Trinity Alps Journal - Canyon Creek

I see the faint flickering of a satellite that is traveling between the phantom shadows of the trees. (night one)

Our last nights camp was set up just near the bottom of Middle Falls. It is a beautiful campsite with a granite rung fire pit and a soft earth beds for the tents, sitting just beside Canyon Creek. Amongst the many pines, there are low shrubs, along with dogwood, ferns, and we are even graced by a few lovely tiger-lilies. The sound of the waterfall is not far off, and from where I sit I hear the creeks' gentle bubbling.
This is freedom. To wake up to the singing birds and to hear the water rushing...to boil water out of the creek in a pot suspended over hot coals. And I wonder, "who else has enjoyed this exact view from the rock where I sit?"
Yesterday we hiked through such a variety of micro-climates. First through the forest, full of pines and the occasional grove of madrones. Then through meadows, low and cool, through lush ferns, corn lilies, and queen anne's lace. The next section was the high, dry, granite portion of the trail with manzinitas and magnificent views. From there it was back into the forest and a variation of this combo. Each section of the trail held it's own intoxicating perfume for our pure enjoyment.

Since the Grand Adventure....

Not all that shines is gold; not all who wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolken

Since our travels out of the country, all adventure has not ceased. Although we haven't been lost in the faucets of a foreign journey, we haven't halted our inquisitive endeavors. It is true that we remained within our own country and worked a job, five days a week. It was a blast.

We flew into Sacramento California, from Manila. My brother picked us up from the airport on a rainy December evening. One of our first stops we made was to Winco. Winco, Really? Yes really. After five months in Asia it was overwhelming to view the variety of cheeses, and whole grains. What an intro.
We stayed in our hometown over the Christmas season, and enjoyed every bit of family that we could before taking off on a flight to Southern Baja to visit Jess's parents, sister and niece. While we were there we visited family and ate lots of tortillas. Also, we sailed our catamaran in the Sea of Cortez. The closest city to where we stayed is called Santa Rosalia. It is an interesting area of Baja with a rich history of ingenuity within it's beginning.
The city was founded in 1884 by a French mining company called El Boleo. It was a copper mining city until around 1954. And unlike other mines which would dismantle the mining structures, Santa Rosalia still has all of the original structures in place, which happen to be in the center of town. Most of the buildings are constructed of California Redwood which was shipped down to the baja on the return ships that carried the mines goods. It is one of the few cities in Mexico that you would see constructed of wood.
There are three volcanoes nearby and the city is powered by geothermal electricity. It is also known to be the squid fishing capital of the world, where the giant Humbodlt squid migrate to and produces excellent fishing commerce. Jesse had the opportunity to go fishing with some of the locals here (which is only done at night) and they pulled in over 1 ton of squid on their panga (fishing boat) that night.
While in Mexico we spoke with our travel recruiters (travel nursing) to see if there were any positions available for two surgical techs. And to our surprise, there were two full time positions at Kaiser San Diego. We put our applications in and shortly after (while still in limbo) we realized that if we were to get the jobs, we would have to leave the tacoria where we were having dinner within the following ten minutes, drive 20 min back to the house, pack ALL of our things (and we do not travel light) then chase after a bus to the next town an hour south. We needed to catch that bus and travel 14 hours south to Cabo San Lucas to hopefully catch a flight that we hadn't booked yet to fly home and take care of business. We would have just taken a bus north to the boarder where my car was, but the roads were all closed due to severe flooding of the Northern Baja.
Well long story made short. We did all of that, caught the bus made it to Cabo, picked up wireless in the airport there to talk to our recruiters to find out that we did get the jobs. HOORAY!! SO we purchased some tickets on a freak deal of like, $200 from Cabo, to REDDING California. Which is totally absurd and fortunate for us. We made to flight, then on our LA to Redding connection we ran in to two of our best friends at the airport who were in the same flight as us. We visited the whole way to Redding and the rest is history, literally.

