West Coast Adventures

Happy Tuesday and for those of you who had yesterday off, I hope that you had a great long weekend! I had an adventure filled several days actually, and drove more last weekend than I have in a couple of months! First was a stop to Grass Valley, a town where gold was discovered in 1850. Their main mine, the Empire Mine was the richest hard rock mine in California, producing 5.8 million ounces of gold in its operating history of 106 years. Just to put that in perspective, currently one ounce of gold is sold for about $2,000.00! I spent a couple of days spending time with family, playing games and hiking around Empire Mine, which is now a park with dirt paths for hiking. 

Mill St. Grass Valley in December

Next, I headed to Monterey and Carmel for the annual MLK girls trip with K, A & L. We had a great time searching through the tidepools for fancy shells, eating candy, playing in the waves and watching the sea otters try to crack things while floating on their backs (they are so cute!) We also drove the 17 mile drive, which winds along the coast and has some great views! I think the girls were happier to just find shells on the beach and were not as impressed by the drive, but we had fun all the same! It rained a bit on Saturday and Sunday, but overall we had pretty good weather and I even got a tad burnt! 

Carmel Beach

Lone Cypress Tree - 17 Mile Drive

L looking for otters at the Monterey pier.

On Monday, I went with a friend to hike San Francisco's crosstown trail, which is a 17 mile trail that goes from Candlestick Point, which is on the southeast side of town to the Cliff House, which is on the northwest side of town. 

Crosstown trail map (found here)

It is actually a really cool taste of the city, and goes through some neighborhoods and parks that I had never been in before. It also tries to go on a lot of dirt, so it would randomly just pop into the trees on a path that you may not have even noticed. It also went on a lot of hidden stairways (which I have talked about before) and I found some of those too that I had not been on before. All in all, it was a great way to see the city in a different way than I had seen. However, it did go through some of the places on my 10 things to do in San Francisco list too, for example, we went on Irving Street and stopped there for pho!  

16th Ave. tiled steps - very cool mosaic! 

16th Ave. stairs with Ocean Beach in background.

Moraga stairs with downtown San Francisco in background.

Ocean Beach

This was the second "town tour" walk I have done in the last month; the first was the same kind of thing in the city of Pacifica on new year's weekend. So now I think I need to make one or find one for Oakland and that can be the next one in the tour of the town series! Maybe I will try to include some of my favorite nooks and crannies on my next tour! 

How was your weekend!? Have you ever been to the California coast? Have you ever done a walking tour or a long walk around the neighborhoods of your town? 

Ore-GONE

We took a few days off a couple of weeks ago and went to Oregon...Portland, to be exact. It was 4 days of go, go, go...not much of a "relaxing" vacation, but very fun!!
The first few days we rented a car and pretty much covered the whole of north-western Oregon (and some of WA as well!!) The first day we went to the Columbia River Gorge and did some hiking. It was a little muddy, as it had just snowed the weekend before and had not totally thawed, but MAN was it nice to get outside, walk into the mountains and trees and to take a deep breath of fresh mountain air.
The next day we did a super-duper tour of Washington and Oregon... We started at Mt. St Helens, which was covered by fog, but was still a beautiful drive through the snowy mountains. I found my dream piece of land -- a plot up on the mountain overlooking the lake...only problem is that you could get a little eruption! Then we drove south and went through Warm Springs and Sisters, which are cute little mountain towns.
The next day, I re-introduced Mr L to the wonderful West Coast...we drove to the coast, went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, which was pretty cool...Then to the shipwreck of the Peter Iredale, which has been stranded on the beach of Fort Stevens since 1906. We went house shopping in Cannon Beach (where the movie The Goonies was shot!!), just becuase it is so fun to dream of living in one of those beautiful homes on the beach...then we went to Tillamook, where there is a cheese factory. We ate free cheese and got out of there becuase it was packed (rainy Saturday, what did we expect).
We spent the next day exploring Portland, which is a very walker friendly town and has lots of fun places to eat and fun neighborhoods to explore. Tristan's recommendation of the Tin Shed for breakfast was probably our favorite place of all.

Now it is back to the old grindstone...and the flat plains of Iowa.