This photo is all about “HOT” to me. And wow, is it hot! We made plans to escape to the mountains for the weekend, and while it is maybe 10 degrees cooler, it’s still HOT!
Hopefully July will moderate a bit, but for now, we have heat aplenty. Enjoy this wallpaper for the month, and we’ll see what August brings.
This vacation was our first visit to California, so naturally our visit to California’s Wine Country was our first visit there as well. It was something we had been planning for a long, long time and as we sailed back to San Francisco from Alaska we were very anxious to get the next step of our vacation started!
Once we disembarked our cruise ship in San Francisco on Wednesday morning our first order of business was to get a taxi to the airport to pick up our rental car. This was sort of bass-ackwards as the airport was the opposite direction from where we wanted to go, but that turned out to be the cheapest place to rent a car. Plus we wanted to be able to drop the car off at the airport on our return as it was much more convenient. After an exciting ride with a Greek cab driver (You like my driving, no?”) we made it safely to the airport and navigated the rail system to the rental car desk. Soon we had our car and were back on the road.
We had Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday for our adventure, so we wanted to make the most of it. Our first order of business after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge was to locate Highway 1 and head toward the coast. Our intention was to stop at Muir Woods National Monument, but for some reason the place was packed – on a Wednesday! The main parking lot was full, the over flow parking was full, and the overflow for the overflow parking was full and people were parking on the road. We decided to drive on, and people were parked along the road for nearly a mile from the entrance. We hadn’t done any research ahead of time, so maybe the place is always that crowded. I’d sure hate to go there on a weekend if it is even busier. Amazing! We’ll have to do that another time.
After a brief stop at the Muir Beach overlook to get a view of the Pacific Ocean from the land side, we headed on North along Highway 1. What a view! Nothing like we get along the East Coast, that’s for sure. We stopped at a little restaurant in the town of Stinson Beach for lunch, then headed inland toward Santa Rosa, where our hotel was located.
We knew that with nearly 4 days, we would have plenty of time but we also knew that we had a lot to see. We also decided that we didn’t want to have a “death march” through wine country, although how hard is drinking wine, right? Seriously though, this was less about seeing how many wineries we could visit or how much wine we could drink and more about seeing the countryside, exploring side roads and having plenty of time to enjoy our time there.
We had started planning our visit several months in advance, and with the invaluable advice and assistance of our good friend Jon Dressler of Dressler’s Restaurants in Charlotte, we had arranged private tours of 4 wineries. Two of our tours were on Thursday and two were on Friday, with one tour each morning and one tour each afternoon. We purposely left Saturday completely open in order to see what else we wanted to do. As it turned out we used Saturday to visit Napa, as none of the wineries we visited were located there. We had an 11:00 flight on Sunday, so that day would be spent solely on travel.
We used the four scheduled tours as the framework for our visit, and I think it worked out very well. We got an early start each day in order to have as much “piddle time” as possible with plenty of time to get to our first destination. We left time between tours for lunch, with plenty of time to drive to our afternoon destination. Our standard practice after the second tour of the day was to head back to our hotel, make a dinner reservation on Open Table, then take a nap. Like I said, no Death Marches for us!
Three things stand out to me from our visit:
(1) Distinctive geography – we always hear about the differences in climate, soil and terrain and how those differences affect the grapes and ultimately the taste of the wine. It’s one thing to hear, but to actually the area is to appreciate the descriptions. When someone describes a wine as coming from grapes “planted on a steep mountainside at 2500 feet” or coming from “the sandy and rocky soil of the Carneros Valley, it really drives home the distinctions that each area has to offer.
(2) Each winery has its own very distinctive character, from the style of the building, the layout of the winemaking area to the design of the bottles and labels. What I love about this is that it really allows us to enjoy the wine as a unique statement of everything that goes into the product. Each bottle is a representative of the winery, since every decision about every ingredient and every step of the process has some kind of an impact on the final result. Just like photography, everyone starts with the same basic set of tools but ends up with their unique expression of those tools.
