In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and in 2010 Curtis & Denise biked past a winery or two
Not postponing going to Murphys and doing this bike loop any long Curtis and I set out on a couple day long adventure. Our Goals were to: Enjoy the wine and chocolate flight in town Find the vegetarian restaurant we have heard good things about Camp on the cheap Bike the loop that my road bike was dreading (GRAVEL!!!) What was accomplished instead was: Took Curtis’s new Focus on it’s…
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass makes me think I don’t know what bluegrass really is.
There is a very well-to-do person who loves the idea of a lots of free blue grass music, dirty pot-smoking hippies, and peacefully, but loudly, taking over the Golden Gate Park for one weekend a year. They call this phenomenon “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass”. Although I am still trying, and failing, to become a bluegrass fan, Curtis (+ all of his work buddies) were going. How could I really turn down my first big California Dirty Hippie festival anyhow?
Bike Paths, Cold Rivers, and Trail Markers
Curtis and I had planned to bike around wine country this weekend, but, as we should have expected, it was your traditional end of September scorcher of a day. Instead we decided to take the opportunity to swim in Yosemite, and bike around the valley there. We had been avoiding the valley all summer because of the hoards of people everywhere. I enjoy people watching to a degree, but we…
North Dome, Not the North Pole
Trailhead: Porcupine Creek Trailhead, off of Tioga Rd / Hwy 120
Distance: ~9 miles. Slightly downhill on way out and then uphill on the way back. The end of this hike take you onto granite slopes and it is probably best if you wear some shoes with traction & not your foam Tevas like I did.
Northwest for a wedding
Curtis and I adventured this labor day weekend to the Oakland California airport through 5:30 am bay area traffic, across the state of Oregon, and many mountains Curtis told me the name of, to Spokane Washington, then Flathead Lake Montana, for the wedding of Two or Curtis’s friends from college, Rick and Adair. The mountains in the northwest seem very different than the Sierra Nevada by us, and it was a really great time meeting…
The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Pikas… on Mono Pass!
Pikas are distant cousin of Basil and all bunnies, and occasionally are referred to the real life Pokemon Pikachu. No joke, I read it on the internet ;) And pikas are liable to become an (Word of the day!) endemic species with climate change, due to their highly specific mountain sub-alpine scree environments and mortal distaste for warm environments. These cute little threatened critters can be found throughout the park,…
Where we finally go to San Francisco, but not Alcatraz
Which you would think was a good thing because people tried to get out of Alcatraz all the freaking time and died terribly. But seeing as Curtis’ two Estonian friends, Margus and Arvo, came to the City for the very purpose of seeing Alcatraz it was a minor set back. Instead we wandered around aimlessly until we accidentally walked up to Coit Tower, wandered down to some quaint oldschool part…
Obama said we needed a vacation- So we went to Mono Lake!
Actually Curtis and I had been planing to go to Mono Lake ever since I pleaded with him to understand that the fragile saline ecosystem appealed to my inner environmental engineer. In case if you have not heard the back story, or slept through environmental engineering fundamentals, Mono lake is a saline lake in the great basin that is fed by various freshwater streams. The city of LA quite some…
Hetch Hetchy Day Hike or as we like to call it Hetch Hedgehogy: the story of our water source and a brave hedgehog
Trailhead: Evergreen Rd down into Hetch Hetchy Entrance Station, parking lot by dam
Distance: ~ 4 miles rounds trip to Wapama Falls, we went ~ 1.5 miles past that and in addition got to see rattlesnakes & bears!
Hello! I am a 30-something outdoors-lady, backpacker, and resident of Groveland, California - 
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