Crazy California: Finding Purple Sand Beach (Part 5)

May 3, 2016

The original plan was to take a weekend trip to go backpacking in Yosemite National Park. But, due to the extreme heat forecasted over the weekend, no camping reservations, and at least an eight hour round trip to and from the park, new plans were hatched. Instead, I convinced my friend, Tina, to go on an adventure to find a purple sand beach. The pictures looked amazing! See here.

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, CA

Early Saturday morning, we packed up and headed out. Our first stop was the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, CA. We arrived at low tide and spent a couple hours exploring the tide pools. The rocks were slick and covered with colorful seaweed.

The tide pools were full of fluorescent sea anemones, some turning to slimy blobs without the water to bolster their tentacles. As alluring as anemones are, I'd advise to refrain from touching them. Sea anemones shoot out small poison laden harpoons when they are touched to incapacitate their prey. While most anemones are not lethal to humans, there are some that are.

At the edge of the shoreline, a colony of sea lions napped while little crabs scurried around the rocks. Fish, birds, and the smell of seaweed abounded. Later, I would learn that I'd pretty much been standing next to the Monterey Submarine Canyon, an underwater canyon in Monterey Bay, which rivals the depth/height of the Grand Canyon.

Can you imagine a huge underwater canyon stretching out from here?

Pfeiffer State Park, CA

The adventure continued on through Santa Cruz, Monterey, and King City. In King City, we stopped at the Los Padres National Forest ranger station. The station was closed, however, a firefighter who was doing some work in the station let us in and even showed us some maps of the area. I highly recommend going to the ranger station for any national forest you're thinking about staying in because they are the only ones with the maps of the area and the rangers can tell you about camping and the rules and regulations of the forest.

The next stop was Pfeiffer State Park back on the coast. That is where the purple sand beach was supposed to be. In order to get there, we drove through a winding road through Los Padres National Forest to get to the coast. It was a beautiful drive which took us through yellow grassy fields, forests, and even above the cloud cover.

We passed by several campgrounds pf which I made a mental note of just in case we couldn't find any camping. As it turned out, many people were camped in the turnouts alongside the road. This was the first time I'd seen people camped out in turnouts with tents and everything. To this day, I still don't know if that's actually allowed or if people were just doing that since there isn't any way to drive into the forest. It was pretty sad to see the amount of litter in the turnouts. One group of campers appeared to have had quite a destructive spree as glass bottles had been shattered all over the turnout.

Driving was easy going once we hit Highway 1. The views of the ocean were spectacular as the early evening sun reflected off the water. Finding the beach was...challenging. Should you attempt to find the beach, know that the beach is at the end of Sycamore Canyon Road, a very narrow, uneven road which accommodates two-way traffic. There was a long line of people waiting to pay their $10 to get into the beach parking area as parking was full.

Once parked, we made our way to the beach. We were immediately greeted by a series of sign posts detailing "the story of a bear and a duck." The trail of sign posts ended at a platform surrounded by tiki torches and videographers. It looked like someone was going to propose on the beach.

Since there was no proposal to watch, we headed further down the beach on the lookout for the purple sand. We asked the people walking on the beach if they knew were the purple sand was, but it appeared we were the only ones on the beach looking for purple sand.

We did find some purple-ish sand, but nowhere near the amount of purple that I'd seen on the internet. According to the internet, the sand looks more purple after a rain. In any case, the beach was beautiful and we wandered around a bit until sunset before heading out. We thought we'd be able to catch a glimpse of the proposal closer to sunset, but the couple never showed.

I gunned it back towards the road through Los Padres National Forest. It took us a while before finding a suitable unoccupied turnout as there were even more people staked out in turnouts. We settled in and had a couple of freeze dried meals from Alpinaire. They were pretty tasty and easy to prepare.

