Labor Day Weekend

It wasn't a super eventful holiday weekend for us, but we did attempt a small trip. We left on Saturday and dropped Hazel off at the PetSmart PetsHotel, then headed up to Lakeport, CA to spend some time at Clear Lake. The trip ended up taking so much longer than we anticipated. We decided to take the scenic route through Napa (instead of just taking Hwy 101 straight there), which ended up being a terrible idea. Traffic was horrendous and it ended up taking us twice as long to get there as it should have. The lake ended up being a bit of a bust. We had gotten brochures about the lake and town while at the CA State Fair in July, and were excited to check it out. The lake was covered in algae...so much that we definitely wouldn't hop in for a swim. The lake in this picture doesn't look so bad and the mountains in the background actually make it look pretty nice so you'll just have to trust us about that gross algae!

We stayed the night in Ukiah, CA, home of the World's Largest Redwood Tree Service Station. It's not a gas station anymore, but instead is a little free museum. So adorable.

We had planned to spend Sunday in Mendocino but were not keen on the idea of driving even further away from home after the long trip we had already taken, so we decided to just bail on the rest of the trip. We headed home, picked up Hazel, went to the library and stocked up on reading material for the rest of the weekend. It wasn't quite the weekend we had anticipated, but we still had a good time.

Hazel was very happy for the early pickup from PetSmart.

Lake Tahoe in Summer!

We had on our summer to-do list a visit to Lake Tahoe, and summer was quickly slipping away. We have been quite a few times in the fall and winter, but we both wanted to experience the lake when the weather was warm. We left early on Saturday morning for a quick day trip so we could mark it off our list. We arrived at Sand Harbor, a Nevada State Park, at around 10am and had a great time laying on the beach and reading. There wasn't a whole lot of water activity for the two of us because the lake is COLD (maybe 60 degrees). We both got in about knee-deep and had about all we could take.

By mid-day we were starting to get a little pink and thought it would be best to get out of the sun. We packed up and took a stroll through Northstar Ski Resort. It was cool to see it without snow, and the lifts were still running and carrying mountain bikers instead of skiers and snowboarders.

After church on Sunday, we continued our new CA tradition of going to the farmer's market. We might have gone a little overboard, but we love getting tons of fresh local produce. It's definitely a big perk of living in California.

The CA State Fair

I was so excited to go to the California State Fair in Sacramento on Sunday. I'm a huge fair-lover. My favorite things are seeing the animals and, of course, the food booths. We went in the middle of the day and the temperature reached 102 degrees, making us really second guess our timing, but we still had fun!

 Andrew's first attempt at fair food for the day.. a ridiculously hot turkey leg on a 102 degree day.

It was quickly thrown away and replaced with some refreshing Vietnamese spring rolls.

 A much happier (and in less pain) Andy.

Swanton Berry Farm

I had heard from friends about the variety of local farms that offer pick-your-own fruit and was dying to do it myself. Step one was deciding what fruit I wanted. We're lucky to live in a region that has just about every fruit you could want, fresh and ready to pick. I decided on strawberries. Next I chose the place, Swanton Berry Farm in Davenport, CA because it's on the coast and also because they are organic. The last step was to make a call to my friend Megan who I knew would love to check it out with us.

We picked up Megan and her hubby, Todd, on Saturday morning to join us. The strawberries were amazingly fun and easy to pick. I had imagined it being a hunt of reaching into bushes to try and find a ripe berry that was suitable to pick, and it being a long process to find the amount I was wanting to bring home with me. Instead, the strawberry plants were in raised rows and the dirt was covered in plastic. The strawberries grow and lie on the plastic, so the ripe ones are easily identified.

This picture cracks me up. It is reminiscent of one of my favorite King of Queens episodes where Doug and Carrie are given a terrible painting of themselves as a gift. Doug has beaver teeth and Carrie has a huge hand. Lesson learned... Keep my strawberry-chowing hand far enough away from the camera lens to help it look not-so-enormous.

Carrie: Look at this. I got one tiny arm and one huge arm.

Doug: I think it's just the angle.

Carrie: Doug, look at my hands. That's a chicken foot and that's a catcher's mitt, are you serious?

Show clip can be seen here.

We picked our way up and down a few rows until we had enough to take home with us (and we may or may not have done a bit of taste-testing in the fields!). The guys were nice enough to carry our boxes while Megan and I went to town pulling off the ripe berries. The view of the coast from the fields was so beautiful. But being along the coast also meant battling with the wind (excuse the windblown hair in the pictures)! When we were finished, we walked up to the store, weighed our delicious treasure, and paid the honor till. Yep, you pay and make your own change. We sampled some of the farm's jellies and jams and looked at the amazing homemade baked goods. I couldn't resist getting a strawberry truffle. It was incredible!

We headed back to the car and decided that, although Swanton Farms had other U-Pick stands up the coast (olallieberries, blackberries, and kiwi), we wanted to continue on to Pescadero and stop in Harley Goat Farm for some goat cheese. Megan and Todd had not yet been to Harley's, so we were psyched to show them this little piece of heaven! We munched on some goat cheese and bread and then were ready to head back to the city.

Andy and I didn't do anything creative with our strawberries. We loved them so much just the way they were that we only accompanied them with some homemade whipped cream. Megan and Todd resorted to making these drinks.

Hopefully there will be another fruit picking date to happen shortly in the future! Maybe cherries or peaches?!

