My bud has been on a training kick lately. Something about a big trek coming up that apparently requires him to haul a massive camera bag up mountains every weekend. I don’t ask too many questions. I just ride along.
Today’s plan was Griffith Peak at Mt. Charleston. Good elevation, decent trail, should’ve been a solid workout. Emphasis on should’ve been.
Trail boss, reporting for duty.
We got to the trailhead and the trail was closed. Just… closed. No explanation, no alternative, just a sign that basically said “nope.” So we pivoted to Lower Bristlecone instead. Fine. Flexible. Adaptable. That’s what training is about, right?
Except then about a mile in, Pokin’s stomach decided it also didn’t want to be on this hike. So we turned around.
Not exactly the epic mountain conquest we had in mind.
My bud looking like a snow ninja. Bit dramatic for a pine forest but okay.
BUT — and this is the part Nicholas actually cared about — the gear test was a success. He’s lugging around 25 pounds of camera equipment in that Shimoda bag, and today was about seeing how it all felt on the trail. The bag itself is comfortable. The camera clips on and off the shoulder strap fast. The tripod stays put. The whole setup works.
The bear on top of the backpack? Also stays put. Not that anyone asked about my comfort.
Every piece of camera gear known to man strapped to one person. And me.
He’s got the camera, the tripod, clips, poles, and somehow still found room for water. I’m tucked in between all of it like cargo. Which I suppose I am, technically. Premium cargo.
Short hike. Good intel. We’ll be back for the real thing next week at Brian Head for some altitude work. Assuming no one’s stomach vetoes the plan.
Nicholas’s mom was in town, and someone decided the best use of a perfectly good gaming Saturday was to drive two hours into the hottest place on Earth to look at flowers.
It’s February. It should not be hot. It was hot.
But fine. Death Valley is having a superbloom, and apparently that’s a big deal. When the desert gets enough rain — which happens maybe once every few years — the seeds that have been sitting dormant in the dirt suddenly decide to all wake up at once and turn the valley floor into something that looks like someone spilled a paint store. The last time it happened like this was… actually, the last time we went to see a superbloom. So I guess this is becoming a thing.
Desert gold sunflowers. They’re yellow. The desert is brown. It works.
Nicholas’s mom was going on about the flower colors — the yellows are desert gold sunflowers, the purples are phacelia, and there are little white and pink ones mixed in that I didn’t catch the names of because I was being carried in a backpack and had limited interest in botany. The gist is: different minerals in the soil produce different colored flowers in different areas. Science.
Oh, and this trip had a special guest.
That’s Chestnut. He was… enthusiastic.
Chestnut. The horse. From Hong Kong. He would not stop talking about how amazing everything was. “The flowers are so beautiful!” “The mountains are so grand!” “What a wonderful day to be alive!”
Yes, Chestnut. It’s dirt and flowers. Calm down.
Purple phacelia climbing a volcanic hillside. Even the dark, angry-looking rocks got flowers.
I’ll admit it though — the purple ones were something. Clusters of phacelia growing straight out of black volcanic rock, like the flowers didn’t get the memo that nothing is supposed to live here. The contrast was ridiculous. Dark hillside, bright purple, golden yellow. Looked fake.
Bug’s-eye view. This is what the desert floor looks like when it decides to show off.
We stopped at Artist’s Palette, which has nothing to do with flowers but everything to do with looking like a screensaver. The hills are painted in layers of green, pink, rust, and lavender from different mineral deposits. Nicholas’s mom loved it. I sat on a sign.
Artist’s Palette. Named that because it looks like one. Creative.
Then: Badwater Basin. The lowest point in North America. 282 feet below sea level. I have now been to the lowest point on the continent, which I feel should come with some kind of certificate or medal. It did not.
282 feet below sea level. VIB (Very Important Bear) at the VLP (Very Lowest Point).
Also, both Nicholas AND Pokin forgot their park passes. So they had to buy yet another one. I think this is their third or fourth in less than a year. At least it’s supporting the parks. That’s what I told them. They did not seem comforted.
