Looking Back: Juneteenth Weekend

In the spirit of some of my blogger friends, I will call this Five Things Tuesday, the road trip version! Since I had an extra day off, I drove down to Sequoia National Park for a little bit of backpacking. Here are five things from the long weekend that were interesting or fun! 

Backpacking in Sequoia NP: I had a great time hiking around Sequoia National Park, although once again, I was foiled by snow, downed trees and high river (read: impassable) crossings. However, I never let that bother me too much and I had a fun time exploring, even if I could not do the loop that I had intended. This year has been difficult for hiking plans, as the normal entry to Yosemite is closed due to road damage, the road to Kings Canyon is closed due to road damage and many of the roads in Sequoia are still closed due to snow and/or road damage! It was a rough winter in the Sierra, let me tell you. 

View of Valhalla and Hamilton Falls

Hamilton Lake

Trip to Aldi: Since I was driving down through Fresno, I decided to stop at Aldi (this is the closest one to my house, and is about 200 miles away from me) for a little wander through the aisles. Since I was going to be in the car for a while and I couldn't have food in my car at the park, I did not buy much, but I had a lot of fun checking things out. The weird thing though is that when I arrived, there were only about 6 cars in the parking lot and I feared they were closed but they were open but it was nearly empty! Maybe the Fresnans have not gotten the memo that you can get good things at Aldi on the cheap? It probably did not help that the following stores were all on the same street within about a two mile stretch: Smart and Final, Grocery Outlet, Costco, Albertsons, WinCo. 

Tesla Semi Truck: I saw this on highway 99! I did not know that Tesla made a semi and it was a very strange site; it looks like a toy. I checked later and apparently the Modesto Frito Lay factory is testing them out so that is why I happened upon one. 

Road Trip Snacks: Although I normally try to eat healthy, when I go on a road trip, I give myself a pass to eat what I want! This included corn nuts (guilty pleasure), peanuts (the dry roasted ones with the yummy MSG) and lots of jerky! Actually I also bought some cheese and carrot sticks from Aldi on my way home, so I guess this time the snacks were not really that indulgent! 

Pilot: My Favorite Gas Station: Every time I go on a long road trip on a major highway, my stop of choice is Pilot/Flying J. When I go to Oregon in the summer, they are perfectly spaced out and my routine consists of the same thing every time - get gas (even if I am half full), get ice tea/lemonade combo (Arnold Palmer) refill with lots of ice and use the bathroom. Every. Single. Time. I have had disappointment when stopping at other truck stops and they do not have unsweetened iced team from the fountain drink section (not a bottled one from the cooler) so I just stick to the one that has what I want! 

What did you do this weekend? What are your favorite road trip snacks and/or break stops? 

What I Love

Earlier this year I did a list of gadgets that I use all the time and I thought it was time for another one! Here are a few more things that I either gained a newfound love for recently or have cemented my existing love for in 2023. 

Miso Soup: This one may seem a little strange, but if you have the right ingredients, this is an easy, fast and simple dinner item that you just can't beat. You can supplement it with rice or salmon or just eat it alone, but either way it is delicious. I even love it so much I have made a camping version! Here is what you need to get started: miso paste, dashi, tofu. That's it! If you want to have fun,  you can add: green onions, wakame or any meats or noodles (I like these). For camping, I use the instant version and add rice noodles for a quick two minute dish while on the trail. To top it off, you can add furikake! (I have put links to Amazon, but you can get all of these ingredients at your local Asian food store, or even Whole Foods has them now). 

Reusable Sandwich Bags: I started using these when I was hiking because I felt like we create so much trash with single serving items. There are cloth, washable versions of either sandwich bags or snack bags and these are great for dry snacks like granola, peanuts or dried fruit. There are also silicone ones that are supposedly leakproof. I use these for wet items or things I want to keep fresher or put in the cooler (like carrots or grapes etc.) but have not tested them on any real liquids. I gave a set of these to a few friends and one of them uses the cloth ones to keep her toiletries in check! 

Dry Wet Wipes: These are a game changer. How many of us carry around bulky wet wipes in our purse or car? However, if you have a smidge of water, these expandable wipes are great! They literally only need about a capful of water and then they are large enough and strong enough to wipe down your entire body. I am not just saying this; I have tried it! I usually use them for camping but also have some in my purse for everyday use. I like them so much that I told Santa to give them to all of my family members a couple of years ago. 

Audiobooks: I have to admit, over the last few years, I have moved strongly into the team audiobook camp. I used to listen to a lot of music or podcasts when I ran or drove, but now I am audiobook all the way. Doing this has upped my reading game by probably roughly one book a week and if I am hiking for multiple days or doing a lot of gardening, it could even be two or three! I have gotten to where I do listen to them at 1.75 speed most of the time, but an average book at normal speed takes about 10 hours to finish. 

Gallon Sized Hydroflask: I have a knock off version of the Hydroflask in the gallon size (roughly 4 liters) and it is awesome. I can fill it up with water and ice on a Friday when I am headed out the door on a weekend trip and if I do not drink it all, it often still is about half ice when I get home on Sunday. This has been great for weekend hiking trips when it is really hot and we get back to the car hot and sweaty and parched, but it is also great for long road trips; when I drove to Washington last summer, I kept it right next to me in the car the whole time. It is a bit hard to drink from while driving but I imagine you could get a straw top instead of a screw off and the problem would be solved. 

What things do you use all of the time or have you discovered recently? What does your go to road trip car kit look like? 

Looking Back

As I mentioned last week, Memorial Day weekend normally kicks off "summer" in these parts. It means we can start swimming a little, even if the water is frigid and it marks the beginning of camping and hiking season. This year we had a very high snowpack and some parts of the Sierra have over 10 feet of snow still, but this did not stop me from getting outside anyway. Here are some of the highlights. 

