What a harrowing week I’ve had!   I’m leaving the forest in about 2 weeks, so I thought I better get to all the hikes I’ve been putting off.   This week I decided to go all the way up to Sonora Pass and hike the Pacific Crest Trail. The elevation is about 9600 feet so I asked around to see which direction was more level and was told to take the North route.   The first open parking space was next to the trail head, so off I went.   It was a gradual but steady uphill climb and I could see forever, including parts of the trail above me.   I saw this huge rock formation ahead but I thought the trail must pass by it and go up another way.   Not so much I was soon to discover.   After about a mile of trudging uphill, I got to the formation and was surprised to see my path kept going up.   It seemed pretty dangerous, so I turned around and went back down.   I got about a quarter mile away, and turned around to look at the trail again.   It rea...

I’ve spent the last two weeks doing manual labor and it sure is hard!   We found a meadow that someone on an ATV tore up doing donuts.   It’s so stupid that with the thousands of miles of trails, people feel the need to go off the trails and tear up meadows and campgrounds.   Last week we had to build a wooden fence to protect Long Barn meadow.   That involved using an auger that had a mind of its own.   It’s easy enough to use the auger, until you hit rocks.   Rocks make the drill stop turning and the top, which you are holding, begin to spin.   In other words, the drill stops and the auger handles are ripped out of your hands.   There is a rubber safety bar that is supposed to stop everything from spinning.   In theory it sounds great, but in practice, if the handles don’t rip your arms out of your sockets, the bar will break your legs.   OK, that may a bit dramatic, but I do have bruises on my legs where the rubber bar beat me up. ...

I decided to come down out of the forest and spend a few days in Monterey. I brought my bathing suit, sun tan lotion and beach towels. Too bad I didn’t check the weather forecast, it’s cold and overcast. No worries, there's still plenty to do. I went to the Monterey Aquarium where they had really cool jellyfish and seahorse exhibits. I posted some pictures, I’m surprised at how good they came out using my cell phone. The next day I went to Fisherman’s Warf and took a whale watching cruise. It was pretty cold, but I had a great view sitting in front of the boat. We saw both blue whales and humpback whales. They were huge, but we only saw a tiny portion of them as they came up for air. We didn’t get the spectacular views of them breaching because they didn’t do any acrobatics. The most we saw were a few tail flips, but it was still pretty cool. The ride out and back were fine, but just sitting in the swaying boat brought on some queasiness, so I spent most of the time laying back aga...