Posted by Karen on 25-Jun-2010
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Lori and I went camping at June Lake on the eastern side of the Sierra and enjoyed a nice relaxing weekend. We stayed at the Pine Cliff RV Resort, which is right on the lake, however our campsite wasn’t. We arrived Friday afternoon and then went to Mono Lake’s South Tufa area and spend some time exploring and photographing. I tried to get some nice moon shots, but I really need to practice those types of photos a lot more. Saturday was spent exploring the area, chasing geocaches along the dirt roads and some took us to some wonderful view spots. Sunday brought us back home.
Posted by Karen on 20-Jun-2010
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Lori and I took a Sunday drive today to Marin County to see what there is to see. Our first stop was at the Marin County Civic Center, which was closed, but the outside of the building is still very interesting to check out. The building was designed by the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957, near the end of his life. The building is huge and hard to get a photo of the entire thing, but there are numerous architectural details that catch the eye and the camera. Our next stop was as the Marin Art & Garden Center, which is a tucked-away jewel of flowers, gardens and art to explore. Our last stop of the day as at the Railroad-Ferry Museum in Tiburon, where I learned that Tiburon, at one time was more than million-dollar views, it was a railroad town. On the hilltop we found Old St. Hilary’s Church, an old church in the Carpenter Gothic style built in 1886. We end our day down to the center plaza and docks of Tiburon, enjoying the San Francisco skyline and the fascinating wave sculpture and fountain named “Coming About“.
Posted by Karen on 18-Apr-2010
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On this beautiful warm Spring day, Lori and I headed to Solano County, south of Dixon, to visit the Jepson Prairie Preserve and to do a little bit of geocaching. This corner of the county is farm land and it has been painted yellow with mustard blooms. Hunting geocaches takes us down dirt roads and on one of them we found that Dino the purple Dinosaur met an untimely end… yikes! At the preserve, we walked the 1/2 mile nature trail, seeing a few wildflowers, but not many. The recent rains we had the week before had not allowed enough time for this wetland area to start drying, which is when the flowers spring up. It was still a nice walk, I learned about mima mounds and that Olcott Lake is alkaline and called a playa pool. A patch of California poppies on the roadside as we left the preserve helped complete the flower-fix for the day.
Posted by Karen on 06-Mar-2010
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Lori and I headed to the coast for the maiden voyage of my new-to-me Aliner trailer. We camped at Half Moon Bay State Beach, which is camping right next to the ocean. Setting up the trailer was a breeze, even in the ocean breeze. After relaxing a bit, we headed north a few miles to enjoy sunset at the Point Montara Light Station, which was established in 1900. Back at camp, we just hung out and enjoyed a lovely spring weather evening and sounds of the ocean next to us. After breaking down the trailer Sunday morning, we did some tidepooling at the James Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach. Tidepooling is fun because you’ll never know what the ocean will reveal trapped in the rocks during low tide; I found one large starfish, several anemones, and pretty rocks. We enjoyed fresh fish and chips over at Princeton Seafood Company on Pillar Point Harbor and then we headed home feeling rested and refreshed.
