Highway 4

I’ve got this big map of California thumb-tacked to our bedroom wall. Every time we drive somewhere we trace out the roads on the map in red ink. It’s an exciting moment for the both of us, and we’re always giggling and smiling as we draw in our latest adventure.

In the last six months we’ve been on highways 99, 80, 50, 88, 4, 108, 120, 580, 680, 880, 89, 32, 5, and 205 together. We’ve been to Truckee, Yosemite, Chico, Yuba City, San Francisco, Fresno, Hayward, Minden, Carson City, Reno, Sacramento, and countless other places.

We’ve driven the entire lengths of highways 4 and 88. We’ve driven 99 from Chico to Fresno, 80 from San Francisco to Reno, 120 from Manteca to Tuolumne Meadows, and 50 from Stateline to Sacramento.

And this is just the beginning. One day I’d like to see this old map tattered and torn and completely filled with spider webs of red ink, all over California and Nevada and Oregon.

So anway.

It’s Sunday October 28th. I’m starting a new shift and we won’t have the same days off anymore. What should we do on our last day off together?

I know! Let’s drive the entire length of highway 4 today for no reason! Well, other than to have a new adventure and put some new red ink on our map =)

The original plan was to drive up highway 88 so we could look at the Aspen tree groves just past Kirkwood. But we’ve been up that road before. Let’s do something different. Let’s go somewhere we haven’t been before.

Spur of the moment, the decision was made. We drove all the way up highway 4, through Copperopolis and Murphys and Arnold and Bear Valley and Mosquito Lake, up and over Ebbetts Pass, down the eastern side of the Sierras through Hermit Valley until we got to highway 89. Then it was 89 through Markleeville to 88, then we went east on 88 until we got to Minden. Up and over 207 to Stateline. Then it was all the way down highway 50 to Sacramento, 5 to Stockton, and finally 4 to home.

Me & my Yum

The entire trip was about 400 miles. That’s about 9 hours in the car. We stopped for lunch at Showshoe Brewery in Arnold, many times in the high country to breathe the fresh air and enjoy the scenery, once for ice cream in Markleeville, and coffee in South Lake Tahoe. I finally got sleepy half way down highway 50 and Yum had to drive the rest of the way home.

Whew! What a nice trip.

Highway 4 is my new favorite road in California. Above Bear Valley the road gets very narrow, steep, and winding. There are less people and less traffic. The going is very slow. At this point it no longer feels like a highway. The road is well-maintained, but it is clearly meant for cars. Some of the larger RVs wouldn’t make it.

It’s beautiful up there. Absolutely beautiful. Peace. Solitude. Alpine lakes scattered along the road, and even more within hiking distance. Plenty of places to camp and fish and hike and just… be. Pine trees and oak trees and aspen trees and dogwood trees and cottonwood trees and just… ahhh… Rugged terrain. Jagged, rocky, high mountain peaks. There was even a little snow.

I wish we had gotten out of the Jeep to take more pictures, but the sun was setting fast and we still wanted to try to see those Aspens on highway 88. But alas, we wouldn’t make it.

Oh well. We’ll be back. And highway 4 will be waiting for us.

Some pics here!

The Annual Trinity Hunting Trip

It was too short.

That sums the entire trip up for me. It was just too damn short. Excluding the two days of travel, I got five full days in Trinity. And it felt like one.

I never want to leave. And I always have the funk after I come home. But this year… man… sigh… Now that I’m home it feels like I didn’t go at all.

But enough about that.

The weather was perfect all week. It rained and it was cold. The moon cycle was perfect as well. Wednesday night and Thursday night there was no moon at all (so the deer would be up all day, moving around and feeding during daylight hours).

This was the first year I actually got to put some bucks in my crosshairs. And yet I couldn’t pull the trigger–none of them were legal. No bear sightings this year. No deer hanging in any of the hunting camps. And less gamebirds than I’ve ever seen up there.

The logging has really taken a toll on the wildlife on our beloved Red Mountain. The timber company cut new roads all over the flank of Red Mountain below The Saddle. As a result, I didn’t see one deer above BPR (Buck Production Road) all week. Not good for us.

And I’m seeing more cops (people that we don’t know, not necessarily law enforcement) on Red Mountain that ever. We used to have the whole area practically to ourselves. Now there are new roads, more hunters, and even a winery. Trinity is feeling less and less like “getting away from it all”.

This year was a very tame year for drinking. Drinking beer, that is. In years past we consumed a ridiculous amount of Coors Light 30-packs. This year we brought half of our normal supply… and ended up bring beer home with us. We *did* drink more hard stuff, however. I guess it’s time to make that transition that all men face in their mid-30’s–we can’t drink beer fast enough any more to get a decent buzz. My father and his friends went through the same ordeal around the same age. They made the switch from beer to liquor. And that’s what we’re doing as well. Jimmy put it best when he said this year, “Beer is for road-beer now.”

And now the cabin has satellite TV, in addition to a dedicated year-round phone line, and Internet connection (although it *is* dial-up). Everything is on solar power now. No need to use the propane lamps or the gas generator. The kitchen in the main cabin even has a microwave and coffee pot. This isn’t getting away from it all, this isn’t a hunting cabin. This is a home that happens to be in the mountains.

And now that uncle Stanley is retired, and all his projects are complete, he lives there through the summer and fall. I love the guy, and I’m eternally grateful for his hospitality (the cabin and property belong to him). But it’s kind of hard for me to relax around Stanley. He’s a *little* high-strung.

And this year I have a job. It took me five days to unwind. And then it was time to go. Is this how vacations go for all you working-folk? Last year I spent 15 days in Trinity. This year I spent six.

I feel like something’s missing. I feel a bit empty inside. I guess it was a combination of all things. But I don’t like it. I need more mountain-time.

I need to get away from it all. Still.

Click here for pictures from the trip

Four years of Hippocleides

That’s right, it’s been four years. And it’s been a wild ride.

My most productive month was February 2004 with 26 blog entries. My weakest months were July 2004, April 2007, and June 2007 with only two blog entries each.

402 posts and 560 comments. 67 photo albums.

Countless web designs and header images.

I started with manually editing an html file on the good ol’ snowcrash.org server. Then I moved on to Blogger. I soon grew tired of the limitations of Blogger and installed Movable Type on snowcrash.org and registered the teebiss.com domain, graciously hosted by Smitty and the halibut crew. After a couple of years wrestling with Movable Type I moved on to WordPress and a new webhost. WordPress has been a dream to work with.

Chico. College. Hayward. Unemployment. My mother’s death. Despair. Comcast. Miriam. Brentwood. Happiness at last.

Maybe Hippocleides *does* care, after all?