Mike & Theresa's Travel Journal

Dublin, Ireland - March 2011

2011-07-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

This was our first trip to

Ireland

and we decided why not gofor St. Patrick’s Day. We knew that itwas mostly a tourist deal in

Ireland

to celebrate, but why not. We flew inand out of Dublin and rented a car to driveclockwise around the coast back to Dublin.We were there 16 days, Mar 16 - Apr 1. We packed one oversized backpack each with 8 days of clothes. We dropped our laundry off half way throughour trip to be washed. We were reallylucky with the weather and of our 16 days had mostly sunshine. It rained one evening and drizzled a couple ofmornings.

Our itinerary included: 3 nights in Dublin, 2 nights outside Kilkenny, 1 nightin Kenmare, 2 nights in Dingle, 1 night in Doolin, 2 nights in Galway, 1 nightin Westport, 2 nights in Portrush, 1 night in Belfast and 1 night in Trim. The trip reports will be broken down by the places we stayed, otherwise it would be one long blog!

Dublin (Days 1-3)

Day 1 - We arrived in Dublinat 6am. It took us about an hour to getthrough passport clearance. We hadreserved a car with Avis, but realized it was for a manual car, which is thedefault rental in

Ireland

. We had to wait for them to find us anautomatic and were charged about $75 USD more for it.

We then drove to our hotel, Roxford Lodge. Many people on the Trip Advisor forums don’trecommend driving in Dublin,especially if your hotel is in the city center. Our hotel was a few miles away from city center and we had experiencedriving on the left, so we thought we could handle it ok. It took us about 2 hours to get from theairport to our hotel due to traffic mostly and turning around a few times. Weparked our car in their private lot, checked in and left our bags until ourroom was ready. They said it would be ready probably by 1pm. We had a quick breakfast at a Bean Scene downthe street from the hotel and had our first full Irish breakfast.

Our plan for the first day was to ride on the Hop On and Off Bus. We walked to St. Stephen's Green tocatch the HOHO bus. Our first stop was the Kilmainham Gaol. We bought our Heritage Card here and wereable to get in all the other qualifying places in

Ireland

for free. It definitely pays off and all the localswere glad we had figured it out. We alsovisited Jameson's and had a tour. It’snot a working distillery, but an interesting tour. We also toured Bushmills which is a workingdistillery. If you have to pick one overthe other, definitely go with Bushmills during the week. To see everyone working and smelling thedistillery really is fascinating. Ourlast stop was the Guinness Store. It waspacked since it was the day before St. Patrick’s Day. You give yourself a tour by walking throughand reading signs and then are rewarded with a free pint in the GravityBar. There are great views of Dublin from the bar aswell.

It was a long day and we headed back to our room. I was about to fall asleep and not eatdinner, but figured that wouldn’t be a good idea, so we asked the receptionistat our hotel for a recommendation to somewhere close by the hotel. She sent us to Roly's Bistro. It was a white-linens-on-the-tablerestaurant, but it was really good. Itwas a little pricey, but our entrees were pretty tasty. We debated on finding a pub close by ourfirst night, but we were so tired, that we decided to turn in early.

Day 2 – St. Paddy’s Day! We had ourbreakfast at the hotel, some French toast for me and a full Irish breakfast forMike. We then walked to city center tofind a spot on the parade route to watch the St. Paddy’s day parade. It wasreally crowded and people liked to push to get close the front. I’m not a fan of crowds. We stood waiting an hour for the parade andthen only watched 30 minutes of it. Itwas a really colorful parade. I justwanted to hear few bagpipe bands go by. Wewalked over to Bewley's Cafe for some Irish coffee and snack and to watch thecrowd from their balcony seating.

When planning our trip from home, I came across a band, Blood Red Mountain Band, which would be playing at the Cobblestone Bar on St. Paddy’sDay. So, we decided to head over andcheck it out. It was a 5 Eu cover charge and we listened to about 3 or 4 bandsbefore BRMB came out. It was a very funafternoon, we were probably the only tourists in the there. We befriended some local gals and theyrecommended going to Brazen Head for dinner. We sat at a very large table and shared it with 2 other couples. They only have a few small tables. We had traditionalIrish food, bangers and mash and Guinness stew. Since we spent all afternoon ina pub, we headed back to our room again early since we were still adjusting tothe time difference.

Day 3 - We decided to try Chorus Cafe for breakfast. We walked and took theHOHO bus for a few blocks to get there. It’s a nice, small café and the breakfast was ok, cheaper than at ourhotel. They didn’t really have the bestcappuccinos though. After breakfast, wewent over to Dublin Castle, but couldn’t geta tour right away. We had an hour towait, so we walked through Trinity College. One of our friends from Cobblestone hadplanned to leave us tickets to the Book of Kells exhibit, but we didn’t feellike waiting in the long line on a Sunday. Our tour through Dublin Castle was pretty cool,but it wasn’t my favorite one we visited. I like the Kilkenny Castle better. It was really neat to see the original castleand city wall underground at the Dublin Castle however. We needed a coffee fix after the Castle, sowe stopped in at Insomnia across from Trinity College. I needed something to make up for thedisappointed cappuccino I had had in the morning.

We headed over to visit the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology and took an hour to explore. It’s a really interesting museum withlots and lots of stuff to see. After themuseum, we tried to find the Georgian House No. 29. For some reason, we just could not figure outwhere it was and gave up. We were bothstill very tired and had been walking a lot the last few days that we decidedto head back to the room for a nap before our pub crawl.

I used Trip Advisor to help decide on where to go fordinner. I came across Cornucopia and itlook for promising and inexpensive. Wehad a delicious dinner at Cornucopia, a vegetarian enchilada dish and somechicken curry. You order at the counterand get an entrée and 2 salads. We hadbooked with the tourist office the day before to go on the Traditional Music Pub Crawl. After dinner, we walked to St. John Gogarty’s pub to wait for the pubcrawl to start. It was really crowdedand I thought they had limited the event to 50 people, but later found out itwas increased to 75. As I mentionedbefore, I’m not a big fan of crowds, but made the best of it and we enjoyedourselves. We had way more fun going torandom pubs throughout our trip to listen to trad music, but we did learn alittle from the 2 musicians, member of Dublin City WorkingMan's Band and James Riley, that hosted the crawl and even bought their CDs andlistened to them all throughout our trip. We are still listening to them back home pretty frequently. We only went to 2 different bars with themusicians, Ha’penny Bridge Inn and another one north of the Liffey. We got off track a little after leaving thesecond bar, that we grabbed a taxi back to our hotel. We didn’t feel like walking another hour backanyway.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Roxford Lodge

Restaurants - Bean Scene, Roly's Bistro, Bewley's Cafe, Brazen Head, Chorus Cafe, Cornucopia

Activities - Kilmainham Gaol, Jameson Distillery, Guinness Store, Dublin Castle, Trinity College, National Museum of Ireland Archaeology, Traditional Music Pub Crawl

Pubs - Cobblestone Bar, St. John Gogarty's, Ha'penny Bridge Inn

Trip Continues.....

Killkenny, Ireland and Rock of Cashel

Kenmare, Ireland and Ring of Kerry

Dingle, Ireland and Dingle Peninsula

Doolin, Ireland and Cliffs of Moher

Galway, Ireland and Aran Islands

Westport, Ireland and County Mayo

Portrush, UK and Antrim Coast

Belfast, UK

Trim, Ireland and Newgrange

Park City Skiing - Feb 2011

2011-05-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

A friend of ours was doing her residency in Salt Lake City, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to go skiing there. We decided on a weekend trip to ski in Park City. We skied at Park City Mountain Resort Friday night and Canyons Resort on Saturday. We flew into SLC and drove to Park City and stayed at the Marriott for one night.

We went night skiing at Park City Mountain Resort on Friday night. There were only 3 lifts open and a few runs, so not many options. We got the deal with Southwest to ski for free, so we didn't complain. Payday ended up being the best run. They had the runs lit up with lights, but going up the lift got dark in places. It was kind of eerie, especially with that movie Frozen we were talking about. After a couple of hours, we were bored and cold, so we called it a night.

We went back to our room and got ready for dinner. We made the mistake of not planning ahead and making reservations as there were long waits at most places. We finally settled on Bistro 412. I was using the Yelp app on my phone to find reviews while we were walking around checking places out. The food was really good, although pricey, and we had a great dinner.

On Saturday, we started at Canyons about 1030am. It's a really big resort and they have lots of good runs. We started off on the Gondola to the top and did the run Snow Dancer down to Chicane. We then took Tombstone up and came down Another World, South Fork and Tranquility. We also found our favorite run going up Tombstone and down Another World to Ripsaw then up Peak 5 and down Upper Crowning Glory to Middle Crowning Glory to Lower Crowning Glory. Those Crowning Glory runs were really cool. By the time you got to Lower, it felt like you were skiing in the countryside. There were houses and cool little bridges and it was quiet, because no one was skiing there.

We made our way back to Red Pine Lodge for lunch. One of the members in the group was done after lunch and she went back down to Base Camp. The other 4 of us wanted to do the Crowning Glory runs again. It was a push, but we made it. Going back down to Base Camp took forever, because it was closing time and we decided to ski down instead of take the Gondola. We took Short Cut over to Doc's Run. I was so tired at this point, that I kept on falling down. It was snowing pretty good too and hard to see. I loved Canyons and would definitely go back there over Park City Mtn Resort.

We drove back to our friend's place in SLC for the night and we relaxed with them on Sunday before catching our flight. We woke up to some heavy snow and thought for sure we'd be delayed. By the time we left for the airport, it had cleared up and melted away.

I'm glad we had the chance to ski at Park City, but I still prefer Colorado and Tahoe skiing.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Marriott Park City, Friends Apartment

Food - Bistro 412, Blue Plate Diner,

Activities - Park City Mtn Ski Resort, Canyons Ski Resort

Las Vegas - February 2011

2011-04-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

I almost thought George Strait was going to skip his Super Bowl weekend show in Vegas this year. They didn’t announce the ticket sales until later than usual. I guess he had too much fun touring with Reba McIntyre and LeAnn Womack that he decided to keep touring with them. This year we would have slightly better seats and would get there in time to see LeAnn. There was a miscommunication on the start time of the concert last year that we missed most of LeAnn’s performance.

We decided to stay at Mandalay Bay, because I got a good rate. We try to stay somewhere different every year and it’s mostly dependent on the rate. These days you can get good rates at the top places. We flew from San Diego to Vegas, because what’s better than getting on the plane, ordering a drink and then beginning the descent when finishing your drink. It was early evening on Friday when we arrived and checked into our room. We were given 2 room options when we checked in and took the room that was at the end of the hallway. Sometimes it can get loud in the hallways and we thought being at the end would mean less people walking by and therefore, less noise. I think we may be on to something here.

After getting settled into our room, we got ready for dinner. We had an 8pm reservation at Kokomo’s at the Mirage before seeing Love at 9:30pm. We decided to walk from Mandalay Bay to Mirage. It took us an hour and we were walking pretty briskly. I decided we should take a taxi on the way back. We thought having an hour and 15 minutes or so for dinner would be plenty of time, but the service that night was slow. Our servers also had a private party and were spending most of the time with them. We had decided to go with the prix fixe menu and ordered an appetizer, entrée and dessert. I had the beet salad, salmon and chocolate torte. Mike had the crispy shrimp, filet and spice cake. We got our appetizer within 15 minutes, but it was 30 minutes before we got our entrée. We informed them of our show and requested our dessert as soon as our entrées arrived. Regardless of a little service slowness, the food was really good.

We got to Love with plenty of time to catch some of the pre-show entertainment. If you’ve never been to a Cirque Du Soleil show, they have members of the cast come out and interact with the audience before the show starts. We got a special winter price on our tickets and we seated in the very top row. The stage is circular and in the center with the seats going around it. Therefore, you don’t really have a bad seat. It was a cool being in the very top row, because during one of the segments they cover almost the entire audience under a cover to simulate clouds. Only the people at the top could still see the performers above the covering. I really enjoyed the show and especially the great Beatles’ music! It’s up there with ‘O’ as being one of my favorites.

On Saturday, we had breakfast and lunch in the hotel and relaxed in our room most of the day. I had contemplated renting a car to drive over to explore and hike in Valley of Fire State Park. It might have rushed our day a little more, but I sort of wished we’d done that. I have a hard time relaxing when I’m not at home. I want to do everything, but I made myself relax. It helped that we had a nice soaking tub in the room.

Before the George Strait show, we had reservations for dinner at Wolfgang Puck in the MGM Grand. We usually eat in the MGM since that is where the concert is held. It’s nice to eat and not have to rush off to a show and it’s fun to watch all the people that show up for the concert and walk by the restaurants. This restaurant is very affordable and now I know why it always has a long wait. We had a reservation at 5:30pm and there was already an hour wait. We were able to get a bottle of wine for the same price as our half bottle the night before. I wanted something totally random that I wouldn’t usually order at a restaurant and had the meatloaf. It was pretty good actually. Mike had the prosciutto pizza and it was delicious. Since we’ve eaten at a lot of places in MGM, I can say this is my second favorite (after Emeril’s).

We really enjoyed the concert this year. To be able to see 3 big time performers, of course it’s going to be a good show. I think it’s going to be our last Super Bowl weekend George Strait show for a while, but you never know.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino

Food - Kokomo's, Wolf Gang Puck

Activities - Cirque Du Soleil's Love, George Strait concert

Lake Tahoe Ski Trip - January 2011

2011-04-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

When we go skiing in Tahoe, we usually stay at a friend's family condo. We flew into Reno one weekend on a Friday and drove to South Lake Tahoe to the condo at Lake Village Resort. It was snowing and foggy when we landed. We usually take the quick route through Carson City, but decided to take the scenic route along the lakeside. We drove from the 395 to 431 to 28 to 50. It's about the same distance, but the roads are more windy.

Before heading out of Reno, we stopped at the closest SaveMart to buy our lift passes to save a little money. They were $75 at the grocery store, but are around $95 at the lift. With the snow in the area, we were hoping we wouldn't find any road closures or areas that required chains. We made it to the condo in a couple of hours. It was really pretty drive.

We usually stay in and cook, play games, read and relax when we are in Tahoe. We made a run to the grocery store to get supplies for 2 breakfasts and dinners and snacks in between. We went down to the clubhouse and played pool and ping pong for a while. Mike and I were planning on going skiing on Saturday at Heavenly to meet up with some other friends. Heavenly is definitely one of my favorite places to ski. The views alone are just breaktaking!

On Saturday, we got to the lifts about 10am. It was pretty busy and took us an hour or so to get to the top. We like to make our way to the top and over to the backside to ski the blue trails. We usually stick with Big Dipper, Galaxy, and Olympic Downhill. We met up with our friends for lunch and skied with them a while. I ended up taking a big spill on a steep slope and couldn't get into my skis, so I got separated from everyone. They kept going thinking I already went by and I waited for someone to come back from another run. Luckily, someone in the group spotted me in my pink ski pants and found me. Otherwise, I was planning to make my way back to the car. I was the only one without a cell phone. I remembered to take mine on the following trip.

After skiing, the girls and I went to grab a couple of cocktails at Fire and Ice. It's a cool bar with an outside area that has big fire pits. We've never eaten here, just had drinks. The guys wanted to take another run, so they met up with us later. We parted ways with our ski friends and went back to the condo to have a traditional spaghetti dinner with our other friends and a little hot tub time!

