More bear visitors in Tahoe – one checking all the doors of our camper van:
And another big mama and her cub making the rounds:
Tag: California
Eastern Sierra Road/Cat Trip
In early June we loaded up the camper van for a trial run with the new cats, Sabik and Jinx. We spent about nine days in the Eastern Sierra between Sonora Pass and Rock Creek Lake, relocating to a new wild camping spot every couple of days. We did some hiking — a short one to Emma Lake in Hoover Wilderness, a hard climb up Crater Mountain in the Mono Craters area and a day-long hike through Little Lakes Valley above Rock Creek Lake in John Muir Wilderness. Oh and Darlene finally got her “pie in the sky” at Rock Creek Lodge. We also visited the Travertine Hot Springs near Bridgeport and took a dip in the Shepherd hot spring tub (one of the Whitmore Hot Springs near Mammoth). We checked in on the eagles nest we found in Owens Gorge some years ago and found it now abandoned. And I set out on what was supposed to be a reasonable mountain bike ride to the lookout tower on Bald Mountain on the Long Valley Caldera from our campsite near Smokey Bear Flats but turned into a 36-mile journey avoiding unexpected private property lines and slogging along miles of nasty loose and sandy roads.
The real focus of the trip was acclimating the cats to camping in the wild and they took to it pretty well except for Jinx’s scary first time getting freaked out and not understanding how to get back to the safety of the van. (He is such a skittish cat.) We have radio-tracking collars on them so we can locate them if they wander but the real trouble is they get to having too much fun hunting for critters, climbing rocks or dashing through the brush that we can’t get them to come back in the van when we want to close up in the evening. We can’t even get close enough to pick them up when they don’t want to come in. We’ve been trying treats and toys and both attractive noises and scary noises but this is clearly going to take more work and training. We really need to get them to the point of coming when called (like with Pan and Hera), or at least not treating it like a game of “keep away”.
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Snow and Rain in Tahoe
After far too many dry warm weeks, we finally got a big snow storm across the Sierra in mid-February and Darlene and I dashed up to Tahoe with the cats just ahead of it to enjoy the snow for a couple of weeks. Resi and Aiden joined us for the first week and we got a couple of days in at Northstar before and after the big dump. Later in the week, I met up with Troy and Aiden at Homewood for three days as more snow piled up. Unfortunately, Darlene wasn’t feeling well and missed out on the fresh powder.
We then joined Jon, Stan, Bill, Jim and Lewis for our annual ski week, getting a day in at Palisades before the rain came in for a couple of days to wreck all that fresh powder. So we had a couple of board game days together before venturing back out at NorthStar and Palisades Alpine. Over the first weekend in March, Jon and Roland joined us for more gaming and we got in another day at Alpine before eventually packing up and heading home.
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Tahoe Skiing
The 2024-25 ski season in Tahoe wasn’t great. Plenty of moisture but that often included rain which would muck up the snow and freeze hard overnight and then it was often really warm, in the 40’s and 50’s through the whole season. We did hit up Northstar and Sugar Bowl over three days with Geof and Jennifer in early January, and a few days at Palisades and Alpine before and after our ski trip / road trip to Colorado and Utah in March.
We also encountered a bobcat along the road in our neighborhood who was so focused on what was happening down the street that he didn’t care that we stopped alongside of him to gawk and take pictures.
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Backpacking into Desolation Wilderness
Darlene and I went for a short backpacking trip into the southwest corner of Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe), camping a couple of nights at Twin Lakes. We had nice weather except for the heavy and unrelenting winds each night. We spent our layover day making our way cross-country over and up to a nearby peak. Darlene chose to take a nice nap at the saddle, while I finished the climb up to the top for some tremendous views.
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Darlene’s Family Visit
Darlene’s family (Alice, Kathy, Shel and Dan) came for a visit again this month and among other things, Rachel joined us for lunch at BeniHana’s, we visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk and we met up with Maryanne for some sightseeing down Monterey and Big Sur way.
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Peterson Automotive Museum
After our stay in Anaheim to visit the Disney parks, we spent a couple of hours on Friday at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. They’ve got a large collection of historic and iconic cars including vehicles from Hollywood movies featured in various changing exhibits. There’s currently a large Tesla exhibit there which was unexpectedly pretty cool.
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A Return to Disneyland
Darlene and I decided to make a little road trip last week to Anaheim to visit the Disney parks. It had been 27 years since I’d been to Disneyland, a little longer for Darlene, and neither of us had ever been to Disney’s California Adventure Park. Happily, Hoan was able to join us for the day at Disneyland.
We were all most impressed with the new-to-us Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area in Disneyland. It was fun to see both old and new stuff, including the holiday versions of classics like the Haunted Mansion and Small World. At California Adventure Park, we were impressed with the many detailed environments created around the park, but particularly the Radiator Springs area from the Pixar “Cars” movie. Some rides weren’t available at each park though – like the Indiana Jones ride was under maintenance all week and several had delayed openings or multiple temporary breakdowns. We actually missed out on Space Mountain entirely as it broke down during our assigned window late in the day.
Unfortunately, despite our mid-week attendance, the normal standby lines were often pretty awful (often 50-80 minutes) and Disney’s paid extra “fast pass” Genie+ system isn’t that great. You can only schedule something every 90 minutes, the most popular ride in each park isn’t included and you’re often assigned a window several hours later so you don’t really get to make use of the “lightning lanes” very many times over the course of the day. Plus, as we experienced, there’s no recourse if the ride breaks down during your assigned window.
Anyway, on the third day we rested, had lunch in the Downtown Disney District between the parks, attempted (and failed) at an escape room in Irvine and met up with Hoan’s family for dinner.
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