afternoon, then later cooked steaks and roasted corn, and sat up late playing cards and talking.
There was poison oak everywhere, even on the short path from the car to our site. We really had to pay attention, and still had a few close calls.
We went back to Salt Point for two nights this weekend. The highlight was probably the guided hike on Saturday. We hiked to the Pygmy Forest and picked Huckleberries along the way. Back at camp, we picked more huckleberries and fed Cheetos to the blue jays. Later Saturday, we hiked the beach, where we saw sea lions and abalone divers.
On the way home Sunday, we stopped at Fort Ross and learned a little about the area’s history.
This is a nice campground located beside the Stanislaus River. It’s a kind of oasis in an otherwise dry landscape. The boys were big fans of swimming in the river.