Welcome to “The Trip so Far”, a Midwesterner’s perspective on living in Northern California. I’ve been living in the San Francisco Bay area for nearly two months and decided to start this blog to share my experience with all of the folks back home. This first entry includes pictures I’ve taken so far on my trip. This will probably be the longest entry since it has pictures taken over the last two months. I’ll hopefully have new entries weekly


We’ll begin with the drive out here. I drove out here with my brother and on the way we took about 250 pictures but we only needed this one to capture the entire experience. This was taken about 200 miles outside of Reno, NV and between the bare, brown hills, gas station, and myself, the picture shows everything there was to see between Illinois and Reno.






The trip was pretty uneventful and we only stopped for food, gas and sleep with the exception of the stop we made in Sparks, NV. In Sparks, NV gambling is legal EVERYWHERE making it impossible to avoid. These next two pictures were taken in a gas station/casino/gun museum, across the street from a grocery store/casino, laundromat/casino and post office/casino.

Sparks was exciting for some….

Disappointing for others…

These next three pictures were taken on Mt. Diablo, just Northeast of San Francisco. Here's a couple I took on the road to the top.

Since I was there by myself, I had to use the timer on my camera. To get a picture of me on the side of this big rock, I needed to run 50 feet then shimmy across that ledge all in 30 seconds. It was very difficult to get this shot and it was definitely as dangerous as it looks.

I had to retake this shot four times. Sometimes I wasn’t quick enough to get into the frame….
Three weeks ago, I decided to venture down to San Jose to check out their Jazz Fest. It was incredible. Unlike the Chicago jazz fest where there's only a descent sized crowd and everyone spends the day sitting and picnicking, the San Jose fest was packed and everyone was dancing. I really like how my inability to choose the correct setting for my camera helped capture all the movement from the people dancing in the second shot.

I live about 25 minutes from the ocean and occasionally I like to go there and take pictures of the rock formations and wildlife.

On this day I wasn’t able to get quite as many shots and I would have liked. After taking the picture below, I realized that the couple you can see in the distance (on the left side, just above that big rock) wasn’t wearing any clothes. It’s not wise to be by yourself on a gay nude beach with a camera. People question your motives. I decided it would be best to put my camera away and find a clothed beach.

This weekend I decided to take a road trip to visit the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods and Napa Valley. As you can see, I’m getting much better at getting myself into the frame when use the camera’s timer.

In Napa I went to a few wine tastings. I had forgotten I had my camera with me until after I had already done a couple. At that point I decided to forgo trying to get myself into the shots since I'm not quite as photogenic when my lips are stained purple and my eyes are half closed. The next few pictures I took at Peju. I would highly recommend stopping there when in Napa. The wines were great and the grounds were gorgeous...

A Californian who had been to a few more tastings than I had, pointed out that the sculptor of this fountain depicting a woman emerging from a waterfall had “F***ing totally ripped off, F***ing Star Wars… with that dude in the ice ‘n’ s***” . I think he was probably right.


I really liked this sculpture of the young girl being pulled along by her mother. I was told that most people don’t see her for some reason.