Springtime with grandchildren

The really good part about the end of a road trip is being home again and getting together with our family.

Early in April there was a big car show in Seattle that featured several collections and rare models of cars from throughout the years.  Dan has always loved cars.  He even fixed up a old Model A and drove it when he was in high school.  Boy, I would have loved to cruise College Avenue in Fort Collins with him when I was sixteen!

Anyway, Jules and Jessica suggested that we take Ian to this car show.  Ian is nine and also into cars.  So we took Ian, and we all had a blast!

 

.....and even got to see an Avanti!



When we got back Adam showed me how to weave a hot pad.  He was making it for our camper.  It will get lots of use in our camper.  This is his creation:




Stella and Marina came over and helped us to plant our flowers this spring.







Grandpa hung up our vintage swing from the tree outside our Grandchildren's Room:



Stella seems to be drawn to the piano and really enjoys making “music”.



Marina and Stella knew that Adam and Ian would want to plant some flowers too like they did last spring, so they left some flowers for the “boys.”   The girls were wrong....the “boys” finally did help with the flowers, but I had a heck of a time getting them off the tractors to do their planting!






They casually told me that next year Marina and Stella could plant all our flowers.

Adam really can play the piano.



Dan has made model cars and airplanes since he was a little boy.  He always has some plastic models on hand and Ian has made several airplanes with Grandpa in the past.  Here Grandpa and Adam are making a car.

 

We took the boys to Playground in the Park, and they did like that.  In fact, we all had great fun!

NFL Draft

We had a fun time last night.  Vicky made a great dip, and we sat and watched the NFL draft--guessing who would be picked, and hoping that when they got to pick number 28 that the Broncos would select the "best athlete available" regardless of position.

And they did just that.  A Defensive Tackle, even though they had more needs elsewhere on the team. That's how championship teams remain championship teams--thinking of the long term.  Actually, it's a good philosophy for about all areas of life. 

Now, because of the draft and the new free agents the Broncos signed, Vicky has to learn a whole new set of names and numbers.  That's what she does when she can't sleep--she goes through the entire Broncos roster by number to put herself back to sleep.  It works.  Imagine that.

Tulip Pedal Bike Ride: La Conner, WA

Our first organized ride of the year.  Went with Jules and his (and now our) friend, Dale.  They started an hour later than us and finished a good half hour before us.

It's not that we're slow, it's that they are fast.  Yeah, that's it.  We're not slow.  We're good enough, we're smart enough, and doggone it we're fast enough.



It's really a nice ride, through the tulip fields, through lots of small farms, and along Padilla Bay. 

66 miles.  The last 12 were against a strong headwind, so in pushing ourselves I tweaked my knee.  But we'll rest it a few days and then do a longer ride later in the week.  We are getting in shape for the STP.  We can't wait.

New Dually

Ordered a new pickup this morning.  I have been studying interesting topics related to GVWRs (you're right--actually boring).  When we are gone for 7 months, as we were last fall/winter/spring, we had to carry everything we could reasonably anticipate we would need.  That's a lot of stuff. 

And when we would load up with water, fuel, food, V-8, Diet Cokes, wine, etc., we were 500 pounds over the recommended limit for our new F250. 

Next year we will want to carry even more things.  We also had times where we needed four wheel drive to get to places to camp and hike.  Since those are the more remote areas, which is what we seek, we realized that we will eventually need this.

So we will take a loss on the new F250, but oh well.  It might be surprising to know that even with the money we spent on gasoline for driving almost 10,000 miles, we save money when we are on our road trips.  So we just spent what we saved.  Isn't that how it's supposed to be done? 

We are excited.  I have never ordered a car from a factory built to the exact specifications I wanted.  We spent a lot of time researching options, and found that we only needed a few additions to the base model to be functional and comfortable.  We added a heavy-duty alternator, skid plates, limited-slip differential, that kind of thing. 

But frankly, the cheap packages for the Ford pickups are as nice as the best packages for vehicles 20 years ago. 

Now we can carry our house to Arizona if we want to.  We'll probably stick with the camper instead, though, but now we have room for everything we want because of the larger back seat, and we can stay out a month or more in remote areas because we can load up with everything we might need. 

Bald Eagle, Pileated Wodpecker, & Hummingbirds in our yard--in one day

Or why we live on Whidbey Island in one easy lesson.

We returned home a week ago.  Really looking forward to our home, knowing that spring is coming and our flowers and birds will return. 

