Winter Out West

It’s been awhile since I last posted, and I’m totally blaming this on Owen. It’s hard for me to hunker down and write when he’s home, and with him being in full-on job search mode the past few months, he’s been home... a lot. I finally had time this week to churn it out though, because Owen went on a motorcycle camping trip to Big Sur to celebrate…his new job! He starts working at Nio, an autonomous car company, at the San Jose office next week! So, what have we been up to the past couple months?  

Owen's setup in Los Padres National Forest

View of Big Sur from the fire roads in Los Padres

A long, long time ago (aka November) Owen and I went to Pinnacles National Park. It’s the newest national park, just a couple hours south of us, and has these sweet caves you can hike through. We explored them during the day, then went back for seconds and checked them out at night. 

The caves at Pinnacles National Park

Someone's pumped to go spelunking

For the long Thanksgiving weekend, we were originally planning on backpacking on the northern CA coast with our friends Dusty and Brian. In the interest of staying alive (think impassable trails at high tide, sneaker waves, and swollen creeks) we headed south instead, to Joshua Tree National Park. We spent a wild three nights there, exploring a desert oasis, climbing the jumbo rocks, testing out Brian’s new truck off-roading, and shooting guns in BLM land. We even got Thanksgiving leftovers from a couple camping near us! We also got kicked out of our campsite one night…we shared a site with someone because the campground was full, then he went rogue the next day for an unidentified reason and kicked us to the curb.

Joshua trees and jumbo rocks

Owen top roping at Joshua Tree

Back in December, Owen and I went on what I like to call a microadventure: motorcycle camping on a week night. There’s something about sleeping outside, then going to work the next morning, that makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. After my baby wipe bath and ample body spray, my coworkers had no idea I’d been camping the night before.

The bike was loaded down with our camping stuff

December was a good month: Owen and I got to spend one glorious day with Madeline! She visited with her boyfriend Evan, and we joined up with Will, another college friend. The five of us went on a whirlwind tour of the Bay Area in one day: we got lunch in the Santa Cruz mountains, hiked amongst redwood trees, watched the sunset over the ocean, and capped it off with extreme gluttony- bread bowls then Ghirardelli sundaes in San Francisco. Needless to say, Owen and I were not hungry until after lunchtime the next day. 

Butano State Park. Photo cred- Madeline

I almost never run short races, because clearly I like being in pain, but recently I ran an 8K up in Marin County north of San Francisco. For a race that short, it packed in some of the most epic scenery I’ve experienced in a trail race. I also ran a 5K “prediction run” which means we predicted our finishing time before the race, and the runner that finished closest to their prediction won (no watches allowed). I was way off my predicted time, but I finished second in the race!

Rodeo Beach Trail Run

We returned to the motherland (what I fondly call NJ) for Christmas. We were eager to experience true winter weather and we got it: the temperature hovered around 15 degrees. I had to wear two pairs of pants to hike outside. Two! We had some much-needed friends and family time and finally got to meet Owen’s nephew, Antonio, who just turned one.

Dressed up as a greaser and "bad Sandy" for a 50s themed NYE party

Braving the cold with Kelli and Mom in New Hope, PA

For MLK weekend in January, we planned an impromptu trip up to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Lucky for us, our friend Evan lives not too far from the park so we had a place to crash and a host. Even with last minute notice, he got us El Salvadorean food one night and took us to a game night. Crater Lake was so beautiful that you could literally just “point and shoot” and all the photos came out amazing. During our hike along the lake’s rim, we tried glissading (sliding down the snow on our butts) and even used our hiking poles as makeshift ice axes to self-arrest as needed. Luckily, we never needed to put it to the test: we were able to stop before smashing into the trees at the bottom. 

Crater Lake was incredible

Owen in post-glissading bliss

Last weekend, we went to Yosemite National Park to celebrate my birthday. As Madeline kindly reminded me, I am now closer to 30 than 20. Yikes! I wanted to see the park in the winter, blanketed with snow, but the Sierras had been seriously lacking in snowfall so I wasn't sure what to expect. We lucked out and found snow: we hiked out to a snowy sequoia grove. Mission accomplished! We also spent a good bit of time searching for fireplaces and falling asleep in front of them. It was the perfect birthday weekend.  

Hiking underneath a sequoia tree

Tuolumne Sequoia Grove at Yosemite

We found a fireplace you could sit inside!

I celebrated my one-year anniversary at San Mateo County recently. Work is going well- I'm going to be working on a watershed restoration project, which will hopefully allow me to get out in the field a bit more. I did a site visit a couple weeks ago with an engineering geologist who was drilling some super deep soil cores, and he insisted on getting a photo of me pretending to operate the drill.

Don't worry- I'm just pretending to operate this drill

 

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I'm excited for the coming months and for the days to get longer. If you call us and our phones are off, it means one thing: we are out in our playground in the woods, running or riding down some dirt road, chasing the next view.