Carmel River State Beach

This video captures that location where my fiancée and I will be married in July. It overlooks Point Lobos State Reserve, where we had our first kiss. Yes, a very romantic spot. The second half of the video contains a special 360º view of the beach, mountains, and lagoon where the Carmel River empties into the Pacific Ocean. It was here that the 1769 Portolo Crespi Expedition erected a cross to signal their supply ship that they'd gone back to San Diego. In those pioneering, something like a cross would be the only sign that Europeans would recognize as a message.

Asilomar State Beach

Sometimes you need to be safe in the harbor, other times you need to go to the rocky shore. The vital, edgy, and cantankerous shores of Asilomar Beach remind me that at times there's very little cushion for some of life's challenges. But in the midst of challenge lies opportunity. The tide pools swell with foam and waves at high tide and starve from moisture at low. The creatures that live there must have a strategy to take life's ups and downs in stride. If I'm going to get through the dry and turbulent times, I'll need to do the same.

Manzanita County Park

Its seems I've found a new way to pump life into my personal travel blog: taking short videos of my weekend hikes around Monterey. I guess it takes innovation and fresh ideas to keep a blog going, and I've found something that I can enjoy once more.

The Winter rain has come to California and I am grateful for it. Yet, after a full week of rainy days, it sure makes to grateful to see the sun again! This video is when I was home all weekend by myself. The Saturday before it was beautiful but I was wiped out from school and didn't take advantage of the day. Sunday was supposed to be the beginning of seven days of rain. I took a chance and got out for this hike. To my advantage, the rain didn't start to be steady until that evening. The result was an overcast, yet far-visibility day with pungent aromas of detritus and vegetation that fill the senses to reassure that nature is truly a revitilizing force.

Winter Vacation in Yosemite

For New Year's celebrations, I went up to Yosemite National Park with my fiancee and her friends. We hiked all around the Valley, in Hetch Hetchy, and up at Badger Pass. I was a bit camera shy in 2009, but the first 3 days of 2010 I shot these videos of the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequioas and Hetch Hetchy:

Garrapata State Park

As promised, with a little delay, here are some photos from last month's outing to the hills over the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur.


Here's our hiking group, "the happy trails club" on our first outing of the year. This big log was our point of no return: continue climbing to the peak, or go back through the canyon. Of course we went to the top! And what a view!


The misty Big Sur coastline in silhouette. What a place.



Sunset from the trail.


This last post is for Travis and Joy. Four years ago I helped them move this couch into their apartment by hoisting it onto the top of the moving van to enter through the second floor window. Fast-forward to today. Troy have sold me the couch. I tried to get it through my front door and only succeeded in gashing the dry wall. It would turn out that the only way to get this couch into any dwelling is the second floor patio window!

Double Yikes!!

Another month has gone by, and no posts from me. I've had some New Year's resolutions to get underway, so perhaps implementing them has put off my weekly reflections on the blog. Also, I've been keeping up a blog for a teacher research project, so that has taken priority whenever I have the time to blog.

I returned to Salinas from Chicago on Dec 27. I went to a friend's wedding in Stockton on Dec 29. It was good to see people I hadn't seen since college, nine years ago. I welcomed the new year with my girlfriend with quiet night at home. For the rest of that week, I slowly prepared for the resumption of school.

We had 2.5 weeks of classes until the end of the semester, which just occurred this Thursday. I was glad to see that several of the writing skills had "sunken in" over the break. However, some of the students resumed their old antics to disrupt the class. So I've made classroom management a priority for the new semester starting this Monday.

As for my New Year's resolutions, I'm off to a good start. I've visited two gyms to potentially join. I've joined the local Kendo club as a way to stay in shape and keep in touch with my Japan experience. I've also enrolled in a Spanish for Professionals course at the local adult school. The biggest impasse for communicating with parents is my limited vocabulary while talking on the phone. So I've set a goal of improving my skills in this area. Three New Year's resolutions seems like enough for me.

So far this year we've had some pretty dubious weather in Salinas. Rainstorms from the North Pacific have left snow on Mount Toro, leaving the impression that we're in more of a winter wonderland instead of a mild mediterranean garden.

We also took a nice little 5 mile, 5 hour jaunt to Garrapata State Park. The strenuous climb made the wonderful vista at the top all the more lovely. Photos are forthcoming, and won't take another month to post!

