Bay Area

Matt blending in at the Berkeley Rose Garden.

We covered a lot of territory in three days: San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Marin and Muir Woods. Like Los Angeles--like most US cities--you need a car to explore more than one part of the Bay Area. We stayed with friends from the Judge Business School who have now returned to their home in Berkeley , and we were able to visit my friend Amy, whom I met in seventh grade, who now lives in San Jose with her husband and baby girl.


Amy, Brooks and their daughter; Nik and Jen made sure we had the trolley experience.


Nik arranged a dinner at the landmark Fairmont Hotel's Tonga Room restaurant, where it rains inside.

We also experienced the many climate areas: Marin was in the 50s, while inland was close to 90 degrees. Muir Woods National Monument, the world's most visited redwood park, is situated on the Marin Peninsula just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It is also just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. Between our visits to the redwoods and the beach, we stopped off at the Pelican Inn, an English pub "nestle(d) at Muir Beach in the sea-blown fog, among the pines and the alders, the honeysuckle and the jasmine."



I think Matt's favorite part of the day was the plethora of lichen in the park; he kept teasing me by calling it old man's beard--a common name for a type of lichen that I sometimes take in a tincture when I'm not feeling well. My favorite parts were watching the dramatic fog rolling in, absorbing a feeling of calmness and quietness imparted by the redwoods, and happening upon some fearless deer.


Matt examining his lichen, and a buck shows off his good side.


Muir Beach.

Some People Buy Souvenir T-shirts

and we buy souvenir dome-shaped, wart-like growths found on the trunks of trees. Yep, we bought a redwood burl (scientifically a lignotuber) at Muir Woods during a recent weekend trip to the Bay Area. It's been sitting in a little bit of water for about a week, and in another two we should have full-sized, fern-like shoots growing from it.

One week old shoots.

As the gift shop instructions didn't mention anything about the lifespan of the shoots, I figured they were fine as long as they had water. However, I just read that the shoots don't live very long due to lack of nutrients, and one normally then just throws out the burl. The upside is that the burl can be planted under "appropriate conditions" with the shoots growing into redwood trees. Since we only have a concrete balcony, we're up for sending it off to anyone willing to give it a go.

In Case You Are Stuck In A Trunk

Just pull this tab. Oh, then run.

Uncle Peter Is Kinda Crazy

Taken by my uncle near Guadalupe Island, Sep 2004

but we love him all the same. I'm not saying he's crazy like a great white--just that he's much more of a risk taker for diving (on purpose) in great white infested waters. This is as close as I want to ever get to one of these creatures.

Black Mountain Open Space Park

Matt and I have been trying to get out of downtown San Diego on weekends, and hiking is our current preferred activity. Recently we've been to Black Mountain Open Space Park, about 10 miles east of Del Mar, and El Moro Canyon, on the northern edge of Laguna Beach. While I brought my camera on both hikes, I wasn't as inspired by the terrain of El Moro to take photos--we didn't have a view of El Moro Bay, and I already have plenty of chaparral landscape pictures. Plus, I was really hot; the sun just sapped my energy. Tyler had joined us on that excursion, and I do wish I'd captured his newly enlarged hiker's calves for posterity (he's been hiking quite a bit up in LA as a way to deal with his insane work schedule that finds him home, in front of a computer for days on end).

As for the Black Mountain hike, it was memorable for a few things:

*The group of hikers in the parking lot singing songs about chugging beer and making Matt quite uneasy. He thought them cult-ish, and I tried to allay his fears by explaining that some people don't give up drinking games just because they've graduated college. I still found him glancing worriedly down the hill, whenever we heard their chants in the distance.

*The two snakes--one a rattler, one harmless. Matt had a way of notifying me of the snakes' presence which did not put me at ease, at all. I couldn't explain why until the following week's hike with Tyler. We were walking, and Matt said, "A snake." (Long pause, Tyler and I freeze, trying to locate where the threat is approaching from.) "Was here earlier," he finished. Tyler pointed out that the delivery could have been made less traumatic, if Matt had not paused between the two pieces of information or had said, "These marks are from a snake."

Rattlesnake and a harmless snake (or so Matt tried to convince me).

*The microwave towers at the top that looked like big drums.


*The 360 view at the top of one peak. While the views to the north, south and east were dominated by development, the view west at sunset gave the illusion that you could walk off the top of the mountain directly onto the water.