Tomorrow morning I’m starting the Kalalau trail along the Na Pali coast.  A couple days ago we did a plane trip around the island and I took this shot.  At the time I thought it was as close to the Kalalau trail as I was going to get.  The trail has been closed because rain in the mountains had made the rivers too high to cross.  A couple days ago it reopened, and barring no major weather events I should be starting off bright and early tomorrow. I’m not sure how far I’ll make it. Miles 6.5 through 8 are right along the cliffs and hopefully those aren’t too washed away to pass.  I know mom and dad are worried about me doing this, but I just keep reminding them that I’m neither stupid nor reckless.  If I think it’s not going to be safe I’ll just turn around and head back.  But if I do make it the whole 11 miles in I’ll have three nights of camping on the beach at the end of this valley:

I’ve had a chance to go through almost all of the photos I’ve taken on the trip so far.  I’m going to attempt to set up some posts for the next couple days so there’ll be more photos appearing here even while I’m on the trail.

You can find out more information about the Kalalau trail here.

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I’ve been playing around with the vSlider theme from the folks at iRui.ac and now that I’ve finally gotten around to updating Wordpress I also updated to a new theme.  I’ll be tweeking it as I go, but I hope you all like it.

If you run a website or are just interested in this sort of stuff check out their development work.  There’s lots of cool wallpapers and of course the very cool theme vSlider for Wordpress.  All of it is up for sale (donation) as they’re trying to finance a trip around the world.

When I get back to LA and have some more time for playing around with this stuff, I’ll be purchasing a spot on their map of the world.

In the mean time, I give you another picture from Hawaii.  This is one of the many red-crested cardinals hanging out all over Oahu.

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I don’t know the name of this valley, we passed it driving back from the Waimea Canyon the other day. It was a bit cloudy all day and started to rain right before we left, but I still a great time playing around with my camera.

I’ve finally gotten around to starting to go through some of the pictures I’ve been taking here in Hawaii, so you can be expecting to see some more here soon.  You may have also noticed that I’ve also finally found a picture to replace the generic header that came with this wordpress theme.  That’s a picture of the shadow of our tour van as we went up the Mauna Kea on the big island to visit the observatories.

Categories: Pictures
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I’ve taken about 2500 pictures this trip and am working now in getting it down to just a few that are actually good. With the results I’ve gotten from what I’ve gone through so far I figure I might end up with as many as 50 that are worth keeping. Here’s a couple from my drive out to Colorado at the start of this trip:

Both these pictures were taken from a rest stop in Utah. I believe I was on highway 70 at this point, though it might still have been the 15.

I haven’t been to all the states yet, but Utah just might have the best views from their rest stops. They are the sort of views that always make me grateful for the interstate highway system and glad I’m not traveling in a covered wagon across the deserts.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet bought a tripod so even though I was there a little later during a great sunset the low light pictures I took didn’t really come out very well. I guess I’ll just have to go back someday… What a shame.

I’ve been getting the chance to play around with my new camera on this trip and hopefully as I continue I’ll be able to up that ratio of 50 decent pictures out of every 2500.

More pictures coming as I get them sorted.

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I’ve made it to Las Vegas where I’ll be for the next week visiting with a friend, starting up work again, and (next weekend) attending the New Media Expo.

This means that I’ll finally get all the pictures I’ve been taking sorted through and the good ones posted here. For now though I have a couple pictures I took earlier this evening while waiting for the AAA guy to come bring me some gas because I’d run out on Highway 93 in Nevada. Yes, that’s right, my little Prius ran out of gas.

In my defense I don’t think that’s completely true. According to the odometer I should have been able to make it another 80 miles or so. I should have had another 2 gallons left. I think it must have been that the gas was so low that for some reason it wasn’t getting to the engine. I don’t know what the outtake set up is on the gas tank, but that’s my current theory.

At any rate, I got stuck on the side of the highway and luckily had cell phone reception and a free trial version of the AAA “Plus” membership that includes a couple (in this case 5) gallons of gas brought out to you if you’re a dumbass and didn’t fill up in the last gas station for the next 90 miles.

The second picture should give you a good idea of exactly where in the middle of nowhere I was. It was empty pretty much the entire 90 miles between Ash Springs and Vegas. While talking to the dispatcher I had to walk about ten minutes to find a marker that would give a good idea of where I was. Even after walking that far I didn’t actually make it to a sign (though I could see one way off in the distance) but someone pulled over and was able to give me directions to pass on.

So I ate my dinner and took pictures, and now I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t try to go more than 450 miles on one tank even if I technically should have enough gas to do it. Here is my favorite picture of the evening:

Categories: Pictures
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