Monty's 2001 Trip to California!

The Nakai Pack...
Up, up and waaaay up...

Mount Tamalpalis

At 2571 feet this is not a very tall mountain by any means, however, it rises right from sea level and is one of the highest parts around -- and it lends itself to quite the spectacular view! The windy drive itself lends to one great view after the other. A vista of the San Francisco Skyline, or just the rolling hills all required me to stop to shoot a few snapshots.

The weather could not have been better for this trip. Sunny, warm, well, warm for one who has been acclimated to temperatures well below freezing for the past six weeks if Indiana winter. Just a few days ago a major winter storm (California Winter storm, rain, no snow) had blown through so the air was crisp and clear. Visibility must have been well over 50 miles. A nice day to climb a mountain. Of course that was by car, not by foot ;-)

The parking lot at Mt. Tam is quite near the summit. Only a quarter mile hike up a nicely maintained path to get to the top. On the way I took a LOT of photographs both of the landscape surrounding the mountain, but also of the path itself.

The view north	A cool rock outcropping	The path gets a bit narrow	Big rock in the path	Switch back	The final steps leading to the top
Gardner Lookout	Sun beginning to set	Shadow of both peaks	Nice rocks	The view north	Looking toward the San Francisco beach
Way cool rocks :-)	All this scenery was all well and good, actually quite good, but that was not why I was here today. I was here to capture the sunset from on high. I had hoped for a spectacular sunset with lots of clouds and color, but simply having a sunset was something to be thankful for especially in light of the fact that for many days previous to this one it had rained and been quite gloomy...
Finally, the sunset. The sun was setting through a layer of higher clouds. Below was fog over the ocean. I used this nice rock as a compositional aid to add a certain something to the image. Then I decided to just let the sunset be the entire image. Just for a few seconds as the sun broke through the bottom of that cloud, the fog below lit up in a firery swath of oranges and reds.
As the sun set in the fog, I drove down the road a bit and captured these photos of a darkening winter sky over Bodega Bay.