Since I was on light duty all summer, I wasn't available to go out on fire assignments. Things just fell into place, I took some time off, and voila! One of my sisters came out for a visit earlier this month. It's very rare that I am able to have visitors in the summer - I work my butt off and try not to take much time off, since I don't work in the winter - but I had a pretty lame summer and needed a familiar face and some fun adventures to make up for months of not being able to hike or run.
Linda's visit was the prime time to do all the touristy things in the area that I had yet to do myself. And we only had five days to do everything. Needless to say, I kept her busy. :)
How to have fun in the central Sierra Nevada mountains, according to me:
On the first day, hike 5 miles around the South Grove in Big Trees State Park and show Linda the biggest trees she has ever seen in her life. We took a ridiculous amount of time taking ridiculous photos. Tree hugging was mandatory. Quote of the hike: " If I squat down, does it make the tree look bigger?" (The trunk is 30' around... I think it's gonna look big however you pose!)
Since we took so long acting like dorks in the sequoias, we got to downtown Murphy's for wine tasting a little late and only had half an hour. I took her to Lavender Ridge, where I am a member... so wine tasting was free. :) I wanted her to try the great wood-fired pizza at Firewood,which was delicious as always. The hike, pizza and wine were a good warm-up for our bigger adventure on day two...
Day two, Yosemite! 2 1/2 hour drive, plus some extra time for excessive photography. Our goal for the day was to hike the Mist Trail, and - depending on how my ankle felt - make a smaller or bigger loop with the John Muir Trail. It was a steady uphill hike, but I was disappointed to find the first couple miles of our hike were PAVED. I guess when a park has millions of visitors a year, they must build trails to take the abuse... but still, I was very happy when the pavement began deteriorating and we were left with a more natural, rock-strewn trail. There were a lot of people on the trail despite the fact it was a Thursday, but I expected the crowds on this popular hike. Vernal Falls was the first stop, and I knew water levels were low so it wouldn't be at its full force, but looking at photos of the falls in the spring, it's pretty amazing how different it can be between the seasons. Since the falls weren't raging, we didn't get the "mist" that this trail is known for, but it was still beautiful. Instead of turning around right at the top of the falls, we continued uphill and eventually made it to the footbridge. From here, Nevada Falls were barely visible because obviously, these falls weren't raging either. But it was still a nice view of Liberty Cap and the falls next to it, and at that point I really wished I had fancy photo lenses so I could get the entire view in one photo!
And of course, we got thunderstormed on. Even though I hadn't seen a drop of rain since MAY, it just so happens to rain when we go on our hike. Linda and I have a history of being chased off mountains by lightning and thunder so we had to laugh a little about it. As a result, we did a shorter loop than I had hoped, and went down the John Muir Trail near the footbridge instead of continuing over the top of Nevada Falls. And FYI, the Muir trail is open to horses and, although it had less stone steps than the Mist trail, it was not as nice of a hike in that section. It was probably around 4 miles round trip. On our way home, her boss had urged us to find a place called Rainbow Falls off hwy 120 and jump off. It was cooling down and getting dark, but we found the pull off and checked it out. Ok, let's jump! It's only like 25 feet down! So Linda goes up to the top of this waterfall first. She goes to jump and then freaks out. I'm recording it all on my camera and egging her on, it was SO FUNNY to watch her freak out! Ok, let me show this pup how it's done! So I go up there. I was ready to jump, but she couldn't get my camera to record. I tried to talk her through it, and by the time she got it working, I lost my nerve! I couldn't do it! The water was so cold, I was convincing myself that if I jumped in my body would freeze LOL! We both chickened out, and we are still angry with ourselves. Next time, we will jump!!
That was an all day endeavor, so we played it low key on Friday. I made Trader Joe's beer bread (yum!) and we stayed lazy until the afternoon. I had never been in a "real" cave - you know, the kind with stalactites and stalagmites and is deep underground and stuff. The caves I have been in at Pinnacles National Monument are "talus" caves, formed by big jumbles of huge boulder... no stalac- or stalag- things, but lots of bats! The Motherlode has an abundance of caves to choose from! It sounded like the Moaning Cavern in Vallecito would be a great choice for the cheapest tour offered - ~$15 for a 50 minute walking tour. Other alternatives included much more awesome - but much more expensive - options to rappel into caves, crawl around with a headlamp and hard hat, swim through underground pools, etc... but we didn't have the $75-150 for those tours (depending on which cave you choose). ;) I was worried it would be lame, since it was "family friendly" and so cheap. We were not disappointed! They offer the walking tour every hour without reservations; so it was just Linda and I, and our tour guide. The natural entrance to the cave is a small gaping hole in the earth, plummeting straight down into the main chamber (which bottoms out at 165 ft, our final destination). The visitor center was built around it, with a small, humidor-type room housing this hole. A few ropes and climbing gear showed us this is where the rappel tour would enter - it was the original way miners explored the cave for gold (none was found). A display next to the opening was full of very old human remains, artifacts, "neat old dead stuff". Apparently as long as 13,000, clumsy unfortunate souls had been falling into the hole and never coming out again; their bones piled up below!