We left on Sunday and took the same scenic route back to the airport. I always love going to Tahoe, maybe one of these days we'll buy a condo there.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Condo at Lake Village Resort

Food - Homecooked Meals

Activities - Heavenly Ski Resort

Romantic Napa Valley - December 2010

2011-02-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

There is so much wine country in California to explore. I’ve been to Napa Valley twice, both times basing ourselves in the town of Napa. I like Napa, but I want to stay in other places to see more of the valley. I decided to plan a trip staying in Calistoga, the northern end of Napa Valley. I wanted it to be a romantic weekend for the husband and me, sort of a late anniversary trip. It was different seeing the vines in the winter with no grapes.

Hotels and B&Bs are typically expensive in Napa Valley. I searched VRBO to try and find a nice little rental. I came across Croak Creek Cottage. It looked nice and cozy and a fun place to spend the weekend. I did find a B&B that was comparable in price, but opted for the secluded privacy the cottage offered. I emailed the owner to request a weekend in December, sent her a deposit check for half the total amount and she emailed me a contract and directions that I would need to bring along with the final payment once we arrived.

We flew in and out of Oakland airport. I find this airport a little easier to get in and out of from Napa Valley. The last time I went to the valley with friends, we flew in and out of SFO. We decided to take the scenic route to get to Napa and had to drive through some of San Francisco. There was a lot of traffic that day and it took us a while to get to the Golden Gate Bridge. Part of the problem was that we had got in later than expected because of fog.

We were a little delayed on this trip as well, because of fog in San Diego! That never happens; the fog issue is usually in the bay area. By the time we got to Calistoga, it was about 4pm and the wineries were closing down. They seem to close sooner up there. I was hoping to get in one or two wineries before checking into our cottage. Oh well. We decided to find the cottage. It took a couple of passing it and turning around episodes before we found the driveway. The driveway leads up a hill and to the main house. Then there is a steep drive down to the cottage. The owner heard us arriving and come outside to greet us. She said she had lit the fire in the gas fireplace to warm the place up for us. How thoughtful. It was nice and cozy when we walked inside.

After getting our stuff inside, we decided to go check out Calistoga before dinner. As we were driving down the main drag of town, Lincoln Ave, we noticed a couple of tasting rooms and they were still open. Yippee. We decided on visiting the Ochoa - Solovino tasting room. This was a room hosting 2 different wineries. The winemakers are friends and decided they might get more customers if they shared a room. I’m glad we went inside, because we had fun, tasted a lot of wine and met the winemaker, Luis Ochoa. He loves telling stories.

We headed off to dinner after a pretty intensive tasting. We had reservations at Solbar in the Solage hotel. We got there a tad early, but they let us sit down. This is my favorite restaurant in Napa Valley now. The food was excellent and very tasty! Our server was very helpful in recommending things for us. We had 2 first courses: the salad of 6 root veges, which our server really talked up and sold me on and it was so delicious!; and the Nantucket bay scallops, which came with the most delicate "melt in your mouth" gnocchi. For entrees we had: the duroc pork 3 ways, which was recommended by the server and it was excellent; and the smoked beef short ribs, which were super tender. The freshest ingredients with all these flavors...sooo delicious and worth every penny!

We decided to call it a night after dinner and go back to the cottage to rest.

The next day was a Saturday and we planned to go wine tasting. I really wanted to do the bike tour through the Calistoga Bike Shop, but we weren’t sure of the weather. I thought about booking in advance, but decided to wait and see. We woke up to some clouds, but decided to give the bike tour a go. If it rained, we figured it would probably still be fun. We got set up with bikes, helmets and a map of the wineries on the tour. They mapped out a route that they suggested for hitting the wineries and ideas for which ones to skip to make the ride work. We started our ride at 10:30am and got back to the shop at 5pm. We ended up visiting Twomey, August Briggs, Bennett Lane, and Envy. We skipped Dutch Henry, because Bennett Lane sounded more appealing. Both have a bit of a ride to get to, especially DH with a 2 mile up hill ride. We also added Summers that is not on the tour, but across the road from Envy. I really wanted to try the Charbono. We stopped for lunch at the pizza shop on the map. We ended up having a perfect sunny day for our tour. I’m glad we took the chance.

We went back to the cottage to shower and change for dinner. We had reservations at JoLe, a farm to table restaurant. We opted for the 4 course tasting menu with wine pairing. They say you get 1/2 glass of wine with each course, but it ends up being quite a bit. I had a soup, monk fish, quail and the lemon tart for dessert. Mike had crab cakes, pork fried rice, beef ribeye and coconut cream pie. Out of all that, the monk fish and crab cakes were the best! The other food was good too, but those 2 really stood out. They do a really good job pairing the wine. If you get the lemon tart, you get a pinot noir port that goes well together. If you get the coconut cream pie, you get Madeira and they were meant for each other! It was a good place, but I preferred Solbar of the two.

One of the things Calistoga is known for is mud baths. If we were going to be in the area, we had to try one out. I talked Mike into going with me to a place that offered a couples experience side by side. Other places make the men and women go to separate rooms. Mike said if he was going to do it, he wanted it to be together. The place for private couple’s baths is Golden Haven Resort. We were taken to our room with 2 mud tubs, a large shower off area with curtains and 2 sprays and a little hot tub. Our girl told us how to get in the mud and left us alone to get in in private. After we were ready, she knocked on the door and came in to put the mask on our face and mud on our shoulders. She left and came back a few minutes later to put cold cloths on our heads. Then, she told us to scrape off and go into the showers to clean off after about 15 minutes. The mud was very hot by then anyway. While we were showering, she cleaned up the mud in the room. Then, she left so we could get into the hot tub for a few minutes. We didn't last very long in there, because we were really hot. We toweled off and put on our robes and waited for her to come get us. She then took us to our "nap room" where she let us get under a sheet then she came in to tuck us in with blankets and put cold compresses on our head and neck. We were left there for about 20 minutes to relax and nap. Neither of us feel asleep. After our rest, we went to the mineral pool and hot tubs for a little bit and showered and changed in the pool area.

It was a fun experience and while I don't think I'd be dying for a mud bath again, I'd go again if someone else wanted to and would recommend this place. The mud feels really weird, gets warm at the bottom and has a little weird smell to it, but if you close your eyes and just let yourself relax, it's a relaxing experience being suspended in the warm mud.

After playing in the mud, we headed off to the airport. We grabbed sandwiches at the Oakville Grocery Store on the way out. They have great food and is a great place to grab lunch when wine tasting in the valley. We stopped at Buffalo's Shipping Post in Napa to send off the case of wine we had acquired and headed home. I love visiting Napa Valley. I think we are due to check out Sonoma Valley next time.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Croak Creek Cottage

Food - Solbar, JoLe

Tasting Rooms - Twomey, August Briggs, Bennett Lane, Summers, Envy

Activities - Golden Haven Resort

Anza Borrego - October 2010

2011-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

We decided to get away from the cool, wet weather we were having in San Diego and wanted to go camping. We contemplated between the beach spots at Dana Point or the desert in Anza Borrego. The weather called for mild, dry temps in the desert, so we booked a weekend at Tamarisk Grove Campground. We camped there the last time we went to the park in April 2010. When we got to the campground, there was only 1 other site being used and only 1 other couple came later, so the campground was pretty quiet.

We set up camp right before dark on Friday, got a fire going and started cooking some dinner. We decided on grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and beans for dinner. Cooking by campfire can be fun, but we are looking into a camp stove for future camping.

It gets pretty windy at night in the desert and there were times I thought our tent was going to blow away, but the tamarisk trees did a good job protecting us from the wind. We also were smart and brought our sub zero sleeping bags and kept cozy and warm.

We woke up Saturday to a nice, sunny day. We started coffee and breakfast of eggs, bacon and tortillas. I made some PB&J sandwiches to take on our hike. We really wanted to hike the Slot Trail during our last visit to the desert, but it rained and we left early. So, we started our day at the Slots. We found the turn off, Butte Pass Rd, and drove the dirt road back to where we saw a van parked. We stopped some other people in a car to ask them about the location of the place and he got us going in the right direction and also mentioned Eagle Canyon being a good place to check out in the same area. We decided to stick with our original plan of Slot Trail. We walked back to where the canyon begins and dropped down. Once we started walking along, we discovered why it’s called the Slots. The canyon is pretty narrow in places and we had to take off our packs to get through.

The trail goes through the canyon for about a mile and a half before opening up. We continued to walk past the canyon and out to view the Borrego Badlands from different high points. We enjoyed lunch and the view for some time before heading back to the car to try another trail. Looking at the guide book and map, we thought the Wind Caves sounded pretty cool. We drove out to Ocotillo Wells and turned south to head to where the road ends. We turned off into the Split Mountain wash and tried to drive our Prius. We had to make it 5 miles before coming to the trail head. The wash was pretty gnarly and we took it really slow. We kept passing trucks and SUVs and they were laughing at us being there in our Prius. We finally decided to give up before we really got stuck and turned around after making it half way. We will have to go back with a bigger vehicle next time.

After failing to get to the Wind Caves, we drove back to camp and decided to walk one of the trails by the campground. We chose the Yaqui Well Nature Trail. The trailhead is right across the street from the campground and is 2 miles out and back. The trail is a little rocky and we saw lots of cacti and birds. It was a nice walk to end our day.

Back at camp for the evening, we made our fire and settled for hotdogs and corn on the cob for dinner. We also brought some apple cider, bought in Julian, and rum for our desert.

Sunday, Halloween, we decided to hike in Blair Valley. We started with Ghost Mountain. It’s a fairly decent rocky trail with switch backs up the mountain. It’s a little eerie feeling seeing the metal bed frame remains when you first arrive at the top. Marshall South and his family resided on the mountaintop in the 1930s. Besides the bed, there is still a chimney, water storage pool and other remains of a house that used to be there. The view from the top is pretty amazing also.

We left Ghost Mountain and walked the Morteros Trail. We walked out about a mile at first and didn’t notice any mortar holes in the rocks at first. When we started walking back, we walked around the big rocks and saw tons of the holes in the rocks that Indians used to use to grind their food.

After the Morteros Trail, we finished up our day with the Pictograph Trail. We walked out to the pictograph on the huge rock and studied it for a while. We continued all the way to the end of the trail which drops off and has a view of Vallecitos Valley. We ate our lunch while looking out into the valley. It was so quiet out there and I kept feeling like I was hearing noises. I couldn’t make out the various noises, but they were noises that made me stop and look around. Mike never heard anything. It was probably animals and/or the wind that I was hearing.

We had another great visit to the desert and are planning to return again in the Spring of 2011. There are so many trails to discover!

Trip Summary

Lodging - Tamarisk Grove Campground, Site #18

Food - Campfire Cooking

Hikes - Slot Trail, Yaqui Well Nature Trail, Ghost Mountain, Morteros Trail, Pictograph Trail

Girls Weekend in Napa Valley - October 2010

2010-11-13T17:01:00.000-08:00

I had never been on a girls' trip and always thought it would be fun. Some friends that I’ve known since high school invited me to Napa for a long weekend. Good friends and good wine, I could hardly wait. We all flew into San Francisco and had our flights timed within 20 minutes of each other. We all ended up being delayed due to the fog in the bay area, but still managed to all get there about the same time. We rented a car with Fox Rental and got a Chrysler 300 and it looks like a Bentley, so we kept referring to it as “The Bentley” the whole weekend. We got some really strange looks when we called it that in public around other people.

Friday, Oct 1

We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to Napa. The drive through Marin County is actually really pretty. The traffic was pretty slow getting from the airport to the bridge. The normally 1 and ½ drive took us a little over 2 hours.

We arrived to the Carneros area of Napa Valley about 4:30pm and made a plan to stop at a couple of wineries before checking into our cottage. Our first stop was Madonna Estate. We chose this place based on the tasting fee only being $5. Inside the tasting room, we stood at the counter and tasted 4 of their wines (Chard, Pinot, Cab and Gewurztraminer). It is an independent winery and the wines were pretty decent. I’d never tasted a Gewurztraminer before.

After Madonna Estate, we decided to head over to Domaine Carneros for a tasting. They are open until 6pm and the place looked gorgeous. We walked up the stairs and sat at a table on the balcony in the sun. It was a nice, sunny evening. We all did a tasting for $15, 2 of us had the red wine tasting (2 Pinots and Merlot) and 2 of us had the sparkling wine tasting (Cuvee, Rose, and Demi-Sec). They gave us 2 ounces of 3 different wines to taste. It was a lot of wine, so we sipped and enjoyed the sun and scenery.

We decided to go check into our cottage and think about dinner after enjoying some great wine. A friend found this place online and took care of all the booking. It was such a cute little place and perfect for the 4 of us. The owner, Susan, is really nice and is also from Illinois around the same place as one of my friends. She treated us like family.

We didn’t have any dinner reservations for the weekend; we just went to places that looked good. We decided on Azzuro Pizzeria as it was recommended by Madonna Estate and it was only a block from our cottage. The food was great, especially the mushroom pizza from what I hear from my friends. I opted for the rigatoni, which was really good also, even though the “hot” sausage was really hot to me. We walked off some of our dinner by walking into the historic downtown Napa to check it out. I’d been before, but it seems as though some things have changed since last year, like new restaurants. We all had a long day of traveling and decided to turn in to get ready for our full day of wine tasting in the valley.

Saturday, Oct 2

Early to bed, early to rise. We were all up around 7am and started getting ready for our day of wine tasting in the Valley. We had a driver booked with Bee Driven, so we would be able to enjoy tasting wine and not worrying about whom was going to drive. We didn’t have a pre-determined itinerary set up; we just wanted to go with the flow. After breakfast at Gilman’s Cafe, our driver, Patricia, showed up at our cottage at about 11am. Saturday in October is a busy time to be in Napa, so the plan was to stay on Silverado Trail as much as possible.

The first stop we made was one of Patricia’s favorite places, Signorello. She said we had to go check out the infinity pool and the view from the pool before leaving. It was definitely an awesome view. Our tasting included 5 wines (Seta, Chard, Zin, Syrah, and Cab) for $15 each. The wine was pretty decent; I bought a bottle of the Estate Cabernet.

We had a 12:30pm reservation at Jessup, so our next stop was Girard tasting room, which was right across the street from Jessup. Their tasting is a "pick 4 for $10". I like that option, because not everyone likes whites, like me (and vice versa). The pourer at Girard was super nice and we were having fun, so we were a little late getting to Jessup. We were sat at a high top round table and brought a small tray of cheese, crackers, and chocolate. We were given several tastes at Girard and probably should have called it a day after leaving here. We all bought a couple of bottles of wine each. I bought the Juel and Merlot.

After leaving Yountville, we headed over to Flora Springs. We had a quick tasting there. It was more like a bar set up and gets busy, so not the greatest place to get information on what you taste and the most expensive tasting, 4 for $20. Our guy at Girard gave us some cards of places to go, one being Miner Family (5 for $20). We were having a good time tasting there until we were told we were being too loud. I looked around and there were several other groups in huddles having fun. It must have been because we were right at the bar. Either way, we were given our tasting for free. Our last stop of the day was Alpha Omega. They are one of the few places open until 6pm, most tasting rooms close at 5pm. The grounds were beautiful with a large fountain out front. After tasting all day and going to several places, my taste buds were shot. I’m just glad we had a driver.

Patricia took us back to our cottage and we decided to go find some dinner. We wanted to go to ZuZu, but the wait was really long. We decided on Bounty Hunter instead. Napa smells like smoked BBQ because of this place. The food was super smoky and I didn’t like it, but my friends loved their sliders. We again called it an early night because of the long day tasting wine.