Memorial Day weekend, I went to Yosemite for a few days of backpacking. Basically depending on what way the hill was facing and whether or not there was tree cover, there was snow from about 6,000 feet in some places or as high as 8,000 in others. Additionally there were a lot of downed trees due to either the recent fires and or the snowpack causing them to fall. The cherry on top was the creeks and rivers, which are all swelled up three or four or more times their normal size. This meant altering my route several times, but did not detract from the beauty of the region. 

Panoramic Trail view of Half Dome

Top of Nevada Falls

Sunrise on Half Dome

Merced River

Snowy Trail

Four Mile trail - view of Half Dome

Four Mile Trail - view of Yosemite Falls

Four Mile Trail - view of El Capitan

Last weekend was my Dad's birthday and I met up with my family to do some regular camping, hiking and a couple of rounds of Spades. We met near Mt. Shasta, in an area called Castle Crags. I have driven by this a bunch of times and have even hiked near it, but I did not know that you can hike right into the middle of it and it is really beautiful! It was quite hot though, probably over 90 degrees and we wanted to go swimming, but the Sacramento (and all of the rivers) river is still flowing a bit too fast for our liking. 

Mom and Dad looking at the Crags

Crag Dome and Mt. Shasta

Dad nearly at the top of the Crag Dome trail

View from the top (with Mt. Shasta)

What did you do this weekend? Is it hot where you are? Have you gone swimming yet this season? 

Great Divide Trail: Logistics, Gear & Planning

Happy Memorial Day! This weekend kicks off the "official" backpacking season for me each year, so I thought I would finally post about the two week trip that I took to Oh Canada to hike the Great Divide Trail (GDT)! Hopefully you are off enjoying the extra day off of work and the sunshine today (and are reading this post on Tuesday)! 

Healy Pass - Banff NP

Canada's Great Divide Trail is a 1,123 km (702 mile) trail that follows the Great Divide between Kawka Provincial Park in the North to Waterton Lakes National Park in the south. If you are a Continental Divide Trail (CDT) hiker in the US, you can actually just keep going north if you wanted, following the GTD the rest of the way up to Kawka PP.  It flip flops between Alberta and British Columbia and goes through several different national and provincial parks and wilderness areas. 

It is made up of several trails linked together and some are very well maintained (Banff Mountain National Park), some of them are washed out and some of them are nearly non-existent and require route-finding (Don Getty Wildland Provincial Park). Some of the trail goes through places with more access to roads and/or people (Banff, Jasper etc.) bus some places are downright remote. In fact, if you are a NOBO hiker, when you arrive to Kawka, you have to hike out about 75 km (47 mi) on a forest service road to get back to a highway. You can find information about this and a lot more on the GTD website. 

The Route: I had been hiking in Yolo, Kootenay, Jasper and Banff before and had found the scenery stunning, so in 2018, I decided that I wanted to see more. However, I was not going to be able to cover it all in a two week vacation. I really wanted to see the four parks I mentioned again, but logistically, I felt it was easier to either pick a more southern section, therefore skipping Jasper, or pick a more northern one, therefore missing some of the Provincial Parks I had not been to. 

I decided to do a NOBO section hike of sections B, C and D which would be a 500 km (312 mi) stretch starting in Coleman and ending in Saskatchewan River Crossing. This would mean hiking about 25 miles per day. If needed, I could skip section C and bail out one road crossing before that at Field, which would be 385 km (247 mi) stretch and about 20 miles per day. I would start in Coleman since I could easily get a bus from Calgary, and hope that at the end I would not have to wait around for two days for a bus back. 

I used Gaia to map out my estimated miles per day and then exported the routes to the Offline Maps app. I also bought the GDT app for my phone so I would have a couple of different options for navigation. I won't lie, I did not figure out until two thirds through my trip that it's interactive and people could make notes in the app, which would have been helpful at the beginning, which was more rugged and had more route-finding. 

The Plan/Logistics: To hike the trail, you need to buy a Parks Canada National Pass, which covers entry into all the parks. I bought mine in advance and had it sent to my house. Camping is a little confusing as there are several different organizations and parks you have to deal with regarding passes and permits. You may need to book campsites in advance for many of the national parks and some provincial parks; this pdf list of all of the sites and whether or not they need to be booked was very helpful. When I went, they were not all online, but it looks like more are now; you can find the online booking tool here. 

I got a flight to Calgary from San Francisco, which after spending nearly 24 hours traveling to my mountain destinations in Europe, felt so short and easy! From Calgary, I took a Greyhound bus to Coleman. There was only one bus per day and it left Calgary around 10:00 pm, arriving in Coleman around 4:00 am. I flew in around 10:00 am, which left me with some time to kill, but I spent it having my last hamburger and beer, and buying fuel and bear spray since I could not fly with either of those. 

A quick note about Canadians and bear spray: I had to purchase bear spray and register it, as it could technically be used as a weapon. I was told that there was a serial number on the can and if I left it at a random trailhead and someone used it as a weapon, I would be liable. Wow. I am not sure what they expect foreigners to do with their (hopefully) unused bear spray. (Note: apparently you can rent it in Banff, but I did not find a place to do so in Calgary). After eating and shopping, I killed time reading and charging my electronics at a coffee shop before boarding my bus to Coleman. 

I arrived at Coleman around 4:00 am and was dropped off at the 7-11 in the dark on the side of the highway. I then had to walk a couple of miles on the highway to get to the trail. It was a bit of an odd start; I was very happy when I veered off the highway and onto the trail, although then you walk on ATV roads for the next maybe 20 or 30 miles, so it was not exactly what I had expected.