(3) Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, is the amount of passion that people have for their business, from the winemakers to the tasting room people to the staff in the restaurants we visited. The people we encountered were visibly passionate about their work, and that passion is contagious. This made visiting the wineries, dining at the restaurants, and generally visiting the area a very pleasurable experience.
I’m going to have more to say about our experience in future posts, but the time since we’ve returned has slipped by in a hurry. I wanted to get this post wrapped up so I can “put a bow” on the overview and get back to some specific commentary about other parts of our vacation. Hopefully this collection of photos will provide a bit of a sampler of the 4 days we spent in wine country.
For a lot of cruisers, Victoria is little more than a fuel stop and a way for the cruise line to comply with the Jones Act (also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920) that, among other things specifies that a foreign-flagged vessel operating out of a US port must call at a non-US port before disembarking passengers back in the US port. It makes things a bit more complicated and interesting for cruises originating from a US port and going to places like Alaska and Hawaii.
Situated on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, which interestingly the city of Vancouver is not on, Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. The locals say that on a clear day you can see across the channel to the Seattle area, the Olympic Mountains, the Cascades and Mount Rainier. I’ll take their word for it! We could barely see the water, let alone the US, it was so rainy and cloudy. No problem, though. We were going to see a castle!
Our tour started, ominously enough, with a visit to the highest point in Victoria, Mt. Tolmie. But the peak was socked in with clouds and rain, so other than a few photos of blurry yellow flowers and some wet rocks, there wasn’t much to see or photograph. We spend some time driving through town and looking at the sights of Victoria through raindrops on our bus windows, so not many photo ops there!
Craigdarroch Castle is an interesting attraction, and its history is full of intrigue, family feuds and probably some steamy romance. Check the website for details! Located in a residential neighborhood, buses are not allowed to come to the castle, so we were dropped off a few blocks away and walked there through a very nice neighborhood. We didn’t have time for a leisurely walk because we were late for our scheduled arrival, plus it was raining (still) and we wanted to get to the shelter of the castle. That sounds so romantic!
The castle was fairly dark and full of people, so my photography there was rather limited and shot at a pretty high ISO (thank you 5D Mark III!). I don’t think there’s much here that I’ll frame and put on the wall, but we’ll certainly have a few frames to remember our visit. The furniture was beautiful and the woodwork was extraordinary, most of it original but some of it added recently during renovation.
Our visit to downtown Victoria was complicated by the fact that it was Victoria Day – British Columbia’s version of Memorial Day – and downtown was rather congested due to closed streets for a parade. And it was raining pretty steadily, so except for a few grab shots from the sidewalk outside our bus, I don’t have much to show. It’s definitely a place I’d like to return to and spend some time, hopefully in better weather.
I’ve reached the end of the cruise portion of our vacation, so I’ll start shortly posting about our visit to wine country. I think I have more to write about our visit than I have photos, and I haven’t decided exactly how I want to present it, but I’ll be working on that soon. It’s been fun reliving our vacation, and I hope those following along have enjoyed the recollection of it as much as I have!
On our first visit to Ketchikan several years ago we did a boat tour around the area to look at “Lighthouses, Totems & Eagles” then we took in the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show. Kathy wanted to see the lumberjacks, and I wanted to see Annie Oakley.
For our day in Ketchikan this time we decided to try a boat tour to Misty Fjords National Monument. Dubbed “Yosemite of the North” for its similar geology, many of the glacial valleys are filled with sea water and are called “canals”, but they are not man-made in any way; the walls of these valleys are near-vertical and often rise 2,000 to 3,000 feet above sea level, and in some places drop 1,000 feet below it.
We sailed about the ‘St. Nona,’ one of several vessels operated by Allen Marine Tours, a family-owned tour company and one of the longest running operators in Alaska.
