Northbound

I was going to open this blog post with how it already feels like spring in California: the air has that fresh, damp, earthy feel. Then I realized that later in the post this would be coming:

13 feet of snow and counting

That doesn’t quite go with the whole spring theme. But that’s California for you. Drive a few hours in any direction and you’re in a completely different world. That’s exactly what I did the past few weeks.

I had a long weekend off in January, whilst Owen was in the UK on a business trip. Evan, who’s living in Oregon now, and I scoured maps to find a place to meet up halfway and finally settled on Humboldt Redwoods State Park, on the coast of northern California. On the way up I drove through wine country, Bigfoot-themed tourist traps, and best of all: Avenue of the Giants, a scenic route that snaked through hundreds of giant redwood trees. We had the park almost entirely to ourselves and spent the weekend hiking through ancient redwood forests, trying to trip each other by see-sawing fallen sticks, and searching out the best lunch spots. On one hike, overcome by our growling stomachs before we could find a better spot, we dined in a dark, cold corner of the forest hunched on the ground over our food. We spent the rest of that day making up for our sub-par lunch by snacking at every overlook we came to. Other highlights included playing volleyball with a clump of moss and gorging on pizza at a local restaurant one night. The biggest highlight of all was just hiking underneath the redwood trees and experiencing the feeling of being a tiny blip alongside these prehistoric giants.

I filled the rest of my time while Owen was gone running with friends and coworkers, going to yoga, and I even took a bike repair class at REI one night. I got insanely lost getting to REI, despite the fact that it’s about three miles away and I’ve biked there several times. It is NOT the same in a car.

Last weekend Owen and I drove (or shall I say got driven? We took a Tesla) to Lake Tahoe for my birthday. Over 13 feet of snow had dumped on Tahoe this winter so far. It was more snow than I’d ever seen in my life. The snow drifts on the side of the road were higher than our car. Saturday we went cross country skiing through silent, snow blanketed forests and along Lake Tahoe itself. The running joke all day was that whoever fell first got the first round of drinks. Neither of us fell! That night we piled on layers and dined outside under a heat lamp, then walked into Nevada, just a few blocks from our hotel. The next day, while the Tesla was charging we killed time and hung out in a local coffee shop, had a snowball fight, and watched some gnarly sledding wipe outs. Despite the fact that we almost clawed our own eyes out after sitting in 3 hours of traffic to go 3 miles, it was an amazing weekend. Plus, as my sister put it, I'm now closer to 50 than 0. Cheers to that. 

This weekend we hunkered down for an intensive "get shit done" weekend. We had particular fun on our apartment purge. Owen had somehow ended up with almost every mixed CD from his 7 siblings’ teenage years and we experienced a blast from the past listening to blink-182 and Avril Lavigne and making bets on whose girlfriend wrote an intensive love note on one CD. Still haven't figured that one out yet.

I'm hoping to title the next post "Southbound"...stay tuned...