Pinnacles National Park, CA

The next morning, we made breakfast on the BioLite Wood Burning Stove. It was the first time I'd used the stove and absolutely loved it. The coolest thing about the stove is that it has a built in fan which is powered by a battery that is charged from the heat of the twigs you burn in the stove. Have you ever seen your fire die out because it couldn't get enough air? This stove provides a constant stream of air to the fire which in turn allows you to combust all sorts of things and makes it very easy to light the fire. On top of that, the stove is extremely fuel efficient as it requires only a couple handful of twigs to cook up a whole breakfast.

With breakfast done, we headed inland to Pinnacles National Park.

Pinnacles National Park in the summer is dry and hot. The sun beat down upon us and there was little way to escape it as Tina and I hiked up to the Bear Gulch Reservoir.

The terrain was rocky and steep. It was formed by a combination of volcanic activity, the movement of the San Andreas fault, and general erosion. We passed through small caves, narrow staircases, and eventually reached the reservoir which had dwindled down to a small pond.

My favorite part of the hike was discovering trees with curling red bark. Internet research tells me they are called madrone trees. Today, the tree is mostly used for firewood as it is a very hard and dense wood. However, indigenous people used to eat the berries and use the bark for medicinal purposes.

Soon the weekend was over and it was time to return to the Bay and once again to hit the road on my own.

Crazy California: LA & SF PRIDE (Part 4)

April 13, 2016

I’m often asked if I’ve set off on this journey to do some soul searching or to find myself. The simple answer is no. While I suspect that traveling will have an everlasting impact on me, it is not the reason I travel. The situation is actually the reverse. For me, traveling is a byproduct of my journey towards self-discovery (which I will write more about later).

In my life, I have tried to become many things. After all, “what do you want to become?” is an all too common question when we are young. However, it’s a misleading question and draws our attention away from an even more important task of just being ourselves. Ironically, I find that as adults, we sometimes have to turn a passive act of being into an active one of becoming as we often lose sight of who we are, having practiced for so long being someone other than ourselves.

When I think about being myself, I’m often remind of the excerpt of a poem called, “I Sing the Body Electric” by Andrea Gibson:

I said to the the sun
“Tell me about the big bang”
The sun said
“it hurts to become”

It hurts to become.

Of the many challenges in my life, it’s been hard to accept that I’m gay. It’s been even harder to be out, to be open about the fact that I am gay. I won’t get into the details, but I can assure you it’s been a process that has spanned the better part of my adult life. There’s nothing quite like negotiating expectations set forth by family, relatives, friends, culture, community, religion, work, etc. There’s nothing quite like drowning in shame, guilt, depression, etc. after having violated those expectations.

The idea of having pride in who I am has long been elusive to me as much as I’ve desired it. In that sense, I find it very fitting that the once-a-year celebration of being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) and the rest of the alphabet soup is called PRIDE. I don’t think it’s about being prideful as in celebrating an inordinate opinion of one’s self. I think it’s about owning our identities--letting fear, shame, and guilt take a vacation--and celebrate who we are, at least for a day.

Los Angeles Pride (June 12-14, 2015)

While in Phoenix, I met Courtney who told me about WeHo (West Hollywood) pride in Los Angeles, CA. She told me that she was going to head there with a group of friends and that I could meet up with them in LA. It later turned out that Courtney did not end up going, but I had already made plans to be in LA for pride. Coincidentally, my cousin was staffing an event at the festival and hooked me up with work.

LA Pride was nestled on a block in West Hollywood. It was a lot smaller than I expected considering LA is a large city. LA Pride was also the first pride I’d been to that charged admission to the festival, a grand whopping $20 a day! I can see the benefit of charging admission if it means the organizers can use that money to keep corporate interest out, but the same corporate suspects were present. I’m glad Minneapolis pride does not charge admission and continues to be fairly accessible to those who want to celebrate.

Probably the funniest part of LA pride was finding out I was at a Kesha concert. I’d been working 10 hour shifts at pride and around 9PM on my second day, I hear Kesha music playing from the main stage. Luckily, I was working in the VIP section (which was fairly empty) and I was able to walk up pretty close to the stage without much trouble.

San Francisco Pride (June 27-28, 2015)

One of my dreams was to go to San Francisco Pride for its iconic factor. I remember watching the movie Milk thinking how cool it would be to go see the Castro. Milk is a biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk. He was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California; and he lived in the Castro neighborhood.

