Greetings from the Left Coast

We arrived in Santa Cruz this evening, after a bit of a bumpy ride. We spent three days in Tucson, AZ, with Paul, April, and Silas. This was wonderful, aside from one small detail–I got a vicious cold on the drive from Hueco Tanks to Tucson. I spent most of the time in bed, or sitting at a desk working, rather than doing stuff like visiting Mount Lemmon, drinking, climbing on their backyard wall, or swimming. This was not fun. But….I am not alone on this journey, and the rest of the gang had a fine time, and we miss our friends already.

We spent an evening in Joshua Tree, stealing away a few minutes to sample the boulders around the Hidden Valley Campground before the sun set. We ate dinner, then the fun started–Seb had picked up whatever I had, which it made it difficult for him to sleep, which meant it was more difficult for us to sleep. I ended up sleeping in the top of the van with Oren. While the pop-top bed is great for the kids, it closely resembles a coffin for an adult. Add to that my waning sickness, and temps that flirted with freezing, and it is safe to say we’ve had better nights. But, the sun rose, the air warmed, and we were okay again, enjoying the scenery along the central California coast. The rolling, pastoral hills between Fresno and Watsonville were my favorite bit of the trip so far.

So, we’re in Santa Cruz for about a week, while I work in my employer’s Scotts Valley office. We hope to visit Castle Rock State Park near San Francisco for a day or so of bouldering, then we begin the trip east, with a first stop planned for Salt Lake City.