Sunday, Oct 3

When we tasted at Jessup the previous day, we befriended one of the reps that poured for us and educated us on the wine. We told him that we had hired a driver to drive us around the valley and he agreed to drive us around on Sunday. He came to our cottage around 11am after we’d had another breakfast at Gilman’s Cafe. Since Jeff was in the industry, we were hoping to have some fun tasting and we ended up getting most of our tastings for free or "2 for 1". We let him chose all the places to visit.

Our first stop was Artesa. I had been there on a previous trip only to check out the grounds and the view. We did a tasting here this time and once again enjoyed a great day and gorgeous view. Our next stop was down the road at Michael Mondavi Folio. Jeff said it was a high end winery. The lady serving us was super nice. The wine was really good and she let us taste Mondavi’s $200 bottle of Cabernet. She said only he can open it and if there is some left, she’ll pour it for some visitors. They have a porch on the back right up against some vineyards, nice view.

We left the Carneros area and stopped at Plumpjack for a tasting. I had tasted there on a previous trip and liked the wine, but I think it’s too expensive. We headed over to Mumm for our next tasting. I had seen Mumm being recommended on TripAdvisor all the time, but I’m not really a sparkling wine drinker. It was such a great afternoon, sunny and warm. We were sat a table outside looking out into vineyards and the surrounding mountains. Basically, they pour you three 2 ounce glasses of sparkling wine and leave you to enjoy it while socializing or taking in the view.

We made one final tasting stop at Rutherford Ranch, but didn’t have a great experience since it was close to closing time. They really didn’t seem interested in serving us. Their wine was actually pretty decent, but I didn’t want to buy any since they rushed us along.

Jeff took us up to Auberge du Soleil for appetizers and to see the great view of the valley from the top of Rutherford Hill. It was a lot of fun hanging out with friends enjoying a drink and some food.

We made one final stop for the night at V Wine Cellars in Yountville. It’s a cellar that sells wines from all over the world. We started a tasting and ended up there for a long time hanging out on their leather couches watching some of the Bears game on Sunday Night Football. It is such a cool place to hang out and enjoy some wine.

We didn’t feel like anything fancy for dinner, so we ended up grabbing a pizza from Round Table and taking it back to our cottage. How boring for being in Napa Valley where there are such great restaurants to visit, right? But that’s how it goes after spending 2 full days drinking and tasting wine all day long.

Monday, Oct 4

My friends had never been to San Francisco, so they wanted to spend some time on Fisherman’s Wharf before catching our flights home. Before heading back to the city, we took all of wine to a shipping store, Buffalo's Shipping Post. I shipped home 6 bottles, while my friends had about 30 bottles between them all.

We drove back to the city and found a parking garage by the Wharf and walked around looking for a place to enjoy lunch. We settled on Cioppino’s since it was the busiest place we walked by. That’s usually a good sign that it’s a good place. I couldn’t pass up ordering the cioppino and it was so good and full of seafood.

We walked around the maritime pier a little, had a final drink at an Irish Pub and headed back to the SFO airport. I had a great time traveling with my friends. It’s not that often that we are able to get together and travel and I hope we start doing it more often. Girls’ trips can be really fun!

Trip Summary

Lodging - The Corner Cottage

Food - Azzuro Pizzeria, Bounty Hunter, Auberge du Soliel, Round Table Pizza, Cioppino’s in San Francisco

Tasting Rooms - Madonna Estate, Domaine Carneros, Signorello, Girard, Jessup, Flora Springs, Miner Family, Alpha Omega, Artesa, Folio, Mumm, V Cellars

Santa Ynez Valley - Sept 2010

2010-10-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

A weekend filled with wine tasting and scuba diving seemed like the perfect opportunity to visit Santa Barbara. I grew up watching Santa Barbara soap opera. I had an image of beautiful coast line and a peaceful place.

We drove up on a Friday afternoon leaving San Diego by 11am. We ended up with a little traffic on the 5 north of LA, but soon we turned off onto the 126 and it was smooth sailing. We tried to take the long way around LA to avoid any traffic. Now that we have discovered the longer way around LA, which really isn’t longer time wise, we are back into exploring California. We got stuck in real bad traffic once on a Friday afternoon taking the 5 all the way through LA to go white water rafting near Sequoia National Park and really didn’t take many road trips after that experience.

Once we got to the Coast Fwy and started heading north out of Ventura, we could see the marine layer creeping in. We got to our hotel in Santa Barbara about 4pm. We booked a weekend stay on points at the Fees Parker's DoubleTree Resort. We got to choose a room with a partial ocean view, but we never did see the ocean from our room since it was fogged in most of our stay.

After taking our stuff to our room and resting for a minute, we decided to go out walking around. I love when you can explore an area on foot. We walked along the beach down to Stearns Wharf. It was a nice evening, a little sun came out. There were lots of birds on the beach: pelicans, black skimmer, and seagulls. We walked out to the end of the pier and made our way into town along State Street.

KU was playing football that Friday evening and Mike would look into every bar we passed to see if the game was on TV. Finally, we walked passed a bar and I suggested we go in to see if we can find out about the game. This made Mike very happy. It really is hard to travel places when our college teams are playing sometimes. We had a couple drinks and watched the game, once having to have them turn it back to our game when they tried to change the channel.

After a few drinks, we were in the mood for Mexican food. I consulted Yelp’s mobile app and discovered great reviews for a taco stand, Lilly’s. It was between Lilly's and another one, which we walked by and only one person was sitting outside. When we got to Lilly’s the place was packed with locals. We thought it must be good, so we went in to order. They have several different types of tacos. I was a little nervous seeing eye, cheek, tongue, etc, and was going to stick with a couple of beef tacos when Mike blurted out to the cashier that we wanted one of each! Gulp! I guess we are going to be adventureous! When our 9 tacos were ready, we loaded them up with salsa from the salsa bar and shared half of each different taco. They really weren’t bad, although the texture on some were not to my liking. My favorite one ended up being the pork one.

We called it an evening after dinner, grabbed a coffee and walked back to our hotel. Before turning in, however, we enjoyed some time in the hot tub.

The next day, Saturday, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel and got ready for our wine trip into Santa Ynez valley. We’d booked a trip with Sustainable Vine Wine Tours. They are rated highly on Trip Advisor and visited wineries that focused on organic and biodynamic farming. It sounded like a great tour. Bryan, the owner and driver, is a very nice guy and loves to talk wine and about the farming techniques. He is really interested in questions and teaching everyone about the sustainability of the wineries we visited.

Our first stop, Alma Rosa, was featured in the movies Sideways and The Kids are Alright. We walked out back for a tasting standing around outside. We had about 4 or 5 pours and bought 2 bottles. We liked the wine, the place, and their story. The family that runs the place lost a lot of vineyards, money and their namesake (Sanford Winery) in a battle with another party.

Our next stop was in Lompoc and an area known as the “Wine Ghetto”. It looks like an industrial area with a bunch of metal buildings. All through the buildings are tasting rooms. Supposedly some good wine comes from these places. We went to visit Ampelos’ tasting room. It was actually their first day of opening the tasting room. It was all bare inside, but we had a great tasting while listening to the owner’s stories, he loved talking! Ampelos is Greek work meaning vine.

We had ordered sandwiches for lunch in advance with Bryan and they were included in our tour price. We ended up going over to Ampelos Vineyards to have our lunch at a table under a tree next to the grapes that made the wine we had just tasted in the tasting room. We also opened 2 bottles of Ampelos wine to share amongst the group while enjoying lunch. It was a nice day, the sun had come out and it was cool in the shade.

After lunch, we made one more stop at Demetria Estate. This place is located in a hilly area and vineyards were planted all along the hills. The scenery is beautiful. They have a very casual tasting atmosphere sitting at tables under a tree overlooking their vineyards. We were lucky to have live music as well. After tasting, Bryan took us behind the house to check out the machine used for making their wine.

We really enjoyed the tour and made it back to our hotel around 6:30pm, which is actually later than we’d expected. We’d asked everyone on the tour where to go for dinner and we settled on Ca’ Dario. We called and had a reservation set up for 8:30pm. We enjoyed a nice late dinner there and headed back to our hotel afterwards. We were tired from a long day of tasting wine.

We had planned on scuba diving the Channel Islands the following day, but the trip got cancelled since there weren’t enough people signed up. I guess we have to make another trip up there to get to scuba dive.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Fee's Parker Doubletree Resort

Food - Lilly's Taqueria, Ca' Dario

Activity - Sustainable Vine Wine Tour

Mammoth and Bluesapalooza - August 2010

2010-08-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Mammoth is a cool destination for skiing in California, but we usually ski once a year and go to either Colorado or Lake Tahoe. I’d always heard stories of the traffic being a nightmare trying to go to ski resorts in CA. Mike is a member of the website Meet Up and joined a group that likes to camp and hike. A member made up an event to attend Mammoth’s Bluesapalooza. Mike forwarded me the info and I said sure, let’s go. If nothing else, it would be a good excuse to finally get up to Mammoth to check it out.

Mike RSVP’d and we sent our $10 fee to the organizer so we’d have a spot at the group camp site. Neither of us had attended a meet up event with this group, but we thought why not? camp with some random people and enjoy Mammoth and this festival. We ended up not spending more than a few hours with the group anyway.

Friday

We left on a Friday morning around 7am to beat and avoid some of the morning commuters and LA area traffic. We took the route up the 15 and connected to 395. 395 is a two-lane highway that goes through some desert and is kind of a dry, boring drive. We kept driving along wondering who would live out in the middle of nowhere and wondered what they would do all day or for fun. Once we got outside of Bishop, we started climbing the Sierra Mountains and the scenery got a lot better.

Within a half an hour of leaving Bishop, we were stopping at the Visitor Center in Mammoth. Once we got out of the car, the smell of pines overtook me. It smelled so heavenly! We checked out things to do in the area, since we wanted to see at least some of Mammoth while we were there for the festival. We found the Devils Postpile Monument to be one of the more popular attractions and got directions and advice from a guy at the counter. We’d have to park our car, get on a shuttle and get off to hike out to the Postpile and Rainbow Falls. It sounded like a great plan for Saturday morning.

We still had about an hour before we were technically allowed to check into camp, so we headed off to find a grocery store for a few supplies. We knew we were going to be at the festival most of the time, so we didn’t need but the usual supplies: fire wood, stuff for smores, and beer. We got back on Main Street and thought it would be easy to find a store. Within a few blocks, we were out of town already and didn’t see much. Mammoth really isn’t that big! So, we had to turn around and stop at the Rite Aid. They had everything except the wood, but told us where to find the grocery store.

Set with supplies that we later hardly used, we found the entrance to the campgrounds and made our way to our group site. We got to the site and saw a small one-person tent set up and that was it. We decided what the heck; we’ll set up our tent and see who shows up. Once we had our tent up, the owner of the other tent showed up. He turned out to be practically our neighbor back in San Diego. We can see his condo community from our place. We sat around enjoying the crisp air and smell of pine trees and getting to know each other before making a plan to head to the festival for the evening.

As soon as we were planning to head off to get some dinner and listen to some blues music, another couple pulled up. They didn’t have tickets to the Friday night events, so after making our introductions, we headed off with our new friend, Sam, to get on the trolley. Mammoth has a great trolley system that goes around town allowing people to get on and off throughout town. For the Bluesapalooza, they had separate trolleys that dropped us off right in front of the entrance.

Friday night was a great night at the festival. We had received a free meal ticket with our tickets, so we could pick from select booths to have a free dinner. The longest line was at a booth that had BBQ brisket, but it wasn’t on our list…bummer! We opted for the booth making Hawaiian BBQ. We were given pork, salad made with pineapple, coconut and mango, and 2 sweet rolls (instead of a bun). The food was pretty decent! Mammoth Brewing Co. was providing the beer for the evening, so we enjoyed tasting a few different beers. My favorite was their pear cider, it was so good! We meant to pick up some from the store to bring home with us, but forgot!! The evening’s music consisted of 2 bands, Jon Justice Band and Ruthie Foster. Both were great bands, but Ms. Foster rocked!

We hopped on the trolley and it dropped us off at the campground entrance after the show. When we got back to camp, there was another party that had arrived, but the organizer of the gathering was already sleeping. We sat around the campfire getting to know one another and telling stories for a while before turning in for the night.

Saturday

We woke up before everyone else at camp and headed off for some breakfast. We searched our Yelp app and decided the Breakfast Club was the best option. We had to wait about 10 minutes for a table when we arrived. The restaurant is decorated like an old farmhouse. The décor included flower wallpaper and lace and cows. I ordered an omelet with a blue berry muffin and Mike had two eggs with ham and a homemade biscuit with a side of gravy. It was so much food, but not bad. They were really busy and our server kept saying she would bring us more coffee every time she brought something to our table. Finally, she came back again for like a third time and asked if we needed more coffee as if she forgot she kept saying she was getting us some.

After our enormous breakfast, we decided on making our way out to do a little hiking at Devils Postpile. We got out there around 9am and didn’t have a clue as to how the shuttle system worked. There were signs saying it was mandatory that you took a shuttle to get to Devils Postpile. I don’t know if that’s really true because once we were on the shuttle, there were other cars on the road. We bought our tickets anyway for the shuttle and were told we’d have to wait another 30 minutes or longer for shuttle 4. When shuttle 2 was loading, the guy asked if anyone would like to stand in the aisle of this shuttle. We happened to be right there, so we said we would. We got on the shuttle full of day hikers and overnight hikers and had to stand in the aisle until the first stop unloaded about 5 overnight hikers. Then, we had a seat the rest of the time.

We got off at stop 6 for Devils Postpile and started our hike. We made it to this amazing phenomenon of the Postpile within a few minutes. Devils Postpile is a dark cliff of columnar basalt created by a lava flow sometime between less than 100,000 years ago to 700,000 years ago, according to Wikipedia. We also found out later that it used to be included in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park! After snapping several photos, we continued hiking in the Inyo Forest towards Rainbow Falls. Who doesn’t like waterfalls?

It was a nice walk to get to the falls; we were one of few on the trail in between the 2 attractions, so it was pretty quiet. We could still smell the pines and saw little squirrels everywhere. They were the smallest squirrels I’d ever seen. We arrived at the falls and there were several people standing and sitting around enjoying its view. We walked down some steps to get a view at the base of the falls as well.

We made our way back to stop 10 to catch the shuttle back to the parking lot and got back to our car a little after 1pm. We’d stayed a little longer than we’d originally planned, but it was nice to do some hiking. We went back to our campsite to drop off the car and grab our gear for the festival. Then, we were off for the beer tasting part of the festival.

We got to the festival around 2pm and it was packed! We found out later people were waiting in line several hours before the gates opened to get good seats. We walked around so many people to try and find a spot for our 2 chairs that we brought this time. The website said you could only have low beach chairs, but we saw tons of captain chairs on Friday, that we decided to bring ours on Saturday. We finally found a place to squeeze into that was close to the food and beer. We grabbed some of the BBQ from the place that had the long line that night before and it was pretty good also. We then took turns going back into the beer tasting section to find 2 different beers to try and bringing them back to our seats. We had some good beer and some not so good beer. Some of our favorites included Trout Slayer, Acai Wheat Berry, Blueberry Wheat, and Sam Adams Cherry Wheat.

After the beer tasting was over, we were able to move our chairs up to another spot that we still couldn’t see the stage, but we could hear the music better. We enjoyed listening to most of the music, but ended up leaving the festival to have dinner outside the festival. We didn’t really want anymore BBQ. We found a little pizza place in the village area. We grabbed some coffee afterwards as it was a little cool and made our way back the festival for a couple more hours. We left before Los Lonely Boys finished.