Then begins our decent down 234 steps, to the "improved" entrance that was built after the miners figured out they wouldn't get rich from the fake gold and a vertical hole in the ground. Wooden steps through a narrow tunnel lead down to a metal spiral staircase and you go around and around and around and around! It follows down alongside the "Chocolate Waterfall", a seep of iron-rich water that has formed a blob of weird formations all the way down to the bottom. There's a couple huge stalactites and some big round white thing called the "igloo". It was so hard to get a feel for how huge everything was until a rappeller came down from above, to our platform at 165 feet below the ground. The "adventure" tour would continue down some smaller tunnels even further down; the deepest part of the cave is off limits though (415 feet below?) because apparently the carbon dioxide sinks to the bottom and, over time, has filled up the bottom depths! Weird huh?
The coolest crazy part was when they turn off all the lights in the cave. The "darkest dark" you will ever see. Yikes.
That was fun! We still had time after the cave tour to go wine tasting and swimming! Back to Murphys, this time to Milliaire and Twisted Oak. Yay free wine! Then I took her to Candy Rock, the awesome local swimming hole on the Stanislaus River. And we had an absolute blast! Even had brought Logan (he waited in the truck during the cave tour) and outfitted him in his hiking harness so I could have a good handle to help him over the boulder and onto the slippery rocks in the water. He did much better, but we did squeeze/push/pull/lift him into some surely uncomfortable situations and I felt kindof bad! We played in the waterslide and then did a "double rainbow guy" freak-out when a double rainbow appeared over us! OMG IT'S A DOUBLE RAINBOW! Linda made a spoof video, now if she'd only upload the darned thing!
The next day (Saturday), I had trouble planning. What I really really wanted to do was take a long whale-watching trip out of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands. However, to make the 8 am departure, we would have to leave around 4 am. Yuck. Plus, I wasn't sure if I had somebody to let the dog out. By the time I had gotten confirmation, the tour was sold out! The other companies out there are even more expensive ($125 vs $75) and we didn't want to spend that much. Instead we opted to whale watch out of Monterey, through the same company Tim and I had used back in March. This way, we could bring Logan!
It was a long drive, but we got there early enough to take a detour through the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is always awesome. Linda got to see sea otters, and we took even more silly pictures. Once again, the crew and other passengers on the whale watching boat treated Logan like he was a celebrity. :) We decided to stand in the back of the boat with the dog...this is where people go when they are getting sea sick. People were puking left and right! I don't know what it was, but I think at least 10 people got sick and we were trying to avoid being in the crossfire! But we finally made it out to the whales, and WOW - there were humpbacks EVERYWHERE! We were surrounded by them! We even had a few of them come within 30 feet of the boat, and then one rolled over, it's huge flippers coming out of the water. While everybody was distracted, Linda and I were looking off into the distance and then suddenly a huge whale breached completely out of the water! I am glad she saw it to, or I don't think anybody would believe me! It was incredible. Logan did not get as sea sick as last time, and a deckhand was taking his photo for being such a good sailor. :)
All that excitement, and we were pretty hungry. Fortunately, many restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf are dog friendly! Once again, Logan was a welcome guest and received a dish of water and a bowl of Old Mother Hubbard dog treats when we decided to eat at Isabella's. The food was good but the bottled beer was pricey. Then was the long drive back to my house; Linda's last night here! Made it back late at night and woke up relatively early to take her to the airport.
We never did make it to San Fran, or even the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that I really really wanted to see... BUT, I don't think it would have fit into our already-crammed week of adventure, and we would have probably fallen asleep after all the driving. ;)
And that is one way to entertain a guest in California. I will add photos to this later, but for now it is time to go to bed!
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