Road Trip West Day 11 (Ventura, CA)

Our last day in Ventura we went to Loon Point Beach. Took a long walk and enjoyed the scenery. There were SandPipers everywhere, a few loons, and lots of seaweed. Later that night we flew the kite some more, spent a little time in the ocean, and watched the sunset. We then went and played Putt Putt Golf at 'Golf & Stuff', yes that was the name. It was lots of fun!

Road Trip West Day 10 (Ventura, CA)

The Great Race! Outside of Kevin & Annie's there are a ton of snails every night. I decided to catch a few shots. This was a good challenge for me. I wanted a low-grain picture so I knew I needed a long exposure. As slow as they are, they still moved quite a bit over the 3 second exposures. Plus finding a depth of field that worked with the exposure I was going for deemed a challenge as well. The results came out OK, I would love the opportunity to do them over and get some better shots. We went to the beach again, I had epic wind for flying my Kite something I haven't really had a lot of good opportunities for. We also played in the water until long after the sun had sunk into the ocean and the bright moon was shining above with casts of orange and red on the horizon. So cool being in the ocean surfing and boogie boarding in the dark.

Road Trip West Day 9 (Ventura, CA)

Abbey, Annie, and I went to Downtown Ventura while Kevin was at work. We looked in some shops, got some coffee with some Vegan Donuts too! I went to a camera shop specializing in Film. They had probably close to 500 old medium and large format cameras available for sale as well as a ton of 35mm. I picked up a roll of Ilford SFX 200 B&W film for my Canon ftB. I shot a little downtown with the film. I'm still shooting the roll and am excited to finish so I can see the results. the SFX is a 'border-line' infared film; High-Contrast, with a large red spectrum. The benefit to using the SFX instead of infared is that you don't need infared filters. A SFX filter would cause the sky to be black and the grass to be white, creating a spooky almost night-vision effect. We'll see how they turn out as-is.
We met up with Kevin at Chucky Cheese's and played a lot of games. We purchased stomp rockets with our tickets, heck yeah!

Road Trip West Day 8 (Ventura, CA)

Alright, so on this leg of our trip, the camera stayed resting for most of the time. I still took one a day, but for today, this is the only picture I took. We played clue at the end of the night. During the day we went to the Carpinteria beach and boogie boarded, had a picnic and I scared away people trying to feed the seagulls. Childish? Yes. Immature? Yes. Healthy for the birds? Most Definetly. Basically when people would throw food to the birds, I would run and dive on it before the birds could get it, I did this a few times, and after eating a significant ammount of sand, called it quits for the day. We went back to Annie & Kevin's and got in the hot tub. Clue soon followed...

Road Trip West Day 7 (Ventura, CA)

Our first full day in Ventura, CA we went to Play it Again Sports to pick up a wetsuit for muah. We found a wetsuit for $30, a pretty good deal! While I was prancing around like a ballerina, Annie & Kevin purchased Doyle, the newest member of the family. A bright red soft-top surfboard. Super awesome! We headed to the beach and they taught me how to boogie board and surf! I felt super cool surfing the waves. After 5+ hours in the ocean, we went to Mary's Secret Garden, a Vegan Restaurant, specializing in Raw Food. We indulged ourselves to the max, for sure.

Road Trip West Day 6 (Sequoia & Ventura)

There's a bunch for this day!!! This was our last day at Sequoia National Park. When doing research before we left on the trip, we found that the park has a Cave underneath one of the Sequoia groves. We thought it might not get better than that so we went. Abbey had never been to a cave, and it had been years, maybe 15 or so since I had been with my Dad in Arkansas. New experiences rock! We woke up early that morning, had a cup of tea as seen below, and packed camp.

cup of tea

We then hiked a big rock, Moro Rock. A granite formation in Sequoia. Super cool hike. 360 views of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Beautiful.

We then began our tour of Crystal Cave. Crystal Cave is mostly Marble, which I learned actually comes from Limestone! Kinda like Coal turns to diamonds but after some intense geo-plate smashing and shifting and then intense heat and ocean waters cooling down at the same time, crazy. Crystal Cave is home to many endemic creatures. We learned a lot about them, had a cool tour, the guide even turned all the lights off for a minute so we could experience complete blackness! Awesome!! Here are some pics of the cave. Unfortunately I didn't take notes and don't have a clue what these are. Any Geologists out there????


















We then left the park and headed to Ventura, our resting place for 5 days! We arrived at Kevin & Annie's place and it was so nice to be in a place that felt like home after a week of camping! We had an awesome meal and a great time chatting with each other.

Road Trip West Day 5 (Sequoia National Park)

Get ready for a boat load of pictures. I narrowed it down to these 20 from about 50 that I wanted to post.....I had a blast taking pictures at Sequoia National Park. I'll give a brief caption of what each one is. They got a little jumbled, and seeing as I still have about 12 days to catch up on I'm going to leave them how they are. Fun Fact: Sequoia National Park is home to over 2,000 Sequoias that have a greater than 10 foot diameter. and another 6,000 under 10 ft in diameter.

This is a 'Baby Sequoia' as in 400-500 years old, haha!

Peace! found in the local Bear-Proof Dumpster

If you enlarge this one, You can see tiny little Abbey way down the path next to some rather large trees.



Found a little stream running by a fallen Sequoia

A fallen tree, looking at old rings. The squiggles are years that the tree grew around fire scars!

Fire Scarred tree. Give it about 500 years and it'll be good as new, assuming there isn't another fire.


A dried Sequoia Cone. Smaller than the average coniferous cone, yet it contains thousands of Sequoia Seeds.




A fallen Sequoia. You can really see the root system still sticking out of the ground. These roots were burnt After the tree had fallen. The roots grow about 5 feet deep but up to 150 feet out from where they are!

A fallen tree with Ab standing by the roots!

Even though this tree is split in two and mostly hollowed by fire, it will more than likely completely heal and grow for upto another 1,000 years.

A 'green' or 'wet' Cone. These will stay green and on the tree for up to 20 years. They actually photosynthesize for the tree, which helps with it's enormous size. These cones will ONLY fall after a fire. The fires below cause the heat to go up and dry the cones, in which case they open up and spread their seeds and then fall to the ground. Without fire, the Sequoia cannot reproduce, they grow only from seeds.

Beetle Rock

Beetle Rock


Campfire, the last night at Sequoia.