So, in late June, I found myself getting off the BART at the Civic Center station to go volunteer at the festival’s informational booth. It was entertaining helping festival goers find their way around a city I didn’t live in and inform them about events at a festival I’d never been to.

SF Pride was of epic proportions. On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that gay marriage was a constitutional right. It’s not surprising that there were over 2 million people who attended the festival.

After I finished volunteering, I headed to the Pink Party in the Castro to find my friend, Austin. As soon as I emerged from the train station, I was swallowed up in a sea of people.

Needless to say, SF Pride was an interesting experience which may or may not have included falling asleep on the last train leaving SF and ending up at the terminus stop without a way to get back to Oakland, losing my credit card, running away from a predatory taxi driver…

Austin and I - surviving the craziness of pride.

HAPPY PRIDE!

Crazy California: Channel Islands National Park (Part 3)

September 22, 2015

For the longest time, I'd heard that driving Hwy 1 along California’s coast was a beautiful drive. One summer, I drove a small portion of that highway between Monterey and Big Sur. Indeed, it was gorgeous. This time, I decided to take the opportunity and drive the portion between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Finding the coastal highway in Los Angeles wasn’t too hard, but staying on it proved to be tougher than expected as it wound through the city. I often became distracted by random street art, or surfers, or gas prices, etc. The day was overcast and hazy. I couldn’t tell if it was fog or smog, It was probably both. In any case, there wasn’t much of a view in any direction.

Channel Islands National Park, CA

The Channel Islands are a group of islands located off the coast of California. There are 8 in total, of which 5 belong to the National Park Service. I think of the Channel Islands as the United States’ version of the Galapagos. There are several species which are endemic to the islands. In other words, the flora and fauna of the islands have been removed long from their mainland relatives to have developed into their own unique subspecies.

All adventures to the Channel Islands begin with purchasing a boat ticket through Island Packers in Ventura, CA. Island Packers is the National Park’s concessionaire and the only company that is allowed to dock its vessels on the islands belonging to the National Park. It was rather easy to get a spot on a boat to Santa Cruz Island the next day. All I had to do was to find a place to stay. The map showed Los Padres National Forest as being the closest place and that’s where I went.

It rained all morning the day I went to the Channel Islands, which limited visibility, but kept it nice and cool.

On my hike up from the beach, a woman asked me to borrow one of my hiking poles. I initially hesitated because it would mean I'd be stuck hiking with her until I got it back. But, I decided that she probably needed it more than I did, so I agreed. I ended up spending all day with her and her husband and son on the island. Since the parents were slower going, I hiked mostly with their son who was super interested in the accounting profession and asked me all sorts of questions about the subject. All I could think of was that I was not the ideal person to be talking to about the merits of the accounting profession as I was just getting out of it. Other subjects covered included: investments in real estate, substitute teaching, nursing school, and life in Vietnam.

Santa Cruz Island looking inland after the sun came out

In addition to being a place to see some unique plants and animals, the Channel Islands are also a really great place to witness the success of the National Park Service's (NPS) work in restoring the islands to what they would have been like before human presence. I learned that in the 1990s, the NPS professional hunters to come exterminate thousands of feral pigs, sheep, and other human introduced animals on the islands in an attempt to restore the islands to their natural state. I guess the park didn't think having the islands' plant life mowed down by farm animals gone wild was a good thing. The NPS also helped reintroduce bald eagles to the islands after having been wiped out by the use of pesticides such as DDT. Eagles were eating fish contaminated by DDT which is poisonous to adults and weakens their eggs so that they crush their own eggs while sitting on them.

All in all, a day on the Island of the Blue Dolphins was enjoyable and I'd totally go back to do an overnight trip there as it's rather easy to camp on the islands.

How I Spent $283 in Lodging in 4 Months of Travel

September 22, 2015

Everyone’s style of travel is different. Some people require the assurance of five-star hotel amenities before being able to step out the door; others can make due with less. No matter what your style is, the cost of lodging can easily break the bank especially for those desiring to travel for longer periods of time in the United States and Canada. For that reason, I would like to share with you some of the things I’ve done to spend less on where I sleep and be able to spend more on travel experiences.