We made our way back to the campsite and another party had arrived, the organizers son and his family. And, we also finally go to meet the organizer, Holly! But, we were so tired from being out all day, that we said hello and headed off to sleep.

Sunday

We slept a little later than I’d expected, but were able to say goodbye to everyone and leave to grab some food for the road. We decided instead of going back home the same way, we’d drive the Tioga Pass through Yosemite on the way home. Since we were so close to the Yosemite entrance, why not, I’d heard it was an amazing drive and wanted to do it someday anyway. We grabbed some food and coffee from Schat’s Bakery. There was a line wrapped around the place and to the door when we got there. We had to wait about 15-20 minutes, but our breakfast sandwiches and coffee were really good. We grabbed a couple of pastries for the road as well!

By the time we headed out of Mammoth and got to the turnoff for 120 and the Yosemite east entrance, we made it to the entrance by 10am. There was a line of cars waiting to get into the park. I was hoping they’d wave us through like they did when we came in the South entrance over Memorial Weekend. I guess traffic was backed up too much they had to start letting people in for free. That happened to us both days we went into the park that weekend. That didn’t happen this time however; we had to pay the park free.

Finally in the park, we drove and stopped and took photos and enjoyed the lovely scenery of Yosemite. It really is a beautiful park, one of my favorites. I can’t wait to go back again to do some more hiking and camping. We made our way through the park and was making good timing until we started down towards the south entrance near Mariposa Grove. They are repairing the roads, so we had to drive on gravel at many points. We finally made it out of the park, stopped for some Subway in Oakhurst and made the long trip home to San Diego. We didn’t get home until about 8pm, so it was a long day in the car.

We had a nice time in Mammoth and hope to get to make it up there to ski someday.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Pine Glen Group Camp Site #11

Food - Breakfast Club, Bear Creek Pizza, Schat's Bakery

Activities - Bluesapalooza, Devils Postpile Monument,Yosemite National Park

Yosemite May 2010

2010-07-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

Traveling during holiday weekends is usually not recommended, but we both had a 4 day weekend. Why not go somewhere? I had been looking into visiting Yosemite National Park for the past couple of years. We had a trip planned for Labor Day weekend a couple years back, but cancelled it due to other plans and the fact that the waterfalls would have all been dried up. Memorial Day weekend sounded like a good time to go as the waterfalls would be in full flow.

We booked a camping spot outside the park, because we were out of the country the day the spots in the park went on sale. They obviously filled up quickly. I think I tried to book a spot only a few days after the reservation system had opened up. After some research, I decided on Forks Campground at Bass Lake. I thought camping next to a lake would be a suitable second to camping inside Yosemite.

Day 1, Friday – Traveling to Yosemite

We drove up early on Friday morning, leaving here around 7am. I thought this way we’d be able to beat some of the traffic heading out of the town for the long weekend. Not as many people were probably lucky enough to have Friday off like we did.

We loaded up the car with all of our gear and 5 peoples' worth of clothing. It was a sight seeing all of our stuff laying on the ground to be packed into the car. I thought for sure we’d have to take 2 separate cars. But, the guys managed to cram everything into the Trail Blazer. We took our time on the drive up. With 5 people in the car, it can be a little tough driving straight through. Besides, I think having a road trip is part of the experience and to enjoy it, you should make stops along the way. We stopped almost every hour on the hour for bathroom breaks or food. My bladder is horrible in the mornings after having my coffee. The drive ended up being about 7 hours with all the stops. I think we made the trip home a little faster since we were all tired and dehydrated.

We got to our campsite about 2pm and checked in at the main ranger’s station. We still didn’t have any traffic getting to our campsite, it was smooth sailing. While the 2 guys set up our massive “mansion” tent, the ladies went to the grocery store for supplies. We didn’t want to haul a lot of food or firewood up as we barely had enough room for all of our stuff in the SUV. Besides, they say to buy your firewood there so you don’t introduce new bugs to the area.

We chose to spend Friday evening relaxing around camp while deciding on what hike to do on Saturday in Yosemite. We had a delicious dinner of roasted hot dogs and baked beans. It was freezing our first night. I think we had clear skies and were next to a lake, so that made it colder. The key to camping is sleeping bags! Blankets do not keep you warm enough and we should have known that from our camping weekend in the desert the month before.

Day 2, Saturday – Panorama Trail

We woke up around 8am to get breakfast going and to get ready for our hike. We decided on the Panorama Trail, which was a 10 mile out and back hike that was estimated to take 6 to 8 hours. This was one of a few trails that I had picked out of my guide book, Hiking Yosemite National Park, A Falcon Guide. It was the longest and hardest and it was agreed to go with the hardest one first. We made breakfast burritos thinking the eggs would be a good thing to start our day of a long hike. We packed our bags with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, apples, granola bars and water.

We finally left the campsite at about 10am and headed to the entrance of Yosemite. We got to the entrance pretty quick and were waved through without having to pay since there were so many cars backing up traffic. We made our way to Glacier Point and got there around 12pm. Yosemite is way bigger than it looks on a map!

The view of the valley from Glacier Point is breathtaking! You can see Vernal and Nevada Falls to the right and Yosemite Falls to the left. We started on our hike and everyone was in good spirits. Had they known how the hike would go, a few people wouldn’t have gone the whole way I don’t think. The trail is downhill in the beginning. We had lunch down at the valley of the hike along Illilouette Creek. The hike began going uphill after our lunch break. Once it leveled out, we were almost at the top of Nevada Falls and were starting to lose one of our fellow hikers. She had never been hiking and thought it was really hard. Luckily she is young, so we pushed her along to finish out the hike.

When we arrived at Glacier Point, we saw the magnificent Half Dome. We didn’t realize at the time that we’d be hiking all the way over to the west side of it. None of us realized that the upper fall we saw when we first started was the fall, Nevada Fall, we were hiking over to.

Once we were at the top of Nevada Falls, we rested and syked ourselves up for the hike back, since we were only half way done. We had to go all the way back! I tried to set a fast pace for the way back to keep everyone going physically and mentally. We made it back to Illilouette Creek and rested and made our way back, uphill, the rest of the way. The last uphill part of the trail was the hardest. We were all exhausted, especially our novice hiker. But, what a feeling when we finished and made it back! We had to take our photo in front of the sign in the beginning to show we’d survived the Panorama Trail!

It was about 7pm when we finished the hike, so we weren’t going to make it back to camp before dark. Therefore, we decided to eat out for dinner instead of making dinner in the dark. We had seen a pizza place, Timberloft Pizzeria (Yelp), on the way into the park and were on a mission to find it on the way out of the park. We still made a fire when we got back to camp, but crashed out pretty soon after we got back to camp. It wasn’t as cold the second night.

Day 3, Sunday – Happy Isles to the Top of Nevada Fall

Because of the extraneous hike on Saturday, our companions were done with the hiking. Mike and I were the only ones interested in hiking on Sunday. We decided on the hike from Happy Isles to the Top of Nevada Fall. It was a 6 mile loop that would take about 3 or 4 hours. We chose this hike, because our guide said if it’s the only hike you do in Yosemite, it should be this one. Sounded like a winner to me. By the time we ate breakfast and got going, we were starting our hike about 1pm. We didn't have to pay the park fee again since there was a lot of traffic. Traffic, parking and crowds were pretty bad down the in the valley. We realized we probably should have hiked down there on Saturday and at Glacier Point on Sunday. It seemed more people traveled to Yosemite on Saturday making it busier by Sunday.

We lucked out and found a parking space around Curry Village and took the free shuttle down to the starting point at Happy Isles. The beginning of the trail is really steep, but it was all mostly downhill at the end.

There were so many people on the trail that I thought it was going to suck. The guide said the crowd would thin out the further you went, but it ends up being once you are at the top of Vernal Falls. So many people hike up the Giant Staircase that aren’t really fit and tire out, so they don’t go any further along the trail. But, the staircase was crowded with people and many people would stop in the middle of the trail instead of moving over to rest. We tried to be patient.

Regardless of the crowd, the Giant Staircase is pretty amazing. It is a staircase made from stone blocks and goes up the side of Vernal Fall. When the fall is in full flow, you get sprayed by its mist. We were soaked when we got to the top. Once we were up and out of the mist, we sat down and had our PB&J sandwiches while watching the waterfall and the beautiful rainbow it was making at the base.

We found our way to the top of Vernal Fall and continued along the trail to start hiking up to the top of Nevada Fall. That trail was a little harder as it was longer, dry and in the sun most of the way. We recognized the top of Nevada Fall from the day before and thought about how tired we were at that point the day before! We continued along our current trail to start circling back down to finish the hike. Along the trail there was snowmelt running off onto the trail and we had to walk under it, there was no other way around. Therefore, we got soaked again, but it was fun.

We got back to camp around 7pm and told our travel companions about our hike. I was starting to stiffen up as we were sitting around the campfire, so we decided not to hike on Monday and just go home as early as possible. We were originally planning on exploring the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees had we had enough energy. I could barely walk, however, my calves were really tight!

Our last night at camp, we made grilled chicken and corn on the cob for dinner and tried to eat and drink as much of our supplies as possible. We ended up having to throw some stuff out, because we had no extra room in the SUV.

The next morning, Memorial Day, we packed up camp and stopped for breakfast at Pete's Place (Yelp) in Oakhurst, before driving home.

Yosemite is magnificent and beautiful! I can’t wait to go back someday and go on more hikes. We chose a good year to visit Yosemite, 2010 was on of the best seasons for the waterfalls. They are expected to continue running into August this year! I highly recommend visiting the park in the Spring or early Summer if you’ve never been so that you can see the waterfalls.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Forks Campground at Bass Lake #15

Food - Timberloft Pizzeria, Pete's Place, Vons (camping food)

Activities - The Panorama Trail, Happy Isles to the Top of Nevada Fall

Belize - April 2010

2010-06-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

This trip was planned to attend a friend’s destination wedding. They got married at a resort in Hopkins and we decided to go a few days early to go diving in the Cayes (keys). We chose to stay on Caye Caulker instead of the popular tourist destination, Ambergis Caulker. Caye Caulker is smaller and more laid back according to my travel guide. I used Moon Handbooks Belize guide to help plan the trip along with the trusty TripAdvisor website.

Day 1, Apr 20 – Arrival

We flew Continental from San Diego to Houston and then on to Belize City. The airport is really small, it reminded me of the airport you fly into when going to Cabo San Lucas. There are only a couple of international planes that fly in daily, but lots of small cesna planes that fly in the country. Our plane pulled up to the terminal and we walked out and down stairs onto the tarmac. It was a breeze going through customs. We were out of the airport and in a taxi in about 15 minutes.

Our taxi into Belize City was a station wagon that was covered in brown fuzzy things inside, like the seat covers. It was like riding in Huggy Bear’s car or something. The taxi ride from the airport to the water taxi terminal took about 20 minutes and cost us $50 BZ ($25 US). The last water taxi to Caye Caulker left at 4:30pm. We grabbed a couple of Belikin beers and sat in the waiting area for about 45 minutes. The ride to Caye Caulker was crowded and took about an hour and a half. We held our oversized backpacks in our laps the whole way.

We got to Caye Caulker and walked off the pier and our hotel (TA Review) was right there. We checked in and got settled in before exploring a little of the island. We walked around and thought it was very quiet, there weren’t a lot of people around. We found the tour company we were going to use for our snorkel trip the following day, so we stopped to say hello and get some information.

After getting details for our tour, we found Rose’s Grill for dinner. One of the girls working at the hotel recommended the place. We walked up and saw all the fish laid out next to the grill. We got to see what the options were for dinner before sitting down and ordering. We both went for the fish kabobs. The food was delicious.

Since we had a long day of traveling, we decided to get some beer and rum, One Barrel, and head back to our room. We sat out on our balcony and enjoyed a couple of drinks in the sea breeze before calling it a night.

Day 2, April 21 – Snorkeling on the Reef

Our snorkel tour with Raggamuffin (TA Review) didn't leave until about 10:30am, so we had plenty of time to have a nice breakfast. Our guide book recommended Glenda’s for her cinnamon rolls and fresh squeezed orange juice. The guide said the OJ was “the best two bucks you’ll spend on the island.” The restaurant is located on Back Street a little away from the other restaurants and vendors. You walk up and order through a window and find a table on the front covered porch. Basically, the restaurant is connected to the house. I’m not sure if it was Glenda that was running the place, but she brought out our coffee within a few minutes and then our food when it was ready. The food was good and it was pretty inexpensive. Our meal was $25 BZ ($12.50US) total and that included coffee and our bottle of OJ.

After our delicious breakfast, we headed down to the dock where our snorkel tour was to leave from. We boarded a sailboat that took about an hour to get out to the reef and our first stop. Our first stop to snorkel was Coral Gardens. We snorkeled here for an hour on our own. When we got out, we had lunch on the boat. We had fish sandwiches and fruit. The next stop was Shark-Ray Alley. As we pulled up, our skipper, Patrick (or English is what Reynolds kept calling him), was throwing chum out to attract the nurse sharks. There were a lot of them, but as soon as we jump in, they swam away. We were in a protected area, so we had to snorkel with our guide, Reynolds. We were able to see couple of sharks and rays during our snorkel, it was pretty awesome! We headed to Hol Chan Marine Reserve for our final stop, which was also guided. We saw a lot of fish and a sea turtle. On the way back in to Caye Caulker, we drank rum punch and ate shrimp ceviche! The only bad thing about the trip was that there wasn’t a bathroom on the sailboat. By the time we got back to shore, I had to run to our room!

We had a little nap and rest after snorkeling and before going to dinner. One of the girls at Raggamuffin recommended Syd’s for dinner. We sat on the back patio. In Belize, they don’t use past tense; so instead of fried chicken, it’s fry chicken. Mike ordered the fry chicken and I ordered the fry conch based on the servers recommendation. The food was ok and it was inexpensive, but we decided we liked Rose’s better.

We had some after dinner drinks on our balcony again before turning in for the night. We had to get up earlier the next day to go scuba diving.

Day 3, Apr 22 – Scuba Diving on the Reef and Rum Stumble

I’m not much of a morning person when I have to get up early for work. But, when I’m on vacation, I enjoy getting up early. I want to get the most out of my day when traveling. I want to have time to eat breakfast, to site-see, and to just relax and maybe take a nap. Our room had a thatch rooftop and I would start waking up about 5am to birds sitting on our roof singing good morning. If I was at home, this would probably not make me happy. Since I was on vacation, I just wrote it off to part of the experience.

We decided we liked Glenda’s a lot, so we had breakfast there again. After breakfast, we made our way to the dive shop (TA Review) to check in and get sized for our gear. We left Caye Caulker about 9:45am and headed for Hol Chan Reserve. They change dive spots daily.

Our first dive spot was Pillar Coral. The coral formation made it look like tall pillars underwater. My max depth was 73 ft and bottom time was 53 min. The second dive spot was Eagle Ray Canyon and we made a drift dive. I had a large fish following right beside me for most of the dive, which was pretty cool. My max depth was 59 ft and bottom time of 56 min. Both times we had a 15 min safety stop before surfacing. We had about 30 ft visibility on both dives and the water temp was 83 F. The coral is beautiful and there was quite a bit of life.

After we got back from diving, we asked someone at the hotel desk where to go for burritos. She recommended a place called El Paso. We walked into a small seating area and ordered 2 burritos, one fish and one shrimp. They didn’t serve beer, but said we could go to the store down the street to buy a couple and bring back to have with our meal. They even gave us a bottle opener to use. The burritos were delicious and filled with peppers and onions.