Jess and I spent an amazing six months back in San Diego. We moved into the same trailer park that we were in before, and my best friend moved back to SD within a week of us being there. Jess and I shared the same schedule, in the same OR, we would surf in the mornings together then go to work from 11-7. It was absolutely divine and fortunate and amazing and such an exquisite blessing all around. Completely fantabulous!
This time around in SD, we were able to explore so much more of the area including the surrounding mountains. We visited Joshua tree and hiked Torrey Pines Reserve. What made being there so amazing was that we were rich in friendships and adopted family. Jesse and I also were able to have so much fun together sharing the experience of surfing such fun waves, and beautiful waters where dolphins would be swimming directly beneath me and would surf the waves with us. We had a blessed and amazing six months.

Leyte, Philippines, The Forgotten Post...

The Forgotten Blog...

After the rain started coming down in Siargao, it became impossible to dry any of our clothes. I wore the same shirt and shorts every day. We decided to take a small trip to Leyte Island. It took two ferry rides, the first to Surigao City, and the second to Illoan on the eastern island of Leyte. The ferry schedule is reliable and usually there are several different ferrys routes to get where you need to go.

Once off of the ferry Jess and I walked around with our backpacks for a while to see what was around the area. We wondered where we should go from there. We were pretty sure that there was a place to stay an hour bus ride north so as soon as we saw one drive by we jumped on.

Well from there everything fell into place....I sat next to a woman who happened to speak english, to be the niece of the chairmen of conservation for the whale-shark tourism, who is also a pastor of the local church. She called and arranged a home-stay with her family there in the small barrio of Son-Ok, the center of whale shark activity in Sogod Bay. We happily accepted her offer. If there ever was a sign from God saying "I've got everything covered, just go with it"....this was the time. We got off of the bus with her walked down a hill toward the barrio cradled inside of a bay formed inside of a towering cliff line.

We stayed in a bedroom of this nice family's house. Our hosts were Armay and her husband Reggy. Jess and I settled in pretty well there, the family made our meals for us and we were able to hang out with the family throughout the day, though much of our time was spent in the water.

The day after we arrived we arranged our trip out to find the whale shark (aka tiki-tiki), we went out with our guide Pastor Ernesto and started the search. They have a set routine for spotting the tiki-tiki. There are two small boats with a spotter in each who go out and search while you are in a boat with a guide who is also looking. Of coarse, the more eyes the better to watch for them and it is a good business for the local people. Many of the resorts from across the bay have guided tours arranged by the Pastor. They come over in the resort boats and meet up with the spotters and guide from Son-Ok. We enjoyed paddling around in the three person bangka boat. Our experience felt much more natural than I imagine it would have been with the resort. We did not see anything for the first three hours so it was decided that we would go have some lunch. Just before we started to eat one of our spotters ran up to the house yelling "tiki-tiki! tiki-tiki!!" Wow, what a whirlwind it was as we grabbed our gear and raced to put on our snorkel gear. We ran out to the banka and paddled over to where we saw two resort boats floating next to a bunch of snorkeling tourists....there it was the largest fish in the ocean. They live to be 70 years old on average and dive up to 700 meters deep.

We swam with a whale-shark. This was accomplished on our first day there and the pressure was off. From then on we snorkeled on our own in the protected marine sanctuary and saw many beautiful fish and sea snakes. We stayed in a families' home where all of the meals were made for us and we enjoyed the people. On Sunday we were invited to visit the pastor's church and to share an encouraging word with the congregation. It was a very good time. Pastor Ernesto took us around on his motor bike and gave us a tour of the area. We were blessed with this whole experience. It was more than we had hoped for.