Once I had finished, I took a series of local busses and the Greyhound back to Calgary. The bus system in Canada was just okay; it definitely was not as good as the transport in Europe, and is probably more on par with some of the options in the US. For example, both the bus to Coleman and the one back to Calgary were just once a day and they were at very strange times. Also, as it is in the US, there were some interesting characters riding the bus, whereas in Europe everyone rides the bus, not just the people who do not have a car. 

The Big Three: I took my Big Agnes Fishhook UL1 Tent (one man - 47 oz.) on this trip. I used the Hyperlite 2400 Southwest Backpack (28.6 oz.) and Western Mountaineering Ultralite 20 degree sleeping bag (29 oz.). For my sleeping pad I had the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir Xlite short size (8 oz.) that had popped on my Kungsleden trip. I patched it up with the kit that comes with it, but it still slowly deflated throughout the night, so I was constantly blowing it up. My big three weighed about 7 pounds.

Base Pack Weight: My base pack weight was about 18 pounds, excluding clothing worn and including an extra dry and clean outfit for after the trail. You can see my LighterPack list for this trip here. 

Clothing: For weather, this trip ran the gamut. I experienced the following: baking in the sun, below freezing temperatures, snow and rain. I brought my normal list of layers: REI button down shirt, short sleeved shirt, Mountain Hardware ghost whisperer puffy jacket, Montbell rain jacket & REI rain pants. I also brought a buff, a windbreaker, gloves, beanie and tights just in case, and I used them all! I don't want to have a spoiler alert for my trip report, but after this trip, I did a lot of research about snow camping and waterproof gear.  

Food: After my Kungsleden trip, I decided that when I am hiking long days, I prefer to have a hot meal in the morning and am fine with a cold one in the evening. This saves on gas and time. However, I do love a warm cup of coffee, especially when it's cold. My plan was to have coffee and dinner for breakfast, which consisted of beans and rice, ramen and a couscous medley. For dinner, I would have cold muesli with fruit and powdered milk. This also allowed me to eat dinner easily on the go as well as not eating in my camp at night due to the presence of bears. 

I carried all of my food in two drybags, which I hung each night. However, this is more easily said than done, as some forests were made of only pine trees which did not have limbs long enough or high enough to hang a bag from. There were some nights that I had to hang the food as high as I could in two separate spots 100 feet away from my camp and pray for the best. 

Water: This was the bane of my existence. I carried the Sawyer mini and the 1 liter squeeze bag that comes with it as well as a one liter clean water container. Finding water was no issue at all, and I did not really need to carry more than a liter or so at a time most of the time. However, I popped the squeeze bag somewhere around day 4 or 5 and duct taped it up, but it required a bit of jerry rigging to make it work. Aside from that, filtering is my least favorite thing to do and I felt that I was constantly filtering on this trip. Spoiler alert, I have since fixed this problem with two magical items, the CNOC squeeze bag and gravity filtering! 

Total Pack Weight: Including two liters of water, about 20 pounds (13 days worth) of food, a medium fuel container and bear spray, my pack weighed about 40 pounds. Let me tell you, I was happy to eat my way toward a lighter pack on this trip! 

The Verdict: As I mentioned above, after this trip I dialed in my water filtration system a lot, which has made me a much happier camper. I also invested in some wet/cold weather items, as I got pretty wet and cold in good ol' Canada. Other than that, I was very happy with my set up. I definitely want to go back and hike more sections of this trail and maybe even revisit a few places, such as Mt. Assiniboine, which was very foggy on the day that I was there. I would say that my pack is quickly becoming my favorite piece of gear as it is lightweight, comfortable and mostly waterproof! 

More Information: GDT website. 

If you have any questions, let me know! Otherwise, happy hiking! 

Have you ever been to Canada? Have you ever ridden the Greyhound (or other long distance transport) in the US or Canada (and what did you think)? What did you do for the long weekend this weekend? 

Grandad Jokes

I heard a phrase the other day that reminded me of my Grandad; he used to have a lot of these phrases he would throw out and this one really made me remember him as well as wonder...does everyone's grandfather do this? I also think some of them have flowed over to my Dad and some of them are still said by my Grandma and so I may be mixing them up a bit, but here are some of the sayings I used to hear a lot as a kid. 

Grandad

Yours is not to question why; yours is but to do or die. This is the one that gave me the initial deja vu feeling, and I actually looked it up and the phrase is actually "ours is not to reason why," but it is still an alteration of a line in a Tennyson poem about the British military: “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die.” However, I am pretty sure that my family used to mean that if you are a child, just do as you are told. I guess this kind of jives with the military aspect, although luckily as a child we would not actually die, which cannot be said for the soldiers. 

Children should be seen and not heard. My Grandad was often working when we were at his house and you had to always be quiet. This also was used when we interrupted, and I would often stand there quietly, waiting for him (or my Dad) to call on me to speak when he was on the phone or talking to someone else. Of course in my child's mind, what I wanted to say (probably "can I have an ice cream") was important, but he would make me wait my turn. 

A penny saved is a penny earned. As I have talked about before, I am actually a saver, and I don't know if it was this phrase that kicked off my habit, but this is one I heard often. I actually had a savings account when I was quite young; in fact I had a little bank ledger book that I would record each entry in and I was fastidious about keeping track! Although I don't think we should pinch pennies so much that we do not enjoy our day to day life, I do think that not spending on frivolous things now can help build a bigger pot for later, as the saying indicates. I think my Dad and Grandma still also use the phrase, so it lives even though my Grandad does not. 

In for a penny, in for a pound. If you are start something, you may as well go all out, no matter how difficult or costly it is. Once again, I do not know if I have this phrase in my head when completing a race, or working on a project at work, but I definitely believe in finishing what you started, so maybe this phrase stuck too! However, I am not sure I would always throw good money after bad, so the literal "pound" part of if may give me pause. 