We decided to go down to The Split and Lazy Lizard and check out the scene. It’s a popular place on the island where people go to sunbathe, snorkel, relax, and have drinks at the bar. Mike snorkeled around a little, while I leaned up against a tree to read, and then we decided to have a rum and coke at the bar. The bar was pretty busy and everyone was friendly and having a good time. At some point, we decided to have a pub crawl and stop at all the bars along the beach to have a different rum drink. We stopped at several places and had rum with coke, lime juice, coconut water, watermelon juice, pineapple juice, and grapefruit juice. We ended the night with delicious mojitos.

Since we enjoyed the fresh fish at Rose’s, we had dinner there for a second time. We decided to get different things to try, so we ended up with a fish kabob, a shrimp kabob and a grilled grouper fish. We finished it all too!

Day 4, Apr 23 – Driving the Hummingbird Highway to Hopkins

For breakfast our last day on the island, we decided to try the Amor Y Café. It wasn’t as good as Glenda’s as far as price and food, but the coffee was really good. They specialize in egg sandwiches. I had an egg and cheese sandwich and Mike had fried eggs with homemade toast. We also shared a fruit plate. Our breakfast was $40 BZ ($20 US).

After breakfast, we went back to our hotel to grab our things and headed to the water taxi terminal to head back to Belize City. Once there, we took a cab back to the airport to get our rental car. The cabby was very friendly and when he found out we were driving down to Hopkins, he gave us some direction.

Getting our rental car took a little time as they don’t really use computers like rental companies do here in the U.S. We had to wait for paper work to get printed out and she had to walk around and check the car for damage to make sure we didn’t get charged with anything.

We were finally on our way around 11:45am. In Belize, they drive on the right side of the road, so that made things a little easier for us. I used our guide book to find a place to stop for lunch on the way. We stopped off at a place called Amigo’s and grabbed a burger and fries and super sized iced teas. It was hot and humid in Belize, so the iced teas were very satisfying. While we were waiting for our food, a lady came to our table to tell us about her shop next to the restaurant that sold gifts and some baked goods. She had brownies and mango bread for sale that day. We ended up buying some and they were delicious! We looked for her on the way back through a few days later, but she wasn’t open yet.

After lunch, we debated on stopping at the Belize Zoo for an hour. The guide book recommended it and I’d read that it was a fairly “natural” zoo, so we stopped. All the animals in the zoo are native of Belize. The zoo was started in 1983 when the animals weren’t needed by a film company any longer. Instead of releasing the “tame” animals back into the wild, the zoo was started. The zoo is used by schools to educate children on the local animals of Belize. The zoo also runs the only jaguar restoration and research program in the world. It is a cool little zoo and the animals are in as natural as possible compounds. It was so natural that sometimes it was hard to see any of the animals.

After our hour at the zoo, we continued down the highway towards the Blue Hole National Park. There is a Blue Hole dive sight, but this was a little swimming hole that we were looking for on our drive. We found the entrance, paid our park fee, changed in the changing room, and made our way down the steps to the blue hole. It was definitely blue and very cold, which was refreshing since it was hot. Mike put his goggles on and dove down and said it was freaky looking down there! We spent about an hour exploring the little area.

Back on the road, we drove past little towns. Kids were playing outside at school. People were all along the road either walking or riding bikes. Some people were even walking along with machetes. People lived in old, run-down shacks and would sit around the porch or under shade trees. These houses would definitely be considered condemned in the States.

We finally pulled up to our resort (TA Review) in Hopkins about 6pm and checked in. We had a hard time finding the front desk as there are 3 resorts in a row, but all owned by the same company and they use the same place to check in. We ended up with a room in their newest addition, Villa Veranda. New is usually good, but our room smelled of lacquer that they use to shine and protect all the wood furniture. The room was decked out with a huge marble and tile bathroom with a ginormous walk-in shower. It was definitely a nice place, but it felt out of place for being in Belize. I would expect something like that in Hawaii, but Belize is a poor country and I felt it was a little too much. If it weren’t for our friends getting married at this resort, we probably wouldn’t have chosen this hotel. I would have rather stayed in Hopkins at a small B&B.

After settling in and finding our friends to check in with them, we headed off to Barracuda Grill at Beaches and Dreams for dinner. This was a nice little open air restaurant on the beach. We both had fish for dinner. I had a special, I love to order specials. It was grouper with lemon and caper sauce and came with pasta and green beans. Mike had pesto fish that came with the same sides. The food was delicious, but a little bit of a splurge. Again, that’s what you get for being next to a resort. Our meal was about $120 BZ ($60 US), but we figured it would’ve been even more for something like that in San Diego.

We walked back to our resort to look for our friends and found everyone in the dining room watching a drumming and dancing performance by the staff. The staff then got everyone up and dancing with them.

Day 5, Apr 24 – Scuba Diving on the Reef, Rehearsal Dinner and Karaoke

We had to get up early to go over to the dive resort (TA Review) to check in and get sized for gear. I really wanted to dive with the whale sharks, but we missed that dive by a couple of days. They only come close during a full moon when they feed on the plankton.

Our first dive site was 6th Cut. My max depth was 82 ft and our bottom time was 40 min with a temp of 83F. The coral seemed way more abundant, but maybe not as much life on it as off of Caye Caulker. It was beautiful though. The second stop was Discovery Curlew Bank. My max depth was 60 ft and bottom time was 39 min with a safety stop. Our dive master saw a hammerhead, but we all missed it. We did have a sea turtle swim right under us...soo cool!

In between our dives, we stopped off at a small caye island for our surface interval. We had juice, watermelon and cookies while hanging off the dock.

After diving, we were ready for some lunch. We decided to check out a local place in Hopkins. The first place we stopped at the cook hadn’t shown up, so we went across the road to Innie’s instead. I’m glad we did. We were the only ones there and ordered two local Garifuna dishes off the dinner menu. They were so nice there and the food was delicious! We had 2 fish dishes, one with banana dumpling like things (bundiga) and one with coconut milk and plantains (hudutu). Our meal was $40 BZ ($20 US) that included 2 beers.

We went back to our resort to relax on the beach before the rehearsal dinner. The dinner was a BBQ on the beach and it was pretty good. They made chicken and shrimp and had potato salad, ceviche and cake for dessert. After dinner we all went into Hopkins to a local bar that had karaoke. It was fun even though the machine didn’t work that well.

Day 6, Apr 25 – Day of Rest and The Wedding

We woke up and went back to Innie’s for breakfast. I had pancakes and Mike had fry jacks, which are a Belizean cuisine of deep-fried dough that puff up. Both of our breakfasts came with beans and some delicious eggs. The coffee was pretty decent as well. Our meal was $22 BZ ($11 US). When we left, Innie told us to spread the word of her restaurant since we liked it so much. So, if you are in Belize around Hopkins, you must stop in for a meal!

We thought about planning an adventure before the wedding like going to the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary or hiking to a local waterfall, but we decided to hang out at the resort and lounge around. We ended up having our lunch at the resort, which was another BBQ.

The wedding was on the beach and Mike was a groomsmen. It was breezy the whole time we were in Hopkins except for the moment of the wedding. I got attacked by sand fleas during the ceremony, it was horrible. I had to run back to the room and shower afterwards.

Despite my little issue, the ceremony was lovely. They had incorporated their love for reading books into their ceremony and vows. I think one of the flower girls carried each of their favorite books and they cited their favorite quotes in their vows.

Day 7, Apr 26 – Departure

We woke up early to drive back to the airport. We made the drive down with all the stopping and it took us about 6 hours. On the way back, we didn’t make any stops and it took us 2 and ½ hours.

We both really enjoyed our time in Belize and if we ever make it back, we’d like to go back to Caye Caulker and dive more and maybe visit some ruins in San Ignacio.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Seaside Cabanas, Almond Beach Resort

Food - Glenda's, Syd's, Rose's Grill, Amor Y Cafe, Amigo's, Barracuda Grill, Innie's, Almond Beach

Activities - Raggamuffin Tours, Belize Diving Services, Hamanasi Dive Resort

Next Trip: Belize

2010-04-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

I'm in the stages of finalizing plans for our next trip, which is to Belize. We have planned this trip in order to go to a friend's wedding being held at the Almond Beach Resort in Hopkins, a small place south of Belize City between Dangriga and Placencia.

We are flying into Belize City on Continental Airlines, our first time flying with them, a few days before the wedding. We will be taking a water taxi over to Caye Caulker (CC) to stay a few nights and go scuba diving. (I'm not about to get on one of them propellor planes if I don't have to.) We will be staying at what looks like a fun place called Seaside Cabanas. The more popular place to stay in The Cayes is San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, but CC supposedly has a more laid back feel and is not as touristy.

Belize has the second largest reef system after the Great Barrier Reef. I'm hoping we can get a refresher course in before doing any major diving as it's been 2 and 1/2 years since we've gone diving. We didn't make a dive trip on the GBR as the dive boat in the area was out of commission for repairs.

After a few nights in CC, we will take the water taxi back to Belize City and pick up a car rental to drive down to Hopkins. Our friend's wedding is on a Sunday, so we are hoping to dive again or find some hiking to do on the Saturday before the wedding.

I'm using my usual online source, TripAdvisor to help plan my trip and also a Belize guide book by Moon. We were actually looking into going here the summer of 2008, but it didn't work out. It's amazing that we are going now...it was meant to be.

Anza Borrego March 2010

2010-03-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

We went camping for a weekend in Anza Borrego State Park. We decided to go in March to see some of the wildflowers. Anza Borrego is known to be really pretty when a lot of flowers are in bloom. We were able to see quite a few flowers during our hike on Saturday, but there were still a lot of buds. I think we missed the full bloom by a week or two.

Day 1, Friday

We left home about 2:30pm and drove through Ramona and Julian. It’s amazing how the scenery changes along the way. Once you get out of Poway, you are in the country…which is different than the country we are used to back in Kansas. Once you are in Julian, the elevation is 4200 ft. The road is 2 lane most of the way and pretty windy once you pass Julian to go back down the mountain. Once you are down the mountain, you are pretty much in the desert.

We got to our campsite about 4:30pm. We reserved a spot in the Tamarisk Grove Campground. It was the only campground on the reservation system of the 2 that had spots left when I reserved ours. I’m glad we got this campground anyway, because it looked nicer and had trees. The other main campground is Borrego Palm Canyon by the visitor center and all the spots are in the open with no shade trees. I guess it has the advantage of being closer to the tourist center and you can probably see the stars better and they have RV spots. Tamarisk Grove is all tent camping with only about 20 spots.

Anza Borrego is one of the only, if not the only, state park you can pretty much camp wherever you want. You don’t necessarily have to camp in one of the 3 reserved sites (the Horse Camp is the 3^rd one). The only rule is to have your fire contained.

When we arrived, the ranger booth was closed, so we just drove around the circle looking at the spots that were left. At Tamarisk, you don't have an assigned spot, it's first come first serve. We decided on campsite 8 as it was one of the last with some tree cover that was not in the middle. We set up camp and started a fire and relaxed by the fire. I love camping; it’s so relaxing and peaceful to be hanging out outside.

For dinner our first night, we kept it simple with roasted hot dogs. It’s about one of the only times we eat hot dogs….besides baseball games. We always end the night with smores!

We froze in our tent our first night. It gets pretty cold in the desert at night. We had 2 big blankets, but they weren’t enough.

Day 2, Saturday

One of the downsides of camping is waking up early. What can I say, I like to sleep in a little on the weekends. If your fellow campers don’t wake you up early, the sun usually will. We woke up about 7:30am and started a small fire to make some coffee and breakfast. We made coffee with a percolator and had bacon and fried eggs for breakfast. We bought a cast iron skillet to bring with us on this camping trip. We don’t have a camp stove yet, because most of the campsites we go to have a little rack on the fire rings. Besides we haven’t done any primitive camping yet to need a camp stove.

After breakfast and some much needed coffee, we headed to the visitor center to get some updated information about the wildflowers. At the visitor center, we asked a lady at the counter about hikes that she recommended. I didn’t realize there were so many hikes in the park. She pointed out ones that would have wildflowers and another one (The Slots) that was popular with locals and the photographers. I had originally planned to hike at Palm Canyon, but she said it might be crowded because it’s a really popular hike. We decided to go anyway.

We started on the Alternate Path, which is not where most people start, so it was pretty secluded. This path took us up the mountainside a little and over to the river where it connects with the main path. Once we got to the main path and headed back to the palm grove, we started seeing a lot of people. We finally made it back to the palm grove and ate our packed lunch of PB&J sandwiches, chips, and apples under the palm trees. By the time we started heading back to the parking lot, the clouds rolling in looked like rain clouds.

We then headed over to Coyote Canyon, because it was another spot that was supposed to have the most wild flowers at the time. There were lots of people here just walking in the sand and grass looking at the flowers. I’m glad we did go there, because that’s where we found our desert lily. The desert lily is like the prize wildflower in the desert. We passed another couple looking at flowers and they asked us if we’d been able to find any desert lilies.

After leaving Coyote Canyon, we noticed the rain clouds were getting thicker and it was raining in some places. It’s pretty flat in Borrego Springs, where it is surrounded by mountains, so you could see the weather pretty well around there. We decided to make it back to camp before dark and any rain.

Once back at camp, we noticed it was a little breezy. The breeze was cold too; it made it hard to stay warm. We got a fire going and made us some dinner. I didn’t want to have hot dogs two nights in a row, so we made pita pizzas. I searched online for ideas before we left home. We made them using pitas topped with pizza sauce, pepperonis, and mozzarella. They turned out pretty good.

We rearranged some of the blankets and wore our long johns to bed and was able to stay a little warmer our second night. And yes, we brought thermal pants with us as I was expecting it be a little cold. Good thing we did!

Day 3, Sunday

It was raining lightly when we woke up. We woke up really early due to sound of other campers packing up. It must have been a little after 6am. We got a small fire going when the rain let up to make our coffee and some breakfast. We decided to make an egg scramble with eggs, bacon and mozzarella cheese. It was very tasty.

We were planning on going to The Slots trail today. But, we decided to head home instead after breakfast, because of the rain. We weren’t prepared to get all wet while hiking.

We headed back to Julian to stop and have some apple pie. Julian is famous for apples pies. They have an apple fest in the fall. It was also snowing when we got up to Julian! We went into Mom’s Pie House for our fix. It’s a cute little place decorated like an old country farm house. Mike got an apple crumple pie with ice cream and I went for the apple dumpling after I heard the guy describing it to someone else. He made it sound really good. And, it was really good!

We left Julian and decided to go back home through Cuyamaca State Park and Alpine. It was fun going this way in the snow. The snow was coming down pretty heavy! I was amazed to see this much snow 2 hours from San Diego. It was kind of hard to get my head around it. It was like we were in Colorado or something. Once we got out of the elevation it was just raining and we made it home by noon.

Now that we know Anza Borrego is that close to us, we may try to take some daytrips out there just to hike around.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Tamarisk Grove Campground #8

Food - Mom's Pie House

Activities - Borrego Palm Canyon Nature Trail

Sydney, Australia - January 2010

2010-03-22T12:14:00.000-07:00

Day 1, Jan 10 – Arrival

As I mentioned before, flying domestic Qantas flights are great. We flew them again from Cairns to Sydney and during our 3 hour flight enjoyed a pasta meal and an ice cream bar. They also played a movie, but we chose not to watch it.

