It’s amazing how much work vacations are. I feel as if I need a few days off to recover from mine 
All in all we had a great time. I went on several nice runs, Karin and I visited a few of the nearby coastal towns, we had some fantastic local food pulled straight from the sea, and happy hour began at 5pm every night.
Alas, all good things must pass. For now it’s back to the grind. The next big outing for me will be the Mt. Whitney run in September. Better put in for a few days off from work for that some time this week.
The view from the top of Point Arena lighthouse
The Gualala River feeding into the sea
Deep in the forest at Sea Ranch
One of the paths I ran at Sea Ranch
The process for obtaining a permit to hike Mt. Whitney is a bit convoluted, and relies on punctual form submission, proper request format, pre-payment, and pure dumb luck to come out a winner. The US Forest Service limits the amount of people allowed on the mountain each day, and because the demand for permits is extremely high a lottery system was introduced to be as fair as possible to all applicants. The lottery drawing begins on February 17th, with the winners and losers notified via mail in April.
As luck would have it, this past Friday I received an envelope in the mail containing one of these:
Awww Yeah! I actually won a spot on the mountain. Looks like my training won’t be in vain. I’ll see you up at 14,500ft in September! The plan is to run up and down Mt. Whitney Trail (22 miles) in under 8 hours. As you can see I have an extra spot open on my reservation. Want to come along?
UPDATE 9/9/09: I’ve successfully completed my Mt. Whitney run. See this post for details and photos!
