Moving to California Part 4 - Colorado to San Francisco

The last segment of a long, amazing road trip out Californy-ways.  It's hard to believe some of these things exist, let alone in this country.


Sunday 8/10/14 - Great Sand Dunes National Park
When we woke up this morning, everyone was in moods.  We were tired and some people had flights to catch... it didn't leave much room for fun.  So we just drove straight to the park-n-ride, where Soup spent a few days hanging out.  We then unpacked, re-packed, and said our goodbyes.  From here on out it would be me, Jess, and Katie.
After getting the car settled, our adventure for the day was to drive South to Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The drive was uneventful... a wind turbine here and there.  Driving along the Rockies.  But really the big thing was to see the Sand Dunes for the first time.  Oh man, so cool.  National parks are great because you enter them and your first thought is "how does this exist?"  It was so pretty.  Enormous dunes formed at the base of a mountain range.  Evidently they formed from a long standing predominant wind from the West pushing against a rare but powerful wind up over the northeastern mountains.  The dunes shift a maximum of 30 feet in either direction.  Not something one would expect in the middle of Colorado.

Jess is trying, I'll give her that

Excited about exploring, we quickly set up the tent and started walking up into the dunes.  Wearing shoes was a poor choice, because I poured about 2 lbs of sand out by the end of the day, but it was an extremely fun hike/walk.  A thunderstorm scared some people off, including Jess, and the whipping winds blasted us with abrasive sand, but we made it to the top of the High Dune.  It looked like another world.  So unbelievable.  Sand dunes completely surrounding me; it looked so unreal.

Surely I'm not posing

That weather was FUN

More light jackets than a lot of travelers in the Sahara

Is this even America?

Going back down was a lot of fun: a lot of tumbling down the dunes.  There was no part of my body uncovered by sand.  Sand was absolutely everywhere.  For days.  In my hair, ears... yikes.

All of that sand is just what I dumped out of my shoes

After that, we went on a short hike up to a lookout: seeing these impressive dunes reminded me of the dunes in Death Valley, but way bigger.  So impressive.

The Rockies are weird

Haha just kidding this is a famous painting I stole from a museum depicting something about Jesus

We made some pasta for dinner and then had a nice night walk back to the dunes to see them under moonlight.  Holy-freaking-crap.  Are you serious?  So amazing.  I can't believe that I, me, Chris Severino, future Emperor of the Universe, was lucky enough to experience something so unique.


Monday 8/11/14 - Mesa Verde National Park
After an efficient tent packing we started on our way West toward Mesa Verde National Park.  Staying in Colorado yet again - there's a lot going on here.  And this will be the last national park in Colorado that I have yet to visit!  We stopped for breakfast at what appeared to be a town, kind of.  The restaurant was called "Boogies."  The food existed.  They DID have a 6 lb cinnamon bun though, so that's good.
Anyway, after more driving, we finally got to Mesa Verde and signed up for a cliff dwelling tour at Balcony House.  We were just trying to understand how this park works, but apparently if we wanted to check this thing out the time is NOW.  So we had to book it up the mesa and through the park to make it in time.  The park is a lot of green, hilly mesa with several canyons.  In many of these canyons, Ancient Pueblo people built their communities.  Right into the sides of the canyons.  The sandstone ruins remain, and they look incredible.  So amazing to see how these people lived.
Our tour was very informative and involved climbing a few wooden ladders and crawling through some tiny doorways.  There were quite a few "people of size" on the tour that maybe shouldn't have been on the tour.  But whatever, it was still amazing to walk around INSIDE these sandstone dwellings.  Apparently the people would farm the tops of the mesas, so every day they would literally have to climb up and down the sides of the canyons, rock climbing sans harnesses, just to collect and maintain the food supply.

Mind you, this is IN THE SIDE of a vertical cliff

Katie's face has just a LITTLE bit more personality than that building

Just you WAIT until you see a photo of the entire community

After the tour we did a few short hikes, walked around checking out some of the other dwellings, went to some overlooks: it was a fun time.  We definitely saw a lot of cool stuff.  And I finished that gigantic cinnamon bun on top of a cliff.  I win.

WHO DOES THIS

Colorado, consider all of your national parks VISITED

Some thunderstorms started moving in as we drove around the mesa, providing some fairly epic sunset views.

what the fuck is going on here

You're looking in the wrong direction

But after all the sightseeing, we set up the tent and had SHOWERS!  What an unexpected treat!  And we made some more pasta and called it a night.  Good day though.