Had lots of chores to do--fixing the lawnmower and mowing the very tall grass:

Taking the camper in for it's one-year checkup (actually we returned one day before the warranty expired so we could get some minor repairs fixed under the warranty).

 

Taking a load of trash to the dump:

Starting our training for this year's STP:

 

And enjoying our animals, both domestic (Jack, who is very happy we are home) and wild.  Our first morning we saw a doe and her fawn:

 

And today we really scored with birds.  Many have returned, but we are always happy when we see our first hummer, which we did yesterday. 

He was back today at our feeder and at our Hummingbird bush.  And a Bald Eagle soared over our property and landed in a tree right in front of our window.  Later, a Pileated Woodpecker came to the feeder.  What a day for birds!

We are home, and we love it.

Damage at Joshua Tree National Park and the Facebook connection

One more reason to not have a Facebook account.  Vandals are spray painting rocks and historic sites at Joshua Tree National Park and posting their photos on Facebook.  This is really sad.  Maybe Mark Zuckerman or whatever his name is and the businesses that profit from the sale of personal information from Facebook accounts should be responsible for cleaning it up.

And the vandals themselves should be court ordered for responsible-citizen classes taught by my hero Evie:   A young girl who accidentally brought home two sticks from Yosemite National Park. 

Hiking totals for Road Trip 2

We left home in September, 2012, and drove home April 7/8.

In that time frame, in addition to 440 cycling miles, our hiking totals are:

Number of Hikes:  95

Miles of Hikes:  550

Elevation gain for hikes:  16.75 miles

It's the final figure that I can't quite wrap my brain around.  We walked up (and down) 16.75 miles in 6 months?

Valencia Peak Hike: Montana de Oro State Park, Los Osos, CA

Very fun hike.  We left the campground on the Reservoir Flats trail, which was a relatively flat and simple two miles or so, and then met up with the Valencia Peak Trail.  It is a relatively steep trail, but overall not a strenuous hike. 

Occasionally we got some stunning views of the ocean, although today it was foggy and we often were staring into a fog. 

Here we are at the top:

Oats Peak Trail, with the loop through the Coon Creek Trail, Montana de Oro State Park, Los Osos, CA

 

This is one of our two favorite hikes of all time.  You cross beautiful mountain meadows, with views of hills and the ocean.  It is sort of a moderate hike in terms of difficulty—9.5 miles with 2100 feet of cumulative elevation gain and 9.5 miles.  A little of that gain and about a mile is due to the fact that we went part way to Alan’s Peak.

If you are considering this trail, I would recommend doing it before the mountain biking trails are completed to it.  The trail as it is currently configured is absolutely wonderful, but there is no guarantee that the new trail to it will be—for one thing it will be a lot longer, unnecessarily so, because swtichbacks are being created for mountain bikers.  Also, you can’t enjoy the serenity of the hike while you are always on guard for bikers screaming by you. 

We had lot of difficulty on the lower part of the trail because there were a HUGE number of these new switchbacks, and we couldn’t always tell any longer which was the real trail.  No signs.  What we did was try to follow what looked like the oldest trail—and that worked. 

We had planned on going all the way to Alan’s Peak, but my foot started hurting.  The last five miles was just gritting it out through the pain.  The pain was in my left foot, not the right one that had been surgically repaired, so that was good.

I think what happened is that I had stubbed my toe a few days earlier--in the campground of all places.  500+ hiking miles in some of the most difficult mountain terrain in the past six months, and then I trip over a curb at the campground and go flying onto the pavement.  Jeez. 

(the good news is that it healed quickly, as the next day I did the Valencia Peak hike with no difficulty whatsoever). 

Next year we will come back and go all of the way to Alan’s Peak.  Unfortunately, I think we will have to dodge mountain bikers for most of the hike, and that is sort of sad to us.  This part of the park had a solitude and peacefulness that was almost unmatched anywhere we have been, and now that will be mostly lost.  

Hazards Peak Trail Loop with the East Boundary and Islay Creek Road Trails: Montana de Oro, Los Osos CA

This is a nice hike on a well-maintained trail.  The total distance for the loop is 9.6 miles, with a cumulative elevation gain of approximately 1500 feet.  

As I mention in another blog post, the only downside is that there are a lot of cyclists, and so one is not really on a real hiking trail where you can just focus on the scenery, your aching legs, the flowers, etc.  Part of you is always on alert for cyclists who in actuality really own those trails. 

We would recommend always scanning far ahead and far behind you for mountain bikers.  Doing this, and being on alert, can make this loop a very enjoyable one.  I wouldn’t take our grandchildren on it, though—too many blind spots for bikers to be able to always be able to see little people.

