I'm not over the hill yet, but I'm climbing hard!

After common sense set in with the added advice of many others, I decided to forgo the trip to the Joshua Tree National Park. Though I’d like to experience the desert environment sometime, probably doing so in mid-July wouldn’t be the most enjoyable time to do so. So instead, I headed to San Jacinto State Park to start the climbing part of my trip. After getting the appropriate permits from the National Forest and State Park offices (since the trail I was using went over both lands, I took the Mount Marion trail to San Jacinto peak. It was a pretty tough climb, well for a Florida flatlander, and since I had a decently late start, I had to camp out overnight a few miles from the peak. Being my first mountainous experience in quite a while, the views were superb. I expect that the entire trip will be one of those experiences where it seems like every turn around a corner has an even more beautiful or interesting view than the last. There were multiple stream crossings, lush meadows, and plenty of vistas. After breaking camp in the morning, I headed to the peak to be able to bag my first summit above 10,000 feet. While this doesn’t mean a lot to those that have done several of the county’s 14ers, it was still a pretty good step and means of introduction to the California landscape. The vista was quite a joy to experience as I even cooked my breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon right at the top. There were sweeping views of the San Bernardino (with apparently several fires happening at the time) and Palm Springs valleys. Though it wasn't on my map, I found a nice shack right near the peak that can apparently be used by hikers. It had a couple of bunk beds inside as well as a cabinet that held some supplies people have left over the years for emergency use (like cans of soup, first aid, etc). I took some time to clean out some of the trash and old bottles and such to pack back to the trailhead trash receptacles. After signing the log, I left my copy of the park trail map since there wasn't anything like that around and took a small packet of power-gel that I hope to use before my Half Dome climb in Yosemite. I figured it was sort of like a geocache where you can often take something if you leave something.

After getting back to the car, I headed back towards Los Angeles since there were a few things I wanted to do while there. Sponge, who lived in the area, was kind enough to allow me to grab a real shower since I was pretty grungy from the climbing and probably still had some Tijuana funk on me (though I did take a camp shower when I got back to the car, but wasn’t able to get as sparkly fresh as I would have liked). After getting cleaned up I headed over to Burbank for the evening so I could get to the NBC Studios ticket counter when they opened up so I could snag a ticket to ‘The Tonight Show’. After getting the ticket around 8AM, I headed to the Malibu Creek State Park to get in some day hiking. Though the site was overgrown with only two vehicles still there, this was the location used to shoot the outdoor scenes of the show 'M*A*S*H' many years ago. Since I think this was the best show every produced, I definitely wanted to check it out when I was in the area. Everything is overgrown, but the mountains surrounding the site, particularly Goat Butte, were prominently featured in the opening scene and still recognizable. The rest of the hike was enjoyable as well, though it was indeed quite hot. Even though I needed to get back to Burbank in order to get to the show taping, I could not resist stopping at a reservoir half way back from the hike in order to take a quick dip into the cool waters. While I was really starting to drag from dryness and heat exhaustion, the swim was incredibly refreshing and made the final trail miles go by very quickly. I made it back to Burbank with a bit of time to spare and enjoyed the opportunity to see the show live. The guest for the evening was Rosario Dawson, promoting her role in ‘Clerks II’ as well as Cedric the Entertainer with musical act Dashboard Confessional. The pre-show was entertaining with Jay Leo coming out to joke with the crowd and take pictures with those that asked. The show itself was indeed a ‘live taping’ in that there were no retakes as everything aired as we saw it. The band played during the entire commercial breaks (which were as long as they would be for the TV viewing audience) to keep the crowd entertained. The only thing pre-taped were a couple of intro teasers that were done after the show. Since the show just finished around 5 o’clock, I figured there was no way I was going to get anywhere with the state of LA afternoon traffic. I just used the GPS to find the closest movie theater, which ended up being the theaters at the Universal Studios theme park a couple of miles away. Since I figured most of everyone I knew would have already seen it (this of course means you Jason and Tracy), I elected to view the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ film. I was just a tad disappointed since most scenes just seemed to be used as a lead in to an extremely over choreographed fight scene, but it was decent enough to keep me entertained. I was considering not even seeing the third movie until the final few seconds of the film. Damnit, now I have to see the next installment to see where that last tidbit will take the plot. I also think that CG (computer graphics) were used a bit much when it really wasn’t necessary, as seems to be the case with most movies. Did we really have to have to see Jack jumping into the mouth (that looked like a direct copy of the mouth of the Sarlac from ‘The Return of the Jedi’) of the giant sea thing-a-ma-jig? I of course stayed through the entire credits expecting a final little tidbit at the end (like was done with the first movie and even the X-Men 3 movie), and wasn’t disappointed, so if you haven’t seen it, ignore what I just said and hang around until the very end. The view from the top (left pic) of the parking garage was pretty nice in the day time when I drove up, but was almost even better at night after the movie with all the lights dotting the hills. It was a great ending of a pretty full day and I hung around for quite a while soaking up the view before finally heading out towards the nest part of the journey, Sequoia National Park. Are we having fun yet? Damn skippy!