Tuesday 8/12/14 - Grand Canyon National Park
Today's adventure began around 7am, packing up the car and heading down toward the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  But first, we stopped at the Four Corners Monument.  This spot is literally the point at which Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet.  Kind of cool.  It was on Navajo land, so we paid some money awkwardly to get onto the park land.  But it was worth it to stand in four states at once.  I guess.  Whatever, it was fun.

Quad-State Starfish

Then we got a bullshit breakfast at Denny's and THEN to the Grand Canyon.  Quick stop off at our campsite, which is just outside the park (the one campground in the park was full, THANKS), and then on into the park itself.  On the way in we passed a herd of Buffalo: these guys are everywhere.

So freaking lazy

And then we headed right to the lodge and had a drink before anything else.  Because you know, we're in a national park, so that's the thing you do.  This gave us enough time for Jess to see the actual canyon for the first time, and it was ridiculous.  So unbelievably beautiful.  The colors and expanse were just as I remember and more - so freaking insane.  Not as many tourists on the North Rim side, which is nice, but they can still be annoying over here.  So we set off to drive over to some other viewpoints.  We didn't want to go on a hike because it was so late in the day, so seeing different areas would be nice.

It's a greenscreen

Most of those colors aren't even in the color spectrum

We drove up to Point Imperial, the highest point in the park at about 9000ish feet, and to Cape Royal, which has some incredible views.

Severi-YES

It was just ok

We caught what might be my second favorite sunset of all time there.  Holy crap so gorgeous: absolutely indescribable with the colors of the sky and the canyon all going BANANAS.

What is happening here

THAT. FREAKING. SUNSET.

We were hanging around with a group of photographers there, who seemed to be good fun, all heckling a shittier group of photographers who would yell at us to get out of their way.  Fuck off.  It's the Grand Canyon.  Nature is free.  Stop living behind your cameras.
It was definitely dark when we drove back to the campground at 8pm.  And it took an hour from Point Royal.  So we made some quick boil-bag meals (I had a pretty tasty beef stew made out of powders) and played our traditional game of Head's Up before nappy time.  But the important thing is that on the drive back there were some nighttime buffalo grazing right next to the road.  Kind of scary because they were so close, but it was great fun.


Wednesday 8/13/14 - Grand Canyon National Park
It's our second day at the Grand Canyon and OH GOOD the entire thing is fogged in.  We're on the inside of a ping pong ball.  We were going to get up for sunrise, but nope: rain.  Ok, so we slept a bit more and drove to the lodge for some breakfast.  We were seated right next to the window for a cool cloudy view of the canyon, but within moments, moments, EVERYTHING was fog.  Nothing could be seen past 20 feet.  Super annoying.
So we spent SEVEN HOURS writing postcards, catching up on my journal, reading, playing cards, and snacking.  Oh and several adult beverages.  When at the Grand Canyon... do as the Grand Canyons do?  So yeah, not the best Grand Canyon day.
But hey, when the clouds did finally start to clear it was amazing.  We went on a short walk and then drove up to Point Imperial again to see the shadows and colors of the canyon walls, which now included cloud remnants and rainbows too.  Not a bad way to end our stay at the Grand Canyon.

Maaaaaybe the clouds made it better... at least just a little bit

We went back to the campsite BEFORE dark this time and had one last round of pasta and Head's Up.  And the clouds cleared, revealing an AWESOME starry sky.  One of the best I've seen since that backcountry camping night in Yosemite.  Thanks for a great sky!


Thursday 8/14/14 - Las Vegas
Today we packed up the tent one last time: no more camping on this trip (SADFACE).  Tonight is Vegas night.  We started the drive blind though, no directions whatsoever.  We had to work on memory for about an hour until we finally got signal to look up directions on our phones.  We filled up on gas at a place with about a thousand dead moths.  HUGE moths, all over the place.  What the fuck?  So weird.
Our drive took us into Utah for a bit, then back down to Arizona for 20 minutes, and then Nevada.  This is state number: who the  fuck knows?  We got In'N'Out burger just outside Las Vegas borders.  No idea what time it was in Nevada, but apparently we arrived 20 minutes before it opened.  And they still served us!  I was order #3: so good.  I love this place.
After our delicious meal we pulled into Vegas, seeing all the casinos on the strip brought back fond memories of trips past and... PTSD from when I tried driving the Strip in Joe's manual car.  Haha.  We APPARENTLY have a suite at the Venetian.  So ridiculous.  So big.  So baller.  Also it is 97 degrees holy freaking  crap.  I am outside at the pool right now.  Super hot, but so great swimming and drinking Pina Coladas.  Tonight we are probably going to hit up the casinos on the Strip.  LIKE BALLERS.

