after i got home from muir beach, i accidentally formatted my card without copying all of the contents to my hard drive. i nearly died. i probably lost about half of the photos that i took.

so i looked around and asked around and finally i found pc inspector smart recovery which is a program that will undelete/unformat files that you have deleted on your memory card. the program worked beautifully, and i was able to recover my files.

phew.

christi and i went to muir beach today to scout out the location for a future photo shoot that i was thinking about doing for a friend’s engagement photos. i’ve never been to muir beach before and i very rarely head up anywhere north of san francisco.

originally, we were planning to head up there on sunday, but it turned out that the forecast was for rain so we headed up saturday instead. the day was just gorgeous. i was amazed at how beautiful the weather was in san francisco, blue skies, warm weather, it was hard to imagine that it would rain the following day.

i found this thai restaurant called thep lela thai restaurant while i was looking for places to eat on the trip. when we got there it looked pretty nice. the food was a little different than i had expected. i got my usual panang curry, which was good, but different. the larb gai was also good, but also different. i’m not sure how exactly to describe it. the dishes just weren’t what i had expected. but still, it was fun to try out a new place since we were uncharted territory anyway.

the beach itself was equally gorgeous. great weather, great sand, and many people just enjoying the day. i brought out two of my cameras today, one for each of us. i gave christi the 20D and shot with the 10D myself. i had forgotten what the 10D had felt like and though i know that the 20D is a better camera, the 10D was still very, very usable. i don’t think that i missed anything from the 20D that much in the bright conditions.

the beach had some nice terrain, sandy spots, rocky spots, and a little hike that you can take to overlook the beach from above, as well. if you have never gone to muir beach, check it out, it’s quite cute.

sometimes when i’m taking pictures, i look too hard to look for picture taking opportunities that i just don’t soak in what’s around me. i really enjoyed muir beach and after i had taken about 50 photos or so, i sat down at a log and just watched the waves crash onto the shore. there was just something peaceful and mesmerizing about it.

probably about 50 pictures later, i hiked up the side of this cliff to a bench that overlooked the ocean. i sat there for a while too just watching the ebb and flow of the waves and enjoying where i was. it was nice.

we headed back towards home and we had planned to go check out stowe lake in golden gate park, but through some kind of bizarre traffic and direction marvel, we managed to miss golden gate park…twice! i don’t know how we did it, but i thought it was pretty funny. i elected to just head back home because it was getting late and i was getting hungry.

we stopped off at san carlos where i ate at what used to be my favorite chimichanga place. i think that they have changed their frying ways, though, because they no longer use lard in their cooking. this is particularly distressing because the secret to their cooking was that they would put a bit of lard INSIDE the chimichanga and then deep fry it in lard. man, that was the best chimichanga i’ve ever had. and now they’ve ruined it with vegetable oil. poo on you.