Ride to Monterey

Earlier this week, Darlene and I made a little two-day, round-trip bike excursion to Monterey and back from Santa Cruz.  It worked out to about 101 miles round trip from my place in the hills near Scotts Valley.  We had actually intended to go down on Monday, hang out on Tuesday and return Wednesday but as we weren’t really ready to go until late Monday afternoon, with two hours of sunlight left…. oops!  So, Tuesday morning we finally headed out.

It’s a common route and except for a couple of miles around Moss Landing, you stay off of Highway 1.  And in fact, there’s a great bike trail that runs from Castroville all the way into Monterey which we didn’t know about until we stumbled on to it en route.

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We had great weather both days and a lovely ride and stayed overnight at the inexpensive but nice Cannery Row Inn – across from San Carlos Beach and The Breakwater (a popular SCUBA diving spot).

Perseids at the Pinnacles

Darlene and I camped out on the east side of Pinnacles National Park this past Sunday to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We had some fairly dark skies as Pinnacles is in a somewhat remote location. The glow of lights from Hollister and Salinas (about 25-ish miles away) were apparent to the north but the Milky Way was still quite visible. And the crescent moon set nice and early. We spotted probably several meteors per minute.  There were a few clusters of four or five.

I made a little video of some time lapse images I captured during the night:

As it was a Sunday night, getting a campsite was easy – most of the sites were vacant — not so on a Friday or Saturday night!  There was lots of wildlife though… of the more natural variety.  We had multiple visits from human-habituated deer, rabbits and a coyote in our campsite.  (I don’t count the yellow jackets!)  We went for a hike to see the nearby talus caves and saw a couple of bats but part of the caves were still closed to protect the bat colony.  (Talus caves are formed by rocks and boulders falling into a narrow area to form a ceiling and block out the sky.)  On Monday, we hiked the High Peaks loop and happened to run into an old coworker from FileMaker.  We also saw some turkey vultures and possibly some California condors.

 

Back Into “The Womb Room”

Here’s a collection of pictures and a little video from an afternoon of caving/spelunking at California Cavern on their “Mammoth Cave Expedition” tour. I’ve enjoyed many caving adventures (including multiple visits to this cave system) but this was a first time experience for Darlene, Glenn and Michele to go on more than a walking tour of a cave. They were a little nervous and reluctant but went for it and everyone had fun and came through with smiles… despite a few moments of claustrophobia!

Click on through for the full gallery:

 

Climbing Mt. Whitney

These are pictures and videos from a three day backpacking trip with Stéphane and Darlene to summit Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft).  Second time for me!  (Here’s the first.)

We chose to camp at Outpost Camp (10,400 ft), a relatively short 3.8 miles from the Whitney Portal trailhead at 8360 ft. However, this made for a long summit day of over 14 miles round trip. We made it though and enjoyed a beautiful day and stupendous views all along the way!

Click on through for the full gallery: