Greetings,

As I mentioned briefly in one of my previous posts, Ryan and I will be taking a cross-country trip in the coming days.

Ryan is scheduled to arrive in San Jose tomorrow (July 31st) and will drive up to the Bolinas area on the 1st of August with his friend and neighbor Carol. Carol’s time will apparently be limited, but Ryan and I will then start a near 3 week trip from CA to NY. We will spend nearly the first week in coastal CA with two days of camping in the Point Reyes National Seashore, followed by some visits to nearby locales. We will end our stay in coastal CA with a 10hr pelagic (open ocean) birding trip with bird virtuoso Rich Stallcup on the 7th. There we hope to come across many species of albatross, shearwater, petrel, storm-petrel, and jaeger as well as hopefully whales, dolphins, and sharks. That night after that trip we will make our first push going east with a stay in the Central Valley with our friend Anne.

The following day (8th) with Anne we will head up to Lake Tahoe in the Sierra-Nevada for some birding/sightseeing. This will be Ryan’s first time in the Sierra so this should be great. However, our stay here is limited too, and the day after (9th) we make our way to Idaho near the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park. This is where the real fun begins!

The main chunk of our trip (~ 1 week) will be spent in the Rocky Mountains with adventures in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming, and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. We of course will stop in many different habitats along the way including grasslands and Pinyon forests. While in the parks we will of course do some birding, but we are also going to do a lot of relaxing! And after the past few weeks/months I feel Ryan and I will be very glad to have that opportunity (Sightseeing, fly fishing (cutthroat trout!), camping etc.) When we finish up in the Rockies with a stay at Ryan’s cousin’s place we will make our way east along I-80 and hit up places in the plains and great lakes region. Hopefully, along the way, I will be able to meet up with my friend Katie from ESF who I have not seen in a few years.

At any rate, it is going to essentially be the All-American Road Trip. Summer time playing on the beach, hiking in the mountains, seeing the wildlife, it has the potential to be very good. I just hope that the weather holds out.

One last note, due to the trip Chat Happens will be put on hold for a few weeks, but don’t worry, when we arrive back east in late August we should have plenty of material to keep the site busy for weeks to come.

See ya on the road!

~Chad (07/30/2006)