We arrived in Sydney in the early evening and were picked up by a friend of Mike’s. We were staying with him, his wife, and their new baby girl during our stay. Their apartment was located in Potts Point and had a fantastic view of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

We usually get to a new city, check into our hotel, throw our stuff in our room, and go out to explore. I was itching to get out and explore a little, so after catching up a little with friends, we went out for a walk from Potts Point to Rushcutters Bay.

We enjoyed dinner at our friends this evening.

Day 2, Jan 11 – Exploring Sydney on Foot

We woke up early and found a little café along the sidewalk to have a little breakfast. We found a small place called Cafe Nest that is run by a very friendly guy. We just had some cappuccino and egg, ham and cheese sandwiches (meal $17).

After getting a little nutrition, we walked from Potts Point through the Royal Botanic Garden and over to the Opera House. We then headed off to find the way to walk across the Harbour Bridge. It took a little while, but we went through The Rocks area before finding the stairs up to the street level of the Bridge. We walked across the Bridge and back enjoying the views from the Bridge.

We really wanted to go on the Tribal Warrior Harbour Cruise, but it happened to not be running that day. So, we walked back to the Botanic Garden looking for the Gardens Restaurant for lunch. While looking for the restaurant, we discovered there are flying foxes in the Garden that sleep in the trees during the day.

The Gardens Restaurant is in the middle of the park and has white linens and servers dressed in black. We were probably a little under dressed in our tourist gear, but we had a great lunch here anyway. Mike had steamed blue eye cod and I went with a spatchcock chicken (a way of grilling chicken). Sometimes I have no idea what something is when I order, but I like to be adventurous and try new food. The description sounded very promising, so I didn’t hesitate to order the spatchcock. We also enjoyed a glass of wine each with our meal and took in all the tourists under us going through the park. This lunch was a bit of a splurge, but very delicious and full of flavors (meal $85).

After our tasty lunch, we took a rest in the park under a tree and tried to figure out what else we wanted to do with our day. We thought about taking a ferry to Manly, but opted to go find the Lord Nelson Brewery and Hotel. We’d originally had a room booked with them before deciding to stay with friends. We arrived and immediately loved the place. We enjoyed a couple of pints of their house brew. We tried to get back there during our stay in Sydney, but never made it.

For dinner, we decided on Otto’s in Woolloomooloo. This Italian restaurant is located on a pier and Russell Crowe lives on the end of this same pier. The restaurant is known to be a place where celebrities like to hang out as well. We didn’t have any celebrity spottings during our dinner, but it is a nice place to sit and enjoy dinner with a great view of the city lights. We weren’t super impressed with the food, but it was ok. We had oysters for an appetizer and I found them to be very tasty as I usually find oysters kind of fishy tasting. These were really fresh. We both had the fish specials, Mike went with the Flounder and I had the Swordfish. We ended up switching dishes after having a few bites. We liked each other’s dish better. This meal was another splurge (meal including wine $150) with 2 glasses of wine; a Torbreck Steading and a Randall’s Yard Cabernet. Food is pretty expensive overall in Australia unless you stick with fish and chips or meat pies.

Day 3, Jan 12 – Blue Mountains

This morning, we went to a place recommended by our friend for breakfast. It was another little sidewalk café in Potts Point. It was the Spring Espresso Bar on Challis St (meal $34). We sat at a table outside where they were all lined up along the sidewalk closest to the street curb. The food was pretty good. I had banana French toast and Mike had pancakes. The French toast came out with fried bananas and it was very good!

After a very satisfying breakfast, we made our way to Circular Quay to catch a train to Katoomba to visit the Blue Mountains. We ended up on the 11am train and sat back to enjoy the 2 hour ride in the air conditioned train. It was very hot today. We arrived in Katoomba after 1pm and went to buy tickets for the hop on and off bus in the ticket office next to the train. We needed to get on the bus at 1:30, so we settled for meat pies ($4 each) for lunch. Mike had been dying to try one anyway. He ordered a meat one, I ordered a potato one and it ended up being meat and potato which was way better.

Since we got to the area in the afternoon, we had about 2 and ½ hours to explore the Blue Mountains. We did the 3 popular hikes (1, 5, and 8) as was recommended by the bus driver. It was so hot and humid. But, the views were very cool. We saw the Three Sisters and Echo Point. We also saw the nice Leura Cascades. By the time we finished the last, long walk 8, it was almost 5pm. We took the bus into Leura and everything was closed down! We were starving from all the walking, so we again had to settle for meat pies. I opted for a ham and cheese crossiant this time. We got on the 5:30pm train back to Sydney and ended up back by 7:15pm. If we had to do this experience over again, we would have gotten to the Blue Mountains earlier or stayed the night there to have more time. It felt like we just ran though it in our couple of hours.

After our long, hot day, we enjoyed some drinks with our friend in the Kings Cross district. We got to enjoy some rain and thunder this evening. We don’t get thunder in San Diego, so it was pretty cool.

Day 4, Jan 13 – Aquarium

We walked to find Cafe Hernandez that was recommended in Frommer’s Australia guide. We found the small coffee shop and had the lady recommend some coffee for us. She was very friendly and we enjoyed the coffee. It was on a side street away from a lot of foot traffic, so it was pretty quiet. We also had a couple of pastries with our coffee.

We left the coffee shop and made our way to the Sydney Aquarium. We opted to go here instead of the Sydney Zoo, because we have a pretty cool zoo in San Diego. Also, Frommer recommended it over the Zoo. It was a pretty cool Aquarium, but maybe we should have gone to the Zoo instead. We spent 2 hours checking out the different, colorful fish, the Dugongs (aka Manatee aka Sea Cow), and the Sharks. Both the Dugong and Shark exhibits had an underwater viewing tunnel.

We decided to catch some lunch while we were in Darling Harbour at Pontoon Bar. We both had a huge steak sandwich with a beer (meal $31).

We went back to our friend’s house through Hyde Park and took a nap when we got back. After our rest and downtime, we went out to have sushi in Kings Cross. We went to Busshari and had a great experience (meal $85). We got a sake sampler with 3 different sakes. We ordered 2 rolls; the Tasmania and Dynamite, and Udon noodles with prawns. The food was very good and we had fun trying something new, the udon noodles. We usually just get rolls when we have sushi.

It was raining after we finished dinner and we decided we weren’t ready to call it a night, so we walked in the rain to an Irish bar, O’Malley's. We had passed it earlier in the day and thought we should come back for a drink. We ordered 2 Guinness, but were super disappointed. They didn’t taste like Guinness! We don’t know if it was an imitation or if something was wrong with the beer. If they were selling fake Guinness, that should be a crime! We ended up leaving our barely drank beer on the table and left and called it a night.

Day 5, Jan 14 – Hunter Valley

We had to get up early to meet our tour guide down the street at 7am for our tour to Hunter Valley. We opted to go on a tour, because we were planning to taste lots of wine and didn’t want to worry about driving. We chose Boutique Tours based on reviews on TripAdvisor and the fact that they were a small tour group and not one of those huge buses full of people. Certain wineries in Hunter Valley won’t take large groups.

We stopped and picked up more people for a total of 10 of us and were heading to the Valley by 8:30am. We had people from England, Copenhagen, Australia, Ireland, Canada and the U.S. on the tour. On the way to Hunter Valley, our guide, Jason, did a lot of talking. He educated us on Sydney, Hunter Valley, wine tasting, and the Rabbitohs! Jason is a big fan of the South Sydney Rabbitohs and will try to make you one too!

Our first stop was Iron Gate Estate. We arrived here around 10:15am and tasted 7 wines and had a little tour of the winery. We sampled the wine standing along a tasting bar inside the tasting room. We tasted the 2006 Milenio, 2006 Unwooded Chardonnay, 2005 Oaked Semillion, 2005 Shiraz, 2006 Shiraz/Cabernet, 2009 Sweet Semillon, and 2008 Sweet Shiraz. Most of the wine in Australia is aged in stainless steal barrels instead of oak which is used mostly in Napa. Australian wines are also not usually corked, but have screw tops. We ended up liking this place the most of all our stops. The tasting and tour were very informative and the guide, Joann, was very friendly. We didn’t realize what unique wine they have here until we compared it to our tastings at the other wineries. We ended up bringing home a bottle of Sweet Shiraz. I also like the Chard and I normally don’t like white wine.

Our next stop was Pooles Rock. We sampled 9 wines sitting in a little room off to the side. We weren’t even sat at a table where we could swirl the glass. We ended up sloshing our wine around before tasting it. We tasted 2008 Cockfighter’s Ghost Semillon, 2008 Cockfighter’s Ghost Verdelho, 2009 Cockfighter’s Ghost Viognier, 2007 Cockfighter’s Ghost Chard, 2008 Riesling, 2009 Firestick Rose, 2007 Cockfighter’s Ghost Shiraz Viognier, 2060 Firestick Shiraz, and NV Firestick Liqueur Shiraz. Overall, I didn’t like the wine here and poured out most of my pours. I liked the Liqueur Shiraz the most which reminded me of Madeira wine. The pourer, Paul, would pour the wine and leave the room, it was pretty boring. I like a talkative pourer.

After stopping for a quick lunch where we had sandwiches, we went on to Tempus Two Winery. We first went in to the Smelly Cheese shop to taste some smelly cheese. We had Pesto Feta, Sundried Tomato Frais Fromage, Labna, Herb and Garlic Frais Fromage, and Gorgonzola and Mascarpone Cheese. It was a very interesting experience. By the way, none of the cheese smelled bad.

After some tasty cheese, we headed over to the Tempus tasting room. This tasting was on our own. Not everyone from the group tasted wine here. We tasted a 2007 Tempranillo, 2008 Grenache, Shiraz, and Mourverde (GSM), 2007 Barossa Vinevale Shiraz, 2006 Beechworth Sangiovese, 2008 Coonawarra Cabernet and 2008 Hunter Valley Shiraz. I ended up liking the Sangiovese and Cabernet the most, we came home with a bottle of the Cabernet.

In between our next tasting, we drove around looking for some kangaroos. We found a couple under a tree, spotted by me, and some people got out to try and get really close to them. I don’t believe in getting that close to wildlife, so I enjoyed watching them from a distance. It looked like it was a mother and offspring couple.

After our kangaroo safari, we made a final stop at Peacock Hill winery. Someone on the tour requested this place. That’s another great thing about this tour, the guide will take requests and try to make it to those places. I did not like this place, mainly because the winemaker, George, was super stuffy. He seemed pretty put off by our group and didn’t like anyone asking questions. If someone did ask a question, he made it seem like it was a stupid question. Maybe I was the only one that picked this up, but I put on my review of the tour that they should not go back there again. Regardless, we tasted 2006 Godfather Sparkling MCZD, Absent Friends Sauv. Blanc/Semillon, 2008 Top Block Chard, Fond Memories, 2006 Jaan Shiraz, 2005 Jaan Shiraz, 2007 Tall Tales & True Fortified, and 2008 Good Company. Because of the poor attitude from the winemaker, I don’t remember much about the wine itself and we definitely did not purchase a bottle.

After Peacock Hill, we made our way back to Sydney. We dropped one of our members off at the Crowne Plaza as he was going to stay the night. The tour will drop you off and pick you up the next day if interested. I wish we would have known about that option as we might have stayed the night. The ride back was pretty quiet and most people took naps. We were back in Sydney by 6pm. It was a great day for wine tasting and the tour company was perfect!

We decided to take our friend out for dinner that evening. We went to Opium Den, a popular, local Thai place in Potts Point (meal $70). The place is dimly lit with red décor and interesting chandeliers all over. We were crammed in with everyone else in the lively atmosphere. We ordered and shared some Spring Rolls, Pad Thai Noodles, Chicken and Sweet Potato, and a Beef Dish. The chicken and sweet potato is what I’d ordered and it was awesome! All the food was good! We could bring our own wine (BYO) and brought 2 bottles with us. Our friend brought one and we brought our Ginger wine from Shannonvale Winery and it was very good with our Thai food, just like the winemaker said it would be. Our ginger wine needed chilled and the server put it in the freezer for us until we were ready for it.

After our yummy meal, we headed for a few drinks at a place in Woolloomooloo before calling it a night.

Day 6, Jan 15 – Bondi Beach and an Opera

We got a ride to Bondi with our friend and had breakfast at Trio (meal $47). We sat at a table on the sidewalk and enjoyed the Big Breakfast (eggs with toast, bacon, mushrooms, sausage, oven-roasted tomato and hashbrowns) and Vegetarian Breakfast (eggs with carrot sourdough toast, spinach and cherry tomatoes, saute mushrooms, avocado and a huge hunk of feta) and 2 cappuccinos.

After breakfast, we walked from Bondi beach to Bronte beach along a scenic coastal walk. We got to Bronte and jumped in for a swim. The water was very cold, but refreshing. We relaxed on the beach a little.

I’d left my dress for the Opera behind in Melbourne, so we had to go shopping for a dress for me. We walked about 1.5 miles to the mall and spent a while looking for a dress. We don’t usually enjoy shopping on our vacations, so it was a bit of a pain to get this done. I finally found a dress (I’m picky) and we made our way to the metro train and rode it back to Kings Cross.

After a little bit of relaxing, we got ready for dinner and the opera, Manon, which we were going to see at the Opera House. Neither of us had ever been to the opera. We took a cab to Aria and enjoyed a nice meal with a fantastic view of the Opera House (meal not including wine $150). We ordered a bottle of the Wanderer Shiraz (Yarra Valley), it was delicious. We shared the scallops (roasted and served with green asparagus, basil puree, tomato and black olives) for an appetizer. Mike had the Snapper and I had the Ravioli (a big ravioli with lots of sauces and flavors, I can't find the description for it). Both were pretty good, but the ravioli ended up being very good. For dessert, we shared coffee cake with espresso ice cream…yum!

After dinner, we walked over to the Opera House. We got our tickets from will call and headed to our seats. We were really high up in one of the last few rows. The opera was in French, but they have subtitles. I never knew the opera had subtitles, but how else would you know what they were saying! During intermission, we went out and enjoyed the night views of the harbour and Harbour Bridge from a balcony. The opera was long, 3 hours, but a very cool experience. Now we can say we saw an opera in the Sydney Opera House!

Day 7, Jan 16 – Departure

We got up and had some coffee with our friend before he took us to the airport.

We found it a little more difficult to sleep on the flight home as we left in the early afternoon and it was daylight outside most of the flight. We watched movies and I finally got a couple of hours of sleep. I was going right back to work the day after we got back, so I had to get some sleep. Mike was still going to have another whole day to rest, he stayed up most of the flight.

The trip to Australia was very fun, but we prefer to travel to foreign places…we think. We found a lot of similarities between Australia and the U.S. Our favorite and most memorable time was spent in Northern Queensland in Cape Tribulation. We hope to get to the Red Centre, Tasmania and Perth on our next visit….someday.

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3 Nights in Melbourne

5 Nights in Cape Tribulation

Cape Tribulation, Queensland Jan 2010

2010-03-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this entry in a journal style, because our accommodations kept journals where guests could write what they did during their stay for other guests to read. This is basically very similar to what I'd written in the journal, with a little more detail...

Day 1, Jan 5 - Arrival

We flew Qantas from Melbourne into Cairns in a huge plane with a 3 seat middle row. It was only a 3 hour flight and they showed a movie and served lunch. I found this to be luxurious as we fly 3 hours from San Diego to Kansas City a lot and only get a bag of pretzels and cookies!

