The Travel Continues West

It's been nearly three weeks since my last post, from Moab! Agh! After leaving Utah we stayed the night in the Navajo National Monument camp ground in NE Arizona. The monument houses Navajo artifacts from the area and protects the left over mountainside habitat (which was pretty cool to see.)

After one night there we drove West, through the Grand Canyon National Park to look over the ginormous crevice. It was cool, Rae wasn't impressed. It was so busy, and nothing as populated with tourists is ever as interesting as finding something on your own. Nevertheless, we made our fun with photos and went on our way.

the ol' GC

and us in front of it...

this was sort of scary. i still imagine falling off the edge right as i'm going to sleep at nights...

We arrived in Flagstaff, AZ and found a free dispersed camping site in the Coconino National Forest just North of town. It's the first time we've seen trees like this since we've been on the road! It was a cooling site for our desert-scorched eyeballs!

celebration of arrival into the trees

We stayed in Flagstaff for a week, with a schedule something like this:

Morning - Americano and breakfast at Macy's European Coffeehouse while Rae blogged
           and I processed hundreds (HUNDREDSSS) of raw photographs from Moab.
Afternoon - walking around down town Flagstaff before heading back into the woods
Evenings - read, eat, read, read, read, pee in the woods, read, go to sleep at dark.

Flagstaff is adorable and charming, big things with a small city feel. Rae was tempted to stay "if it wasn't landlocked." I found hiking boots (that I had been whining I needed for weeks) at a thrift store for $2. We had a perfectly relaxing time and both finished a couple books while lying around the Scampi in the trees.

From Flagstaff we took a long trek through the Mojave - we had originally planned to camp there for a night or two but by that time we were both so tired of the desert scene that we pushed on forward to Bakersfield, CA. There we had some local brew and slept the night in a parking lot. Then on toward the coast! We arrived at water in Cambria, then drove North on California's coastal Highway 1. The view is amazing, sadly I didn't get many photos because the day we came (and the day we left) fog was covering the water.

Our camp site was amazing! We stayed here for the week, not doing much of anything but hiking to beaches, reading, and enjoying the hummingbird who visited every couple hours. Gas there is outrageous, since there are no other stations for 60 miles, so we traveled most on foot. Our longest hike to the ocean (we are guessing) was about 3.5 miles one way. I am realizing how out of shape I am. But it was a good day trip. We brought Rumi so she could romp in the water - we found she was not fond of the tide coming in and out, but she enjoyed herself anyway.

With our limited range of travel from the camp site I found myself getting a little stir crazy. But then I unraveled and employed myself with photographing flowers and finding their names in my grandmother's Flowers Guide. I waited for the hummingbird to come by, always trailing the bee in flower rotations by about ten minutes. I listened to the waves, the bark of seals, buzz of the bees. Let myself be, without anywhere to go. I needed that, it just took me a couple days to settle into it.

necklace?!

i love these teensy tiny flowers!

seal friend

hummingfriend

the Scampi is there just beside that tree on the far left.

This week we are in San Francisco. Actually, right now we're in Fairfax, just N of the bay area in a cute little town, in a lovely coffee roastery. We parked Scampi at Samuel P Taylor State Park outside Fairfax but we have been traveling to San Fran each day for some action (mostly find-a-parking-space-and-get-back-before-two-hours action). We have seen a good amount of the city, although we know there are a million more things to see. But I'll save all this info for the next post....

For now we are enjoying a chill day outside the city. Hope you are as well, wherever you are!