Pismo Beach Surfing Safari 
Exciting Surf this morning. Went out at 9am on a cloudy day. Miranda still stayed with kitty because of back pain last few days. On the beach, I noticed a Dead Seal body in a mess of Kelp.. hmmm.. Out in the water, The typical Seals were poping their heads out and staring all rudely about 25 feet away. Out in front of me, I Saw a Big Fin.. . . I freaked, Turned out to be a Dolphin fin though... Little later watched 4-6 dolphons jumping The surf 100 yards away. A single Fin popped up about 30 feet away from me. Later on saw a Sea Otter Lazing on it's back, paddling out to see.. And the whole while Giant Pelicans coming within a Couple feet of my head as they Wind-Surf The same Waves to save on Flapping their wings.. . Also saw a couple baby diving birds of some sort nearby. All in all, a big load of Items on the food chain.. . Had my mind on the one missing Predator to make the party complete, but never saw one ;) Oh.. and the surf itself, is o.k. Morro Bay was better.

Fun.
-Joe

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Hmmm I hit a car today. I won. 
We were riding bike back from a china buffet down by the harbor, I was going probably 15mph when a new shiny honda civic fully opened it's door in front of me, I veered, but it was too late, My right chest went fully into the top pointy edge of the door.. I was fully stopped by this, not even falling over :) by the time the stars cleared in my head, I had a slight minor chest pain, but the poor chaps door was nearly ripped off ;) Oh well... He couldn't close it as the brackets were all strectched and the open-limit bar ripped :)

Thanks for new cheap-plastic-cars, they bend really well, to cusion the impact ;)

We had a better surfing experience this morning, except for the 25+ people there.. . I managaged to paddle out of the beach break only once after 4 unsuccessful winding tries :) but it was nice. Tomorrow it should be a little smaller and cleaner, so it should be even better :)
-Joe

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Morro Bay 
So Joe and I are staying in Morro Bay, CA which is between San Fransisco and LA on the coast. Joe tried surfing yesterday and got a bit beat up. The forecast sounds like the waves should be good tomorrow so we're both going to try then and see how it goes. :)
-Miranda

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Leaving the Sequoias 
We stayed at a campground that didn't have any bathrooms.. . You had to walk to the visitor center to use their cold bathroom because they closed the one in the campground for the winter.. . Quite annoying. We then drove to see General Sherman. That is the largest living thing on earth. We also checked out a little museum they had about Sequoias and the park that was well put together.
On our way down the mountain, Lucy came up and laid on the dash. First time she's done that and it was a super windy road. She is seeming to get much more used to the driving.
We are now on our way into town to find a place where Toan will be able to rent a car to drive back to Sacramento to catch his flight out. It will be a nice break after Toan's 20 miles and our 28 miles of hiking over the last few days.
-Miranda

CLICK FOR VIDEO:Lucy Riding on the Dash


An old, burned out sequoia that is a natural tunnel. Their roots are very shallow, though they spread out a lot, so snow storms and wind storms can knock them down. Especially if they are severally scarred from fires. Which most of the sequoias we saw had a triangular fire scar at the bottom. A fire rarely takes out a mature sequoia.

General Sherman.

Lucy looking out the passenger side window when we were in a parking lot.



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Sequoia National Park 
We drove to Sequoia National Park and went to see the second largest tree in the world, General Grant. We then decided to head to the Redwood Mountain Grove which has many large trees. Unfortunately, there were 2 hiking loops that were both 6 miles long. We chose one that looked interesting and took that not really expecting to do the entire loop. We saw some huge stumps from an old logging camp, the Hart Tree, which is one of the largest sequoias, and Fallen Goliath, which was a huge sequoia that feel down a long time ago. I assume at least a couple hundred years ago. We did end up doing the entire loop which was a bit painful after our many miles from the last couple days. However, we did get to see a momma Black Bear and her three cubs. They were across a creek from the trail we were on which was nice. I felt no need to meet one on the trail.
-Miranda

CLICK FOR VIDEO:Hart Tree


General Grant. This tree is about 40 feet in diameter and the second largest tree in the world (by volume).

A very large stump from when a logging camp was there many years ago.

A large, dead, burned out sequoia.

There were places were there would be a number of large sequoias near each other. This is part of the trail. Joe and I were basically in the middle of the triangle (so the tree on the left is actually slightly in front of us)

Toan and I standing near the roots on the Fallen Goliath.


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