Saturday, January 27, 2024

catching up

It's been a minute, huh? OK, let's catch up, quick and dirty style.

October
Mike and I went to Rhode Island and Connecticut, states 47 and 48 for me, for a weekend right before Halloween. We rode bikes all around Newport, ate a delicious apple cider donut at an old-fashioned farm in the country somewhere, and explored a coastal state park in Connecticut. We ate calamari at Iggy's Doughboys, something that has been on my list since I saw it in the 2020 Democratic National Convention (the delegate from Rhode Island was accompanied by a chef from Iggy's). Also pizza at Frank Pepe's, which Mike judged to be very tasty indeed. Henry and I also did a pumpkin train ride with my siblings and nieces and nephews. Very fun! And I went to my first tailgate at Purdue with Liam, Popi, Maria, Kelsey, Emma, and Elly. Boiler up!





November
Thanksgiving happened. Liam came home for it. Max got his senior pictures taken downtown. Bike season ended, and snow season started. Ugh.





December
I started the month with my very first girls trip! My friend Kelly and I went to Savannah for a long weekend. We stayed at an oceanfront condo on Tybee Island and had a blast. There was a holiday parade (so weird to be warm for that) and tons of holiday lights viewing. We rode bikes all over the island one day, and did a full day of exploring Savannah by trolley as well. We ate SO MUCH good food. Would 100% recommend.

Mike and I spent a weekend in Indy for my cousin Stephen's wedding, which was at an absolutely gorgeous venue downtown. I had so much fun catching up with all of my cousins.

Before we knew it, it was time for the holidays! We spent a lot of time with our favorite people. Gifts were exchanged. Liam got his wisdom teeth taken out right at the beginning of break, so we kept it pretty low-key. I did get to go to a couple of holiday light walks, though: Illumination at the Morton Arboretum with Aunt Rita, Kent and Popi, and Lights at Fernwood with the boys and our cousin James. Oh, and I turned 49 in there too.














January
Here we are in a brand-new year! Henry has joined the wrestling team. I was definitely NOT prepared for how brutal and bloodthirsty it would be. I also apparently missed the part of the parent handbook where I was supposed to spend a decade learning every single wrestling technique so I could scream them at my child from the bleachers. Oh darn. He really seems to like it, and I like that he's happy. Max has been busy making college plans (more on that soon), working, and starting his last semester of high school. Where has the time gone?? Liam has finally discovered a class that is hard enough to even give him pause: thermodynamics. He seems like he's really enjoying the challenge, though. Meanwhile, Mike and I are just waiting for this endless winter to end. We're tired of being cold. I want to be on my bike, and he wants to be in his garden. Soon, friends. So soon.



Wednesday, October 11, 2023

redwood national and state parks


This might be a record for me: three weekends in a row in different national parks! 

Liam had two days off for fall break, and Max and Henry jumped at the chance to take a couple days off themselves, so we decided a trip was in order. I asked for ideas for where to go, and only Max really had a strong opinion, which was that he wanted to hike in the forest and see some really big trees. Mike wholeheartedly endorsed that plan, so we set our sights on Redwood.

This was mayyyyybe slightly too ambitious for a long weekend. Here's how our travel looked: Liam got a ride home from Purdue on Friday morning, then once we got off work Friday, we drove to Chicagoland and stayed in a hotel. We caught an early flight from Midway to Oakland (4 hours), got our rental car, and then still had 5 hours of driving ahead of us just to get to Eureka, on the southern end of the park. The boys were good sports about it, but this was not their favorite kind of vacation.


They perked up on the first day once we reached Avenue of the Giants. We caught our first glimpses of the big trees and were appropriately wowed. It was late in the afternoon by this time, so we didn't spend a ton of time there, but the boys had a blast climbing on downed trees and even heading down a hillside to meander along the banks of a river. (I stayed up top because my foot cannot be trusted on those inclines.) 



We really only had one full day in the park, so we tried to make the most of it. The boys really love doing challenging hikes with Mike whenever possible, so this time I made reservations for them to hike the Tall Trees Trail. This trail is by permit only, and it's about 40 minutes from the main road through the park. The first 20 minutes of that drive is windy, narrow paved roads, but then there's a locked gate (they email you the code to unlock the gate; it all feels very dramatic) followed by a windy, extremely narrow, not at all nerve-racking dirt road for the final 20 minutes. All in all, it was about a 90-minute drive from our hotel. I dropped them off, then figured I had about three hours on my own before they would be ready to pick me up. What I didn't plan on was that I would have to spend basically half of that time just getting to and from the main road. UGH. I ended up driving to a coastal overlook, but it was so foggy that I couldn't actually see anything, so I came back down and checked out one of the visitor centers, then headed back to the trailhead, where Mike and the boys were waiting.



I don't have any firsthand knowledge of their hike, but they all seemed like they really enjoyed it. They were full of stories about their adventure all the way back to the main road. After that, we tried to go on a shorter hike together to a small waterfall, but we got halfway down the trail only to discover that the second half was really steep inclines, so I ended up turning back while they went ahead to finish the trail. Somewhere along the way, some shoving happened, with the result that Henry fell down and broke his phone on both the front and back sides. He was uninjured, but Max is going to have to buy him a new phone. Good thing he works so many hours at Culver's!