One of the landmarks of Misty Fjords is New Eddystone Rock, which is actually a pillar of basalt that came from fractures in the floor of Behm Canal in the last 5 million years. The broken, haphazard texture of these basalts indicates that New Eddystone Rock was part of a volcanic vent where magma rose repeatedly to the surface of the earth.
After returning from our adventure we took some time to explore the shops on Creek Street, which at one time housed the “red light district” of Ketchikan but that now takes your money in different and possibly more legal ways. We bought a few genuine Alaskan souvenirs then set out in search of ice cream. Amazingly we came up empty-handed. Not to say that there is no ice cream shop in Ketchikan, just that we didn’t find one. Hmmm, could be a business opportunity!
The next time we go to Ketchikan I think I’ll plan to spend some more time exploring the area right around the town. There were a number of commercial areas that were too far for us to walk in the short time we had, some that might be good places for lunch and some more genuine Alaskan handicrafts and art. That’s one of the problems with being on someone else’s schedule – so much to see, so little time!
Several people commented about the boat I used to illustrate my last post, and as it turns out I had taken some other photos of it but hadn’t gone back and looked at the rest of that day’s photos until yesterday. I thought it would be amusing to post a few more. I can’t imagine that the person who owns this boat pays dock fees for it, so I can only guess that he works for the marina or for one of the tour boats that operates from there. Hopefully he doesn’t have far to travel.
I don’t know much about boats but I don’t think this one would pass a Coast Guard inspection.
I’m slowly catching up on my processing after a momentary slowdown. Stay tuned for some better subject matter very soon!
At work the other morning, someone asked me how I was doing. She was somewhat taken aback when I replied that I was doing “fantastic.” She looked at me like I had just spoken to her in Swahili. I then said that having just gotten back from a 2-week vacation that I was loving life, even though the benefit of the time off was quickly fading. Cue the “must be nice,” “wish I had your money,” I could never take 2 weeks,” etc., etc., etc. commentary. Then she said something about “coming back to this place” to which I replied that I would gladly come back to work in order to be able to do another vacation like I just did, that I thought it was a fair trade. More Swahili.
We all know and work with people who are, let’s say, “happiness challenged.” Not that they are depressed or anything – although it’s possible that some of them are – but mostly they just spend a lot of time with negative attitudes – toward work, their spouse, their kids, their cars, etc. And they’re not too shy to talk about it. But that attitude carries over to how they live their lives, to the point where, for many people, they don’t seem to have the ability to understand the concept of doing things that make them happy. Sometimes I meet up with friends for lunch or dinner, and way too often all they do is complain about things.
We all have stuff that makes us angry or drives us crazy. But I have come to the conclusion – and this was a long time coming – is that it is not all of these outside things that bother me and make me crazy. It is my reaction to those things that makes them intolerable. So I’ve been working really hard at managing my own attitude, and I’ve found that it really helps. Don’t like the way people are driving? Back off and think about something else. Don’t like your cube neighbor’s Polka ringtone on his cell phone? Laugh it off. Neighbor’s dog barking endlessly while they are away? I haven’t solved that one yet, so I just turn up the music. Blue jeans in the cruise ship dining room? Whatever! I can’t change any of it, so fix the things I can fix, and for those things I can’t fix, I accept them and move on. Works for me.
The great thing about taking a vacation is that it does tend to put things in perspective. There’s a lot more to life than work, and there is way more to life than finding things to complain about. So look for the positives! While coming home and going back to work can be difficult, I would gladly trade a few months’ work in order to take another nice vacation. It’s a worthwhile trade.
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One of the best sayings I saw or heard on our trip to Alaska: “There is no such thing as inclement weather, only inappropriate clothing.” That pretty much says it!
Our day in Glacier Bay was my single best day, photographically, in a long, long time. I don’t know if that is a result of the place being so photogenic, or the fact that I was prepared for my time there, with my only goal for the day to make photographs. It’s probably a combination of the two, since Glacier Bay is certainly an amazing place and I found it quite inspirational on my first visit several years ago. I have to imagine that what I experienced was a confluence of my own openness to the place and the renewed inspiration I felt from being there.
