Monday, July 24 — Eric, Greg and Heath got up at 0500 to get an early start on the Vernal Falls hike. Here is a photo of them at the footbridge, the first milestone of the hike.
They took the Mist Trail up, which was essentially a giant set of stairs.
Continue readingWe left San Diego on Saturday, July 22 and made the 7.5 hour drive northeast to an AirBnB in Raymond, CA. We met up with our friends, Greg and Heath, there.
On Sunday, we were up at dawn and out the door by 0700. We skipped breakfast, deciding to eat in the park. It took about an hour to get from the AirBnB to the south entrance (on route 41) of Yosemite National Park. We had to waiting in line a little over a half hour, and we were inside the park by 0830.
Our first stop was Mariposa Grove, where there was a cluster of redwood trees (AKA Sequoia trees). The parking lot for Mariposa Grove was just beyond the park entrance. From the parking lot, a shuttle bus took visitors up to the hiking trails around the redwood trees. The trail we chose had a noticeable incline, but the trail was graded well, so it wasn’t particularly steep.
Overall, I like Baja California, Mexico It has it’s good parts and it’s bad parts. It has beautiful scenery (mostly rock formations… most plants we found were cactus or dead).
Dans l’ensemble, j’ai aimé Baja California. Mexico a des bons cotés et des moins bons cotés. Il y a de très beaux paysages (plutôt des formations rocheuses…. La plupart des plantes qu’on a trouvé étaient des cactus ou étaient mortes).
As for civilization, La Paz is nice with good food and a beautiful malecon. Loreto is a good town, not too big and too small. Bahia de Los Angeles is super small, but it is a good town nonetheless. But my favorite town is Santa Rosalia. It has good food, especially pastries, and is cute and small.
(*Sorry for the delay in posting. Life got busy once we got back to San Diego)
On Sunday, March 5, we awoke at 0300 to do the last minute things to get Kosmos ready to go to sea. We untied at 0400. It was about 60-nautical miles from Marina Coral to the mouth of the San Diego Bay. Here was the sunrise
The day was mostly overcast and grey. Had we not done the previous difficult passages to Bahia Tortuga and Ensenada, we would have said that the conditions were rough, but compared to those two, sea conditions weren’t all that bad. We were hobby horsing a lot, but the swells weren’t giant nor the intervals rapid enough to make it a miserable ride. We were all functioning normally (for the most part). Here is a “sail” boat passing us… in 5 knots of head winds.
Continue readingFriday, March 3 was a chore day for us. Here was the sunset.
On Saturday, March 4, we went to breakfast at our second favorite restaurant, Los Veleros. It is cheerfully decorated with bright, colorful paintings of sailboats. It was also packed. One of the reasons Los Veleros was so popular for breakfast was because they dropped off a tray of pastries at the table (the pastries weren’t included in the meal price, but you only paid for them if you ate them), and a quesadilla appetizer was included with the meals. We went there specifically to get the flaming fruit desserts, but we had forgotten that they don’t offer them at breakfast time.
After eating, we walked next door to the new science museum. It was a large building, and there was scaffolding up and construction workers outside working on the building, so it clearly was not completely done yet. Admission was about $3.50 USD.
Continue reading