A job worth doing is worth doing well. Once again, I think this one makes sense. My parents had a business and I worked in the convenience store and helped clean cabins from the time I was about eight. I remember my Dad checking on my sweeping and mopping at the end of the evening and making me redo it if there was dirt in any of the corners. My Mom makes her beds with perfect hospital corners and I also learned to do this by having to redo it if I got it wrong. I hated that, and I hated redoing it, BUT guess what, they were right to do that (thanks guys) because I do not like to do shoddy or half baked work now. To be frank, my Dad will probably still go one step further than me because he is a Gemini perfectionist, and my Mom's hospital corners are still way tighter than mine, but doing it right the first time rather than having to fix it again later makes sense! 

Have you heard these phrases? Do you agree with them? What phrases do/did your grandparents or parents use often? 

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

I recently listened to the book Food, A Love Story by the comedian Jim Gaffigan where he talks about his relationship with food. I don't know much about Gaffigan and have never seen his stand up or a movie with him in it, but the book was available at my library and I wanted something light so I picked it up. It is read by the author and in the end, it was surprisingly funny. I am not always a fan of memoirs as they just talk about themselves the entire time, but he talked about himself in a depreciating but comedic manner. 

One of my favorite places to think deep thoughts...

In addition to that, this book made me think. Of course I was out hiking when I listened to it, and that already lends itself to deep thoughts, but I do love a book that makes you consider things you may not have thought of before. In this case, he made a joke about eating when you are not really hungry: “Ugh, I’m so full. I guess I’ll have some cheese. Hmm, I don’t even like this cheese. I guess I’ll finish it.” It got me thinking about how often I do this (a lot!) and how some people don't seem to have this issue. Why can I not open a bag of tortilla chips without eating the entire thing when some people CAN "eat just one?" I don't know the answer to this question, nor do I know if I will ever change, but it got me thinking! Here are a couple of other recent reads that have got me saying hmmmm lately...

The Measure: this is a book about everyone in the world receiving a box with a string in it. The length of the string indicates the length of your life. I will not tell you how I felt about this book, but it got me thinking... would I want to open the box? What would I do (differently?) if I found out that my string was long/short? The book also explores the politics surrounding the strings: should you be required to disclose your string length? Should you run for office or be in the military if your string is short? It was very interesting and really make me think about a lot of different social and political issues. 

Living Without Plastic: this book is, not surprisingly, about trying to use less plastic in your life. It talks about some of the substitutions we can initiate, like some obvious ones such as our own reusable grocery bags, own own produce bags or some more not so obvious but easy ones like wooden combs and toothbrushes, bar shampoos and soaps, non-plastic straws and utensils etc. I try to do my part, and don't use a lot of single use things like plastic water bottles or takeout containers etc., but there are some changes I will make due to reading this. It even inspired me to finally take a load of old grocery bags to Sprouts for recycling (also did you know you can recycle plastic wraps, like the ones that are around a case of water or toilet paper, at some grocery stores too?) I still have a long way to go, but I feel like this book has given me some ideas to move in the right direction. 

Can you "eat just one" chip? Would you open your box/want to know how much longer you had to live? Do you do any of the anti-plastic activities I mentioned or do you have any other tips/tricks for not using so much plastic? 

The Best Month

Picking a favorite month is like picking a favorite travel destination, or a favorite child (not that anyone would ever do admit to that!) It is hard. There are things about each one that have their ups and their downs. For example, I love Italy because no matter where you go, you can find good food. It doesn't matter if it is some guy on the street selling tomatoes; they are the best tomatoes you have ever eaten. The same can be said for Bangkok street food - I could eat $1 Pad Thai all.day.long. Seoul has the most excellent outdoor fish and fruit markets. La Paz has mountains and tiny streets and Cholitas with various hats. And there are many more. I can't pick a favorite! 

When it comes to months, there is something special about a snowy day, a blue skied summer weekend in the mountains or the changing colors of the trees. However, despite the fact that I love summer and would be outside every day if I could, spring is my favorite season because it feels like a fresh start, and more specifically, the month of May is my favorite month. I may be a little bit biased, since it is the month of my birth, but celebrating my birthday is not even on the top ten for the month. Here are a few things that are on the top ten list! 

Green hills: the Bay Area has various different outdoor spaces, but is mostly either redwood forests on the coastal areas or savannah like grasslands on the inland areas. The grasslands are pretty much dry and yellow for 9 months of the year and on a hot year, it could be even less. However, in April and May, they are green for a fleeting moment and I love looking out over the green hills; it feels so fresh. 

Green hills

Flowers: The same hills described above have wonderful wildflowers in the spring. Also, my garden flowers are all in bloom too and they are so pretty (and due to the rain, I did not even have to water yet!)

April showers bring May flowers

Food: All of my edible perennial garden items have started to flower or fruit. Currently, the following are ready to eat: artichokes and strawberries. These are coming along nicely: peaches, plums, blueberries. These are getting new leaves and are showing promise: fig, apple. It's going to be a good year and the early heavy rains seemed to have helped more than they hindered (expect for my avocado, which I suspect got drowned or suffocated. So sad.) 

Friends/Family: Aside from my birthday, May is also the month of my parent's anniversary and Mother's Day. We have an annual tradition to get together with my family and a good friend's family for an all encompassing celebration and I really cherish this time spent together every year. 

Outdoor adventures: Memorial Day weekend is essentially the unofficial start to summer for me, as I often do my first backpacking trip over this three day weekend. This year I have an outing scheduled but due to our high snowpack, it may look very different than it did for the last few years. 