The Tourist Approach would be to slap a wide angle lens on the camera and shoot the huge expanse of icebergs, blue water and glaciers. But what I was feeling was more intimate, although even with a 400mm lens, the actual slice of landscape I captured was still quite large. The scale of the place never ceases to amaze me.
One of the most striking things about being in Glacier Bay aboard a cruise ship is how quiet everything becomes. They mercifully turn off the sound on the outdoor “Movies Under The Stars” entertainment system (it’s just a big television), the ship slows to maneuvering speed, and except for a few comments from the onboard naturalist, the place is silent. And I crave silent. Silent makes me happy.
Only one ship at a time is allowed in each area of the park, which is huge (3.3 million acres!) with several “inlets,” so the captain is able to essentially stop the in front of the glaciers, and when the ship moves from one place to another it does so slowly, barely creating a wake. The slower movement of the ship makes using a tripod very easy, both for composition and for holding the camera still. People ask me why I use a tripod on a moving ship, but it really does make a difference. Other than a couple of videographers, mine was the only tripod I saw on board the entire cruise.
I scouted ahead of time and found a great spot on the aft of the ship that had good, unobstructed views, access to both sides of the ship and had enough room to get out of the way. You would think that, with 2000 people on a ship in a place like Glacier Bay it would be crowded, but except for the time in front of the major glaciers and the times when they were giving away free hot chocolate on deck (there are always crowds around Free Food) I had the place pretty much to myself. Most of the people hung out in the center of the ship, closer to the pools, the restrooms and the bars. Silly me, the bars!
The onboard naturalist told us that one of her most frequently asked questions was, “what’s the best side of the ship to be on to see wildlife?” To which she replies, “the OUTSIDE!” She also stated that wildlife watching involved a lot of wildlife “waiting.” But amazingly, most people didn’t like the idea of waiting. I saw dozens of seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises and whales, and often I was the only person around to see them. Once in a while someone would walk by, see all my gear and ask me if I had seen any whales. When I replied that I had, they looked at me like they thought I was lying. Most of them were too far away to take photos of them, but they were still fun to watch through my binoculars.
Even on a ship large enough to hold 2000 passengers – small by modern cruise ship standards – I was struck by the enormous scale of the landscape and how small I felt within it, the ability for it to remain relatively undisturbed and how quiet it was.
My personal favorite photos from the day are the abstracts. They really speak to the quiet and calm I felt that day. I seem to have a thing for moving water, and some of the patterns are simply spectactular. I’m thrilled that the photos reflect them so well. I also enjoyed finding patterns in the glaciers and on the mountainsides along our route. Again, the relatively slow speed made for some pretty easy composition, although I did find that I had to “lead” the scene just a bit in places. All I did there was to keep the panning knob within easy reach, so that once I had the composition framed up and level, I could just pan the camera just a bit as needed.
One of the funny things about being an obviously serious photographer on a cruise ship is that people always ask me to take their pictures. I always oblige, although Kathy often handles that task so I can keep making my own pictures. What was really funny was that I think every one of the ship’s photographers took our picture at some point during the day. They knew we would understand that they had a count to make and almost looked like they wanted to apologize for it. We didn’t buy any of their photos but it was interesting to see the difference in composition and framing between the different photographers. Good photos, reluctant subjects!
Our arrival in Juneau was delayed by about 3 hours due to a combination of a late departure from San Francisco, rough seas and wind, and a temporary problem with one of the ship’s diesel generators (described by the captain as a “bolt” that took about 2 hours to restore). As a result, we had to forgo our planned dockside lunch at a little crab shack we had heard about, but fortunately we did not miss our whale watching tour with Harv & Marv’s Outback Alaska.
