Outdoor Travel Geek

  • snowy swan song

    For the last full day in Prague our plan was actually to spend it outside of Prague. I had wanted to go to a concentration camp called Terezin, which was about an hour bus ride outside of Prague. But when I woke up and looked outside the window and saw that it was snowing pretty…

  • the prague card

    After our whirlwind walking tour of Prague, we knew what most of the major attractions were in Prague. We decided to buy a Prague Card, which would get us into most of the attractions for free. We went to a few museums. One of the museum exhibits had this lithograph of Prague in the 1500’s.…

  • whirlwind walkthrough of prague

    I had made it to the hotel that Jack was staying at without a problem. The place he’s staying at was quite nice, and it served a pretty good breakfast. Along with typical breakfast foods like bacon and eggs they had a wide variety of pastries. And they had panna cotta. I found that panna…

  • passage to prague

    I am venturing outside of the country for the first time in a dozen years. It’s mostly stupidity on my part that has kept me from traveling outside of the United States for so long. Up until about six years ago I was a citizen of South Korea, with an expired passport. I didn’t bother…

  • yosemite in winter

    I love Yosemite. I’ve been to Yosemite many times, but I always find new things I love about it. Of course part of the reason is the many epic hikes in Yosemite, like Half Dome or Cloud’s Rest, but even shorter hikes out of the valley are nice there. Even though I’ve been to Yosemite…

  • carson pass snowshoeing

    Today I went snowshoeing with some friends from my small group. Originally it was supposed to be an overnight trip, but we ended up changing it to a day trip instead. The trailhead was the Carson Pass sno-park, same as last weekend. Here we strapped on our snowshoes and began our hike into the Mokelumne…

  • year ends and old friends

    So apparently New Year’s Eve is the biggest party day of the year. I wouldn’t really know, I’m not really all that much of a party person. I don’t think I’ve been to an actual New Year’s party in my lifetime. This year was pretty low key too. My parents were in town, so I…

  • snow scouting

    Today I went snow camping. Or I guess I should rephrase that. The original plan was to go snow camping, spending the night in a snow cave. We ended up doing a day trip instead. It’s all good for me though, I was planning to go up to the same place next weekend anyways, so…

  • not so subtle

    Today I went home to visit my family for Christmas. My parents gave me a Christmas card. Here it is. They used to be somewhat subtle about this. They’re not so subtle anymore. So anyways, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

  • newly nikonian?

    My new Nikon D600 arrived today. Coincidentally, it was actually sunny today. So I took it for a hike. I figured the best way to see how much better it is than my old camera is to go somewhere that I’ve photographed often. So I went to Cold Canyon, a place I’ve hiked to probably…

  • farewell pentax

    Recently I ordered a Nikon D600, which is a pretty big (and expensive) upgrade from my Pentax K20 camera. So I’ll soon be selling my Pentax gear to cover the cost of the new camera. I’ve had a great run with Pentax, with two different cameras over six years. So this week I decided to…

  • reno and rosey return

    This week I took a few days off to go to Reno and ski Mount Rose with Gid and Jason. We left after work on Tuesday. Although it wasn’t snowing, there was still snow on the road. That in and of itself would have been okay, but it was so cold that my windshield wiper…

  • ride railroaded

    The plan sounded easy enough. Drive to Elk Grove then ride south along the river on the levee roads, grab lunch in the old historical Chinese community of Locke, cross one of the drawbridges and then ride back to Elk Grove on the other side of the river. Forty nine miles of completely flat roads–it…

  • light painting fun

    Here’s a quick and dirty copy and paste of the light painting we did during the meteor shower last night. Thanks Brenda for the pix! There are four separate exposures here, each of which was 30 seconds long. The end result is this card. Four poopy people wish you cheers and Merry Christmas!

  • panoche hills

    The Panoche Hills is a large area owned by the Bureau of Land Management. If you’ve ever driven down highway 5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles, you’ve passed right by it. It’s a hilly grassland area, which in my opinion, is not all that interesting. It seems like the only reason why this area gets…