May 2022 backpacking in Yosemite

Running: if you like trail racing, May is the month where races kick off in earnest and in my area there is basically one in every weekend. There have been some years that I have done three races in May! This year I will do none, but many of my friends are out there getting it done! 

Weather: the weather starts to warm up, time is spent in the backyard reading books and life it good! Sometimes in May we get some freakishly hot weather, but overall it is usually nearly perfect! 

Backyard reading with Gato

Woof! 102 in May, go away!

To top that all off, I think as the sun starts shining more and the weather gets nicer, motivation levels go up, as do the serotonin levels, so when May arrives, it feels like it is time to get out of our winter shell and get ready to tackle the world. 

What is your favorite month of the year and why? 

The Money Pie Deconstructed: Groceries

Every year I do a recap of my spending, and I have broken the items into nine categories: Dining Out, Entertainment, Groceries, Health, Home, Misc., Shopping, Transportation and Travel. Last year I broke down my transportation category and went into more detail about where I spend my money in this category, how I get to work, how hard it is to park sometimes and what's in my trunk. 

Now its time to talk about groceries. Before I start, I have a confession to make. I like reading posts and watching YouTube videos about how people spend their money, and specifically how they spend their grocery money and/or how they save money on groceries. Some of my favorites are Frugal Fit Mom, Mary's Nest and FlavCity. 

I am not a doomsday prepper, but I definitely could last for a few months on the stores that I have in my house. Much of this is due to the fact that I have a good supply of camping food, which lasts for a long time, is lightweight and can be eaten by just adding water. I also have amassed a good supply of staples over the years, such as rice, dried beans and canned tomatoes. 

I am not an extreme couponer; however, I do like to sit down with the ads each week and compare prices at my local stores. I prefer to do this on paper as it is nice to be able to compare the different places side by side, but a lot of stores have apps and I will sometimes browse them instead, which is nice because you can make a list of things to buy right on the app. However, using the apps does sometimes mean toggling back and forth or making notes about which store has better deals. I usually base my weekly shopping trip on whichever store has the better deals. If one store has one of my staples at a great price, I may just shop at that one store for the week, or if the deals are split, I may go to two. 

I make a list in Google Keep and to be honest, a lot of weeks I just duplicate the list from last week and change a few things. There are a few staples I often buy so my list looks very similar each week. This app is also good if you are sharing shopping duties as you can add a collaborator and they can also add or cross off things from the list.

I generally shop at Safeway for most basics, and a local store called Farmer Joes for produce. Farmer Joes is a combination of expensive specialty items, bulk items and produce; if you want a head of lettuce, their prices and quality can't be beat, but if you are looking for a gallon of milk, you will pay out the nose for it. This makes it worth my while to go to both stores, plus they are only a block apart so it does not take too much extra time. 

I have a two tiered method of shopping: (1) fresh items that I use each week, such as milk, eggs, vegetables and fruit and (2) longer term items, such as dry goods like beans, rice or oatmeal, canned goods and meat, which I will buy in bulk and freeze. For the fresh items, sometimes you just have to pay a little more, but I try to buy what is in season and work around that rather than having a specific dish in mind and buying specific items for that dish. I am happy to eat oranges instead of apples, or use oat milk over almond milk if one is cheaper or fresher than the other. For longer term items, I try to get them when they are on sale and I store them until I need them. For example, last week Lucky's had pork chops for $0.99 per pound, so I bought ten pounds and froze them in two packs for later. Again, I don't really need specific items so will buy whatever is cheap at the moment. 

The "pantry"

I do not plan meals per se, but will see what is on sale and will then loosely plan around that. If pork chops are what I bought, that week's lunches will be pork chops and I will add whatever veggie I bought along with rice or quinoa from the long term section. I usually cook enough for one week's worth of lunches and prep them all at once. For dinners, I will normally go to the freezer where I have stored my prior deals in convenient serving sized packs, and I will take something out in the morning and then cook it at night with some other veggies etc. 

I guess I will be having pork butt soon!

I do not mind eating the same meal several times a week, and a lot of my meals consist of meat/tofu and a veggie with sometimes rice or potato. Other standbys are beans, lentils or some sort of Indian or Thai inspired "stew" (usually beans or tofu) over rice. If I am feeling lazy, an old standby is miso soup and if I am feeling frisky, I may add chicken or pork or rice noodles to it and call it ramen. 

Weekly meal prep

Lunches for the week

Let's talk about the costs, my favorite part! I love hearing what others spend on their grocery bills and why its higher or lower. I know a few of you chimed in on my purging post and I am amazed at what a range there is of how much people spend! Over the last six years, my average grocery bill per month has been about $320. This is inflated by the amount I spent in 2020; without this outlier, the average would be about $290. For the first quarter of 2023, the average is about $200, but my goal for this year is to shop more from my pantry and use up some of the items I already have rather than buying more, so I expect my grocery costs to be lower this year. 

Fun facts: in 2022, I went to Costco 17 times; my average spend per trip was $115. My three top purchased items by count at Costco were blueberries, strawberries and cucumbers and by dollar amount were coffee, strawberries and blueberries (yay fruit!). The price of two pounds of strawberries ranged from $6.99 to $10.79 throughout the year. The average cost was $7.97. 

What is your grocery shopping schedule/method like? Do you often buy the same things over and over or are you more exciting than me? What is your favorite "go to" meal? If you have not already answered this, how much do you spend on groceries? 

North Bay Overnighter: My First Bikepacking Trip

You have already met Bob, and you know that I have not really had a lot of experience with mountain biking, but that did not keep me from deciding to try bikepacking out as soon as the bomb cyclone had passed and we had a sunny weekend. I figured why not, since I already have a lot of backpacking and camping gear, so all that I needed was something to put the gear in and attach it to my bike and I would be good to go. I figured I could learn the rest as I went.