Alum Rock Park

This is a catch-up post for our visit to Alum Rock Park in San Jose about a month ago. I had heard of a “must-do” hike in the area with a gorgeous view and I wanted to tackle it. Turns out (and lucky for us) it wasn’t the long, grueling hike we thought it was going to be. It was a quick walk along the North Rim Trail to Eagle Rock. Along the way, we saw a giant rattlesnake. It was just a couple feet away from us as we were walking. Andrew was chatting away and I don’t think he even would have noticed it had I not come to a dead stop, basically unable to move from shock. It was so big, and slithering up from a small dip on the side of the trail. Andrew fumbled for the camera and I thought he had at least got a picture of its tail before it slid into the brush. Unfortunately, our blurry photos only show how flustered and unsteady we can be when trying to photograph deadly animals. Nature photographers we will never be!

We made it to the top (bite-free!) and the view was nice, even though we had quite a bit of afternoon smog. With a clear sky, the Santa Clara Valley and the south end of the San Francisco Bay can be seen from the overlook, but for Andy and I the best part of it was that the hills were green. Spring is supposed to be the rainy season for us where the hills turn bright green and stay so for several months. But this spring was an odd one for the Bay area in terms of weather. The rain came and was gone within a week so while the hills were green for our trip to Alum Rock and Eagle Rock, they turned brown again way too quickly. It was a bummer for us because we love the green hills. We fell in love with them when we moved here last spring and were so sad to see them turn dry and brown within our first months here. Since then, we had been anticipating their return. Unbelievable that this spring was for the Bay area was the driest in 35 years!

Enough of my rant with Mother Nature. We headed back down to the park and grabbed our picnic gear from the car. We walked to a little area where Andy grilled some chicken.  We ate chicken sandwiches and pasta salad at a table, then took our picnic blanket and spread it out under a tree. I read for awhile and Andrew napped a perfect ending for our Sunday at the park!

Beekeeping in Redwood City

This Saturday was so awesome. I have always been interested in beekeeping but have never known how to get into it. So when I saw a Living Social deal for a beekeeping class in the area, I was ecstatic.  Andrew has never been keen on the idea of beekeeping as a hobby, but since he goes through honey quicker than I believe any other human does, he thought it could actually turn into something worthwhile for him and agreed to accompany me. The deal promised it would be a hands-on experience with organic beekeeping (wearing a super cool bee suit) and we’d leave with the knowledge to assemble and populate our own hives to harvest honey.  

When we arrived at Red Rock Honey in Redwood City, CA, we were pretty surprised that the location was actually a residence and not a commercial facility. We went in the back yard where the family had many hives. We sat on the porch, away from the grassy area where the hives were housed, and learned from the master beekeeper. This guy was so knowledgeable and talked for hours. I would have never thought there could be so much to learn about the hobby. After our brains were packed full, we suited up and went to a hive. The beekeeper took apart a hive, showing us each frame. We even got to see the queen at work! Notice in the pictures that he didn’t wear gloves. He never does, but did get stung once and acted like it was nothing. It reminded me of a couple years back when I got stung while camping and my eyes welled up in tears because it was so painful. And the rest of the day I could feel the heat radiating from it. Perhaps I’m just a bit of a baby (ok, I know that’s part of it), but bee stings hurt and his reaction was as if a fly landed on him!

At the end of the day we did a honey tasting. This tasting was better than Napa! It was Heaven for a honey-lover. We tried their different varieties and also comb and whipped honey. Honey is supposed to be an amazing superfood- used to boost immunity, a natural remedy for stomach ailments, and even has anti-cancer properties. So, really, we were just honey sampling in the name of health!

After all this, I’m pretty set on the idea of not starting a hive. There is just too much to learn and even if you do everything correctly, you will not likely have honey production until year #3. There are also way too many diseases that can wipe out your whole colony and they can even destroy your equipment. Andy and I will just stick to buying our honey. It turns out it’s actually very cheap for the amount of work (and love!) that goes into it.

Big Sur Camping (Last Weekend, Part 1)

Last weekend was pretty busy so we're going to break it down into two parts. On Friday we drove down to Big Sur, one of our favorite places in this area. The views of the coast are just amazing. It was pretty foggy on Friday (late afternoon-ish) so we didn't bother stopping to take any pictures and instead drove straight to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. Andrew set up the tent while I sat out our camping chairs. The guy is a pro at it so I leave it to him because I usually just end up getting in the way. And he did really have it up in the time it took me to set out chairs and put on my tennis shoes. We threw our stuff in the tent and drove over to Pfeiffer Beach. We hadn't been before but had heard of its purple sand which gets its color from the surrounding rocks. On our visit we only saw a few patches of sand with a light purple hue. We later found out that the sand gets darker the further north on the beach you go, where the following photo from LA Times Travel was taken:

Image source here.

Our photos show a much more "normal" color sand:

We left before sunset and went back to the campground and biked for awhile. Then Andrew built a fire where we sat the rest of the evening.

  

We woke up early the next morning, tore down our site, and stopped to get pictures as we left beautiful Big Sur.

Ever seen the "Happy Cows Come from California" ads? I believe it!

Then we drove onto Castroville, where the 53rd annual Artichoke Festival was taking place. Last year we just happened to stumble upon the festival when we were visiting Santa Cruz/Monterey/Big Sur. You can read about that trip here.

 

We walked around and checked out the vendors, then hopped back in the car with our freshly fried donuts and kettle corn (how I love fair food!) and drove back to San Jose. We were back in time to take a quick nap to energize us for our next big adventure this weekend...stay tuned for Timko Weekend Part 2!