We spent a long weekend in Baltimore. We were there for my parents 50th anniversary party, but we also took the opportunity to visit Grandmom and wander around the city.

The harbour area is full of things I love coming together: water, old buildings, and occasionally, decay.

The USS Constellation in the Inner Harbor, in front of the World Trade Center building.

There was, I believe, a student group on the Constellation on Friday night. They were getting to shift the masts but did NOT fire the cannon.

Sadly.

Brickwork and hinge for storm shutter on old warehouse turned into condos.

These buildings are directly on the harbor, but none of them seemed to have functioning shutters anymore.

Looking across a dock at a warehouse that was turned into luxury condos.

Street in Fells Point.

Standing on Federal Hill, looking across the harbor towards the World Trade Center, and to the right, the National Aquarium.

Decaying dock.

I love the Lifehacker bag posts. I love seeing the tools and toys people keep in their bags, and I’ve found a couple things I discovered I wanted/needed viewing those posts, so I decided it would be fun to show you my hiking bag.

We typically do day hikes, usually several hours long, eating lunch before we leave, and stopping for dinner at a local restaurant before heading home. (Unless we’re hiking at Coopers Rock.) And taking pictures is a good excuse to stop and enjoy where I am–reminding myself that I’m out for the journey rather than the destination.

What do I take hiking?

Everything (with the exception of the hiking staff) fits into the bag. Plus two smaller water bottles.

High Sierra Diplomat Lumbar Pack (I prefer hiking with a lumbar pack to a backpack. When I take a backpack, I add even MORE stuff, like wildflower guides and maybe an extra camera lens.)
Canon EOS Rebel Xsi camera
OP/TECH USA Pro Strap
FlexARMOR X dSLR Camera Case
Vaultz Mesh Bag
Garmin Oregon 550T (link is to newer version)
Eneloop AA rechargeable batteries
Tracks Compact Travel Staff
Sharpie
Sea to Summit Accessory Straps
PackTowl, medium
PackTowl, small
Seattle Sundries, Gardener’s Gold Soap
S-Biner
Dried fruit (in Ziploc bag)
Dark chocolate (in a Ziploc bag)
Vitamin C drops/throat drops (in a Ziploc bag)
Pill case with Acetaminophen
WetOnes wipes
Tissues
Lip balm (spf 15)
Hand lotion (spf15)
CeraVe SPF 50 Sunscreen (not pictured)
Bandana
Samsung Galaxy S5 cell phone
–Garmin Fit app

Just in case items:
Spare camera battery
Spare eyepiece
Extra SD card
Gallon size Ziploc bag (for if it suddenly downpours)
Kershaw pocket knife
LED flashlight
Waterproof matches
Pill case with anxiety meds (from Etsy)
Girly stuff (in Day of the Dead bag (from Etsy))
Ankle wrap (not pictured)

Also, when hiking near creeks and streams (when it’s warm), I’ll clip a pair of water shoes onto the outside of the bag so I can hike up or down the creek.

NOTE: Michael carries the first aid kit and toilet paper and two larger water bottles.

Obviously, several items are specific to me: the ankle wrap and acetaminophen are because of my ankle, and my ankle was initially why I started using a hiking stick, but it’s so nice to hike with, Michael now uses one.

You can’t really hike Berkeley Springs, as it’s tiny. But it’s still pretty.

Location: Cacapon State Park
Trails: Ziller Trail, Ziller Loop Trail, Central Trail
Distance: 5.0 miles
Elevation: 1561 feet

We hiked ALL the way up to the ridge line, but aside from one place on the way up (where we didn’t want to stop) there wasn’t much of a photogenic view.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a gorgeous hike, just that the forest isn’t generally photogenic.

Saturday was beautiful, so we headed south for Droop Mountain and Beartown State Parks.

Droop Mountain

Droop Mountain is the site of the last major Civil War battle in West Virginia.

I can really only handle a small amount of thinking about war and death and misery, so it was a short visit.

The view is gorgeous, though,

Confederate Graves

The museum is where I really started to get depressed.

Beartown

Location: Beartown State Park
Distance: 0.7 mile

Luckily, just down the road is Beartown State Park, which is a 0.7 mile boardwalk through some pretty fascinating rock formations.

The boardwalk is really nice.

This was a lovely walk.

While we were staying with Mechanicky Gal, we went to Cabrillo National Monument to visit the tide pools. We also got to go into the Old Point Loma Lighthouse. Most of the rooms were closed off to the public, so you could look in and see what it would have looked like when it was in use.

