Moments in Dirt and Ink

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Click for map. I signed up for an overnight backpack way down south and since getting there involves driving halfway to Phoenix (well, 20 miles short of) and then turning right to drive some more, I decided to leave at a time that might not have as much traffic and could give me time to hike at the end. Just a few tens of miles of slow curd around the 405 and one complete freeway stoppage later, I have arrived at the start of a road to an old calcite mine and a good approach to climbing Travelers Peak with an hour and ten minutes to sunset. It is plenty of time to check out the mine, but probably not enough to head up the peak. I had rather hoped this would serve as a shakedown for how my injured foot* is doing and if I can get away with wearing my soft trail runners instead of my immobilizer boots for the overnight. Getting into the scramble up the mountain would be better for that than the road walk to the mine. Of course, maybe I can drive the r...

Santa Barbara front country I finally stopped searching for a "light weight tripod" and tried searching for a "one pound tripod" instead and this search has yielded much better fruit. I found a backpacking light post to help me out. Well, a little. The original information is actually on a blog and the writer just links to the blog rather than the particular post that is of interest. Wherever that blog post is, I do not know, but a post about making the original tripod lighter is pretty easy to find. Not so easy to understand why it wouldn't come up with the original search. Anyway, that seems a dead end because the tripod (Giottos RT-8150) is not available anymore. On it goes. But the price on the tripod does give a clue to finding the lightest of them. They are also the cheapest. Well, compromises must be made to get the lightest, usually. I tried digging through the tripod offerings of a large online camera shop and found many at about 1.3...