As of the date of this post, I have spent a total of $283 in lodging in over 4 months of full-time travel. This includes the cost of campgrounds, hotels, and hostels. While I could have been more aggressive and not chosen to pay for some of the places, I always try to consider the trade off of the additional cost of driving out of my way to find a cheaper place to stay, location convenience, and overall feeling of safety. The following are my top picks for places to stay in order of preference. Keep in mind that I travel in a vehicle I can sleep in and do not require hookups.

1) US National Forests/Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Land

Both Forest Service land and BLM land are public lands that the US Government manages through its respective agencies. It is free and legal to stay on public land as long as you don’t erect a permanent structure on the land and follow the miscellaneous regulations in each district. You can find National Forests and BLM land all over the western part of the United States. Unfortunately, there is very little public land east of the Mississippi.

I love public lands because it's free and beautiful camping. In the forest, I can sleep in silence, I don’t have to worry about theft, and I can shower, brush my teeth, and relieve myself with relative ease. It might sound dangerous to seek out remote locations to stay, but in my experience, I’ve never met anyone who made me question my safety, and for the most part, the roads to access public lands are decent to drive on.

My advice: if you want to camp on public land, is to talk to the rangers in the respective office for the district you would like to stay in. Ask them whether there are any free campsites or whether they allow “dispersed camping”, and if they do, where it is allowed. Every place will have different guidelines. In addition, ask them if they can show you a map of the area since often public lands are dotted with parcels of privately owned land which you should not be staying on. I wouldn’t rely on the Forest Service or BLM websites to be user-friendly or have complete information as some forests will have maps and some won’t. Remember that the Forest Service and BLM offices operate on official government hours and will probably be close around 4:30-5pm, and may have limited hours on weekends.

2) Friends, Family, and Couchsurfing

There are many reasons for why I recommend tapping into your social network while traveling. One of the benefits is having a place to stay in urban environments, as well as a place to be out of the elements, take a shower, and/or do laundry. Much of the reason I was able to stay in California as long as I did was because of the people who let me stay with them. Even at the cheapest hostel rate, I would not have been able to afford staying in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Aside from having somewhere to stay, it’s great to explore a new place with someone who is more familiar with the area than you are. What’s even better is that everyone has a different set of interests and a different take on the place in which they live. This means that you’ll probably have the opportunity to see the places you visit from different vantages than you would seek out yourself all while in the company of amazing people, which leads me to the best reason to seek out people to stay with.

The human connection makes traveling most meaningful and memorable for me. Whether you’re meeting for the first time, reconnecting, visiting, or getting to know someone in a totally different context than before, I can’t recommend staying with others enough. It takes a lot more logistical planning to stay with people, especially when couchsurfing, but don’t be afraid to reach out and life might surprise you with who it brings into your life. This trip would most certainly not be possible without the people who have let me stay with them and I am ever grateful for their kindness and generosity. As of the date of this post, 26 people have welcomed me into their homes. They are credited below:

Yasmin, Mineas, Jade, Julia, Jennifer, Eric, Tina, Austin, Aria, Sarah, Haftom, Oliver & Owen, Dana & David, Ann & RC & Paul & Susan, Carolyn, Jess, Kyle & Steph, Mara, and my Aunt and Uncle.

3) Urban Places To Overnight

There are numerous places you can openly overnight in urban environments as long as you can sleep in your car. Some places include: Walmart, Cracker and Barrel, truck stops, gas stations, and rest stops. It’s always good to inquire if overnight stays are allowed since many places have their particulars.

