On the personal work front, I got back from San Jose yesterday (early as it turns out - I managed to get standby on a flight 6 hours before I was expected - which makes for a happy wife) and just started going thru my pictures from a weekend backpacking in Henry Coe State Park.
Henry Coe State Park is an wonderful place, located less than an hour from the Bay Area and consisting of more than 80 thousand acres of prime wilderness. I've been backpacking and hiking there since 2000 when I discovered it, and its come to be one of my favorite places to get away from the bustle of Silicon Valley.
The sad thing is, the Governor of that great state is proposing to shutter Henry Coe (along with 48 other state parks) as a cost saving measure. It really saddens me when we have billions of dollars to fight unnecessary wars and yet we can't adequately fund our state parks. Henry Coe really does not get used like it should by the nearby residents - people in that blighted place tend to sit in front of their bloody computers instead of getting outside and communing with nature. Its nice, because you get the park to yourself, but its also sad for obvious reasons.
So I really made an effort to get there after my weeks work and was richly rewarded. Henry Coe hiking is characterized by ups and downs. Mostly ups. The views are epic - rolling hills, old trees, expansive meadows and sweeping ridge-lines. The trails are punishing on the weak - they generally go straight up and down, as if switchbacks were anathema to those who settled the area.
Here are a few pictures from the trip that capture some of this majesty (gallery to come):
As an aside, I just put 8 more GB of Ram in my Mac. Yowsza! What an upgrade.
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