Posted by Karen on 04-Mar-2007
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After a wonderful night celebrating with friends, some of us spent Sunday exploring the area a bit. We started with a short walk along the Earthquake Trail to look for a geocache and learn a bit about quakes. The San Andreas Fault bisects Point Reyes from the mainland and if any piece of California were to ever fall off, this could possibly be it… LOL! We then went over to the Point Reyes Light Station to check it out. The lighthouse was in operation for over 100 years before it was retired. We caught the bus to the end of the point and then walked the last half mile to it. The last bit of the hike 308 steps down to the actual lighthouse, which isn’t so bad going down, but is a good little haul coming back up! The bus driver said they had spotted 57 whales from the lighthouse the day before, however we didn’t see any today during our short visit. Here’s a webcam view of Point Reyes Beach from the lighthouse (it’s pitch black at night time and foggy alot during the day). We left Point Reyes and headed over to the Iron Springs Brew Pub for a wonderful lunch and for David and Rebecca to refill their “growler” with micro-pub brew. 
Posted by Karen on 03-Mar-2007
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Happy Birthday Maria! Theresa, Jason, Alda and I met up with Rebecca and David at the Bear Valley Visitor Center in Point Reyes National Seashore to hike into Sky Camp, where we were meeting Maria and Ron to celebrate Maria’s birthday.. YAY.. it’s a party!! Maria and Ron had camped the night before at another campsite on the beach and had a heck of a trek to get up to this campsite. Jason, Alda and I decorated her campsite with balloons and banners, while the others hiked up Mt. Whittenberg to grab a geocache. As we’re decorating, I hear a load “WOO HOO” coming from down the trail and shout, “hurry, that’s Maria’s woo hoo”. So we quickly finished and had everything done just as she rounded the corner in the campsite. It was so great to see her surprise at the decorated campsite and all the good, non-backpacking food we’d all brought in. We all did our parts and ate way too much food because nobody wanted to carry it back out the next day.. LOL! After a gorgeous sunset, we borrowed Paige’s trick and did some glow-stick dancing for the camera–see what you missed Paige by going to the beautiful Grand Canyon instead!
Posted by Karen on 26-Aug-2006
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I joined Theresa, Tanya, Maria, Michelle, Cindy, Rebecca for the NorCal Hiking Group’s annual girl’s backpack trip to Island Lake in the Tahoe National Forest. Francis, Maria’s son, and Gavin, Cindy’s dog, were the only guys allowed! ;D
I had planned on hiking on Friday night after work, but I got a late start and didn’t arrive til after dark, so I chose to just go in first thing in the morning and apparently my choice gave me a much warmer night sleeping in the truck then they had out by the lake. As the dayhikers hadn’t arrived yet and the campers were just rolling out of the sleeping bags, I enjoyed a peaceful early morning hike to the lake without really seeing anyone. I bushwhacked my way in the last bit the campground and found the gang enjoying breakfast. Most of us decided to hike up to Grouse Ridge and look for some of the solar system geocaches; a neat set of hidden caches all in perfect scale to our solar system and they use the Grouse Ridge Fire Lookout Tower as the center of the universe. We headed out while Maria and Francis decided to stay in camp and do extended water testing of their flotation vests. Following what we thought was the trail, we found an elaborate campfire site–someone had paved the ground and pulled logs around to make benches all the way around the fire ring. Which was also about the spot where we realized we were on the wrong trail and needed to backtrack a bit to get back on trail. The slowpokes in our group (me first and foremost) reached Grouse Ridge campground and decided to have lunch. Theresa and Rebecca had already gone on ahead and were finding the hidden geocaches. After they returned and we had lunch, we headed back to camp to swim, chat and just generally kick back and enjoy the afternoon and the sunset.
Distance: approx. 6.85 miles
Posted by Karen on 04-Jun-2006
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Day 3 in the Channel Islands National Park. Again, a beautiful morning to walk up to. Lisa headed out on the solo dawn hike this morning, I stayed in camp and nursed a blister on my foot. Those plastic sandals are not meant to be walked in for several miles <grin>. After we packed up our gear, we headed to the beach for a bit more tide-pooling before catching the boat back to the mainland. We enjoyed a nice lunch in Ventura Harbor and then we all headed north towards home.
