Based on a tip from our friends Ted & Kat, we decided to skip Lake Tahoe for now and head back west and north to California Gold Rush country! It seems there are several old-west style towns built during the gold rush of the 1850's and now several good wineries dot the area. We headed to Sonora to make our base and found a quaint (and cheap) bed and breakfast called Pesce's Garden. It didn't seem like much at first glance but we had an entire apartment with ...

We packed up early and headed east to Yosemite National Park first thing Thursday morning. It was another picture perfect California day - highs in the 70's and not a cloud in the sky! We raced past the westbound traffic heading into the city (all those suckers with day jobs!) and eventually hit the rolling hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We got to the park just after noon and drove the valley loop to gasp at the enormous granite walls of El Capitan and Ha...

So we finally finished up our work and took off to San Francisco on Friday, May 31st. It was a long drive up through the central valley and we finally arrived at our friends' Dan & Linda's just before midnight. They live in the cool little area of Rockridge, an Oakland neighborhood just across the boarder from Berkley. Our initial plan was to have a relaxing stay in the city before our various treks into the wild, but as it turned out a bunch of our friends p...

So we're packed up and all ready to go! We're staying in Pasadena for the weekend for a friend's wedding then finishing off some last minute work and it's Arctic Circle or Bust time! A three month journey from Southern California to Northern Alaska and back. Our plan is to drive up the coast (more or less) until the road ends in British Columbia, Canada, then ferry our way up to Alaska. Aili has a conference in Anchorage in late July, after that, it's a return tr...

TBD