Bolinas Ridge Trail

What is bikepacking? It is basically the same as backpacking except instead of carrying all of your stuff on your back, you carry it on your bike. Your stuff includes a tent (unless you are going to cowboy camp, aka lay out your bedroll under the stars) and sleeping gear at the very least and can include a stove, pots, food, bike tools, extra clothes, electronics and toiletries. So, like I said, pretty much like backpacking. Usually the route consists of more trails than pavement, also like backpacking, but can be on highways, gravel roads, bike paths, logging roads, forest service roads or fire roads. 

Here is Bob, all loaded up and ready for adventure!

How did I find out about this? I have no friends who do this. To be honest, and I am a little embarrassed to admit this, I found it on YouTube. I was looking for ideas for summer hiking/backpacking and I stumbled across this channel where two regular people completed part of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) and I thought, "I want to do that!" and I started looking into it. I found a great local route that I could get to without driving and off I went. Of course, before this, I went pretty deep into a YouTube wormhole. You know how that goes. 

The route that I found can be found on Bikepacking.com and is called the North Bay Overnighter. It is an 80 mile route that goes from the Golden Gate Bridge (GGB) through the Marin headlands to Samuel P. Taylor park near Point Reyes and back a different way to the GGB to finish the loop the second day. These are mostly trails that I have run on before, so I felt pretty comfortable with the route-finding aspect of the trip although this also meant that I knew exactly what I was up against in some cases, which was a little bit daunting! 

Day 1: The official route starts and ends at the Anderson parking lot on the Marin side of the GGB. However, since I live in Oakland, I decided to get there by bike rather than driving. I started off by riding my bike from my house to the BART, which I took to the Civic Center station in the city. It was pretty early in the morning and the only people on the street besides me were the homeless, the druggies and the prostitutes. This is not the most beautiful part of the city, let me just say that. From the Civic Center, I rode down to Fort Mason and then went past Chrissy Field to the end of the GGB. I crossed the bridge in the fog and wet and finally got to the official start around 8:00 am with about 9 miles under my belt already. 

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from the headlands

From there, the route goes up the road to the Coastal trail, and the sun was just starting to break up the fog and I had some really nice views of the bay. I then cruised down the Coastal trail, which is a very gradual downhill, although there were a few rutted areas that made me realize that I had no idea if was best to ride in the rut or try to stay on one of the side lumps, and at one point I heard another bike behind me and I was not sure if I should pull over or get off to the side or...what the rules were! The route goes down, crosses the road and then heads back up Bobcat, which is really just one big mile and a half long uphill and is a trail I have run many times, but have never been able to run the entire uphill without walking a little. However, I rode the bike without stopping the entire time and I was so proud of myself that I stopped at the top for a snack before heading down towards Tennessee Valley. 

From Tennessee Valley parking lot, the trail goes back up the Miwok trail, which was my first experience with the hike-a-bike! Also by now it was actually getting warmer and I shed yet another layer on my way up this hill. After the uphill, Miwok is a nice gradual downhill that crosses highway 1 before going back up towards Dias ridge. Dias was my first true single-track and I had "fun" learning how to manage the hairpin downhill turns, although I did  have one slow speed fall in this section. Side note: the completely packed bike is probably about 50 pounds, which is hard to control on the curves! You live and you learn, I guess. 

Dias Ridge Trail

After going down Dias you get to Muir Beach and this is where I had to break out the GPS. The trail was hard to find, as the route takes you basically up the side of a hill in what looks like someone's backyard, but I think it is just an attempt to not make you ride on the road for that section. However, it is a little strange, as you come out at the top on the road, which you then have to ride on for about a mile and a half before you go back onto the trail again. I was a little afraid of the road as I have driven on it and seen cyclists and it seems a bit scary (it is a windy coastal road) but people were polite and the traffic was still not yet too bad. 

Getting off the road and back on the trail toward Cardiac/Pantoll

The trail takes you to Cardiac and you cross the Dipsea before heading to Pantoll, which is a parking lot, bathroom, water fountain and camping area. Apparently there is hike in/bike in camping here but I was only about 21 miles into the official 40 that I was supposed to do this day, so I kept going. From Pantoll, you ride on the road uphill for about 2 miles; again, this was with cars, but there were also a lot of bikes and the cars were pretty polite. Then came one of my favorite parts of the ride: Ridgecrest Blvd. This road was mostly downhill and is very flowy, with barely any cars AND a view of the ocean for days, and then you go into a redwood forest and it's dark and moist and magical. It is super cool! It was so SO fun. 

Ridgecrest Drive

After four miles, you turn off on the Bolinas Ridge trail, which is dirt but doesn't have too many steep ups or downs and goes on for several miles. However, the very end, when you are headed down toward the turnoff to the camping, is a lot of bumpy downhill, which was quite jarring at times. When you get almost to Point Reyes, you turn off and go to Samuel P. Taylor park, where there is a hike in/bike in campground and for $7 you can put up your tent! I got there around 5 pm, put up my tent, made dinner and then spent a wonderful few hours listening to my audiobook before heading to bed. I did this trip in January and I was the only person in the shared campsite! 

Bolinas Ridge Trail

Samuel P. Taylor hiker/biker camping

Day 2: The next morning I got up early, realized I was out of fuel, drank a cup of cold coffee, strapped on my headlamp and hit the road. Well actually it was a nice flattish paved trail at first, but very soon afterward, I went straight uphill into the fire roads again. Seriously, my first 2 miles were flat, then the next 8 miles were about 3,000+ feet of climbing. Again, I embraced the suck of the hike-a-bike, but I spent a long time wondering when the joy of the downhill was going to come. When the downhill finally came thought, at first it was not very joyful. It was very rocky and rutted and I actually had to push my bike on some of the downhills! 