We had cooler weather than we expected while visiting Melbourne. When we got off the plane in Cairns, we were slapped in the face with humid, warm weather. I am not a fan of humidity, but tried to take it all in stride during our stay in Cape Tribulation. We rented a car and made our way up to Cape Tribulation. It ended up taking us 3 hours to get to our accommodations, but we had to stop for supplies and a map with directions to our B&B. I forgot to bring a printout of the directions before leaving home. I figured someone would know where the Fruit Farm was located. The tourist map for Daintree and Cape Trib, which we picked up from the Daintree Discovery Centre, actually has the B&B on it. Crossing the Daintree river requires a car ferry, which is $20 round trip.

We arrived at the Cape Tribulation Exotic Fruit Farm (TA Review) at about 4pm and were greeted by Alison right away. She took us back to our cottage, they have 2 on site, and gave us an orientation of the cabin and farm. She invited us to join her and Digby for a drink at their home later that evening to discuss the area and decide what to do during our stay.

After our orientation, we walked to the nearby Cassowary Cafe for lunch (meal $35). I ordered a chicken avocado baguette with fries and Mike had the vegetarian pizza. The food was just ok, but the restaurant is pretty cool. It had a tree house type look and setting. We were the only ones eating as it was an in-between meal time, but they serve food all day. We came to realize pretty quick that you can't always eat wherever you want whenever you want in Australia, especially in smaller areas. We always had breakfast at the farm, lunch is 12-2 and dinner is 6-8. Other than that, you can't always find anything to eat during those in between times. We also discovered this "fake chicken" that is used in Cape Tribulation in several restaurants. I don't know what it is made from, but it is not good. I made the mistake twice of ordering chicken and this was the first place I did.

After filling our stomachs, we went back to the farm and met Alison and Digby for a drink on their porch. Their house is completely open in the front. There are no walls or screens. You can walk up and see their kitchen and living room. They wanted to build their 2 cabins that way also, but didn't think guests coming from other countries would appreciate it as much as they do. We all drank some wine and talked about the area, how they met, how they started the farm, and what were good activities to do in Cape Trib. We also met their neighbor that runs another B&B farm, Farm Stay, close to them. This farm inspired their farm and they are all friends! When I researched places to stay in the area, I thought for sure they would be competitors that weren't necessarily friends.

After getting some ideas of things to do, we went back to our cabin and enjoyed another drink on the balcony before turning in for the night. The cabins and balconies are right at the edge of the forest and you can hear some amazing sounds at night. There are no TVs in the cabins, but who needs them when you have the forest to entertain you.

Day 2, Jan 6 - Forest Hiking, Ice Cream Tasting, Wine Tasting, Swimming Hole, and Crocodile Tour

The first thing we heard when we woke up was rain! Rain in the forest sounds really cool. The cabin was left open the whole time because it was really hot. They have a sliding door and you can shut the windows, but during the summer, you want to leave everything open. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes.

Breakfast is served to you on the balcony of your cabin. Digby usually serves the breakfast and starts with the exotic fruit. About 30 minutes later, he brings a hot breakfast. This morning our fruit was Abiu, Pineapple, Papaya, Mango, and Passion Fruit. Our hot breakfast was banana pancakes with Black Zapote chocolate sauce, which was my favorite breakfast of our trip. These breakfasts ended up being our favorite meal of the day and we very much looked forward to them.

After breakfast, we went on the guided walk behind the cabins. Alison had mapped out the walk that had stops along the way to point out the flora, plants, or particulars of the forest. Supposedly, their real estate agent had recommended they cut out a big chunk of the forest to build their house up higher than it is located now. They didn't want to ruin such a special place!

After our hike that left us dripping in sweat from the thick humidity, we cleaned up and headed down to cross the Daintree River on the car ferry and on to Mossman. We had booked a crocodile tour on the river for later in the evening, so we took advantage of exploring the other side of the river while we were down there. On our way, we stopped at the Daintree Ice Cream Company to taste some exotic fruit ice cream. We tasted Banana, Wattleseed, Jakfruit, and Mamey Sapote.

We then headed to Shannonvale Winery outside of Mossman. The winery specializes in exotic fruit wine and we really didn’t know what to expect. We pulled into the driveway and followed signs for parking and the wine tasting room. There was no one in the covered tasting room when we arrived, but there was a bell to ring to let someone know we were there. I think they saw us pull in, because as I rang the bell, the owners were coming out to greet us.

He explained that his wine tasting included 13 tastes that day ($5 pp if we didn't buy any wine) and asked if we were interested. Whoa! When we went to Napa, we only had about 4-6 tastes at a tasting. We sat down at one of the long tables with bar stools and he gave us a couple of glasses and got the first bottle. He gave us a form for our tasting notes. The first wine he poured was made with Mango and he explained it was a dry wine that was recommended with lighter foods such as prawns. Mike really liked it, but I thought it was a little too dry. Out of 10, I gave it a 5, Mike gave it an 8. We went through 12 more wines this way. Half of the wines we tasted were port-like, sweeter wines.

During our tasting another couple showed up and then the wife came out and finished our tasting. They said during the busy season all their tables are usually full.

The owners are really serious and passionate about their exotic fruit wine and it shows during the tasting. We tasted wine made of Mango, Lychee, Passion fruit, Jaboticaba, Ginger, Orange, Purple Mangosteen, Lime, Grapefruit and Black Sapote. We bought Lychee, Ginger, Purple Mangosteen, Lime Cello, and Black Sapote. We knew we'd never be able to buy something like this anywhere else!

After our wine tasting, we headed to some swimming holes to cool off. We went to Mossman Gorge and Mike jumped in and swam around. There were lots of people swimming and lots of others watching. There was a little rapid on the river that people were riding down and Mike made friends with a local kid to tell him how to ride it also.

We left the Gorge after an hour or so and headed back towards the river to grab some food before our crocodile tour. We stopped at 2 places that weren’t going to be serving food until dinner an hour later, so we settled for fish and chips at a gas station in Wonga Beach. The fish was pretty decent and very hot, but I was a little disappointed that it was hard to find food.

We ate quickly and then drove down the road to met Dan Irby for our Daintree River Tour ($50 pp). He’s a nice guy originally from Oklahoma. He drives a small boat with about 10-12 seats total, so you don’t get a big group. We only had 2 other couples with us on our tour. Dan took the time to learn all our names and asked questions throughout the tour to get to know us. We rode up and down the river looking for crocs, birds, frogs and whatever interesting things Dan could find. In 2 hours, we only saw a few baby crocs. Regardless, being out on the river at dark was amazing.

Day 3, Jan 7 – Great Barrier Reef Snorkeling and Exotic Fruit Tasting

Our fruit this morning was Mango, Papaya, Pineapple, Abiu and finally the Mangosteen…queen of the fruit and the B&B’s pride and joy. Our breakfast was potato pancakes with green onions and tomatoes. We also had some Jakfruit jelly for our bread.

After breakfast, we were picked up by Ocean Safari to go snorkeling on Mackay Reef ($108 pp). We picked up a few other people and went down to their office to sign waivers before walking out to the beach to get on the catamaran. There ended up being about 20 of us on this snorkel cruise and we were out to the reef within 25 minutes. We snorkeled around for an hour in 2 different places and saw some great colorful coral and fish. Someone on our tour was lucky enough to see a reef shark. One of our guides pulled a sea cucumber off the ocean floor and showed its defense mechanism. I wish we could have stayed longer or gone again. We were back to the beach by 12:30.

We had lunch at PK’s Jungle Village (meal $28). This place caters to backpackers and younger people. I really liked the atmosphere. If there was any place in Cape Trib with nightlife, it was this place. I had a vege burger and Mike had a prawn roll, both were pretty decent. We both had a beer also.

We went back to the farm and did the Fruit Tasting ($20 pp). As if we weren’t getting enough with our breakfasts, we were hoping to sample new stuff. Trish ran the discussion and she did a great job. I discovered that I really enjoy Mamey Sapote; it tastes like sweet potato to me. We tasted Breadfruit, Jakfruit, Mamey Sapote, Salak, Abiu, Black Sapote, Davidson Plum, Carambola, and Jaboticaba.

For dinner, we ate at Whet (meal $100). This is the nicest place to eat in Cape Trib. The seating is outside on a covered patio with torches lit around the patio. The service was very friendly. We ordered a pork and scallop appetizer that was absolutely yummy. The portion was really small, but very good. Mike had the trout and I ordered the tuna. My tuna was a little overcooked for my liking, but the trout was very good. They ended up running out of that right after our order. For dessert, we had chocolate mangosteen ice cream with mango syrup. Yum! Our meal was a little bit of a splurge for the area, but worth it. We didn’t have any drinks with our meal.

Day 4, Jan 8 – Sea Kayaking and Hiking

Our fruit this morning for breakfast was Star Fruit (Carambola) Sugar Bananas, Papaya, Pineapple, Passion Fruit, and Mangosteen. Our hot breakfast was a cheese and herb omelet. The eggs come from the hens that run around on the farm.

After breakfast, we walked to the local campground and rented a kayak to take out in the ocean. We had it for 2 hours ($40) and paddled from the camp up a ribbon reef around the Cape Trib point to the bay on the other side. We were looking for the dugong (similar to a manatee) that had been spotted in the area. We didn’t have any luck finding it.

After our kayaking adventure, we drove to the Cape Trib Beach House for lunch (meal $35) on our way to go hiking. We really liked this place. I had some pasta and a salad and Mike ordered a chicken sandwich. We also each had a beer. The pasta dish was a huge serving, but somehow I managed to finish it. I was craving some pasta!

With full bellies, we drove on to Emmagen Creek to find the trail back to a swimming hole. At first we went the wrong way and Mike jumped in a swimming hole that wasn’t the one we were looking for. We joked around that there might have been crocs in that swimming hole. We referred to our map and discovered we had to walk a little down the road to get to the trail. Finally on the right trail, we headed back to a nice secluded swimming hole. There was another couple from San Francisco that were on their honeymoon, but other than that, no one else was there or came during our time there. We swam around and relaxed a little in the shaded place.

For dinner this evening we decided to walk to PK’s Jungle Village (meal $45) to experience the place at night. Being in Cape Trib, you are pretty secluded and don’t always see a lot of people. I was looking for some lively atmosphere, if just for a couple of hours. It was pretty busy and there was some music playing. We ordered the BBQ chicken pizza, but picked off all the chicken. We forgot that the chicken isn’t always good as I’d mentioned earlier in this post. We had a couple of beers each,

Day 5, Jan 9 – Sunrise, Hiking, Swimming Holes, and a BBQ!

We got up before breakfast and 6 am to catch the sunrise on the beach. On the way to the beach, we saw a wild pig in the B&B’s orchard. It was a little cloudy, so it wasn’t really spectacular. It was nice however to be on the beach first thing in the morning. It was quiet and the sand was cool! The sand gets really hot during the day. We walked along the beach a little and saw a reef shark swimming along the shallow waters.

Back to the cottage for breakfast, our fruit was Pineapple, Abiu, Mango, Dragon Fruit and one of my favorites…Mamey Sapote. For our hot breakfast, we enjoyed French toast with bacon and maple syrup.

After breakfast, we drove to find the trailhead to Blockade Creek. This used to be a popular hike that locals would send tourists on, but the popularity of it had died out for some reason. Alison & Digby said that none of their guests had gone on it in a while. I think Alison had told us there was a trail, but we did what everyone else usually does and hiked up the river bed. It was a little difficult climbing over the big boulders and some were wet. I slipped and got one of my shoes all wet. I wasn’t having the greatest time at first, but once we made it, it was pretty cool to see the little waterfall and swimming hole underneath it. We shared the swimming hole with a Black Bittern. We believe he was trying to fish, but he stayed there the whole hour or so we were there and barely moved.

The hike back down was a lot easier. We drove back to Mason’s Café for lunch (meal $25). I had a burger and it came with lots of veges on it (cucumber, beets, lettuce and carrots). Mike had the fish and chips, the fish was little battered and very flavorable. The food was very good, especially the fish. We shared a coke. After eating, we checked out their swimming hole. It’s located in a river in tree shading. It’s in a nice cool spot and it’s a big swimming area. You could actually lie out and swim some laps. There were several people that ended up back here while we were there.

We decided that we wanted to go look for a Cassowary after our swim. We had only seen one that we briefly saw run across the road as soon as we crossed the river our very first day. Digby told us they have been seen at the Jindalba walk next to the Discover Center. We drove down and walked around a little, but didn’t have any luck. One our drive back to the B&B, we stopped at a Daintree Coffee Co. for a cup of coffee. It was a nice little shop that had great coffee. We noticed some rain clouds and the guy in the coffee shop said rain was coming!

We made it back to the B&B barely and it started to rain. It was raining pretty heavy to us, but the locals considered it a sprinkle! The sound of the forest changed, the bugs started chirping really loud. They were very excited for the rain!

We had been invited by Alison & Digby to a BBQ they were hosting to celebrate the opening of their packing barn. The rain didn’t keep everyone from attending the BBQ. A lot of people were walking around barefoot under umbrellas. We enjoyed a mango bellini made by Digby and lots of champagne poured by Alison. It was a lot of fun and we met some fun people. We had read in a book what to do if you get invited to a BBQ in Australia and thought that would never happen. We actually were invited to a BBQ in Australia!

It rained and rained all night! It was awesome listening to it rain in the forest.

Day 6, Jan 10 – Departure

It was still raining when we woke up and we got up and sat on the balcony with our morning tea and coffee listening to it. Our last morning of fruit was Dragon Fruit, Abiu, Mangosteen, Sugar Bananas, and Mangos. Our hot breakfast was poached egg Benedict with spinach.

It was so hard to leave, because we loved our stay at the Cape Trib B&B! Being in Cape Trib was the best part of our trip. It’s nice to travel to new places, but it’s even more fun and memorable when you go to places that are off the normal tourist path. Cape Trib is definitely that place. To fully enjoy your time, you have to be ok with the lack of amenities, the bugs, the humidity in the summer, and the rain.

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3 Nights in Melbourne

6 Nights in Sydney

Melbourne, Australia January 2010

2010-03-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

We went to Australia for 2 weeks. We usually like to travel in October or November, but a job change forced us to wait until January. January is summertime in Australia and we were expecting it to be quite warm.

Our itinerary included: 3 nights in Melbourne, 5 nights in Cape Tribulation (visiting the Great Barrier Reef), and 6 nights in Sydney (visiting the Blue Mountains and Hunter Valley).

We flew into Melbourne and out of Sydney on Qantas Airlines. We also used Qantas for our domestic travel in Australia between Melbourne and Cape Trib and Cape Trib and Sydney. We rented a car in Melbourne and Cairns using Avis. We used Frommer's Australia guide book to help plan our trip.

January is an expensive time to fly to Australia. I checked airline prices almost daily for a year and the price never went down much. We ended up booking 2 weeks in advance, as that is the required booking time for international flights, because I was hoping for a last minute deal that never came.

3 Nights in Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne after a 14 hour flight from LA on a Saturday morning. We went to pick up our rental car at Avis and the first thing I did was try to get in on the driver's side (since it's on the opposite side). Mike was the designated driver and I was the navigator and the one constantly reminding him to KEEP LEFT. We tried to go slow and it took a little time getting used to driving on the left, but eventually it started coming easier. I don't know that he ever got used to the turn signal being on the opposite side, however. Most of the time when we made a turn, Mike turned on the windshield wipers. We ended up with an Australian car, a Holden, that has their windshield wipers and turn signals on the opposite side than American cars. Other European cars have them on the same side as American cars.

