Introduction to California Discovery Vacation 1997

California Discovery Vacation 1997 - Introduction

Welcome to Steve and Steffi's California Discovery Vacation 1997. I created this site because I wanted to show our friends and relations all of our cool vacation pictures. It took on a life of its own after that and grew into this big hypertext travelogue.

Hypertext Links

Links within the body of this travelogue may point to just about anywhere on the net. I have tried to make them relevant, but you can skip every one if you like, and miss nothing. They are there to save you time in case you are interested in more detail on any topic. In fact, if you get right down to it, all of the text is optional, too. Feel free to just look at the pictures. In that event, you'll want to skip this introduction, and start the trip with the first section.

Introduction

In early April, 1997, we took perhaps the best vacation we have ever taken. We've taken plenty of vacations before, and some were a lot of fun. But while our kids were growing up, we mostly did car camping vacations. They were terrific, but limited by the amount of driving we were willing to do. So from our starting point in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we never got much farther west than Yellowstone or the Rocky Mountains. While these are wonderful places, our vacations had never taken us to California before.

What really made this vacation different for us is that our kids have now grown up and gone off to college -- one to MIT and the other to Lehigh. We waited for the Easter rush at the airlines to be over, bought some cheap tickets on Northwest Airlines, left our car at Detroit Metro, and flew to SFO, rented a compact car (a Kia, which was a new one on us) with unlimited milage from Hertz, and headed up into the Sierras. Throughout the vacation we continued this thrifty approach by invoking our AARP discounts and staying at cheap motels, like Motel 6 and Super 8. When we stayed at different types of places, it is noted. Now you have to understand that while we are willing to tolerate cities, it is mostly because they are in the way of where we would like to be. Steffi and I are big fans of nature. We love to hike. We are fascinated by birds and other animals, flowers, trees, mountains and other natural wonders. Man-made wonders are OK, but not quite as spiffy. We were determined to see as many natural wonders (plus a few man-made ones) as the two weeks we had alloted would allow. We may have come close to the theoretical limit. It was too much fun not to share it all with you.

This site was constructed to share that vacation, for the enjoyment of family and friends. If you are neither family nor friend, you are still free to enjoy it. The site consists of narration like this and pictures. The pictures were taken with my really ancient Yashica 35 mm camera. The light meter had stopped working (yes, I checked the battery) and so I guessed at all the exposures. If I guessed badly, the folks at Kodak must have compensated pretty well. I shot 4 rolls of Kodachrome 135-200 print film, and had it developed onto a Photo CD. I then read the pictures into Photoshop and made the final tweaks.

Copyrights and Other Legal Stuff

The pictures and text are all Copyright © 1997, Steven R. Weiss. All rights are reserved, but I grant you all the right to look at and enjoy this stuff. Also, take note that although the web site is copyrighted, the vacation is not. You are to feel free to duplicate this vacation or any part, without even giving me credit if you don't feel like it.

Note that no one paid me anything to name them or link to them in this site. This does not mean that I would turn away money if offered by Hertz, Northwest, Kia, Kodak, or even the California Division of Tourism.

Comments are always welcome. Please send them to srw@alum.mit.edu

Navigation

This site is organized into chapters, in the order of the areas of California that we visited. Links are provided at the bottom of each chapter to all other chapters. If you are planning on viewing the whole site, I recommend following them in order, but feel free to jump around if it pleases you.

[Intro] [Sierras] [Desert] [Zoos and Beaches] [Redwoods]