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Northern California

Adventures in the Golden State

By Gregor McNeish

July 21^st, 2014

Burlingame

Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. An early suburb of San Francisco, the city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. Beginning in the 1960s its proximity to the San Francisco International Airport generated airline support services growth and an increase in population.

Of course the girls just wanted the Gap…

napa VALLEY

Calistoga & St Helena

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State Parks

Our first camp, Bothe-Napa State Park. A beautiful wild retreat amid the upperclass enclaves and caves of the Napa Valley. Responsible for almost one-third of California‘s scenic coastline, the California State Park system includes 280 parks, beaches, trails, wildlife areas, open spaces, off-highway vehicle areas, and historic sites. It consists of approximately 1.59 million acres, including over 339 miles of coastline, 974 miles of lake, reservoir and river frontage, approximately 15,000 campsites and alternative camping facilities, and 4,456 miles of non-motorized trails.

Sierra NEvada

Large rocks and tall trees.

The Sierra runs 400 miles (640 km) north-to-south, and is approximately 70 miles (110 km) across east-to-west. Notable Sierra features include Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at 14,505 ft (4,421 m), the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers out of 100-million-year-old granite.

On the road to Tahoe.

Shenanigans at the Lake and biggest ice cream we have ever seen.

Camp Richardson Corral, Lake Tahoe.

Camp (Richardson) Life. S’mores ‘n’ all.

BODIE

Bodie – a town so lawless that in 1881 it was described as:

“ . . .a sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.” Quote by Reverend F. M. Warrington

Bodie is a ghost town – perhaps the West’s best preserved ghost town, where abandoned, weather-beaten buildings stand stoically against encroaching sagebrush. But years ago, the remote mining camp east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California became the object of a gold rush that gave rise to one of the West’s wildest boomtowns. Saloon brawls, stagecoach robberies, vigilante justice, and spontaneous eruptions of gunfire earned Bodie a reputation for violence that rivaled Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City. Bodie’s penchant for trouble gave rise to one legendary figure, though his fame was short-lived. Evoking peril and doom, the “Bad Man from Bodie” was a name recognized across the country.

There‘s a story about a little girl whose family was moving from San Francisco to Bodie, she wrote in her diary: “Goodbye God, I‘m going to Bodie”

Yosemite

What can i say about this place… Not just a great valley, but a shrine to human foresight, the strength of granite, the power of glaciers, the persistence of life, and the tranquility of the High Sierra. First protected in 1864, Yosemite National Park is best known for its waterfalls, but within its nearly 1,200 square miles, you can find deep valleys, grand meadows, ancient giant sequoias, a vast wilderness area, and much more.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” – John Muir

“There are no forms in nature. Nature is a vast, chaotic collection of shapes. You as an artist create configurations out of chaos. You make a formal statement where there was none to begin with. All art is a combination of an external event and an internal event… I make a photograph to give you the equivalent of what I felt. Equivalent is still the best word.” – Ansel Adams

“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.” ― Ansel Adams

CARMEL & MONTEREY

Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, USA, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history. In 1906, the San Francisco Call devoted a full page to the “artists, poets and writers of Carmel-by-the-Sea“, and in 1910 it reported that 60 percent of Carmel‘s houses were built by citizens who were “devoting their lives to work connected to the aesthetic arts.” Early City Councils were dominated by artists, and the city has had several mayors who were poets or actors, including Herbert Heron, founder of the Forest Theater, bohemian writer and actor Perry Newberry, and actor-director Clint Eastwood, who was mayor for one term, from 1986 to 1988.