First experience with underwater photography and the SeaLife DC800

As promised in my last posting about my scuba diving safari through the Southern part of the Egypt Red Sea here now comes my report about lessons learned and first experience with underwater photography in general and the SeaLife DC800.

SeaLife DC800 Underwater Housing

I purchased the SeaLife DC800 from divestore.de for around € 700 as a package together with a flash light SL 961 and a bag. It is supposed to be a camera suitable for beginners as well as satisfying advanced photographers. The camera comes with numerous programs especially also for underwater photography. A “Sea” mode allows taking good pictures also without a flash light and further options allow to specify whether you are in the blue ocean or green river water. It is a 8 mega pixel camera and allows capturing videos in VGA resolution. The flash light has the great advantage to support an automatic mode as well as adjusting intensity manually – which turned out to be a real important feature.

"My very first underwater shot with the SeaLife DC800"

Befoe using the camera under water I tried it out on land, as recommended in the instruction manual, without and with housing. The first pictures I shot to me appeared to be less brilliant and sharp than the one my Sony Cybershot DSC-S90 delivers, which of course is well known for its good quality photos.  The results however I now brought back from my scuba diving safari have convinced me that I have made a good purchase with a good cost/performance ratio. People who know what you would have to pay for a professional underwater camera or video camera probably would agree with me.

I spent almost the entire last Sunday to create a slideshow with Windows Movie Maker including combining my video clips to a 8 minute video, burned it on DVD and watched it on my LCD TV screen: absolutely nice and convincing ! Throughout my slideshow one can see how my skills taking underwater shots improved. At the beginning I had some problems with using the flash light properly and lots of photos are too dark ( see my lessons learned further down below ). Later on photos turn out to have more light and color and some time I also got the idea to use the zoom function and take closer shots.

A few of my photos and some video clips are available on my flickr-Account.

As I mentioned in my last posting here underwater photography is more complicated than taking photos on land.

Too dark shot

First of all on land you usually stand secure on both legs ( most of the time ) while under water you first have to maintain a proper buoyancy before pushing the trigger. Additionally you try to find a nice view angle to your motif and may be a point at a rock or reef to hold to for a more stable position. During that you have to avoid hitting the sand with your fins since then the sight very quickly might turn into a milky environment ruining your photo.

Another challenge is the proper adjustment of your flash light intensity. The SL 961 as most probably most flash lights has of course an automatic mode but this turned out not to work well in all situations. As long as you take a picture of a fish may be 2 meters away in blue water it works quiet well, but as soon as you are getting closer to something or in case you have sand or light corals as a background the flash intensity appears to be too high. Luckily – as a real valuable and important feature – the SL 961 comes with a control dial to manually adjust the flash intensity on a scale from 10 to 1. In those situations I just described a setting of 2 or 1 turend out to be sufficient to get a photo with the right amount of light.

Shot with too much light

As many beginners I went through a couple of mistakes at the beginning I like to share here with you:

• Wrong adjustment of the flash light angle. I assumed wrongly I should have the flash light arm adjusted in a way that the flash light was more pointing downwards to get a good light for a photo in 2 meters distance. This yielded photos being too dark and it turned out to better have the flash light more pointing straight forward or just slightly down.
• After the first re-charge of the camera and putting it back into the housing I forgot to set the slider on top of the camera to the “capture” position; I left it in the “display” mode. In this situation there was no way to get the camera into capture mode under water. (Unfortunately this happened during the dive when we met a shark under our boat ). This is mentioned in the instruction manual but a good hint for further dives is: turn on the camera once before jumping into the water to see whether it is in the correct mode, especially after you had taken it out of the housing before the dive. Once the slider is set right the camera is in a mode where you can change to all other modes through the DISP key: you can view all your pictures under water and you can also put it into video capture mode.
• One time it happened to me that accidentially I pushed the power switch instead of the tripper to stop a video capture. This caused the camera to hang up completely thus it became unusable for the rest of the dive and after getting back on the boat I had to remove the batteries to fix that situation. Luckily this happened towards the end of a dive.

I noticed the following two strange behaviors of my camera :

• When turning on the flash light initially the red light does not turn on and I am not sure whether the flash light actually operates properly. Only after moving the slider to the TEST position once the red light then turns on right away after setting back the slider to ON.
• Below a depth of 30 meters my camera started to behave real strange:  When pushing the DISP button it started to ask me whether I want to delete pictures.  Hmmm ….

