I am staying with some "friends of friends" I guess, and this place can only be described as good for the soul. Full of peace and tranquility, a good place for a break from the manic life of travelling.
Up on leaving SB I travelled up to SC for a night and was treated to spending the night looking out over the pacific in a tepee (purchased from tepee.com if you ever need one!). It was an amazing night and I got to catch up with Duncan and discuss the pros and cons of the american dream, the conclusion..... society is pretty screwed but all the same california is a nice place to live.
After that we headed to San Fran to sample its delights and meet my girlfriend who was due to arrive that evening. I had high expectations for San Fran, from talking to people I was given the impression it was similar to Vancouver, ie many hippies. In reality this was not the case, it is a surprisingly grungy town, I have a feeling it is a bit like Glasgow in the sense that it doesn't make a great first impression but the more you get to know it the better it becomes. Certainly a place with lots of interesting people.
Having had our metropolitan fix, it was time to head to the wilderness and on the way sample the amtrak. Amtrak is a pleasant way to travel but unfortunately they aren't that organised loosing one of our bags. One long day of travelling behind us we finally ended up in Toulumne Meadows and by some fluke bumped into George and Mason (his climbing partner) and got ourselves a campsite.
We then spent the next week hanging out and basically watching George climb, the highlight being an unbolted ascent of Bachar/Yerian. This turned out to be pretty big news and the next time we had internet access we discovered george was all over the climbing sites.
After a week in Toulumne we headed down to Yosemite valley, for more climbing. The valley despite its beauty does not compare to Toulumne, Toulumne in fact makes the valley feel like a small city. All the same it is a pretty amazing place, with granite towering above you in all directions. Here we met 3 people from Portland who were looking for people to climb with so Eva and I jumped at the opportunity and finally got a week of good cragging in. This was great fun and I finally got introduced to "freedom climbing" ie crack climbing, something I could definitely get into.
The week ended and I was left by myself for the first time on the trip, with the plan of meeting everyone in roughly a week. Since I didn't get any climbing done up in Toulumne I decided to return and try and climb some of the routes I had been staring at. Things just began to fall into place. As I got off the bus, Justin and Sara (the people I met in the valley) pulled up and a guy who just got off the phone came over and asked if I needed a partner and if we needed somewhere to stay, the answer being yes and yes. The place to stay being very important since the campsite was booked up. Two days of awesome climbing ensued before Justin (actually spelt Jasin) and Sara left to continue their travels. At this point two girls who we had met moved into the campsite and my next little climbing adventure began.
Tori and Sara, two super cool, pysched climbers from Tahoe, perfect people to share a site with. They also had more people visiting so I spent a couple of days bouldering with them as well as having a couple of long awesome multipitch days. That weekend everyone left and I was alone once more for a couple of days, I took this time to soak up the beauty of Toulumne some more and just relax.
Sara then returned and we had another week enjoying the wonders of Toulumne. In my mind I have never been to a more ideal place, beautiful scenery, crystal clear rivers, amazing climbing, quiet, cool people, just a great place to end up spending two weeks.
Sara and I were however about ready for civilisation, in particular showering, electricity, none camping food and toast! So we headed to Santa Cruz for the weekend to soak up the wonders of society. Still you can't go too many days with out climbing, so her boyfriend took us to Castle rock, a mini font in the mountains above santa cruz. I also got another california tick and tried my hand a surfing, which is very difficult.
And after a couple more unforeseen I find myself back in Bonny Doon writing this blog entry. Only a couple more days of my trip left, and since I have no fixed plans there is still a little time for some adventure.
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