After some backtracking, we finally made it to the St. Kilda area where our hotel was located. I decided on St. Kilda and the Hotel Tolarno as I read that the area was beach-y and artsy and had great restaurants. It wasn't as beach-y as I was expecting, but we liked staying there. It was pretty quiet during the time we were there as Australians were still on holiday from Christmas and New Years and it wasn't as warm yet. As soon as we left Melbourne, the temperatures started soring.

LODGING

Hotel Tolerno (TA Review) - Lovely Hotel, Helpful Staff

This was a nice European type room. The staff was very helpful when we needed directions or asked questions. The tram also stops along the street in front of the hotel to take you downtown.

ACTIVITIES

Melbourne's CBD (downtown)

We hopped on the tram after arriving to Melbourne, checking into our room, and eating lunch to go visit the CBD. The tram got us there in about 20 minutes. We bought a ticket at the 7-11, but they have vending machines on the trams as well. We got off at the Southern Cross stop and made our way to the free city tram. We didn't really ride it but to get off a couple of stops down at Federation Square. We checked out the area and then made our way to the Old Melbourne Gaol (jail). We ended up getting there around 3:45pm and they tried to talk us into coming back the next day to do tours. We opted to pay the concession fee to just check out the jail house. This is where Ned Kelly was jailed and hanged. After leaving the Gaol, we walked back to the Southern Cross stop to catch the tram back to our hotel.

The Great Ocean Road (GOR)

Our second day in Melbourne, we got up early, had some breakfast and left the hotel around 7:30am to drive the GOR. Our plan was to get ahead of the tour buses that usually left the city between 8:30 and 9. We were making good time, but missed an exit and had to back track a little. We started on the GOR outside Torquay and made a couple of stops at Bells Beach and the Split Point Lighthouse. As soon as we left the lighthouse and passed the GOR sign that goes over the road, we came to a stop in traffic. People started turning their cars around and heading the other way, so we did also. We stopped at a store to find out what happened and discovered there was an accident and the road was going to be closed for at least 4 hours. The GOR is a 2 lane road, so there was no way to go around that accident on that road. We decided to ask at the information centers to see what our options were to get around.

The info desk in Anglesea gave us a map with a dirt road that went around and we got back on in Lorne. Driving on the dirt road was a little scary at first since: 1) we aren't used to driving on dirt roads; 2) it was the first full day Mike was driving on the opposite side of the car and road; and 3) cars coming from the other direction were flying past us. We joked about our experience the whole way and finally made it back to the GOR. It ended up being a 2 hour delay, but we continued on our trip.

We stopped in Lorne, a cool little town, to get some coffee and stretch our legs. We also stopped and visited the Maits Rainforest Walk, The Twelve Apostles, and other stops along the way. We grabbed dinner in Colac at Cafe Nu-Deli and headed back to Melbourne. We didn't get back until 11:30pm to our hotel.
It ended up being a really long day due to the back tracking, the detour and all the stops, but the Great Ocean Road was beautiful. I'm glad we drove ourselves, so we could stop and go whenever we wanted. I think it probably would have been a good idea to stop somewhere for the night and relax a little, soak in the scenery, and then drive back to Melbourne. That's something we talked about doing different after our trip.

Phillip Island Penguin Parade

We slept in a little before making our way to Phillip Island to watch the penguin parade. We weren't supposed to be there until about 7:30pm as that was about the time the sun would start setting and the penguins would come out of the ocean from hunting all day.

We ended up leaving our hotel around 11am and made it close to the island's turn off about 12:30pm. We hit traffic and thought, oh no, not again. Well, there was another accident, unfortunately a fatal one involving a family, that closed the entrance to Phillip Island.

At first, no one knew if or when it would open back up. We found Kilcunda beach down the road and spent some time hanging out there. We also drove into Wonthaggi to go to the visitor's center for ideas of what to do in the area and to get some lunch. We were heading back to Kilcunda about 5pm when we hit traffic and thought the island must be open again. We slowly moved towards the round about to Phillip Island and got to the Penguin Parade a little after 7:30pm. We made it! It was worth all that waiting, because watching these little fairy penguins get out of the ocean in little huddles and then waddle along the beach back to their burrows was absolutely amazing. We wished we could have seen more of Phillip Island, we had planned on going to the Koala sanctuary as well, but I'm glad we made it to the penguin show!

After the show, we headed back to Melbourne and made it to our hotel after 12:30am.

RESTAURANTS

Chinta Blues - Great Malaysian Food

Our first meal in Australia ended up being one of our favorites. When we got to the restaurant it was completely empty and that made me a little nervous. However, once we got our food and tasted it, I was not disappointed! I ordered the Ayam Ria Chicken (diced chicken fillets, wok-tossed in a blend of spices, fresh ginger and dry red chilli, finished with crisp carrot slices and peanuts) based on Frommer's recommendation in his guide. Mike ordered the Hokkian Char Fried Noodles (soft hokkien noodles gently simmered in a dark soya sauce with fishcake, bok choy, prawns and calamari). This place was delicious. Our meal was about $50 which included 2 beers.

Cacao

This place was a couple of buildings down from our hotel and we went in one morning for coffee. The lady working the counter was from the U.S. and was really friendly.

The Angahook Cafe (in Anglesea on the GOR)

We stopped in here for a quick bite before attempting the detour around the accident on the GOR. I ended up with a grilled ham and cheese sandwich although I tried to order something that looked better in the display case. I guess I didn't say the right thing. Mike had a pastry filled with stuff that he saw someone else order. We had a small lunch for about $10.

Cafe Nu-Deli (in Colac on Murray St.) - Good Local Meal

We stopped here on our way back to Melbourne from the GOR. We made it to Colac with less than 1/4 of a tank of gas and was really starting to wonder if we were going to make it to a station before running out. The first gas station in Colac we came to had just closed and we were hoping it wasn't the only one in town. We finally found one and asked the attendant for a recommendation for food. We didn't really want to eat at McDonald's in Australia. She recommended a pub down the street that we never found, but came across this place instead. It looked like a nice casual place. We walked in and immediately felt under dressed. We had been in the car for about 12 hours and were tired and might have looked a little run down. There were two older couples dressed up and having a nice evening out. We almost missed dinner as our server had to check to see if the kitchen was still running. We were in luck and ended up having a pretty decent meal here. I ordered the special which was chicken and shrimp sauted in peanut sauce, which was pretty good. However, it came with an Asian salad which was drenched in dressing. Mike ordered a ribeye steak and it was very nice as well. After such a long day of driving we were even more tired after our meal here, but had to drive another hour and a half to Melbourne. Our dinner was about $50 which included 2 beers.

Leo's Spaghetti Bar - Quick Egg Breakfasts

We went here for breakfast the morning of our trip to Phillip Island. It was across the street from our hotel. They serve fried eggs over bread and it was pretty good. I had fried eggs and ham on toast and Mike had Leo's breaky. Yes, in Australia, they refer to breakfast as "breaky". Mike's breaky came with some strange looking sausage, otherwise it was a good breakfast for about $20.

Continue Reading About Our Trip:

5 Nights in Cape Tribulation

6 Nights in Sydney

Napa Valley - September 2009

2010-02-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

We booked a long weekend trip for Napa during Labor Day weekend taking the chance that it wouldn't be too crowded or too hot. It turned out to be a perfect weekend of exploring and tasting lots of wine. We flew into Oakland and rented a car to drive to Napa.

On Friday, we visited Napa's downtown tasting rooms. On Saturday, we visited Artesa, V. Sattui, Del Dotto and Van Der Heyden. On Sunday, we visited Plumpjack, Mondavi, and Cakebread.

I read the book "A Moveable Thirst" before our trip and it helped me learn a lot about wine and wine making. It is a great book that is informative and funny at the same time. This book goes through 2 guys' personal experience at several tasting rooms, but then will break away to educate you about wine.

We chose Napa as our base for our first visit to the Valley. We stayed at the Embassy Suites (TA Review) and we were able to walk downtown our first day and we had easy access to the highway to explore the rest of the Valley.

It is tough figuring out an itinerary as there are lots of wineries and restaurants and you just can't do it all in one weekend! We focused on staying in certain areas each day, although Saturday really didn't fit this idea, because our friends really wanted to go to V. Sattui and we really wanted to see the views from Artesa. I'm really glad we went to Artesa, because they had the best views of all the wineries we visited.

We definitely plan to go back again and stay in Sonoma and Calistoga to explore those areas.

Our itinerary included:

FRIDAY

After arriving and checking into our hotel, we went to find the La Esperanza Taco Truck. I heard about this taco truck on the Napa forum on TripAdvisor and we set out to find it when we arrived in Napa Friday afternoon. It was right where they said it would be, at Soscol Ave and Napa St. across from the Westin and Wine Train.

You just walk up and order and take it to go or stand around the truck eating. We opted for the latter as it was such a nice day. We ordered tacos: shrimp, fish, pork and carnitas. I'd have to say the carnitas were pretty darn good. They serve seeded jalapenos with them and they are soo good too.

After lunch and a little rest, we visited downtown Napa tasting rooms. We bought the tasting card online for $20 which allowed us tastings at 14 places in the downtown area. The tasting you would get by showing the card varied at all the places, but it was usually 2 tastes.

It was a nice way to get acquainted with tasting wine and asking questions. It was also nice that we could just walk all over downtown as well. We tasted at (in this order):

Wineries of Napa Valley - 3 tastes. We ended up buying a bottle of 2006 Goosecross Syrah here for dinner that night. The card allows you to have the corkage fee removed, just have the winery put a sticker on the bottle too.

Trahan Winery and Olabisi Winery - 2 tastes. We liked their tasting room, it was all black with some barrels and a big mirror. We bought a bottle of 2005 Olabisi Petite Sirah from JW Warehouse. I may have become a fan of Petite Sirah because of this wine.

X Winery - 5 tastes, they'll let you taste whatever is open basically. Our least favorite wine though. I wanted to drink a lot of water afterwards.

Ceja - 2 tastes. Nice tasting room with bar and menu. We overheard the pourer talking to another couple about some "liquid gold" and we asked nicely for a taste and he gave us a little of the port. Another couple came in to buy some chocolate sauce and we asked about that as well. He let us have a taste as well. We ended up buying a case of that for Christmas presents and they were a big hit!

Napa General Store - 2 tastes. These were quick and small pours. Not really impressed by anything although the pourer was really nice.

Silo's - Either 2 tastes or 1 big pour. This is a cool place that is a night club with a doorman, black decor, and black table clothes. We sat at a table and the server brought us our tastes. There was a guy playing guitar and singing. They have various performers in the evenings as well.

We had dinner at Allegria (Yelp Review)

SATURDAY

After getting some coffee at a local coffee shop, we headed to the Napa Farmer's Market. It's located on the north side of the Wine Train. It's 730 - 1200 Tues and Sat from May to Oct. We wanted to check it out to get snacks and fruit while we were there and to take with us when wine tasting in the valley. There was one stand that had awesome nectarines. One of the guys was yelling he had the best fruit in town and had pieces out for tasting. We ended up buying his fruit and some hummus from a lady. This is a great market with several booths of fruit, veges, eggs, etc.

Artesa - We went there to check out the views and to see if we could see San Francisco from there. We could make out the buildings downtown, but it wasn't completely clear. We didn't taste here, but the grounds are pretty cool and modern.

V. Sattui - Our friends wanted to take us here. Wow, this winery gets crowded! They also only sell their wines there. Our friend with us had VIP passes, so we got to go into the tasting room in the basement. They say you get 6 tastes, but you could really have whatever you asked for. It was a little busy in there as well, but I didn't see the tasting room upstairs to compare. At first, the pourer wasn't interested in explaining the wines to us and would pour us all the same thing when someone wanted something different. We finally got him engaged when we asked about making Maderia and ports. We bought a bottle of the Maderia and 2007 Zinfandel. They supposedly have great grounds for picnicking. It was so crowded there and in the store to buy sandwiches. We ended up having to rush off to a tasting appointment and eating our Margherita and Mozzeralla Turkey in the car.

Del Dotto Vineyards - We chose this winery for the cave tour. We had a 3pm Sat reservation ($40 pp). We got to taste several (6 or 7) wines from the barrel. Our tour guide made it a lot of fun, but his ways of trying to sell you the wine at the end were a little humorous, a little pushy. This is a place to go for fun and it gets a little loud. At the end of the cave tour, they give you some cheese, meat and crackers and pour you more wine. The last wine they poured was actually pretty good. It was a 2007 Giovanni's Tuscan Reserve (75% Cab, 25% Sangiovese) $85. We just aren't the type of couple to spend more than $40-$45 on wine.

Van Der Heyden Vineyards - We left Del Dotto with some friends that didn't go on the tour, but waited for us. They wanted to hit another winery. We decided on Van Der Heyden, because it was one of the few wineries close by that were open until 6pm. Most wineries close by 5pm. When we arrived there were only 2 other groups there, when we left it was packed. The tasting area is outside next to the house under an old car port. We decided to share a tasting at this point ($10). They poured 5 wines outside. Then, we went into a little air conditioned room where the winemaker, Andre, poured us a late harvest Cabernet. It's sweet like a port. You can buy a small bottle of it right there for $55. Online you can only get a whole bottle for $125.

We had dinner at Celadon (Yelp Review)

SUNDAY

PlumpJack - We were driving around on our way to Mondavi and was early, so we stopped to visit this winery. The grounds here are pretty cool. They have a long driveway leading up to the tasting room that goes through the vineyards. We ended up sharing the tasting here, $10 for 3 tastes. The servers were super nice.

Before our Robert Mondavi tour, we headed to the Oakville Grocery Store for lunch. They have a deli and sandwiches and lots of snacks. I asked the guy behind the counter what he recommended. We ordered the Mediterranean Chicken and Beef and Bleu based on his recommendations. We started out sitting in front of the store, but the traffic from the road was a little loud. We went around back and found a picnic table under a tree...much nicer. The Beef and Bleu was probably the better sandwich.

Robert Mondavi Winery - Robert Mondavi's Cabernet was my first favorite wine and we used to drink a lot of it, so I really wanted to visit the winery. I called and made a reservation for 12pm a month and a half in advance, but somehow it got messed up or lost or something. We ended up getting a 1230pm Signature Tour ($25 pp). Our tour started in a room telling us about different regions of wine in CA and some history on Mondavi. We went out to the demo vineyard and was told about the vines and harvesting. We went into the cellar and saw wine fermenting in hugh barrels and then went to where the barrels are stored to sit for a couple of years. We ended the tour in a room with a huge dining table for a sit down tasting of 3 wines plus a port. The tour group was 16 people and went 1.5 hours. I thought it was a little too long. Our group like to ask questions though.

Cakebread - We chose to go here since their wine is usually expensive in the stores. This was probably our favorite winery on this trip. We had a 2pm reservation. When you turn into the place, you are stopped by a guy that has a list with your name on it. After checking in, we were given a glass of wine while we waited for everyone to get together. Our tour guide took us in to see their barrels and up to a room overlooking vineyards to have a sit down tasting. We had 5 more wines. For someone that doesn't like Pinot Noir, I have to say their 2006 was pretty good. We really liked their wine. And, we got to keep our glass that has Cakebread etching. I'd have to say this was probably the best tasting experience on this trip. It's only $10 pp and you get information, a small tour, several pours and you get to keep the glass.

We had dinner at Bottega (Yelp Review)

**Things to remember when wine tasting in Napa Valley: drink water, eat, and don't visit too many in one day. We brought a collapsible cooler with us and carried water and food in it. I thought tasting at 3 wineries a day was plenty! You can always visit wineries without tasting like we did at Artesa or share tastings, which we did at Van Der Heyden and PlumpJack.