Montana de Oro State Park--ruining the hiking trails because of mountain biking

This was our second trip to Montana de Oro.  We enjoyed our stay here last year, and did again this year.

We like it because of the spectacular hiking trails, and because the campground is well maintained, with water, recycling, rules limiting generator use, sites that too small for the RVZillas, and lots of families.

On our other blog entries we will talk more about the wonderful hiking, and hikes, but for now we have an issue about what has happened since our last visit.

The issue is that the trails to Oats peak and many other places are being degraded for hikers, and it appears this is being done for cyclists. 

One can see in this photo a trail running straight from left to right.  That is the old trail.  Then, there is a LOT of damage to the foliage by making unnecessary switchbacks--none of these were needed in order for the trail to be a hiking trail.  All these changes will do is to make the hiking longer for hikers who want to get farther into the park.  

All of this is unnecessary damage to the environment.  There seemed to be miles of this type of destruction:

 

We did one of our hikes to Hazard Peak, coming down on the East Boundary Trail to the Islay Creek Road.  The trail was clearly designed for cyclists.  It is a very nice trail in fact.  However, as a hiker, you are not having the same experience on a trail that is made for cyclists as you are on a real hiking trail. 

For one thing, you can’t relax.  When hiking with my wife, I always make sure I am walking behind her if we are hiking down and ahead of her if we are walking up.  Cyclists sometimes appear out of nowhere, and are not always in control of their bikes. 

Although there were rules about using bells, this rule was only followed about 50% of the time.  And all it takes is for one cyclist to nail a hiker—so the answer isn’t just to say that “well, there are rules cyclists are supposed to use bells and watch out for hikers,” or the patronizing “we need to educate cyclists better,” or some such nonsense.  It is what it is--if they need helmets, knee guards, elbow guards, etc., then everybody on the trail probably needs the same equipment.  People with that kind of gear cannot really safely share a trail with people who do not have that type of gear.

 

And besides, we don’t go out into the wilderness to listen to bells and to worry about being rammed by an out-of-control cyclist. 

You simply cannot relax and enjoy the experience of hiking when you are on a trail with cyclists that are sometimes going very fast—and we saw some who were really flying!

Here is a link to a mountain biking organization that describes what is happening.   Note in this link a photo that shows a banked curve on the trail.

Now, ask yourselves:  Why a banked curve if not to be able to go fast?  You want to take your kids on a route where there are banked curves?  And there are a lot of them already created at this park.  Banked curves are for race tracks, not for a multi-use trail. 

And while the signs indicate that hikers have the right of way, it is unclear what this means because actually cyclists have the right of way.  They don’t get off of their bikes and move to the side of the trail—we do.  We are the ones stepping off the trail into the Poison Oak. 

 

We are not anti-cycling.  In fact, we do a lot of biking, although it is road biking.  2200 miles in 2012.

And it seems fair to have some trails in the park where mountain biking can take place.  Parks should be for everybody. 

But the Hazard Peak, East Boundary, Baranca, Islay Creek, Manzanita, and other trails in the northern part of the park provide many miles of trails where cyclists can do their thing, and if one is a hiker you know that you are on a trail of this nature.  And that cyclists, despite the signs, have the priority in terms of usage and you are on their “turf.”  Be careful, be aware, and constantly be a bit anxious about whether a cyclist might suddenly appear.  OK.  When we were on these trails we would look far into the distance to see if there were cyclists, and would gauge where we would be when they met up with us.  That’s what we signed up for when we went on those trails. 

But now the Oats Peak trail and too many other trails on the southern part of the park are being turned into trails where cyclists essentially have the priority, and that has gone too far.  Too much land was destroyed for all of the switchbacks (the photo above only shows a fraction of the damage), and this part of the park will be experiencing the sounds of bells and, for hikers, a feeling of being constantly on guard.

No longer will there be parts of the park where hikers have the priority like mountain bikers do for other parts.  

If the response is that there still are hiking-only trails like the Coon Creek and Bluff Trails (and the remaining parts of the Valencia Peak Trail), the counter response is that only the Valencia Peak trail is a true hiking trail.  The others have no elevation gain and are more of the nature of strolling trails (also an important part of any park system).  

Hiking is having the relaxing experience of using your muscles to walk several miles and up several hundred feet to experience the serenity of nature.  

And there is a real risk that this opportunity is being degraded at Montana de Oro in favor of people who are mountain bikers.