The salt flats had water in them, which almost never happens. The same rain that triggered the superbloom left shallow pools across the basin that turned into perfect mirrors.
Salt flats with actual water. Rare. I stayed dry.My bud, documenting the documentation.
We stuck around for sunset because of course we did. Pokin doesn’t let anyone leave a scenic location before golden hour. But this time I’ll give her credit — the light was doing something.
Fine. This was a good photo. Don’t tell Pokin I said that.
The reflections on the water turned the whole basin into a mirror. Lenticular clouds stacked up over the mountains like someone was showing off. Snow on the peaks. The whole thing.
Moon over the bloom. Even the moon wanted in on this.The road out. Not a bad exit.
Hot, dusty, too many flowers, not enough cocoa, and someone’s horse wouldn’t stop saying how great everything was.
Chestnut has been with us for a while now, but this is his first Chinese New Year in the house, and wouldn’t you know it — it’s his year. He hasn’t shut up about it. The house is full of horse figurines. The couch is full of horse figurines. I’m not sure where they all came from but Chestnut seems to think they’re his entourage.
The sofa. THE ENTIRE SOFA. As if the bears arriving wasn’t enough.
Apparently the Year of the Horse symbolizes energy, freedom, and enthusiasm. Which is just Chestnut’s normal personality turned up to eleven with cultural validation. Great.
We got Chinese New Year gifts. I got chocolates. Chestnut got apples. Seems appropriate — horses eat apples, bears eat chocolate. I’m not going to pretend the chocolates weren’t excellent.
My chocolates. His apple. The system works.
Now, the main event. Pokin decided to go all out this year and bought a proper wok for the occasion. One problem: she didn’t realize you have to season a wok before you cook with it. It’s not like a regular pan. You have to heat it up, oil it, burn the oil off, repeat, build up the coating, the whole thing. She tried to cook with it raw and it went about as well as you’d expect.
So Nicholas stepped in, seasoned the wok properly, and then — this is the important part — wouldn’t let Pokin use it.
He seasoned it and claimed it. That’s the wok now. His wok. Pokin bought a wok for Chinese New Year and Nicholas got a new wok.
The contested wok. Seasoned by Nicholas. Owned by Nicholas. Purchased by Pokin.
The actual dinner was ridiculous though. Pokin made an entire five-course menu with cultural notes explaining what each dish symbolized. Potstickers shaped like gold ingots for prosperity. Steamed seabass for surplus. Sesame balls because they expand when fried and that means your luck is expanding. Noodles for longevity. There was a whole printed menu card and everything.
Five courses. Cultural footnotes. Printed menus. Pokin does not do things halfway.
I mostly cared about Course V: The Sweet Finish. Mango pudding, almond jello, sesame balls, mochi, AND cookies. Five desserts. In one meal. This is my kind of cultural celebration.
Chestnut says this was the best night of his life. I told him to settle down, it’s February.
Pokin went to Panama with her forum. She brought me. Smart.
She also brought Chestnut. Unnecessary.
The Waldorf. Travel companions. One essential, one decorative.
Nicholas wasn’t on this trip because he somehow felt his brotherly duty of building a bathroom for his sister was more important than quality time with me. Whatever. His loss.
This was Pokin’s second time at the Panama Canal, which apparently helps with the retention of useless engineering facts. She got an insider’s tour of the Miraflores Locks control tower, heard the whole history again, and came back full of opinions about lock chambers and water levels.
The Miraflores Locks. Built in 1913. Still working.
The original control console is still there. Brass gauges, GE dials, manual switches. They built the thing that connects two oceans and operated it with equipment that looks like it belongs in a submarine from a movie.
The original controls. Brass and glass and no touchscreens.A ship doing the thing. Barely fits.
Engineering marvel. Genuinely impressive. I respect anything that was built over a hundred years ago and still works exactly as intended. More than I can say for most apps.
Then Pokin went down a rabbit hole. A literal bean rabbit hole.
Geisha beans. The most expensive coffee beans in the world that haven’t been pooped out by an animal. (Excuse me? There are coffee beans that get pooped out by an animal? I have follow-up questions, but I’m choosing not to ask them.)