Overall I am happy with the SeaLife DC800 now allowing me to capture nice remembrances of my dives. It is handy and delivers good pictures, especially the quality of videos surprised me in a positive way, and in combination with the flash light SL 961 it is a real powerful equipment to take nice underwater photos.

Scuba Diving in the Southern Red Sea

Southern part of the Egypt Red Sea

This year my wife and I traveled to Egypt for a 1 week scuba diving safari in the southern region of the Egypt part of the Red Sea ( which itself reaches further down up to Eritrea ), after we had been there last year to explore the North.

Our dive sides in the Red Sea

In the middle of the night – at 01:15 am on May 28th – our group of divers from our local scuba diving club met at Frankfurt airport terminal 2 to check in for TUIFly flight 6102 to Hurghada, which departed on time at 03:20 am. After 4,5 hours flying time we landed in Egypt and started our second part of the trip, a 6 hours bus ride to Hamata. On our way we picked up our two dive guides for the week, Sonya from Switzerland and Vanessa from Spain, at a hotel in Port Ghalib.

At late afternoon we went on board the M/Y Emperor Elite. After the boat briefing we had to fill out a lot of paper work and clarify all kinds of questions with our dive guides about our last dive, number of dives, health, and a few more topics. After dinner we went to bed quiet quickly after this long journey without any sleep. Nevertheless, the boat had started its long trip down into the South to the Abu Fandera Reef so the engine was running all night long and we did not get much sleep either in this night.

“Welcome on board the M/Y Emperor Elite“

Wakeup was at 06:30 am the next day for our first early morning and check dive. Like last year I used 11 kilogram additional weight and that turned out to be just right. The strenuous  journey the day before had been  forgotten real quick as soon as I entered the water.   We stayed at this reef for this and the next day and enjoyed 5 relaxing dives there.

Real quick we started to feel comfortable with the daily boat routine schedule: wakeup at 06:00 or 06:30, briefing, early morning dive, breakfast, a video presentation by Sonya about interesting subjects like “Life in the sand”, “Corals”, “Fish”, “Symbiosis”, “Night Dives”, based on film material produced at the Fiji islands, a rest period, next briefing, next dive, lunch, a rest period, briefing, dive, dinner. My wife and I did not do any night dives, three dives a day was quiet enough for us. Sometimes the boat had to travel for a few hours to get to a new dive side during the day. From day 2 on no more shipping during night, thus we now were able to catch more relaxing sleep. The food on board has been excellent and nobody got sick.

On 05/30 we went to the Dangerus Reef, Gota Sachaira and to St. John’s, where I did my first cave dive. No real caves – I probably never will do that – those caves had some exit at the top most of the time.

Sealife DC800

For this scuba diving trip I bought myself a first real underwater camera, a Sealife DC800. It turned out for me that underwater photography is much more complicated than taking pictures on land. I had to make myself familiar with the new equipment and I had to learn my lessons regarding underwater photography; more about this in a separate posting. Correctly adjusting the flash light and maintaining a proper buoyancy had been the main challenges for me. First results can be seen here on my flickr account.

After the St. John’s Caves we traveled much further North and visited Claudia, Abu Galawa with a little boat wrack, and Shiriniat, before we continued our trip to the famous Elphinstone Reef. Until that time our dives had been quiet easy and relaxing, now it started to become more advanced: we went down to depth up to 40 meters and had to deal with strong currents. We did three dives here and the first two had been quiet a challenge for me. During these dives we have been dropped off above the northern plateau and every time I was struggling to escape the current and get close to the wall on the Eastern side to start the drift towards the South. Vanessa signaled me to go deeper to find a weaker current there during the first dive which indeed worked nicely, and during the second dive Sonya had to pull me closer to the wall. The third dive became easier since we skipped the North Plateau and started our dive right away behind the main reef on the West to then do a smooth drift to the South Plateau and getting back to our boat without the need to be picked up by a Zodiac.

“Yellow couple at Abu Dabab II“

Real quickly the week went by. On the evening of the last day on sea we got a special dinner with a huge turkey and a big cake for desert, combined with some Thanks speeches to the crew, music and dancing. The next day we did two more dives, at  Abu Dabab II and Shouna not far away from Port Ghalib, where we also observed a big school of dolphines on the surface. Some of us chased them to go snorkeling but usually they disappeared real quick when the Zodiac approached them.

At the evening we stayed on board in the marina of Port Ghalib and did a short walk through the newly built hotel and shopping area there, before we watched a soccer game evolving between divers and crew members in front of the boat. Two harbor sheriffs appeared to stop that and Vanessa had to have a phone call with their boss to get the game going again.