My life right now is very different than it was 24 hours previous to this

Just some road beers on a rampy escalator

Well, we did it.  We enjoyed Las Vegas a little too much.  After the pool, we walked down the Strip for some drink fixins, road beers, and burritos.  These got us back to the hotel, where we took showers (still amazed at how good showers can be) and unwound a bit while watching Shark Week.
We headed downstairs after that, where I promptly lost money playing roulette.  So then we sat down at a video blackjack game and stayed there for about 3 hours.  I put a $20 in and played that thing all night, eventually losing $10?  After 3 hours of heckling the video dealer avatars and getting about 7 rounds of free drinks.  I knew when I ordered a martini that things were going in a bad direction.  Then the waitress started offering us shots and I started ordering 2 drinks at a time... uh oh.
So yeah then more debauchery was in our future as we then started walking down the strip.

Beer #??

Memory is fading from consciousness

Always a fun time, even when you're not aware of it

We bounced around to a few outdoor bars and tried to see the Bellagio water show... but it turned out to be 2am and we definitely, definitely missed it.  Everything after that was hazy, but a cold Subway hoagie the next morning indicated that I tried and failed to have a late night snack.


Friday 8/15/14 - San Francisco
I am super pumped that my hangover isn't as bad as it could have been.  We got up... later than I wanted to, but whatever.  It's fine.  Today was just a day to spend 9 hours in the car driving to San Francisco.  It was long and slightly annoying, but we had some podcasts to listen to.  The drive included a few Joshua Trees and a stop off at a fruit stand for some cheap strawberries.  They were seriously delicious, like you don't even know.
We pulled into my temporary extended stay hotel around 6:30pm and very easily moved into the place.  It looks awesome: deck, nice bed, amenities, a RUG.  And it's really convenient for work.  I think the next two weeks here will be nice.
After we got settled a bit, Jimmy and Tassi came over to welcome me to the bay area.  They drove us up into the city to see Gary, who is in town for work.  It was great to hang out together: we walked around the Fisherman's Wharf area and went to the strangest bar ever.  It was an Irish pub/Curry house.  What?  It looked like someone took an Irish bar, complete with pool tables and air hockey, and wrapped it around an Indian restaurant.  Great food and beer though.  We were so tired, so we didn't stay out too late: just drove back home around midnight.

My home for 2 weeks until I find an expensive home

Not touristy enough

Sunday 8/17/14 - San Francisco
So... I start my first day of work tomorrow.  Kind of excited and nervous all at once, especially since I haven't gone to work in like a month and a half.  But the past few days of being in SF have been amazing.  We toured the city with Blake, Gary, Jimmy, and Tassi.  Eating sourdough breadbowls at Fisherman's Wharf, going to a bar in North Beach, walking around in Chinatown.

Arrow, you're not going to hit anyone sticking in the ground like that

I think I've seen that expression before... in the Shining.

Don't worry about this one

At night we met up with Rebecca and Peter and had an incredible evening.  Indian food followed by Bootie Mashup dance party!  So much fun HOLY CRAP.  It was the 11th anniversary of Bootie Mashups, which I've been a fan of for a few years now, so there was a weird burlesque show going on and live bands and everything.  I didn't even know what was going on: it was nuts.

Rebecca excited is probably my favorite thing ever

Today we've been exploring the Mountain View area a bit and relaxing.  A pool/laundry day mixed in with just a bunch of stuff I need to take care of for work.  Not a bad way to spend the day.  Here's to a good first day tomorrow...

Moving to California Part 3 - Colorado Ragnar

No more new states from here on out, just some amazing mountains and then also a high elevation Ragnar relay.


Wednesday 8/6/14 - Rocky Mountain National Park
We woke up early in order to get to Denver for Hogan's flight to get in: Ragnar Colorado Adventure commence!
We spent the morning driving down to Denver... the only activity of note being lunch at Chick-fil-A.  We pulled into the Denver airport after some weird tolls; apparently I'll get the bills sent to my previous house in Cambridge?  Anyway, we got to the airport and drove around the loop four fucking times because the rent-a-cops there suck, but THEN picked up Hogan.  Yes!
The drive north to Rocky Mountain National Park was full of anticipation: it is a gorgeous park in which you are entirely surrounded by beautiful mountains.  We were going to meet up with Katie and Sterling, but they were on the other side of the park and would take a few hours.  Luckily we had a take a huge detour through the mountains to get there.  Super gorgeous.  Once inside the park, we saw a moose!  Well, we saw a bunch of people standing over a ravine and then a moose very far away.  But we decided to drive around a bend and then walk through the woods to see if we could catch it.  And did we ever.  It came right up to us from the bottom of a hill and got SO CLOSE.  It was an incredible experience.  My legs were shaking from the adrenaline like an hour later.