Here’s the thing about Geisha beans: they’re originally from Gesha, Ethiopia. Named after a Japanese word. Grown on the hills of Panama. A bean from Africa named in Japanese grown in Central America and sold for absurd amounts of money. Globalization is weird.
Naturally, Pokin wanted to buy some for Nicholas.
And went a little overboard.
A ’little’ overboard.
Multiple bags of Geisha beans. Altieri Typica. Specialty everything. And then, because we were in cacao country, a mountain of Panama chocolate. Mahogany Chocolate. I Love Panama Chocolate. Raspao. Something from Barú.
I want it on the record that I was there specifically for the chocolate procurement. The coffee was Pokin’s thing. The chocolate was bear business.
Nicholas eventually finished his bathroom project and came home. This is what was waiting for him.
A brand new coffee maker. Premium beans. A whole setup.
And someone had found it first.
Oh no.
Peep. On the coffee maker. Already claimed it.
Of course. OF COURSE. You leave fancy Geisha beans unattended for five minutes and the yellow menace materializes on the machine like he was summoned by the aroma. He doesn’t even have hands. How did he get up there? HOW?
Nobody is safe from Peep when coffee is involved. Nobody.
Here’s how this happened. Drew calls Nicholas on a Wednesday night. “Hey, I’m going to be stuck at a resort in Kauai for a few days with an extra bed. Want to come hang out?” When? “Friday.” Like, the day after tomorrow Friday? “Yeah.”
So Nicholas booked last-minute tickets to Hawaii. Obviously I was going. Bud trip means all buds. That’s not even a question.
For context, Drew is a pilot. Sometimes he ends up at a hotel for a few days between flights. This time, the hotel happened to be in Kauai. So basically, Drew got a free resort vacation and Nicholas got a free resort room, and I got shoved in a carry-on. Everybody wins.
The Sheraton Kauai Coconut Beach Resort. Not a bad place to get shoved.
We checked into the Sheraton Kauai Coconut Beach Resort, and I immediately claimed my territory. Balcony with an ocean view. Hammock on the lawn. The bed, obviously.
My spot. Claimed.
The front desk gave Nicholas a shell lei. I immediately took it, because it was obviously meant for me and the staff just made a mistake. Rude. Nicholas knows how things work around here. I wore it the entire trip. It really tied the whole look together.
Aloha. I am here now.Bud and bud at the beach.
If I fits, I swings.
The plan for the trip was simple: wake up, go explore Kauai, come back to the resort, and play video games on laptops until way too late. The kind of trip that only happens when it’s just the buds.
We started the morning with a waterfall, because apparently that’s what you do in Kauai.
Fine. It’s pretty. I said it.
Then we ran into the locals.
Kauai has a wild chicken problem. Or, depending on your perspective, a wild chicken feature.
Kauai is famous for its feral chickens. They’re everywhere. Just strutting around like they own the place. Roosters crowing at 4 AM. Hens blocking parking lots. Total chaos. Honestly, I respect the energy. These chickens answer to nobody. They’ve been free-range since Hurricane Iniki blew open all the coops in 1992 and they just… never went back. Thirty years of unsupervised chicken freedom. Living the dream.
We drove south along the coast and found some seriously dramatic cliffs.
Not a bad office view for a bunch of chickens.The two buds. Drew is the one who looks like he’s been flying planes across the Pacific. Because he has.
That’s Drew on the right. He doesn’t like being in photos much, which is why this is basically the only proof he was on this trip. Three buds went to Hawaii. One of them is a ghost.
Then we headed up to Waimea Canyon, which they call the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It’s not as big as the actual Grand Canyon, but it makes up for it by being green instead of brown. And you don’t have to drive to Arizona.
The Grand Canyon of the Pacific. Smaller. Greener. Better snacks nearby.Bear at the canyon.
Last day, so we went the other direction. North shore.
First stop was Kilauea Lighthouse. Nicholas took this one specifically for his mom, because she loves lighthouses. I’m just here for the photo op.