The tide pools were gorgeous, and I loved walking along them.

Oh, well yes, there were a lot of rocks. So I took lots of pictures of rocks. Because I like rocks.

This is the Old Point Loma Lighthouse

You could walk up to almost the top of the tower, but you couldn’t go outside, or climb the ladder to the light.

I took this picture to remind me to look up when and why lighthouses would use different colored lights.

Short answer (according to the internet): it depended upon the light house. The rate of rotation (sometimes in combination with colors) could designate a specific lighthouse. The color could designate the location of the lighthouse in relation to the bay.

Also: This guy again.

Gorgeous pine in the entrance circle. (Not sure what species. I didn’t get a close-up pictures of the leaves, and Michael and I can’t decide.)

Shaw agave (Agave shawii)

Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea)

Coyote Bush/Brush (Baccharis pilularis) has incredibly soft flowers.

(Thanks Mary!)

Not that you can tell from this picture, but we saw a seal!

And the next day we saw dolphins!

Yeah, for both of those you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

After we met up with Mechanicky Gal and Carol Elaine, we got to go to THE LA BREA TAR PITS!

Where we saw… FOSSILS!

BISON!

Why hello there!

American Lion!

SABER-TOOTH!

MAMMOTH!

Ground. Sloth.

DIRE WOLF!

OK. Maybe dire wolves weren’t so smart.

Coyote! Raptor! And some sort of prey!

MAMMOTH TOE!

SO ADORABLE! (Well, perhaps not adorable.)

It was MARVELOUS! And I was VERY EXCITED TO SEE IT!

Carol Elaine generously offered to give us a tour of JPL. (Sadly, it was a holiday of some sort, so I was unable to purchase post cards. You can’t imagine how much pain this caused me.)

I only had my cell phone, so most of my pictures were shit, but here are a few nice ones.

Here’s my favorite thing!

This was a light show that showed you the communication between different satellites and ground control. It was a brilliant way to show the flow of information.

The lights going down the strand represent data coming from a satellite. The lights going up the strands represent data going to the satellite.

Some satellites have very little data transmission right now.

It was a genius learning tool, but also very pretty to watch.

The text that’s hard to read says:
The Habitable Zone: 00001
Confirmed: 01743
Candidates: 03276

HI!

This absolutely delighted me, though I have fears it was a set up, and not just the result of some random argument.

Take THAT Neil deGrasse Tyson!

I still have lots of pictures to go through, but have been trying to get caught back up on, well, everything, so here’s a quick look at some of the wildlife we saw.

Here’s an antelope squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus I think), which I’d assumed was a chipmunk.

I’m hoping this is a coyote (Canis latrans) because I’ve never seen one in the wild, and was excited to see it.

(there are two other pictures if you click through to Flickr.)

I believe this is a Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica)

(I got another picture of a different scrub jay in a tree.)

I may also have seen a Pinyon Jay, but I couldn’t get a clear picture to check.

LIZARD! Most likely a Side-blotched Lizard (Uta stansburiana) but I’m pretty reptile illiterate.

We also saw lots of ravens, but I didn’t take any pictures of ’em. Mostly because I was too busy taking pictures of rocks.

Since we were only a few hours away (and in California) we made a point to visit Joshua Tree National Park.

Since I always buy books of the places we visit, I decided this time to purchase the books BEFORE we left. One of the books I got was Joshua Tree: The Complete Guide. This was completely helpful, since it divided the trails into types, as well as distance and time.

Also helpful was the Joshua Tree National Park (National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map).

We combined the two, to give us an idea of what we’d be able to manage in a day, and plan the drive to see as much of the area as we possibly could.

We walked/hiked the following trails:
Cholla Cactus Garden
Arch Rock Nature Trail
Barker Dam Trail
Hidden Valley Trail
Cap Rock
Black Rock Trail

We drove up to Keys View

We entered the park from the south, Cottonwood Springs entrance. All of the Cottonwood Springs trails are closed, because multiple floods have exposed toxic mine tailings, so no hiking. This took us through the Colorado Sonoran dessert, which was full of Cholla cactus, Creosote bushes, Ocotillo trees, and Smoke trees.

But what I liked best were the rock formations.

We drove north, and move into the Mojave desert, which really did look quite different from the Sonoran.

Joshua Tree and the desert were interesting places to visit, but I would definitely not want to live there.

So Michael’s conference was at Huntington Beach in some really expensive resort hotel.