Jess and I were the first tourist staying in Son-Ok of the season. We were given the special privileged of snorkeling in a preserved marine sanctuary. The whole reef was amazing. There were so many fish of all size shape and color. The coral was beautiful as well. Jesse and I saw many lion fish, damsels, and fire fish, also our swim was joined by a sea snake just under five feet long!! One of the days Jesse saw a manta ray around six feet wide from wing to wing. We had a beautiful time.

After spending four nights in Son-Ok Jess and I moved on to the other side of the Bay to a small town called Padre Burgos. This area doesn't have a lot of tourism but those who do come show up for the scuba diving. There are several amazing dive trips that can be made here, and many of them are taken right off of the shore. We decided to do two boat dives with one of the guides from the resort. Both were drift dives and were such an amazing experience! There were giant barrel corals as well as some that were splayed out like lace tables larger than eight feet in diameter with a couple hundred bright blue fish weaving their way through these massive coral homes.. This trip gave me a new excitement for scuba diving. But aside from the diving Jess and I went out snorkeling every day up and down the reef in front of our room. The variety of soft coral was amazing. All of them were various shades of red, yellow, peach, melon.... it was beautiful. We could see from our room when sea turtles were swimming around in front of the resort, so we would grab our snorkel gear and go out to the water. One morning we saw four turtles in the half hour that we were out. Here we also saw many more lion fish, sea snakes, and I had the priveledge of seeing a cuttle fish.

We met an awesome couple here, he was from Sweden, and she from Chile. Together we visited an orphanage nearby run by a German man. It was really good to see how it is run. There are around nine houses all with about 6-8 kids per house. Each house is created to simulate a family home. There is a house mother who cooks the meals and is a parent for the kids. Every Saturday all of the houses dine together and enjoy a movie. The whole thing is done very well. There is an area on the side of the property with livestock and building materials, where the kids can learn some everyday skills needed for Filipino life.

We ran into a friend from Siargao twice while we were in southern Leyte. We met a few diving instructors through him and learned a bit more about the wealth of sea life in the area. I would love to return to Leyte to do some more diving, there is so much more to see in the area. Next time around I suppose...

Cordillaras Mountain Province, Luzon

Goodbye Siargao

I just enjoyed my last day of surf here in Siargao. Jesse is out fishing now with his fishing partner Tung-Tung. I went out to Dako around 7:30 with one friend, and surfed clean, consistent, head high waves with only the two of us all morning. It was just beautiful. We came back in around 11:00 just as a boat full of some of our local friends showed up. What a beautiful way to start the day. To top it off, this is the first day in two weeks where it has not rained all morning...it was actually sunny.

About the rain, it has been relentless. Yesterday Jesse and I spent the day using the internet at a cafe in town, there were periods where it would pour down, then would stop then would start pouring again. When we first went in all was normal, when we came out there was water down the street! We were like, "hey, who diverted the river?" I was ankle deep in it and there were actually kids skim boarding in front of there homes.

Discouraged by the rain we decided to leave early to go to northern Luzon. So, today we will say goodbye to the island. We will say goodbye to the friends that we have made and the family that we have adopted. We will say goodbye to the food we have come to love and to eating rice with our fingers. I will miss taking the boats out to the picture perfect islands across clear blue water, and surfing without a wetsuit, where my fingers don't go numb.

Tomorrow Jess and I will fly back up to Luzon. We fly into Clark and then go by bus up to La Union aka San Fernando. We stay only two more weeks. Up there we hope to surf and do some diving. It will be a good way to finish off this trip.

Our good friends here have already decided to go home only to work enough to save to leave again and head back to Bali. They were saying that with 600 Euro you could live quite comfortably for eight months there eating well and living in a little apartment or room. This life doesn't sound so bad.....

Traveling you meet many interesting people living the most exciting kind of lives. Most of the French we have met work in the ski resorts back home for the winter and travel in the summer. This is very common even for many Americans.

Jess and I are ready to head back home now. We have gone through highs and lows of wanting to return or not. But now we miss our family, we miss the mountains in California. Happy Thanksgiving

Day at the Market