For Nicholas’s mom. She collects lighthouse photos the way I collect hotel beds.
Then we hiked the Okolehao Trail above Hanalei, which goes straight up a ridge and gives you this view:
Hanalei Bay from above. The kind of view that makes you forget you just hiked straight uphill for an hour.Trail complete. Where’s my medal.
The whole trip was three days. Drew had a free room. Nicholas had no plans. I had a shell lei and an ocean view. We hiked, we explored, we played video games until an unreasonable hour every night, and then Drew had to go fly a plane somewhere and we had to go home.
Not a bad way to spend a long weekend. More bud trips like this, please.
Bruce had been working out of the home office for weeks, and we’d already dragged him to Bryce Canyon and Zion. But we weren’t done with him yet. Nicholas, Pokin, and Bruce loaded up the car and headed west toward the Sierra Nevada.
The destination: Big Pine Lakes, a chain of turquoise glacial lakes tucked into a granite amphitheater beneath Temple Crag. The plan: start early, hike the full loop to all the lakes, come home heroes. The reality: slightly different.
The trail was supposed to be hot, so they started before dawn. Which meant it was actually cold. The kind of cold where you question why you agreed to this while stumbling up a trail in the dark.
Three hikers, zero visibility, maximum commitment.
But then the Sierra did its thing.
First light on the peaks. The valley floor still in shadow. Worth the alarm.
The alpenglow on the high Sierra is something else. The peaks go from gray to orange to gold while you’re still hiking in shade. It’s like the mountains are showing off.
Sunlight creeping down the canyon. Still freezing.Pokin leading the charge.
The Big Pine Lakes trail climbs about 2,000 feet over four and a half miles to the first lake, then keeps going through a chain of seven lakes. The full loop is somewhere around 15 miles. They were going to do all of it.
I rode in Nicholas’s pack. Anti-bath technology deployed. Hoodie up.
Trail ready. Hoodie engaged.
The trail starts in sagebrush and pine, crosses a creek with some spectacular dead standing trees, and then gets into serious granite switchback territory.
That color is real. Glacial flour from the Palisade Glacier, the southernmost glacier in the US.
The Big Pine Lakes are turquoise. Not blue, not green. Turquoise. The color comes from rock flour, basically pulverized granite dust ground up by what’s left of the Palisade Glacier and suspended in the water. It looks fake. It looks like someone poured food coloring into a mountain.
Temple Crag. 13,000 feet of granite and attitude.
Temple Crag dominates the whole basin. A massive wall of vertical granite with buttresses and couloirs that looks like it belongs in a fantasy game, not California. I’ve seen a lot of mountains on this blog. This one is up there.
The view from above the basin. The turquoise just keeps going.My bud and me. Temple Crag doing the heavy lifting in the background.
Bear at the lake.Nicholas and Pokin. Looking appropriately small.All three at the lake. Bruce still has functioning knees at this point.
Bruce found a perfectly round boulder perched on a granite slab and decided it needed a photo.
Bruce vs. boulder. Gym training finally relevant.
I got my own photo series at the lake, because priorities.
The plan was to do the full loop, hitting all seven lakes. They made it to a few and then took an early loop back. Smart call. Nicholas and Pokin, who hike regularly, were going strong. Bruce is a gym guy. Very fit, very strong, could probably carry me and Nicholas up a flight of stairs without breathing hard. But gym fit and trail fit are different animals. Long-distance hiking at altitude doesn’t care how much you can bench press. His knees were done.
No shame in that. The trail gained 2,000 feet and the altitude hits different when you’re from sea level in Colombia. They still covered serious ground, saw the best of the lakes, and got to stare at Temple Crag for a few hours. That’s a win.
Moon rising over the highway. Not a bad way to end a summer.
Eventually Bruce headed back to Colombia with busted knees and a phone full of photos. A summer of Bryce Canyon, Zion twice, and the Sierra Nevada. Not bad for a work visit.
Day two of the Bruce visit. After Bryce (where I was cruelly left behind), we headed back to Zion. Our usual routine: bike the canyon, hike the Narrows, stay at the Cliffrose.