Really expensive resort/hotel. But I was lucky enough this trip that the hotel was NOT in the middle of nowhere, so I was able to walk to find other (more reasonably priced) places to eat.

If you know me, you are probably aware that I do not much care for the sun. So I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the beach far more than I would have expected, mostly because I found watching to surfers to be fascinating and somewhat mesmerizing.

And there were a LOT of surfers.

I was on the pier at 5:30 AM and noon and sunset, and the water was always full of surfers.

I also noticed that not only did males predominate, but when there were female surfers, it was first thing in the morning, or late afternoon (say, before work and after work), which I found quite interesting. Mind you, it was a very small sample size.

And I also liked walking along the beach at sunrise and sunset. Water is very relaxing, and walking along the water without the sun beating down on me or massive crowds was quite pleasant.

And the birds!

I kept watching the Sandlings and giggling with delight as they’d walk down to the water line, and then scurry back from the tide.

Plus, a pelican that had almost no fear of humans.

And I did get to spend some time with this guy:

Where have I been? GLAD YOU ASKED! I have been on VACATION!

Michael’s conference this year was in California, so we made a vacation out of it! We took the train to California, went to his conference, then went to Joshua Tree National Park, then headed back to the coast and spent time with friends. We, of course, took the train back, so it was a very relaxing two weeks. (I’ve got a ton of book reviews I finished writing and posted need to post, because the train is perfect for reading, when you’re not staring out the windows at the passing scenery (which I did quite frequently).

Despite most of our trains being delayed at some point (including spending the night in Toledo) I still greatly prefer taking the train to flying. And with a roomette, we had a place to lie down and included meals, so WAY better than flying.

Because everyone has asked, here are the sordid details:

Capital Limited: Pittsburgh (11:59 PM) to Chicago Union Station (8:45 AM) – This leg is always delayed and running late. Plan for it. Also, I think next time I want to leave from Cumberland, because the Pittsburgh Amtrak station is AWFUL. Plus, we’d leave earlier and get back later. This will be our plan next time we take the train.
Southwest Chief: Chicago Union Station (3:00 PM Fri) to LA Union Station (8:15 Sun) – This was two nights on the train, with meals included. It went through: Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado (south-east corner), New Mexico, Arizona, and California. We went through a LOT of desert, which I found fascinating to see.

Coming back we took:
Pacific Surfliner: San Diego to LA Union Station – This had long stretches of views of the ocean, which I really enjoyed. We got this last minute, so our marvelous hostess didn’t have to drive from San Diego to LA.
Southwest Chief: LA Union Station (6:15 PM Mon) to Chicago Union Station (3:15 PM Wed)
Capital Limited: Chicago Union Station (6:40 PM) to Pittsburgh (5:05 AM)

The total cost for both of us was ~$2,000, and (with the exception of the Surfliner) included the roomette with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (as applicable to that part of the journey). And the roomette was a single fee, not a per person fee. Plus, our luggage was free.

So the trip was, essentially, 3 1/3 days each way, and we got to see parts of the country with which we were unfamiliar.

Currently, a non-stop flight from Pittsburgh to LA is ~$570 / person and takes 5 hours.
Flights with layovers are currently:
United, 6h 40m, $336
US Airways, 5h 45m, $360

That’s with no checked luggage and no sustenance included.

Here are some of the views I enjoyed: (Please note, all pictures were taken from a moving train, through a thick window, with a cell phone.)

Because I turned on location services for most of them, you can click through to Flickr to see where most of the pictures were taken.

So, is it more expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? For me? Hell yes. Especially being able to actually see the landscape as we went by.

ADDENDUM the First:
Because it might be helpful, here are two pictures of the roomette, both taken by Michael (obviously).

After leaving the New River Gorge Bridge, we stopped by Babcock State Park, because despite the overcast day, I figured it would be gorgeous.

It was.

I’ve heard this is the most photographed spot in the state. I find that kinda depressing, since, although the area is gorgeous, the gristmill isn’t original, but was instead reassembled from others that were taken down.

Plus, there’s so much non-man-made gorgeous scenery. But, here’s an obligatory picture of the grist mill, and you can see how gorgeous the area was yesterday.

We saw, in the short time we were there, two separate wedding shoots.

Here’s the stream above the mill:

We decided to take the Island in the Sky Trail.

Climb to an elevation of 2546 feet, and you’ll find this.

It was far less surprising, when we discovered there was a road that could bring you to this height, instead of climbing things like this:

Regardless of the shortcut, it was a gorgeous hike up. (Starting elevation was 2260 feet. We made the climb in about half an hour.)