The next day we had to leave the boat at 09:00 am and stayed in a hotel at the pool for the next 6 hours before a bus took us back to the airport in Hurghada, where our flight back home departed at 09:05 pm. It became 03:00 am in the night until my wife and I got back home, tired but lucky about this interesting trip to the Red Sea, real busy but busy in a different way: no time to think about work, somehow relaxing to follow a tied schedule made to support lots of fun and wonderful dives.

Here is a list of my dives:

#	Date	Depth	Duration	Dive side
1	05/29/2009	22.5 m	44′	Abu Fandera East
2	05/29/2009	17.4 m	47′	Abu Fandera East
3	05/29/2009	22.7 m	42′	Abu Fandera East
4	05/30/2009	19.6 m	49′	Abu Fandera West
5	05/30/2009	19.6 m	48′	Abu Fandera West
6	05/30/2009	22.4 m	45′	Dangerus Reef
7	05/31/2009	22.2 m	45′	Gota Sachaira (Shaab Mahrous)
8	05/31/2009	16.7 m	51′	Umharim (St. John’s Cave)
9	06/01/2009	12.9 m	58′	Claudia
10	06/01/2009	16.6 m	55′	Abu Galawa Soghaira
11	06/01/2009	12.4 m	62′	Shiriniat
12	06/02/2009	32.1 m	36′	Elphinstone Reef
13	06/02/2009	37.7 m	35′	Elphinstone Reef
14	06/02/2009	38.0 m	46′	Elphinstone Reef
15	06/03/2009	15.8 m	57′	Abu Dabab II
16	06/03/2009	28.6 m	45′	Shouna

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days

Between August 2007 and March 2008 I published a series of blog posts here in my blog about that wonderful trip I did together with my wife in September 2006 through the Nortwest of the USA. For all reader stumbling upon my blog later on – here is a chronological table of contents of all these blog postings and a pdf copy of all articles.

Von Travel

USA NorthWest 2006

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 3+4

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 5+6

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 7

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 8

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 9

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 10+11

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 12+13

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 14

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 15

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 16

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 17+18

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 19+20

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 21

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 22

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 23

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 24+25

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 26+27

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 28

Conquering the Alps in 26 days

A few folks might have noticed that it has been quiet on my blog during the last 4-5 weeks or that I have been away from work for a long time now.

I have been on another long vacation trip again and this time around I have had some aggressive plans for my vacation: to hike from Munich to Venice and conquering the Alps within 26 days.

"Starting our hike on the Marien Square in Munich"

On Sunday, September 10th, 09:00 am, a group of 14 people met on the Marien Square in Munich to start this hike. 7 of them planed to do the entire 4-week-hike, among them; my wife and I. The first hike out of Munich, following the river Isar was right away the longest one: 36 kilometer. At the end of day 1 and on day 2 I already felt quiet exhausted with burning feet and legs and could not really imagine to continue hiking for the next 25 days to reach Venice. I never have done a 4-week-hike before and 4 weeks seem to be a real long time when doing something really unusual. Thus I continued my hikes from day to day, just focusing on small achievements ( reaching the destination of that particular day ) instead of the big goal to make it over the Alps. What I was hoping for finally became reality: to get used to hiking every day, sleeping in a different cottage each night, living out of my backpack. No computer, no mobile, no TV, just sometimes being happy to have some dry socks and a shirt in the evening and to get a good warm meal and a place to sleep.

It has been a little adventure for my wife and me, full of great experiences and breathtaking views, but also sometimes coming with these moments of worry  and suffer more or less in one or the other form. I actually was lucky that my feet collaborated quiet well being in hiking boots for up to 9 hours a day. Others had much more trouble, and one man from the group trying to do the 4-week-hike had to give up after one week because of his bloody feet.

26 days later, after hiking 405 kilometers and climbing a total altitude difference of 20.900 meters (2.36 times Mount Everest ), walking 162 hours in total and 6.2 hours in average each day without a single rest day,  hiking in rain for 2 full and around three half days ( that means overall we have been very lucky regarding weather conditions ), climbing on a 3.152 meter summit ( the Piz Boe ) and hiking through snow, we reached Tarzo in the Italian lowlands. The Alps were lying behind us. This was the end of the hike and a train took us the remaining 70 kilometers to Venice.

From the 1024 photos I have taken during the tour I have uploaded a few already into this flickr set and plan to add more later on. I plan to blog in much more detail on a day-by-day base about the tour in my German blog “Axel unterwegs…” – thus if you understand German and are interested in more details watch out for updates on this blog.