View from the top of the hike-a-bike near Kent Reservoir

When I got back to the Bolinas Fairfax road, I decided that instead of going into Fairfax and then back up the hill to Tam and then down again to Tennessee valley and then up again to the start line where I would then have to cross the bridge and ride the BART, I would rather skip the extra hills and the public transportation and head back home via the Richmond bridge. So I went through Natalie Coffin park into Ross and from there I took a series of bike paths into Larkspur, where I rode out onto the Richmond Bridge. Once I got to Point Richmond, there was only about a mile of street riding before I got onto the bike path along the bay. A lot of this part of the route was on the San Francisco Bay Trail, which is a trail that goes all the way around the Bay Area. Some of it is on an actual dirt trail and parts of it are on roads and bike paths, but all together I believe there are over 500 miles! 

Larkspur bike path

View of the city from Richmond (SF Bay Trail)

Once I got to Emeryville, I had to go back onto the streets to get to Oakland, but I have to say most of them have pretty good bike paths, so it was not too intimidating. However, I was definitely ready to be done and I even briefly considered taking the BART although by this point it would not have saved me any time or even very many miles! To add insult to injury I let Google maps tell me which way to go and it took me right up a hill that I normally try to avoid (MacArthur Ave.) However, avoiding it would have added a mile probably, so maybe in this case it was really half a dozen of one and six of the other. It sure was nice to get back home though and I celebrated by taking off my bike shorts and walking around without pants for a few minutes before making myself something hot to eat. (TMI? Too bad!) 

Thoughts/What I Learned: Sometimes riding on the road can be fun. I need to bring more food next time. I am stronger than I think I am. When riding down hills, lift your butt off the seat unless you want to be sore later. Samuel P. Taylor is very beautiful. Pushing a 50 pound bike up a hill makes my arms feel like noodles. It also makes me VERY hungry. I probably need different shorts (I am wearing hiking shorts over bike shorts). A screw top water bottle is a lot of work (will bring squeeze bottle or hydration bladder on next trip). 

Comments: Bikepacking.com says that this route in 99.9% rideable with a difficulty of 4/10. I would agree with the latter, as is it mostly fire roads and there are not too many rocks or things to avoid, so even a beginner like me can do it. However, 99.9% rideable is perhaps a stretch as I don't know who can ride up the 14% - 20% grade at the beginning of day two. Maybe I am just out of shape, I don't know, but 99.9% would mean that less than a tenth of a mile is not rideable out of the entire 80 miles. 

Total Miles: 98.3

Total Elevation: 11,300 ft.

Total Time: 15 hours

CalTopo Route

Download the Ride With GPS GPX file here. I get ideas and inspiration from: Bikepacking.com, Ryan, Chris and his buddy Rob, John and Mira. 

Have you ever gone bikepacking? Tell me about a YouTube or internet wormhole you have found yourself deep in, and how did it turn out? 

Connections

Have you ever taken the Meyers Briggs test? I am an ISTJ; here is what the website says about that: A Logistician (ISTJ) is someone with the Introverted, Observant, Thinking, and Judging personality traits. 

Regarding friendship: Logistician friends are not spontaneous. They are not talkative, or particularly playful in their affection. What Logistician friends are is loyal, trustworthy, honorable and dependable. Others may come and go with the ups and downs of life, but Logisticians stay by their friends’ sides no matter what, with a deepness of commitment that other types may not even believe is possible.

Logisticians are a very methodical personality type, and this loyalty isn’t given away lightly. Often slow to make friends, Logisticians usually end up with a smaller circle, but they consider that circle to represent a promise to be there for the people they care about, and Logisticians’ promises are not easily broken.

I know sometimes we fit ourselves into our horoscope or other personality boxes, but I have to say, the above really does describe me to a tee. This may be something for another post, but one of the other things it talks about is integrity and how ISTJs follow through and don't understand people who do not do what they say they are going to do (yes!) so this personality description really does tick a lot of the boxes for me! 

But I digress; what I wanted to talk about was blogging. Why do people write stuff about their life that is personal and put it out in the ether for others to judge? For me, I started blogging when I was traveling around Southeast Asia as a way to communicate what I was doing and where I was to multiple people at the same time, instead of writing an email newsletter or something more tailored to a few people (here is my first blog post). My only readers were probably my parents and my grandma, who would never comment but would talk to me or email me about things later, so I knew that I had at least three followers. My grandma has since passed away, but my parents are still here somewhere (hi guys!)

I would guess that for the first few years I got a handful of comments from people that I actually knew and none from anyone I did not know. This space was more of an online (public) journal. 

Then I got my first comment from a stranger. It was so satisfying; I had made a connection! I answered them right away and was excited when they commented again on another post. I started reading their blog and commenting and they would answer me back. Back in these days, all comments from readers went into my email inbox and the way to respond to comments was to email the person back. Sometimes we would have a long private back and forth about a lot of personal things and would learn a lot about each other that was NOT put out into the ether. It was very satisfyingly. 

A short while after that, I met up with some of my online friends in real life! My other friends and family thought I was crazy, and one of them even asked me if I worried that my blogging friends may be psychos, but the trip went so well that since then I have met up with several other people that I have met online! There is something about the connection you get when you hear a lot of people's inner thoughts and you learn about their everyday life, as well as the interaction you have along the way. 

Minneapolis - September 2011

There were years when I just did not feel like putting myself out there (in 2019 I only posted once), but I have still kept the connections that I have made. This year I decided to start writing a little bit more again, and I have met many new people that I feel are kindred spirits! 

