Tag: California

Riding Lake Tahoe Trails

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Darlene and I went up to Lake Tahoe for a couple days of mountain biking midweek last week.  We did a bit of Sawtooth Ridge near Truckee after driving up on Wednesday – these are some nice wandering trails overlooking the Truckee River and highway 89 – and chipmunks everywhere!

On Thursday we went for a full day’s ride centered around the awesome views of the Tahoe Flume Trail, overlooking Lake Tahoe.  Here’s a two-minute video montage from the ride:

Tahoe Rim and Flume Trails

Richard fell sick and wasn’t able to join us so we caught the shuttle up to Tahoe Meadows (near Mt. Rose).  Our route started with the Tahoe Rim Trail heading south, then catching the Red House Flume Trail running clockwise, then back up the Sunflower Hill Trail, round Marlette Lake until finally getting to enjoy the Flume Trail proper.  Sweet and long 25-mile day with lots of breaks to enjoy the views and even snag a geocache along the way.

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Big Basin Camping

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Darlene and I joined Laura, Rachel and Sanna for two nights of camping in Big Basin State Park (in the Santa Cruz mountains) earlier this week (Monday-Wednesday).  The creek was nearly dry due to the drought but we enjoyed some great hikes in wonderful weather, several successful geocaching finds and an overabundance of yummy food, including shish kebabs and brats over the campfire.  Thankfully there were practically no mosquitoes (nice change from our backpacking here in May) but we did have to fend off frequent forays by the numerous, brazen raccoons all around the campgrounds.  One of which snagged our buns as we were getting things ready for our brat fest!  The nerve!

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Backpacking the Lost Coast

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Darlene and I joined Abhi, Komo and Anjali on a backpacking trip along part of California’s “Lost Coast”, led by Mike through the Outdoor Adventure Club.  The “Lost Coast” is a remote and undeveloped stretch of coastline in northern California, north of Fort Bragg and south of Eureka.  We hiked the northern section from Mattole Beach down to Black Sands Beach (near Shelter Cove) over three days, August 9th-11th.  Due to the steep coastal terrain, you’re often hiking the beach – several long sections of which are impassable during high tide and so you need to plan around the tide tables.

Click on through for my gallery of pictures and videos, including some from Darlene, Abhi and Mike:

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Cycling Around Lake Tahoe

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Darlene and I joined some of her cycling friends in a biking event around Lake Tahoe this past Sunday, June 1st: “23rd Annual America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride“.  The main route is 72 miles around the lake and a total of about 4000 ft of elevation gain.

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Click for the full gallery of pictures

Here’s a short (three minute, 50 MB) video montage I put together of the whole ride around the lake:

 

Tahoe Skiing

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Here’s a handful of pictures and a video montage from a couple of Tahoe ski trips in March with Darlene and the Outdoor Adventure Club.  Unfortunately, I didn’t catch everyone on camera on these trips.  One weekend was with Greg and Erin but we never caught up with Bruce and Jane on the slopes and the other was with Stéphane, Evan, Richard and Jennifer but you can’t tell that from the photos.  We also met up with Resi and Troy (and baby Aiden!) one day and foolishly I didn’t get a single shot of Aiden ripping up the slopes!  At least I did get a shot of our massive Carcassonne game where we played with four of the major expansions at once.

Click on through for the gallery and video:

  

Ride to Monterey

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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

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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”

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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!

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