Close Encounters of the Condor Kind

Gilda and I decided to get out of Salinas for the day and head towards Pinnacles National Monument. It's about 30 miles south of us, in the Gabilan Mountains. The drive through the Salinas Valley is always a liberating one, with wide open views of the sloping Gabilan Mountains on one side and the Santa Lucia Range on the other. Route 146 carried us past vineyards and wineries and into the bubbly foothills. The road narrowed to one lane at places, evidence that it was a road less traveled.

We pulled into the Chapparal Ranger Station, ruffling the feathers of the park rangers because we parked in the lot before paying our use fees. The nerve of us! wanting to park once instead of twice! I got the routine spiel from the head ranger there about places to go. The drone and precision of his pronunciation gave me the impression that he's done this for a long time! Gilda and I looked at the display detailing the hikes we could take. We passed on the all-day hikes because it was already 3pm. We either would go on the 100 ft-elevation-change hike to the Cliffs and Cave or the 1200 ft-elevation-change to the High Peaks. We both agreed on the peaks. Once underway, we discovered what kind of a hike we were in for.

Our approach took us through Juniper Canyon with an impressive view of the Pinnacles and a gradual slope. We met maybe 10 hikers on their way down. We were the only ones going up at the time, as the shadows across the mountain tops were getting longer and the light struck the rocks with brilliant orange and red hues. Then we started up the switchback climb to the peak. This was pretty strenuous, with plenty of water breaks and photo ops taken. Halfway up, we spotted what we thought were juvenile California Condors, an endangered but slowly recovering species. We could tell by their underwing pattern that they weren't golden eagles or turkey vultures. Gilda remarked that they were probably checking us out, too. I doubted that, I mean, we're alive and walking right? They're only interested in us if we're staggering to our deaths, right?

Thirty minutes later we've huffed and puffed our way to the top of the Pinnacles. We sit on a little bench, near the top of Scout Peak. From here one can look down both sides of the mountain. The sunlight was amazing, so we decided to take some self-portraits with the scenery in the background. We had to do a couple of takes because I was getting cropped out of the picture. Little did we know that a creature as large as us was approaching from behind. In the first picture, you can see a bird flapping its wings in the center, just above Gilda's head. Just as we took our last picture, I see this colossal bird fly past us at eye-level. The "Viiwhoozh" of its gliding wings startled both of us before we knew what it was. The second picture was captured just after it passed us. The bird's wingtips were like long fingers grabbing every spare gust of wind. Its head was fuzzy and small, with deep black eyes. I remember a blur of white and black feathers, probably its under wing and back feathers. Of course, something that big and flying could only be a California Condor. And one of 127 surviving in the wild. How rare an encounter is that? After it passed us, it circled higher overhead and turned its head to pan the area where we were standing. Gilda was sure that it was checking us out and now I conceded a "yes". (Later on I would confirm this with my cousin Jessica, who runs the bird lab in Andrew Molera State Park. Condors can see color and are quite curious as juveniles.) After circling, it withdrew behind the ridge to the east side of the park.

I scrambled up to the highest point to see if the condor would circle around one more time. But s/he was gone. With my point-and-shoot camera I could barely zoom in for details, so you'll have to click on these pictures for closer looks. Gilda and I tried to recreate the situation a little later, for posterity of course. We wondered if these condors didn't quite have the "street smarts" to avoid humans because the collective memory of their small population and captive breeding doesn't pass on the message "if you see a big thing in an orange jacket, its a human, so stay away!" We didn't mind because we had an exhilarating experience getting close to something most people have never seen. Two other blogs have recently posted some condor news. Laura's Birding Blog reports that a new California law bans the use of lead bullets in condor territory. Simon Bisson in Big Sur captured a great photo of an adult condor near Nepenthe.



Our descent down the Pinnacles was faster than our climb, the setting sun left us little time to dawdle. Gilda and I recounted our reactions to the event, speculated the chances of it happening again, and wished we had a zoom lens or the video footage of its approach. The red and orange Pinnacles were now an ashy grey, shutting off their splendor to rest for the night. We made it to the parking lot by dusk, eager to come back to the Pinnacles while our 7-day use pass was still valid.

Maybe we'll come next Saturday to see the caves. Who knows, maybe we'll have a close encounter with another magnificient flying creature: a bat!