Gossip Rock

Me and my favorite jacket

Today's goal was to find the crash site of ill fated United Flight 615 in the east bay hills above Union City. I read about this 1951 plane crash a couple years ago and have wanted to find the location ever since. I found the exact coordinates of the crash site on www.geocaching.com just this past week. I also found coordinates for a brand new geocache nearby that was yet to be found called Gossip Rock. 'First To Find' was still up for grabs, very enticing!

The hills in the east bay are mostly grass and lack the tree cover that the Santa Cruz Mountains have so the views of the bay were spectacular as I gained elevation, rather quickly, hiking through Dry Creek Pioneer Regional Park. I chose a ridge I thought was most likely to get me to my goal but after a lot of climbing I began to realize Flight 615 would be on the ridge just to the south of me. As I reached the top of the ridge I was climbing, Gossip Rock was clearly visible not more than a quarter mile south of me on a clear posted trail. I hadn't seen anyone since the ranchers herding cows a mile or so below so I had the whole ridge to myself. Gossip Rock is a big pile of rocks with a nice canopy of trees which makes for a nice shady rest spot on a ridge that is otherwise completely open.

It didn't take too long to find the ammo box cache cleverly hidden among the rocks. I signed the first page of the empty log book and noted how beautiful the morning was with views of the bay below and lizards playing on the rocks around me. I lounged on the rocks for a few minutes and then decided I should head out if I wanted to make it home in time to take a shower before going into work at 1PM. After a slight detour and some birdwatching I quickly made it back to my car. Flight 615 would have to wait for a different day.

It's a boy!

The latest ultrasound pics from Christofer and Devan Bradshaw:

Here's the little guy at 22 weeks.


Yep. It's a boy alright.

Return to Black Mountain

I think Stephanie was secretly jealous of my trip to Black Mountain a couple weeks back so she organized her own trip and was nice enough to invite me. This time we managed to enjoy the sunset while hiking up to camp instead of while driving to the parking lot, mainly due to Daylight Saving Time. Alan covered most of the two mile uphill dirt trail to camp on his unicycle. Bryan still joined us after dark but since he'd been there before I didn't go searching for him this time. Alan tried to introduce us to some card game called Killer Bunnies, but I think we enjoyed reading the cards more than playing game. We strolled to the very top of the mountain and gazed out at the lights of the south bay before calling it a night under the stars.

TNF Product R&D (aka: retail camping)

Claire and I decided to do some product testing at work. She is 5'1" so she wanted to see if the Blue Ridge kids sleeping bag designed to accommodate up to 5'0" would work out. It fit her with barely an inch to spare ...which she didn't.

I tried out the Pyxis sleeping bag inside the Bullfrog tent with a Therm-a-Rest ProLite 3 and Compressible Pillow. The Pyxis, which is filled with PrimaLoft, rated to 0˚F and weighs 3 lbs. 6 oz. kept me quite cozy and toasty. I own and use the ProLite 3 all the time and love it, unless I am sleeping at 10,000 feet on top of snow, in which case I think I would want the ProLite 4 next time. I also think I need to pick up one of the Compressible Pillows for general camping. Keeping my head elevated prevents my zees from preventing a tent-mate's zees ...if you catch my drift.

Our little adventure was going splendidly and we were accomplishing so much valuable product research ...until a customer walked in the store.

Sunday drive

Went to the King's Beach ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the second week in a row. Wonder if anyone recognised me from last week even though I was with a different group of about a dozen friends.

Glen, Julie, Chris and I decided to take the scenic trip home so we headed south on Highway 89 around the west side of the lake to Highway 88 and homeward. We stopped for a scenic lunch above a frozen lake and enjoyed reading questions from the book, 4,000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone by Barbara Ann Kipfer.

About five minutes after getting home my mom called to see if I wanted to go to a cello concert. Vicky Wang, a rather accomplished cellist who completed formal training at Juilliard, played a phenomenal concert of pieces by Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Saint-Saens and Rachmininoff. Russ Hancock, who puts together these occasional Sunday evening Ensign Street Concerts accompanied her on piano. It was quite a treat.

...more Tahoe

Another weekend in King's Beach at Lake Tahoe. This time around was a lot less ambitious and consisted of walking along the lake shore with Glen, Erin and Christina, driving Christina to the Reno airport, cruising downtown Reno with Glen in the middle of the day, reading a book about Stephen Hawking, napping (no relation to choice of book), Erin's chocolate chip cookies, homemade dinner with a dozen friends, swimming in the 90˚F pool, every one one of us jumping in the 40˚F lake, running back to the 90˚F pool, meditating in the sauna, dominoes and topping the day off watching The Goonies.

Tahoe

I may or may not have decided last minute to head up with some friends to spend the weekend at Tahoe in King's Beach. Saturday morning Beth, Tiara and I headed out to do some snowshoeing. We stopped at Tahoe Dave's where Tiara rented snowshoes and Beth and I chatted with some guy working there about good places to go snowshoeing ...as we were leaving we realized this guy was none other than Tahoe Dave himself!

We headed up Highway 431 to some meadows that seemed to be the place to sled, snowmobile and hopefully snowshoe. We found some snowmobile tracks heading up the hill and into the trees and followed them for a ways before picking our way up the hill to a spectacular view of Lake Tahoe.

Beth and Tiara decided to head back into town for things like massages and walks along the lake. I decided to head up to the Mt. Rose summit pullout, strap on the MSR Denali Evos and go exploring. Two hours later I was standing on top of a peak just south of Mt. Rose looking at Reno to the northeast and Lake Tahoe to the southwest.