Our tour had been scheduled for 3:30, but since we didn’t arrive until 4:00 I called the company and they assured me that they were aware of our late arrival and had made plans for our tour to go on as scheduled. We were very relieved at this, as several of the ship-sponsored tours and most of their earlier tours for other passengers on our ship had to be cancelled. The tour turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip, so we’re glad we didn’t miss it.
After a short van ride to the Auke Bay harbor, we met up with Captain Shawn and boarded the M/V Alaskan, a custom-built boat designed specifically for wildlife viewing. Captain Shawn is a 14-year veteran of whale watching tours and has been with the company since 2010. If I remember correctly, he told us that he has a degree in Marine Biology, so he was well-suited for the tour and turned out to be an excellent guide. There ended up being only 4 of us on this vessel designed for 14 passengers, so we had the run of the boat, which was very nice.
We spent about 3 hours cruising the waters of Auke Bay, Lynn Canal, Saginaw Channel and Favorite Channel. We saw a lot of whales, most of which were too far away to properly photograph, but we did get close to a few. Because they are very unpredictable, photographing one is a little like playing Whack-a-Mole. They blow, surface and dive in a very short time, all while they are moving. But it’s an amazing sight to see! We also saw a number of seals Sea Lions, Dall’s Porpoises and bald eagles.
Since sunset in mid-May is around 10:00, we had pretty nice light for most of the tour, although it was starting to get a little dark by the end. We arrived back at the dock a little tired and cold, but overall very happy, and headed back to the ship for a late dinner.
If you are ever in Juneau, I highly recommend Harv & Marv for your whale-watching adventure!
Several times over the last few weeks, people have asked me about our upcoming vacation. Way too often, the comments I’ve gotten have been along the lines of – insert mopey Eeyore-voice here – “boy, I’m really jealous,” “must be nice,” “I wish I could take a 2-week vacation,” “wow, two weeks? I’d never be able to be away for two weeks.” Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
When I ask people why they don’t think they could take a two week vacation (keeping in mind that many of them don’t even take one-week vacations) I get answers like, “my wife would never spend that long in a car/on a plane/with me,” or “we could never leave the cat/dog/fish/grandchild that long,” or we just can’t afford that while we’re paying for private school/ivy league college/my Mercedes/my wife’s Mercedes/our 4000 square foot house.” I get the same comments when I buy a new camera, to which I reply something about the new Harley/boat/RV or the golf club membership or the 3 car payments that some other people have.
Most people don’t mean anything by their comments, they are just trying to express their interest or make conversation. I understand that, but it still bothers me.
Everything we do has a price. My friend John Schornak refers to it as “currency.” He says there is a cost to everything, and it just depends on what kind of currency you want to use to pay for whatever you do or buy. And I agree. Sometimes it means giving up a fancy car to pay for a vacation. Sometimes it means teaching classes to pay for a camera. Sometimes it means wearing older clothes to be able to eat out more. What do you want? What are you doing to get it, and what are you willing to give up? I’ve always tended to err on the “Life” side of the Work/Life balance equation. Not everyone agrees.
Granted, we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve made good choices and things have gone our way. Some people have had bad luck, and I understand that. But most people have just made different choices, and I believe that sometimes luck comes from good planning and making the right choices. Choices that suit our needs and desires. The grass is always greener somewhere else, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. That just means that it’s different.
I’m going away for a couple of weeks. Have fun and be good. And no whining!
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This is my 200th post. Can you believe it? Thanks for stopping by and making it fun.
Kathy & I are planners, and we have developed a number of tools to help us gather and pack the clothing, sundries, camera equipment and other essentials for every kind of trip we take. I was talking with a friend the other day about our upcoming Alaska/California adventure, with the usual small talk (have you started packing, how many suitcases are you taking, etc.). I replied that while Kathy & I have talked about the fact that our packing for this trip will be a little different than our packing for a typical Caribbean cruise (it’s rainy and 44 in Skagway as I write this, with snow and lows in the 30’s in the short-term forecast!) it’s not that difficult because we’re pretty organized.
“Pretty organized” may be an understatement.