Monday morning we got up and started the long drive back to Oakland. We returned to Avenue of the Giants, and this time we were able to hike together and go to the visitor center (which was closed by the time we got there that first day). We spent most of the morning exploring in the rain, with the boys, undeterred by the previous day's phone mishap, climbing and running and jumping and waving sticks around. They climbed up the roots of one particularly big downed tree, and I have a little video of Liam saying "It would be funny to try to slide down this branch to get to the bottom" ... right before Henry slipped and accidentally slid all the way down. Whoops. He got a little bruised, but he doesn't seem to have any splinters or other lasting damage. That's what he gets for wearing crocs to a tree-climbing party.






We were planning to stop at Muir Woods once we got back to the Bay Area, but the boys had a different idea, so we went with their plan, which was to see the Golden Gate Bridge. So now we can cross that landmark off our list too. I'm glad we did that, because we ended up driving over both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, as well as all over downtown San Francisco, on our way back to Oakland. It really is very hilly! Mike and I definitely want to come back just to explore San Francisco some more.




 

Sunday, October 01, 2023

cuyahoga valley national park


My cousin Connell got married Friday night at the Cleveland Zoo. It was a really fun ceremony. I can't recreate the moment, but Kent officiated and asked if any of the creatures of the land, air, or sea had any reason why the bride and groom should not be joined in matrimony. You'll have to trust me that it was funny. I turned to Janis and said that I wished I could go back in time and change my wedding venue to a zoo just so he could make that joke! The venue was beautiful, and I had a good night catching up with various family members. (Because of the Friday wedding, Mike had to work, so I was solo on this trip.) No pictures because I was busy just living in the moment, but everything was lovely.

It was a late night, but I had to get up Saturday morning because I made big plans with myself. I brought my bike along on this trip, and yes, before you ask, I did keep it in my hotel room like some kind of weirdo. Also yes, lots of people gave me funny looks as I was wheeling it down the halls and onto the elevator. It was worth the weird looks and the early morning, though, because I headed to part of Cuyahoga Valley National Park that we (mostly) hadn't explored before: the Towpath Trail. It was a super foggy morning, which added to the spooky season vibes and was perfect for the end of September.




The parts of the trail I rode were mostly not paved, which I'm not used to, but it was a nice change. I saw plenty of deer and birds along the way. Best of all, I managed not to get lost, even though there were a bunch of side paths and intersections. It really was a great ride, and now I want to take my bike everywhere we go just so I can find something to explore by wheel. And one of these days I'm coming back so I can do a long ride in one direction and take the old-timey train back. Whee! 






Monday, September 25, 2023

yosemite national park


Well, friends, we've made it to 20 years of being married. Two decades of choosing each other every single dayand being happy to do it over and over again. We went to a national park for our honeymoon (Rocky Mountain NP), so it only seems right that we picked the big daddy of national parks to celebrate this momentous milestone. 

Over the years, we've been to a lot of national parks, and in the process, we've seen almost all of the ones that are easy to get to. Well, easier to get tonone of them are conveniently located right next to major airports! So now every park we visit involves an added layer of logistical challenges to get there. In this case, we drove to Chicago, got a flight to Oakland, then rented a car and drove about four hours to Fish Camp, CA, where we stayed at the unnecessarily fancy Tenaya Lodge. 

Our first day at Yosemite was just about perfect. We got there early enough to find a parking space in Yosemite Valley, then we rented bikes for the day. We spent the whole day riding around the valley, which was an incredible way to see everything without the hassle of driving or taking a shuttle from place to place. We brought along a picnic lunch, which we enjoyed at Mirror Lake (we had to park the bikes and hike up to the lake, which was also fun). Usually by this time of year, Mirror Lake is completely dried up (making it Mirror Meadow) but last year there was a record amount of snowfall, plus a lot of rain this year, so there was still lake to be seen. Also because of this, the waterfalls around the park were still flowing. We got so lucky!








For our second day, we drove across the northern alpine sections of the park and out the east side. It was a long drive, but absolutely gorgeous, with plenty of rock formations and mountain lakes to keep our attention. And once we exited the park on the east side, we headed to Mono Lake, a hypersalinated body of water with really interesting rock (salt) formations. We hiked the trail down to the lake and spent plenty of time just being amazed that this exists in the world. Truly there aren't enough superlatives.





Our last morning was a doozy! We drove to the Mariposa Grove visitors center, then took the shuttle up to the grove itself. The plan was for me to hike the shorter .3-mile trail to get a feel for the grove, while Mike did the more challenging 2-mile hike that goes to all the major groves, but we had done quite a bit of walking the first two days and I was still feeling pretty strong, so I decided to accompany him on the longer hike. It turned out to be right at the limit of what I could handle because there were a lot of steep inclines and uneven terrain, but I ended up managing it without injury. After the year I've had trying to get my foot healed after surgery, I'll never take a 2-mile hike for granted again! Anyway, the Mariposa Grove is home to giant sequoias, and they really are incredibly impressive. Mike was so happy to go on this hike!






After we finished our hike and took the shuttle back down, it was time to head back to Oakland. We got to our hotel for the night and basically collapsed. We got some food from the sports bar in the hotel, but we were definitely not up for anything else by then. It was a very busy few days, but pretty much a perfect way to celebrate our anniversary.