Schedule constraints

Yesterday I have been blogging about my recent scuba diving trip on a boat through the Northern part of the Red Sea.

Diving equipment on board of the Emperor Infinity

One thing I became aware of during this trip was how difficult it must have been for our captain and the dive guides to come up and manage the daily schedule for all of us on the boat, to support timely meals, breaks and dives. There are so many constraints to consider and deal with day by day, like:

• fixed time slots for the meals ( you don’t want to wait for breakfast until 01:00 pm ),
• sufficient breaks between dives, also depending on the depth of the last dive
• sufficient breaks after a meal,
• selection of the next dive site, depending on weather, currents ( depending itself on low/high tide schedule ), utilization of dive site by other boats and available anchor place, this itself having an impact on the duration of a dive, whether for instance we have to use zodiacs  (inflatable boats) or not
• driving times to the next dive site
• time slot for getting to the next dive site, preferred not during times when meals are served or during the night, when people want to sleep,
• time needed to refill all diving cylinders

Emperor Infinity reached its final parking position at Ras Mohammed National Park

This in fact required some solid planing day by day, consideration of all the wishes by group members, options, risks and safety considerations and constraints, and a good communication between captain and dive guides.

Having a check list of all the constraints available when coming up with a schedule for a project and ensuring all of those are considered before the schedule is finalized and communicated to all stakeholder, customer and team member, is an essential to-do for project manager ! How easy can it happen that you publish a schedule and then you realize for example: Damn ! I forgot to ask my team members about their vacation plans !

What are the typical constraints for a project schedule ? Here are those I can think of right away  – what would you add to this list ?

• Working hours
• Vacation plans
• Limited availability of people and other resources ( like e.g. someone working only half a day, or never working on a Friday )
• Holidays
• Dilvery lags for ordered items
• Time slots for software deploys  ( or freeze periods )

Scuba Diving in the Northern Red Sea

I just returned from a 1 week scuba diving safari on board the Emperor Infinity through the Northern part of the Red Sea.

On Thursday, May 22nd, 20 folks from our local scuba diving club “Tauchertreff Mainz” met at Frankfurt airport around noon time to board a Condor flight to Hurghada, Egypt. It was dark already when we landed and right away we had been transfered to our boat, the M/Y Infinity, waiting for us in the Hurghada marina close to the Emperor diving center.

After an initial boat briefing, diner, sleep, breakfast, a lot of paperwork and another security briefing our boat left the harbor the next morning. We stopped for our check dive at Poseidons Garden (@ Shab El Erg) and I noticed that I would need 11 kilogramm lead here in the Red Sea to adjust to a proper buoyancy while I had used 6 kilogramm only during my pool training the Friday before. The Red Sea is one of the saltiest bodies of seawater in the world.

Crossing the Street of Gubal

Our second dive site for this day: the Dunraven, our first wrack dive. Built in 1873, the ship sunk in 1876 after hitting a reef. After this dive we had a rough ride across the Street Of Gubal (Gulf Of Suez), since it has been pretty stormy, to reach the “Ras Mohammed” National park, located south of the Sinai peninsula,  where we would do several dives the next day.

Day 3 ( Sunday, May 25th ) took us to the “Small Crack”, a nice dive along a reef ending in a shallow sandy lagoon,  and the Thistlegorm, another very famous wrack in the Northern Red Sea, a British Navy ship sunk by German bombers in 1941, discovered by Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the early 50th. On day 4 we visited another wrack, the Kingston, and did two more dives at Bluff Point, famous for its strange currents and also called the “Laundry machine”, but peaceful this time, where also a small barge wrack can be discovered, home of a giant Moray eel. On our journey to the next stop dolphins accompanied our boat during the hour of sunset.

“giannis d 009″ by Cathy Thomas

On day 5, Tuesday, May 27th, we visited “Gubal Malak” for the morning dive, then the “Abu Nuhas” reef, where four ship wracks are waiting on the ground to be visited by divers. Before lunch and in the afternoon we took a closer look at the Carnatic and the Giannis D, the latter a pretty “new” wrack of a ship sunk in 1983.

Day 6 already was our last diving day, “Small Giftun“, where I did my deepest dive so far: 34.8 meters, and “Gota Abu Ramada West”, where I did my longest dive so far, our last dive sites. At this day we returned to Hurghada and stayed on the boat for another day, until a Condor flight brought us back to Germany on Thurday, May 29th, where we landed Friday morning at around 01:00 am.