This time, I came along.
My bud and me. Yes, the Assassin’s Creed outfit. Anti-bath technology.
The Cliffrose is our spot in Springdale. It’s right at the entrance to Zion, the grounds back up to the canyon walls, and the views from the patio are the kind of thing that makes you briefly forget you’re paying lodge prices.
The patio view. Not bad for a place that isn’t a motel.
Chestnut came too. He was very excited. He’s always very excited.
First up: biking the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. Cars aren’t allowed past a certain point in the park, so it’s either the shuttle or a bike. We bike. It’s better.
The crew at the Court of the Patriarchs.Alone on the road. Canyon walls for company.
Back at the Cliffrose that evening, we had visitors.
Deer. On the lawn. At sunset. With Zion behind them. I mean, come on.
The deer at the Cliffrose have zero fear. They walk right up to the rooms, graze on the lawn, bring their fawns. They’ve figured out that lodge guests are harmless and usually have cameras.
Nicholas and I, observing the locals.Our evening posts. Chestnut took the left chair without asking.
Dinner was in Springdale. Good food, better backdrop.
Dinner with a view.
And then the sky did its thing. Perfect clear night, Milky Way fully visible. Nicholas, Bruce, and Pokin stayed up experimenting with phone cameras, wishing they’d brought the real ones.
The Milky Way over Zion. Phone cameras. Not bad for amateurs.
Zion in August. Biking, hiking, deer on the lawn, stars over the canyon. Not a bad day in bear territory.
We’d barely recovered from Pokong’s visit when the next houseguest arrived. Bruce, one of Nicholas’s engineers from Colombia, came up to spend the summer working out of the home office. Nicholas figured if the team had a tight deadline, they might as well grind it out together. In person. In Las Vegas. In August.
And if you’re going to have a coworker from Colombia staying at your house, you take him to Bryce Canyon. You take Bruce to Bryce. It’s right there. You have to.
The crew was Nicholas, Pokin, Bruce, Po On, and Eric. They picked a quieter loop trail so they wouldn’t be fighting crowds the whole way. Smart.
I was not invited on this hike.
I’m choosing to believe this was for my own protection. The sun. The elevation. My delicate constitution. Definitely not an oversight.
This is what they saw without me.
The hoodoos at Bryce are those tall, skinny rock spires that look like someone stacked a city out of orange sandstone and forgot to add streets. Thousands of them, packed into an amphitheater, glowing different colors depending on where the sun hits.
Five hikers, zero bears. Noted.Nicholas and Pokin, doing the couple-at-a-viewpoint thing.
They started on the Fairyland Trail, which despite the name has no fairies and no bears. Disappointing on both counts.
The trail drops down into the canyon and winds through the hoodoos. Hardly anyone else on it.
Not bad, I guess.
The scenery at Bryce just keeps going. Every direction, more hoodoos, more layers, more orange. It’s the kind of place where you stop taking photos because you realize every single one looks the same and also incredible.
The buddy system.
There are some natural arches along the way that frame the canyon like windows.
Nature’s picture frame.
And then there are the trees. The pines at Bryce hang on to the canyon rim with exposed roots gripping bare rock like they’re holding on for dear life. Which they are. The ground is literally eroding out from under them.
Tenacity.This tree has been through some things.Bruce, bonding with a ponderosa. They smell like vanilla, apparently.
Once you’re down in the canyon among the hoodoos, the scale hits different. They tower over you. The colors shift from orange to pink to white depending on the layer. It looks like walking through a very old, very tall, very orange city that nobody built.
Down among the spires.
And of course, the jump photos. You can’t go to a national park without jump photos. It’s a rule.
Airborne.
Everyone survived. The bear would have also survived, for the record.Pokin, Nicholas, and Bruce. Looking pleased with themselves.
Bryce Canyon. No crowds, no bears, no problems. Bruce got to see something that doesn’t exist in Colombia. Nicholas got to take Bruce to Bryce, which I suspect was the real reason for this entire trip.
