After spending three months zig-zagging across the country, we reached the west coast arriving at the City by the Bay, San Francisco. We are indebted to our gracious hosts, Chad and Seth, not only for providing us with a place to stay at their home in Martinez, but also for being incredible tour guides displaying unlimited patience with our frequent and often ridiculous questions, feeding us some of the fine cuisine that the Bay City has to offer, allowing us to put our car to rest in their driveway while we are gone, and tolerating our frantic last minute preparations for our year of globe trotting.

We spent the week preparing ourselves for the transition from living out of our car to living out of our backpacks. Our week was also filled with fantastic brunches in Berkley, walking through Muir Woods being humbled by the towering Redwoods, shucking and sucking down oysters in Point Reyes National Seashore, taking eloquently guided tours of San Francisco and the surrounding areas provided by our overwhelmingly informed hosts, and picnicking in Napa Valley (sipping on fine wine, nibbling on a variety cheeses, tossing back a few olives...who are we kidding...we were stuffing our faces and getting sloppy drunk).

We arrived at Sequoia National Park late in the day as a layer of fog had begun to set in. The fog only added to the mystique of this majestic park. To walk amongst these giants is a truly humbling experience. These towering trees strain the neck as much as the mind, as you try to fathom their overwhelming size and age. The General Sherman Tree is the largest living thing on Earth. It weighs an estimated 2.7 million pounds, stands 275 feet tall and is believed to be around 2,100 years old. And, it's still growing. If these trees could talk imagine the stories they could tell. They could talk of great fires, deforestation, world wars, civil war or they might just mention a story of a couple of vagabonds trying to stash away some pine cones from a national park.

Yosemite was as beautiful as we imagined and as picturesque as Ansel Adams' photographs so accurately display. It was well worth the years of waiting to see this park, although our arrival was clouded by more prescribed burns (we needed the park ranger to confirm Yosemite Valley and Half Dome where actually in front of us), Mirror Lake was replaced by a barren depression in the dirt where the lake is normally reflecting its beauty, and Yosemite Falls did not have so much as a drop of water falling over its edge .

Located in the central Sierra Nevada of California are 1200 miles of pure natural beauty. Designated as a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite boasts thousands of lakes and ponds, 1600 miles of streams and 800 miles of hiking trails. Yosemite's scenic beauty has inspired countless people, including Abraham Lincoln, John Muir, Ansel Adams and now us. Needless to say, four days was not enough time to appreciate everything this park has to offer. After one visit to Yosemite, it becomes clear why people have lived in this glacier carved valley for the past 8,000 years. It is easy to lose yourself (if you feel the need to get lost) surrounded by the natural beauty of cascading waterfalls, granite cliffs, steep mountains, deep lakes, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, alpine meadows, and diverse wildlife. Speaking of wildlife?

The constant verbal warnings, pamphlets and park videos of bear attacks on unsuspecting tourists who were stupid enough to bring food into their tents or leave food in their cars, began to take its toll on us. Our first night in the park, we chose a walk-in campsite. We arrived well after dark and had not had anything to eat since breakfast. We threw the tent up in record time, jumped inside and proceeded to make some humble, unassuming and unsatisfying sandwiches. We did not neglect even the smallest crumb, but neither of us was willing to get out of our toasty sleeping bags to put the half-full containers in the bear proof box. We rationalized that the two containers we had inside the tent were well sealed and we would further insulate them by putting them inside two other bags we had with us. After reading a few pages of our books, we faded off into dreamland filled with pizza, lasagna, filet mignon, milk shakes and fine red wine... We awoke suddenly with our eyes wide open to the sound of growling like we had never heard before. The most distressing part was that it sounded as if the hairy beast was breathing and growling two inches from the vent in our tent. Fortunately, we were armed with knowledge. Matt could deal a lethal blow to the man-eater with his book (or recite a few of the passages and bore it to death), although it was only a paperback. With the flashlight in hand, Matt slowly, tentatively unzipped the flap of the tent. Much to our surprise when the flap had been pulled back, it revealed another tent about two feet away from our own. The resident inside the tent was, apparently, a rather profound nose breather, perhaps even more frightening than any bear.

On this Hallows Eve, we set off to South America in search of the elusive blue footed boobies, lost Inca cities, Iguazu Falls, lakes of breasts, lands of fire and whatever else may await.