Zodiak ride to a dive site

It has been a fantastic trip with a nice group of people on a comfortable boat with 10 very mindful and helpful crew members and three very professional and nice dive guides, two from Argentina and one from Germany, with lots of beautiful dive sites, a full schedule ( 06:30 am wake-up, 07:00 am first briefing, morning dive, breakfast, some rest, briefing, second dive, lunch, some rest, briefing, third dive, some rest, briefing and night dive ( not for me ! ), dinner at around 09:00 pm, a beer, sleep, … ) and lots of nice experiences and adventures. Even it has been a very enjoyable week I also must say that 1 week for such type of trip is enough. At the end almost two third of our group encountered some problems with their ears, colds or other type of sickness and thus a break after one week of diving was well accepted.

In total I did 15 dives (just missed 1) and those of us who also did the night dives ended up with 20 dives; as far as I can tell actually nobody managed to do all the dives offered. Here is a detailed list of dives I did ( dive # 15 is my 49th dive in total ):

Number	Date	Depth	Duration	Dive site
1	05/23/2008	13.8 m	45′	Poseidons Garden
2	05/23/2008	28.3 m	36′	Dunraven
3	05/24/2008	25.1 m	45′	Ras Ghozlani
4	05/24/2008	20.1 m	45′	Shark Reef: Anemony-Yolanda
5	05/24/2008	24.5 m	41′	Skark Reef: Volanda Reef
6	05/25/2008	18.9 m	44′	Small Crack
7	05/25/2008	24.7 m	39′	Thistlegorm
8	05/26/2008	19 m	47′	Kingston
9	05/26/2008	15 m	37′	Bluff Point
10	05/26/2008	13.6 m	48′	The Barge
11	05/27/2008	24.5 m	54′	Gubal Malak
12	05/27/2008	23.5 m	56′	Carnatic @ Sha’ab Abu Nuhas
13	05/27/2008	20.5 m	52′	Ghiannis D @ Sha’ab Abu Nuhas
14	05/28/2008	34.8 m	50′	Small Giftun
15	05/28/2008	11.9 m	72′	Gota Abu Ramada West

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 28

September 30th (Day 28): San Francisco

Guess who that is with the Golden Gate Bridge behind …

From Mendocino we drove all the way south along the windy state route 1, visiting another lighthouse, stopping in Bodega Bay for a light lunch, stopping at Point Reyes Station for coffee, and stopping in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to enjoy a view of the Golden Gate Bridge with the city of San Francisco in the background.
We found a motel at the end of Lombard Street close to the Presidio area for our last night during that vacation.  In the evening we went down to the marina, passing by the Exploratorium. After sunset we returned to Lombard Street and found a nice little restaurant there – the “Taste of the Himalayas” – to have some Asian dinner.

And that was it ! The loop has been closed after driving 3600 miles with our rental car. We arrived where we started one month before. A United Airlines flight would take us back to Frankfurt, Germany, early afternoon the next day.

Alexander Supertramp

My wife and I went to the movie theatre yesterday and watched the film “Into the wild” by Sean Penn. I did not know exactly what to expect but must say it was a great recommendation by my wife: an excellent and overwhelming movie.

The story is based on a true story investigated and published by Jon Krakauer. Chris McCandless decides to turn away from the regular way of living everyone including his proud parents would expect him to go after he finishes his study – and disappears. He decides to escape civilization and heads into the wild. He gives away all his money, gives up his car, shoulders his backpack and starts tramping through the country. He even gives up his name and calls himself Alexander Supertramp.

He turns away from a world where you have to sign up for a years long waiting list to get a permit for a boat trip on the Colorado river, unless you would prefer to book an organized tour. Alexander does not like both alternatives. He is the type of person who simply gets himself a boat and makes the crazy ride on his own, not accepting any rules made by men how to “use”  nature.

On his trip he meets a lot of people: the old hippie couple, some tourists from Denmark down there in the Grand Canyon and finally an old man who has lived alone for a long time. Alexander is a nice guy, a good listener, someone to trust and to tell everything, someone who easily becomes friend with all people he meets. Nevertheless, in one scene of the film when he has a conversation with the old man he emphasizes that relationship to men is not his primary desire. His ultimate goal is to be alone and on his own in the wild nature of the north: Alaska.