Just a couple of mooses moosing around

Hello there

Um... I'm over here

We also had time to dunk our heads in the freezing cold creek near our campsite, which was refreshing indeed.

It is a lot colder than it looks.  I actually can't tell what temperature it looks like.

We finally met up with Katie and Sterling at the campsite, which had an amazing view of the Rockies.  Possibly one of the best views from a campsite that I've been at.
Our plan was to try to hike Chasm Lake along the Longs Peak trail, which branches to the highest mountain in the park, Longs Peak, a 14,000 footer.  So pretty.  But halfway up we learned it was a much longer hike than we anticipated.  So we turned back, which is probably good because that altitude was getting to us.  But not before seeing some astounding views of the surrounding mountains.

Ragnar fiesta engage

Happy trees

On the drive back to the campsite, we stopped at a big meadow to watch a colorful sunset over the mountains.  So nice.  Although, I'm not pumped about the animal-centric attitude of the tourists here.  A car stopped on the road as we were watching the Sun set and asked if we saw any animals in the field.  Nope, sorry bro.  Just a gorgeous sunset.

No cool animals, nothing to see here

Adventure team is go

We got back and cooked sausages over a fire and had some Colorado beers and watched the stars.  The moon was intensely bright and drowned out some of the stars, but they were still pretty amazing.


Thursday 8/7/14 - Rocky Mountain National Park
We woke up early to catch sunrise from a nice overlook.  WORTH IT.  We drove toward the northwest part of the park and found a cool secluded place and saw a dramatic display of colors play out on the mountains.  It really is difficult to describe in words to incredible it is to see these enormous mountains lit up with colors, creating harsh, beautiful shadows in every crevice.  So I'll make a word up for it: mountairiffic.  Truly mountairiffic.

Dinos at Dawn

Those are some colors

It's not the Sun if there's no solar flare

We kept the morning going by driving along the northern road, stopping at various alpine overlooks.  We went on a short walk in the alpine region, along the highest continuous road (apparently), seeing elk herds, marmots, and Pikas.  And of course more fantastic views.  Blah blah blah everything is pretty.

That mountain range is exquisite

There are more than a handful of trees down there

This is a Marmot, they are feisty critters

Team Colorado Rockies

"Ok guys now act natural"

We then packed our site up and drove to Bear Lake for a nice 9 mile hike along the lake area.  It would end at another location, allowing us to use the convenient shuttle service back to the trailhead.  The hike was nice and of course included a dip in one of the lakes.  The weather in the Rockies (and indeed in most of Colorado) is weird.  Not very humid, but short, sporadic thunderstorms all afternoon.  So it was on/off, nice/rainy... still a nice hike.

Sometimes the endless natural beauty gets boring but then I remember that no it doesn't

shut up

The next phase of our day was to leave the park (yay more detours!) and for us to grocery shop for Ragnar and find a place to park my car while Katie and Sterling picked up the rental van.  It took a while, and we got caught in a thrilling, crazy thunderstorm, but success!  Now we have a van.  This Ragnar is kind of different: normally it is two vans, 12 people relay racing for 200 miles(ish).  This would be all at high altitude, which is now for all of us, and ALSO we were just one van of 6 people (me, Hogan, Katie, Sterling, and soon to be joined by Maria and Steve), and we were paired with another van of 6.  We were Van 2, which means we finish the race.  But the race isn't until tomorrow; tonight we are staying at Maria's cousin's place.
We drove up to Boulder to stay with our gracious hosts, who provided us with a home cooked meal of carbs and my first shower since Monday morning, which was pretty damn great.  And they were so nice: giving us all kinds of ammenities for a good night's rest.


Friday 8/8/14 - Colorado Ragnar
Race day!  Our team (World's Greatest Dads: it's ironic because... you know... none of us are Dads) started at 7am.  Which actually isn't the earliest start - other teams started at 4am!  But since we weren't the first van, we didn't have to join at the start.  So we had time to pick Steve up at Golden (home of a nice little microbrewery) and grab a breakfast sandwich.
We then drove up to Copper Mountain: the start of the race AND exchange 6; it was a few hours drive, but we still had time to hang out and have some lunch before our other van finished their first legs.  This race is no joke: the altitude is REAL.  So it wasn't until 2:30ish when they came in for the exchange.  And I was the first runner in our van.  Decked out in my World's Greatest Dads costume: "Best. Dad. Ever." t-shirt, tucked into my shorts, with knee socks, USA sweatband, American flag sunglasses, and American flag fanny pack.  I was ready.  Or so I thought.