While it’s free to stay at these places, and I’ve most definitely stayed at all the places mentioned above and many others, it’s not what I prefer. Sleeping in public places is tough. For me, it took a long time to get over my paranoia of sleeping in unfamiliar spaces. Once I got over the fear of people breaking into my car, I had to contend with the loud noise of traffic, generators running at all hours, and the sound of random people milling about. And well, if you can get over that, you may have to deal with sleeping under flood lights, having random trash or shopping carts slam into your vehicle, and any other external disturbances. To top it all off, you have to be very conscious of your food and water consumption because having to use a restroom in the middle of the night can be logistically complicated. On the bright side, you’ll probably have less bugs to deal with, and have access to restroom facilities and running water.

It takes more effort to find places to stay that cost less. Sometimes, you scramble and you don’t find out you have a place to stay until the last moment. Sometimes, you are racing the sunlight to find a place to camp while bemoaning not having reception or a detailed map of the area. Sometimes, you’re just so sick of the road, the weather, the complication that you are willing to shell some cash for a place to stay the night. The best thing is to be safe, be flexible, and keep enough spare funds to get a hotel room as a last resort.

Interested in hosting me at a future date? Let me know in the comments below.

For those of you wondering how I spent my lodging funds, here’s a breakdown between 5/12 – 9/22:

Motel 8 – Denver $30

White Sands NM - $3

Grand Canyon NP - $18

Joshua Tree NP - $15

Kings Canyon NP - $9

Grizzly State Park, CA - $18

A Campsite in the Yukon - $12CAD

Double Tree in Detroit - $60 – friend’s wedding

Denali NP - $28

Billie’s Hostel, AK - $60 – two nights at a hostel, but I only stayed one night

Mt. Rainier NP - $20 – paid for but didn’t stay the night

Craters of the Moon NM - $10

Crazy California: A Grave Matter (Part 2)

September 11, 2015

I have a lot of memories of LA that span the entirety of my childhood and then some. Many things I learned in LA, I'm proud to say, have helped shape who I am today. I credit this to the immeasurable influence of my aunt and uncle who live in Long Beach, CA.

Unfortunately, it was bad timing for my aunt and uncle as they were dealing with a death in the family. So, instead of social pleasantries, I went to the cemetery to visit my dad dressed in my "finest" city clothes. Having no place to clean up, I showered behind my truck amidst the large rock formations in Joshua Tree and boom! Several hours later, I had arrived.

It took the cemetery people nearly 20 minutes to figure out which plot I was looking for. I don't understand why I had to provide them with my SSN and other irrelevant information...During this ordeal, one of the three idle employees standing around the front desk looked me up and down and sneered at my sandals. I'm not sure what his issue was since there was no one to impress, just the dead, which I'm sure don't give a s***. On top of getting sneered at, before I left the cemetery, I'd been solicited to purchase additional grave plots three times because "space was becoming limited". The arrogance, commercialism, and overall poor customer service was annoying.

I never knew my dad as he passed away when I was very young. All I have are a collection of stories and a larger than life mental image of my dad which I don't think I could ever live up to. It wasn't until I was in college that an old friend of my dad's told me that I needed to stop living in his shadow and make my own way. That observation really jolted me and I've taken that bit to heart. Nevertheless, my dad has remained very important to me, and I've visited him every time I visited LA.

In honor of my dad, let me share with you a story I was told when I was young. My dad traveled a lot for work. On many occasions, he traveled internationally. He traveled so much to Brazil that he was able to pick up Portuguese and was possibly the first person in his company to deliver business presentations in the local language. Back then, it was unheard of for Americans to do this. In addition to traveling a lot, he also enjoyed playing pranks on people. I remember growing up in a house full of my dad's prank cigarette boxes, gum sticks, etc.

One time, a delegation of business men from Brazil came to Minnesota and my dad went to pick them up from the airport. The Brazilians were completely baffled and in awe when they got in the car as a local Brazilian broadcast was playing. They were so impressed, they told other people at the Minnesota office about it. The Minnesotans were confused because they couldn't recall any radio stations which aired in Portuguese. It was later revealed to them that my dad had recorded the station on a cassette while he was in Brazil and had been playing it in his car. Presumably, this was to help them feel more at home while away from home. But, to me, it's always been a story that illustrated one of the many ways my dad was extremely creative, humorous, and thoughtful.

Peace. Love Nicole.