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Posts Tagged hiking

Week Zero Weekend

Sep 21

Posted by Sat in General | Comments

Welcome back for another installment of the world-famous Bacon & Tofu blog. Another weekend has come and gone but luckily it was another nice one so I am energized and ready for “Week Zero.”

I could tell the weekend was going to be a good one because Colleen and I were on the same page: we both wanted to go to REI. Colleen wanted to go for a pair of hiking pants and I wanted to go for, well, the hell of it. Little did we know that it happened to be their used gear sale so the parking lot was absolutely packed with people trying to get good deals on pre-owned stuff. As we weren’t in the market for any particular gear and we didn’t feel like fighting the throng of people, we stuck to the regular store. Colleen ended up with a nice pair of pants and I ended up with a pair of pants (on clearance) and a long sleeved shirt. I tried convincing Colleen to get a wide brimmed hat to protect her from the sun but she still thinks they are way too dorky. Maybe one day she’ll practice what she preaches when it comes to sun protection ;) I also picked up a camelback hydration pack but it ended up being too big for our pack so it looks like it will have to go back whenever we head back down there. I love our Sigg bottles but I think the hydration pack would make the hikes a bit easier. We aren’t expert hikers or anything so waiting a little longer won’t kill us, I suppose.

I got the cooking bug this weekend and decided to try my hand at making some bread. I have had the outrageously easy big bread recipe on VegWeb bookmarked for about 2 years now so I finally decided to bite the bullet and actually fix it. The recipe doesn’t require any kneading of the bread so it easily won out over other prospective recipes. The recipe was very easy, although it took a while to make simply because of the rising time required. The result was excellent though and I now have visions of bread loaves dancing through my head. The picture below shows not only the bread but also our newest kitchen accessory, a silicone baking mat. Colleen wanted one of these so she could make some crackers so while we were out at BB&B last weekend, we nabbed one. I have become an instant convert, it simply because it gives me a simple non-stick surface to work on. Sometimes the simplest items are the best ones.

This morning, Colleen and I were once again on the same page as we decided we needed to break in our new hiking gear. Not feeling in the mood to travel far, we made our way to Marian Bear Memorial Park. We were there back in February when we experienced our first SoCal frost but we went to the opposite side of the park this time. Both the weather and the hike were very pleasant and we even grabbed a couple caches along the way. I’m in the process of trying to create a panorama but until that happens, you can enjoy the pictures from this excursion on my Flickr photostream.

The rest of the day was mostly low-key. I watched the Eagles rough up the Steelers (w00p), baked some seitan shawarma, and even fixed stir-fry for dinner. Let me tell ya, I felt like some ubermeche this weekend (and I didn’t even mention the fact that I did my bike maintenance in record time on Saturday!).

I guess that about wraps up the recap of the weekend though. Week Zero looms ominously but I’m kinda looking forward to it.

- Sat

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Trip to Palomar Mountain

Sep 18

Posted by Sat in Geocaching | Comments

No need to state the obvious: it’s been way to long since we’ve updated. (Wait, did I just state the obvious? doh!)

With the quarter quickly approaching, this past weekend we resolved to do something we haven’t been doing enough of: have fun! We haven’t really been out geocaching much lately so I figured I would go through my gubb list of local geocaching spots and pick out something cool. Picking out a place was a bit tricky since it hasn’t been very hot here lately but it was probably too hot to go to some random canyon or desert. So, what did I pick? Palomar Mountain State Park, of course.

Palomar Mountain sounded very interesting because they claim it is the only “Sierra Nevada-like” place in SoCal. It also provided a stunning backdrop one morning this past winter when Colleen and I noticed its snowy peak (the first time we had ever seen snow around here). Colleen is a big fan of rocks and mountains so the choice was really a no brainer.

While Saturday has been our normal geocaching day, we decided to hold off until Sunday to go out this weekend. We were up bright and early, although we didn’t actually get out of the house until slightly after 9. I’m not sure why it takes so long for us to get ready for hiking but Colleen has no qualms about laying the blame on me ;) I didn’t realize how long it would take to drive there—the 1 hour, 15 minutes from Google Maps was actually on the low side—but after a wrong turn that landed us at a Harrah’s Rincon Casino & Resort and a lot of winding up around the mountain, we finally pulled into the park around 11. The drive was actually quite interesting, even outside the beautiful mountain views, because we quickly found out where all the Indian Casinos are around here. Route 76 is seriously gambling alley.

I should have known things were in for a rocky start when, halfway through our drive, I realized that I forgot our camera. No worries, I figured, since we have our fancy 2MP camera phones as a backup. By some fit of luck, Colleen happened upon the “panorama” mode on our phones that lets you take three photos which it automatically stitches together into (you guessed it!) a panorama. Unfortunately we didn’t know that you had to manually line up the edges of the photos so most of the panorama shots we took ended up quite poorly. I was in a “ah, who cares?” type of mood anyway so I let this problem slide and we were on our way along the trails.

The scenery on the trails was quite nice but there was one thing that we didn’t take into account: flying insects! I’m not exactly sure what type of insect they were but they were swarming all around us as we walked. Luckily we had picked up some insect repellent during one of our shopping sprees so they weren’t biting us. Still, they made the hike very unpleasant as they were constantly buzzing around our face and going in our ears. The whole experience made me seriously consider buying a couple of these dorky bug hats to help avoid this problem in the future.

We were only out on the trails for a couple hours but that was long enough for us. I thought I was in decent shape from the jogging I do in the mornings but apparently I overestimated my abilities. Colleen was quite a trooper out there though, even thought she ended up with a strained muscle in her calf after the hike. We also made the rookie mistake of starting our hike from the highest point so the last half was all uphill. Colleen was extremely impressed by the quality of the restrooms though, if that matters to any of you prospective hikers out there.

This week has been a slow one for the most part. I’ve been handling some random CSE orientation business as well as helping to plan an outdoor movie for all the graduate students in the Jacobs School of Engineering. Colleen has been plugging away at work, doing that thing she do. It’s hard to believe that the summer is almost over. At least I have lots of yummy apples to look forward to this fall (oh, the joy of in-season eating).

- Sat

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