We haven’t worried about packing because it’s not a big deal. We’ve developed a workbook in Excel that contains checklists for every kind of trip we’ve ever taken. It we did something different, we would probably be able to adapt one or more of our existing lists to make a new one. It’s partly because we’ve traveled a lot and don’t like to reinvent the wheel every time, but it’s also because we try hard to not take too much stuff. It’s a bit of a challenge, but we both try very hard to enjoy coming back from a trip with stuff we didn’t use or clothes we didn’t wear. Especially the latter.
Being organized is a real advantage, though. On one hand, we love to be serendipitous. Decide on Thursday night to head for the mountains after work on Friday. Sometimes we do, and we can be packed for a weekend in 30 minutes. On the other hand, we never worry about having what we need because if we’ve needed it before it’s on the list, and if we haven’t needed it before it’s not. So when we need to we can pack in a hurry, and we take comfort in knowing that – ruling out something unexpected – if it’s not on the list, we don’t need it! And THAT allows us to enjoy the journey and not worry about the gear.
Packing camera gear is a lot like packing shirts. I decide how many I think I need, know that I’ll leave a favorite or two at home, put them in a bag or case, and go. For this upcoming trip I’ve decided to take just 3 lenses. I could take more, but then I would have to take my huge Think Tank roller and I know I’d end up having to check it. Plus, that’s a lot of gear that I just don’t need. So I’ve decided to pare things down to a small backpack that I’m confident will fit under the seat. My current lens choices are the 17-40, 24-105 and 100-400. I keep going back and forth between the 24-105 and the 24-70. It’s tough because the 24-70 is a significantly better lens (to me), but the 24-105 gives me a bit more coverage and I think the IS will come in handy. Handy enough to give up the better lens? That’s the question.
I have the same struggle with the 100-400. My 70-200 is my favorite lens of all, and I hate to leave it at home. But I really think I’m going to want the 400 focal length in Alaska, and while I could get that with the 70-200 and a 2X converter, having the converter is kind of like having another lens, because then I either have a 70-200 or I have a 140-400, and the 100-400 pretty much solves that.
And as I’m so fond of saying – repeat after me – the more lens choices I have the more likely I’ll decide I’ve got the wrong one on the camera.
My next decision involves whether to take a backup body, a point & shoot, or both. There may be a few times when I’ll want to have the 100-400 on one body and a wide-angle on another body. Not too many, but enough that I’m taking the 5D as a second body. It would be a shame to carry all that glass to Alaska and have something happen to the new 5D, so it will be good to have a worthy backup.
I originally planned to take along my G12 as a “walking around” camera, but when I really started thinking about it, I had to ask myself how likely it would be that I would leave the 5D Mark III behind anywhere? I’m pretty sure that the new camera will go with me everywhere, and that I’d end up never using the G12. So, as of right this moment it is staying at home.
One of the things I liked about my previous choices of camera bodies was that the 5D, 40D and 20D all use the same battery. The 5D Mark III uses the same battery as the 7D, but alas I didn’t buy that one, so I’ll need to take a separate set of batteries and a charger for the other camera, too. That’s not really a problem, but it is a bit more stuff to pack.
I don’t usually take a computer when we travel these days, but I’m taking one for this trip. I’m taking it mostly because I know I’m going to take a lot of photos, and even though I think I’m taking plenty of cards I want to be able to back them up. And just in case I do run out of empty cards I want to be able to re-use them. So the computer goes with me, along with an external hard drive for backup. And if I get inspired to write a blog post or two, it’s a heck of a lot easier to type on the computer than on the iPad!
Since this trip involves lots of different destinations with activities in each, with appointments and directions once we get back to California, I’ve added all my maps and documents to my iPad. So in addition to having plenty of things to read I’ve got everything I need to get us where we need to go. Pretty slick!
So, now that I’ve got all the camera gear and computer equipment figured out, the clothes should be a – relatively speaking – piece of cake!