However, going back to my ISTJ personality, I am slow to make friends and I am not one to have a lot of friends with shallower or lighter connections; I like to have a smaller handful of closer connections. I find this also translates to my online connections; I don't read or comment on a hundred blogs or write just to see how many comments I can get without answering them. I like to have the interaction and the back and forth, and I have been known to stop following someone who seems to be just trying to win a popularity contest. However, some of the connections I have made over the years have resulted in friends for life and that is the coolest part of this story. I know that meeting people online now is de rigueur, but back in the day (when I walked uphill both ways in the snow) it was not as normal, but I am glad that I put myself out there back then, and will continue to do so now. 

If you have taken the Meyers Briggs, what personality type are you? If you have not, please do (it only takes a few minutes) and tell me what your result is and if you think it fits your perceived personality! 

Why did you start blogging and/or why are you here reading? Have you ever met any of your online connections in real life? 

My Last To Do List: Trusts & Other Documents

As I have mentioned before, I have a folder of all of my important docs and a list of all of my accounts and important details. I often call this list "the death list" because it is the list of things to do after I die, but this sounds kinds of morbid, so I will retitle it the last to do list. I hope that this list will not be needed for a long time, but I am happy to keep changing it if that means I live a lot longer. However, I also do feel that it is important to have your affairs in order, just in case. This post is about item one on the last to do list, setting up a trust. 

Before I get started, if you do nothing else or do not feel like reading this long post, at least do these two things: (1) Set up beneficiaries on any retirement accounts or Transfer on Death (TOD) designation on your other accounts. This allows worry free and probate free transfers of your money to someone else and even if you do not have a will or any other paperwork, the money will get into the right hands. (2) Complete an Advance Directive (see below for more info) form which will detail what you want done in case you are incapacitated (i.e. DNR).

But now, let's talk about why any of us would need a trust. A trust will help you to avoid probate. Probate is what happens when you pass away and the court has to approve your will and name or approve your executor. The costs of probate differ by state but in California, costs are based on the gross value of the estate and are 4% on the first $100,000 and then there is a sliding scale after that. Let's just say your assets are worth $100,000. That would be a $4,000 cost!! Also, this process can take six or nine or even twelve months, which can be a pain for your loved ones. 

The alternative is to set up a trust. I always thought that a trust was something rich people had for their spoiled kids. This is not the case! A trust is something that protects you, outlines your wishes and minimizes taxes (and avoids probate!). When you die, your successor trustee (the person you want to carry out your wishes) can start doing what you outline right away without getting the court involved. Depending on your situation, setting up a trust should not be too difficult or costly. I spoke to two different trust attorneys and the going rate is around $1,500 - $2,000 depending on your situation and the number of properties you have (in CA it costs $200 per property to change the name on the title). Of course, you could probably also just Google it and fill out something online that would work, but I wanted the peace of mind that comes with having a professional help me. Plus, my job offers legal benefits, which are similar to health benefits where you pay a little bit month. This costs me about $360 per year, so the attorney fees for setting up a trust only cost me $360. 

Additionally, not only will the attorney help with the trust, but they will also complete an Advance Directive, a will and a Power of Attorney form for you. If you have not already set these up, even if you do not have a trust, you should at least have these three things. 

Why do you need these? Let's talk about each one separately. The Advance Directive conveys your wishes regarding your health in case you become incapacitated and outlines who has the right to make health decisions on your behalf. You can easily get these documents from the internet. Nobody wants a case of Terri Schiavo on their hands. Here is an Advance Directive form that I used in the past. These do vary from state to state so you should use one for your particular state. The other things you should write down and keep with your AD are things like: do you want to be cremated or if you want to be buried, where do you want to be buried, do you have a plot already, etc.?  

We all know what a will is, so I won't go into too much detail; however, you may think that it doesn't matter because everything will just go to your next of kin, which is true. But having a will makes things easier for the people you leave behind, specifically appoints an executor (otherwise the state may do this for you) and can detail who will take care of your children, what your wishes are for your funeral etc. Again, you may think that you won't care because you will be gone, but it will make things easier for whoever is left to take care of your affairs. You can also note anyone you do not want to have anything, like creepy uncle Phil for example. This article is very helpful, and also has a free online version of a will that you can use to get started. 

The Power of Attorney tells people who can make financial decisions on your behalf if something happens to you. We all think we are invincible but what happens if you are in a car accident and can no longer make your own decisions? The other option is to add someone as a joint account holder on your accounts, which will give them the freedom to use the money to pay for your care, pay your bills etc. However, if you don't feel comfortable with that, you should appoint a POA. 

Okay! Let's go back to the trust again. Setting it up does take a little work, i.e. you do have to know who you want to get your stuff, who you want to handle your affairs etc. But once you have decided that, the actual process of doing the paperwork is very easy. For example, I had to give the attorney all of the information about my bank accounts (not numbers, just where the accounts are held), any investment accounts, any properties with addresses and any specific bequests. For who I was going to bequest anything to, all they need is the person's name. No social, no address, no phone. For anyone I wanted to give POA designation to, it was the same. So it was really not as complicated as you may think. 

Also, just like most legalese, there is always a phrase to cover you. For example, very common language goes like this: I gift my 13 inch TV to my brother and if deceased, this gift shall lapse. What does this mean? It means if he is no longer around, the gift goes back into my estate. You can set this up however you want and the "if deceased" can literally be a list of 40 people who you want to have in order of importance, or you can give everything to a charity like Warren Buffet. 

Do you have any of the abovementioned items? What steps have you taken to arrange your affairs? Do you have any tips to add or questions about the above? 

Disclaimer: The information above is solely an opinion based my own personal experience. You do you. I am not a tax and/or financial advisor; nothing in this post should be taken as investment advice. I have no fiduciary responsibility to anyone reading this post. Please consult a financial advisor for investment advice.  For my other posts regarding money, go here.