If you’re going to show someone America, you don’t start with strip malls and fast food. You start with a canyon so deep it makes you feel like a speck. PoOn and Eric came along too, because Pokin’s family travels in packs.
The Yeung siblings, already sweating.
We stopped at Valley of Fire on the way out. Red rocks, blue sky, 110 degrees. Classic Nevada welcome. Then we drove to Springdale to set up camp near Zion.
The Cliffrose. Pokin wants you to know it was super expensive.
Next morning, everyone geared up. Rented the canyoneering boots. Rented the walking sticks. The Narrows requires you to literally walk through a river inside a canyon, and the rental shop knows it.
Five people, five walking sticks, varying levels of enthusiasm.
And then we went in.
Everyone still smiling. The water hasn’t gotten deep yet.
The Narrows is one of those hikes where the trail IS the river. You’re wading through the Virgin River with canyon walls towering on either side. It starts ankle deep. It does not stay ankle deep.
At first everyone hiked together. Then Nicholas and Eric took off, leaving the Yeung siblings to go at their own pace. As one does.
Right before Nicholas took off.The Yeung pace. Steady. Scenic. Slower.
Deeper in, the canyon gets serious. The walls close in, the light gets weird, and you start to understand why people fly across the world to walk through a river.
My bud, doing the thing.
We were not the only ones with this idea.
Half of America had the same Fourth of July plan.
The group also went biking through the park, because apparently walking through a river for hours wasn’t enough exercise.
The next day, everyone was trying to figure out what to do. Nicholas didn’t like the plans. So Nicholas took over.
Two guys at a ghost town. The ghost town has better fashion.
He found a ghost town. An actual abandoned pioneer settlement with a schoolhouse and log cabins and everything. Pokong seemed cautiously impressed, in the way that someone from Shenzhen looks at a 150-year-old wooden building and thinks “we’d have replaced this by now.”
Then we saw dinosaur tracks. Real ones. In the ground. Labeled and everything.
Grallator, Batrachopus, and Baby Dino. I outrank all of them.My natural habitat. Warm. Dry. No water.
And then, because the day wasn’t full enough, Nicholas found a cave.
Pokong, underground, wondering how he got here.Three guys in a hole. Living their best life.
The desert out here does not mess around.
Po On showing me the desert. I have opinions about the heat.
Pokong did get his two requests. Nicholas took him shooting. From what I heard, the guns scared the absolute bejesus out of him. Nobody got hurt, which is apparently the bar for a successful shooting range visit.
The Cybertruck driving happened too. PoOn came out for that. There was a photoshoot. I’m told it was very cool. I wouldn’t know, because nobody brought me.
But the real American experience? That’s the food.
Tacos El Gordo. The true American dream.Also this. But mostly the tacos.
Pokong came to America for a Cybertruck and some guns. He got a canyon, a river, a ghost town, dinosaur bones, a cave, a bear, tacos, and the realization that Nicholas does not know how to plan a simple week.
Sesame Street did a collaboration with Gotham Greens. They put Sesame Street characters on salad packaging. Salad. The healthy thing. Leaves. You know.
Pokin thought it was cute and picked up the Cookie Monster one. Good choice. Responsible. A woman training for Everest Base Camp, buying lettuce. Her friends would be proud.
The lettuce lived in the fridge for about a week.
And for about a week, every time she opened the fridge, Cookie Monster stared back at her. Cookie Monster. On lettuce. The irony of putting the cookie guy on salad is not lost on me, a bear who understands that dessert is the superior meal category.
After seven days of psychological warfare from a plastic container, Pokin cracked.
She did not buy more salad.
Dinner.
Four full-sized Crumbl cookies. Not small ones. Not the minis. The big ones.
She ate them for dinner.
That was dinner. The whole dinner. Four cookies from a pink box on the kitchen counter where the salad used to be. Cookie Monster won.
Her friend Davey called it rock bottom. Chestnut called it “concerning.” I call it the most relatable thing Pokin has done all year.
The salad, for what it’s worth, did eventually get eaten. But not that night. That night belonged to the cookies.