— In case you don’t know yet how the story ends and you plan to see the film or read the book you should not read any further since I will reveal here how the story ends. —

He finally makes it to Alaska and enters the wild. He finds an old bus where he decides to stay. He calls this place the “Magic Bus” and it becomes his new home in between the great scenery of white mountains, green forest and clear rivers. He manages to survive quiet well, but at some point in time he decides to leave. This attempt fails, since the river he conquered on his way in meanwhile became a rapid stream – impossible to get through. Thus he has to return to his Magic Bus.

His dream becomes his fate. He fails to conserve enough meat. He is running out of rice and finally picks the wrong plants to eat. He becomes sick and weak and finally dies of hunger. Two weeks later his dead body is discovered in the bus by some elk hunter.

It is a very emotional story and it made me think about this character. Was he a hero or an idiot ? Worldly innocent or figuring out what really counts ?

He knew to some extent how to survive in the wild. He did not plan to give away his young life for this, but of course he did accept the high risk being part of this adventure.

I am not sure about you of course, but I know this feeling and dreaming about escaping our modern life. I actually have nothing to complain about. I live a very comfortable and lucky life. But sometimes when stuck in a traffic jam or seeing how building sites eat up our countryside, or seeing people sitting in their living room watching the life of other people in TV they never would like to meet in their own living room, or when I see how people rush through their life and let stress make them sick, then I sometimes get a clue of this dream to escape the mad world and find some peaceful, quiet spot.

Of course I would not survive for long in the wild. Alexander Supertramp did a much better job there then I would be able to do. I might consider a short escape, like a one week camping or fishing trip, or what I actually did: a five week trip to New Zealand on my own. But after that I also enjoy to return into the comfort of my regular life: back to work, my home, my wife, my friends, my secure existence.

Alexander Supertramp went much further. And obviously he missed the point of return. To me he is a hero, because he clearly decided what would be a good way of living for him and followed his path self confident and without hesitating to do everything needed to get there.

What about you ? Do you sometimes dream about to escape … your job, your family, your home, your life as you live it today ? And do you sometimes go a little further than just dreaming about it ?

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 26+27

September 29th (Day 26): Redwood National and State Parks

Redwoods in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parksmall

After breakfast we drove up the Howland Hill Road east of Crescent City and then did a 5 mile hike along Mill Creek to the Stout Grove in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, which now belongs to the Redwood National Park. The entire hike lead us through a wood of majestic redwood trees.
After a lunch picnic at a river close to Stout Grove we returned to our car and continued to drive south to reduce our distance to San Francisco below 300 miles. In “Elk Meadows” we had the opportunity to observe elks very closely.
Fog still was hanging over the coast of Northern California. We reached Eureka with a beautiful little old town and lots of victorian houses, the most bizarre one the Carson Mansion and on the other side of the street: the Pink Lady-House.
We had a wonderful Crab Fettucine in the Sea Grill restaurant, East Street.

September 30th (Day 27): Mendocino

Point Cabrillo Lighthouse

We left Eureka after another great breakfast in a Dennys restaurant and continued to travel south on U.S. route 101, until we reached Leggett where we turned on to state route 1 south. The very windy road led downhill through forest back to the Pacific coast. After Fort Bragg we stopped at Point Cabrillo and did a short hike to the lighthouse there to have a picnic at the coast. Fog started to disappear making room for sunny weather.
In the late afternoon we reached the pictorial small town of Mendocino located directly at the coast where we found a Bed&Breakfast House for the next night. After a walk through this place and also visiting the colonies of birds breeding out there on rocks in the water
we had a great dinner at Ukiah Street Restaurant and a beer in Patterson’s Pub.

From San Francisco to Seattle in 30 days – Day 24+25

September 27th (Day 24): Oregon coast

Bridge in Astoria, crossing Columbia River

In the morning we hiked along Long Beach on the Seashore Trail, seeing the bones of a gray whale stranded here some time ago.
After visiting a lighthouse in Cape Disappointment State Park we continued our trip into the South, crossing the Columbia River and heading into Oregon. While we had our lunch picnic at Cannon Beach fog started crawling in from the ocean so we would drive through fog for the rest of the day as soon as we got closer than half a mile to the coast line.
We drove until Waldport where we spent the next night.

September 28th (Day 25): U.S. Route 101 South

Fisher boat leaving Florence harbour

Next day we had breakfast in Florence in a cute little cafe where you could watch grandma cooking the breakfast for you.
We stopped in one of the state parks exploring the Oregon dunes and later the day we bumped into California where we made it to Crescent City. We stopped by the Redwood National Park Visitor Center to get us some tips for a day hike for the next day.