Another Ragnar, this one at 10,000 feet

Small Dads, big chair

We Dads are ready to do some running

I felt great for the first tenth of a mile, the other forty-four tenths of a mile were more difficult

The exchange went smoothly, but my leg was 4.5 miles, continuously up a mountain.  An elevation gain of 1300 ft, up to Vail Pass at over 10,000 ft altitude.  There was so little oxygen.  And my hamstrings were killing me from all that uphill running.  And my lungs were killing me from TRYING TO BREATHE.  I started growing lung capacity in places I didn't know I could have lungs.  It seems like they were pushing my organs out of the way just to get air.  But it was such a beautiful run.  Through a field and stream amidst awesome mountains.  I had to make sure I logged that memory for later, because the only fucking feeling I had time for at the moment was pain.
I have never been in such pain in my life.  Probably the most physical, full-body pain that I've ever experienced.  And NO van support.  It was just me out there (and the two runners I passed and the one bike that passed me).  Near what ended up being my last mile (but I'll be damned if I had any warning!) a woman on a bike passed me as she was going down the path and said "you're really close."  This was the closest thing to heroin that I've ever experienced.  I had no idea how much I'd run, or for how long; I only knew that it HAD to end.  Just a few more twists and turns (all uphill of course), and then I saw the exchange.  Right at Vail Pass.  Such a horrific run, but finishing it felt so good, especially amidst this incredible scenery.
After finishing, I immediately started coughing, what we later dubbed the Vail Pass Cough, and this stayed with me for many, many days.  A harsh, abrasive cough coming from some primal location of my body.
The next several transitions were fine for me, since my leg was over, but everyone else had a downhill run.  They still felt the altitude though.  You can't not.  We finished right at sunset, passing off to Van 1 and resting up with some great sunset pictures.
We earned a nice, shitty Wendy's meal before heading to our first place to sleep a bit.  We would have a couple hours to nap before it was our turn again, and being first runner, I did not intend to waste them.


Caturday 8/9/14 - Colorado Ragnar (Todaysterday)
The Todaysterday continued, waking up at about midnight for our second set of legs.  I was tired, but ready... I suppose.  This was my long leg: 7.6 miles.  But all flat or downhill, so I wasn't worried.  Well, I was.  Still high altitude.  But I was decked out in my night gear: glowing lights and neon laces and shit.  Time to rock this.
It turns out this leg was WAAAAY easier than the first.  Still difficult, but not as bad.  I ran a reasonable pace and passed 8 people.  I felt good about it.  But even though it was night, I could still see a bit and could tell that it was a really pretty landscape.  Still no van support though.  What is with that?  This Ragnar is really strange in that only 2 of our 18 legs had any van support.  You don't realize how much you really need the verbal support and cheering until you don't have it.
The next set of legs continued a lot easier.  We were lower in altitude and were somewhat used to the low oxygen.  Plus they were all downhill.  We did well for our second set of legs.  We earned another few hours of some good sleep.

Katie is currently running a billion miles in the hot hot Sun

My last leg started at 8am.  It was only 2.3 miles, but all uphill again.  Ugh.  Whatever, not as bad as my first leg, but still more difficult than my 7.6 miler.  Katie and Hogan both had some really rough legs to run.  Hogan, our anchor, had several extreme hills to conquer.  In the meantime, the rest of the team met up at the finish and waited for Hogan to beast his run, which he did.  So good to finish.

Hogan crossed the finish line first, but he was too fast for the instantaneous photograph to catch him

Mile Thigh Rubbing Club and World's Greatest Dads finish another great Ragnar

 This Ragnar was a tough race, and that first leg I had was definitely my hardest run... ever.
After our celebration beer and lunch, we started on our way to our campground for the night, somewhat nearby.  We got to frolic by the river (couldn't go in though; it was super muddy) and take a SHOWER!  Holy shit!  This entire road trip is just a bunch of amazing showers, several days apart, with a lot of cool stuff between each one.
We got a fire going (finally, after dealing with the wettest wood and paper ever and finally making a torch with Vaseline) and made some dinner while having more celebratory beer.

We are ready for our campfires

And tonight was a "Golden Moon," the closest perigee of the moon in centuries and a very full moon at that.  So incredibly bright - it nearly burned my optics.