We start out again.....by getting Lost



Jori driving across the Golden Gate Bridge

We finally managed to escape the gravitational pull of the Bay Area (Watch out, you go to visit a few months and somehow find that you are still there half a decade later!) and began our bus trip home to New Hampshire on the afternoon of June 11th. After packing and boxing and many sad farewells, we shed a few nostalgic tears as we made our way through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge to route 101 N and the start of our cross country adventure (Part II).

Our first destination: The Lost Coast for a few days of hiking with a couple of good friends.

We've had a few outdoor adventures with Pete and Mary in the past (most notably the infamous misadventure to Snow Creek Cabin a few winters ago, which is a story for another blog) and we quickly settled into that easy rhythm that you find with great exploring companions. We were off to tackle the several hours of rutted and bumpy dirt road driving required to deposit their car at one end of the trail and our bus at the other in preparation for our thru hike. You might not guess from looking at it, but the bus makes a decent off road vehicle as long as there are not low hanging branches and you take it slow.

The Lost Coast is a section of the California shore deemed too rugged to build the ocean-skirting Route 1 along, which has left it beautifully undeveloped and crowd free. We hiked a section of roughly 20 miles between Needle Point and Usal Campground, spending 3 nights on the trail with a “rest day” left for relaxation and exploration in the middle of a couple of longer day hikes. The trail took us up over the sides of tree covered mountains, through brushy meadows, into deep valleys, across bubbling streams, and onto sunny sandy beaches. The crashing of the blue Pacific was rarely far off.

When not hiking, we explored beach caves, sat in the warm sand, took some chilly dips in the rivers and ocean, sat around the campfire, and enjoyed the finest in campsite gastronomy (no prepackaged hiking food for this crew!). We managed to avoid the itchy unpleasantness of poison oak with some post-hike Technu and cold river plunges. Plus, we didn’t get lost when the trail occasionally disappeared into the bushes, but all of us had a few thorn bush scratches and nettle stings at the end of the trip as testaments to our wilderness adventures and overall badass-ness.

We ended our backpacking venture with beer and burgers on the drive back to our starting point and the little blue boose, where we said goodbye to Pete and Mary and the reality of the long adventure in front of us began to sink in!

Testing to see if we can still access our old blog. If you're subscribed, we'll start posting about our journey back home in the next few weeks. -B&J

Mariposa Grove / Willow House

So, in case you haven't figured it out yet, we're settling in the San Francisco Bay area for a while. We found a co-housing community focused on permaculture gardening called Mariposa Grove (In case you're wondering it is not a commune, just a place where people have torn down the fences between their yards and started gardening together. They have a small communal space for shared meals, meetings and socializing and many of them are in the process of buying their individual apartments as condos). We are parked in the driveway of the "Willow House" (there's a large willow in the backyard) and use their bathroom and kitchen, while continuing to use the bus as our bedroom. It's pretty warm here now, so its not a bad arrangement. Mariposa Grove is located in North Oakland (near Berkeley, where people don't get shot as much) and an easy 20 minute BART ride (the BART is like the "T" or "metro") under the bay to San Francisco.


Wine Country and San Francisco

Once back in good old Fairfield we were surprised to find that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen had turned into our own personal resident tour guides. Over the course of a few weeks we went to both Sonoma and Napa to taste at the finest vineyards, we toured great Fairfield establishments such as the Jelly-Belly and Annheiser-Busch factories (both providing free samples of their latest products). We checked out art galleries and sculptures, enjoyed fine dining (Bob's specialties of course), and were given a tour of Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and the Marin area. When they brought us up for a view of the bridge, Betsy and I both had the feeling of wow, we finally made it, we're in San Francisco, since this had been a major goal of the trip.





Karen and Bob have been the most wonderful, hospitable, and generous people. Letting us stay in their house for at least a month all together, and even offering up their condo for whenever we want to use it, including when Betsy's mom and sister come in to visit. Not only all that, but they are really fun people to hang out with too. We've already been back to visit since "moving out" and I'm sure we'll be back often. It's been fun to hang out with my cousin Chris and his girlfriend Katie as well. They took the ferry over to visit us in the city last weekend and we checked out Fisherman's Wharf and Haight Ashbury with them. It was alot of fun. Hopefully we'll be able to go out camping with them some time soon too, and try out Chris' new motor bike. . . if he lets us.

Whoo. So we're almost caught up with the blog. Next post, we'll tell you about the place we found to live out here and the job hunt. We need to download some pics first though. Until then, keep those comments coming. We love to read them

Mommy Nic, Daddy James, and Baby Oona

After Tahoe, my Aunt and Uncle were nice enough to drop Betsy and I off at Betsy's friend, Nicole's house so we could visit with her, her husband James, and their one year old daughter, Oona, who is very, very cute and a pretty mellow baby. She's mastered crawling and is beginning to stand up. She loves hanging out at the park, playing with toys, walks in strollers, and long car rides. Thus, we did a lot of these things and generally hung out with the baby. We also got to spend alot of time with Nic and James and did fun things like go to a local brewery for beer sampling (I liked the stout), walked around a lake at a state park up in the mountains, and had lots of picnics. We spent about a week with them in Placerville before heading back to Karen and Bob's. Here are bunch of pictures of Oona and friends.

Family Fun in Snow and Sun

The trip from Joshua Tree up to my Aunt Karen and Uncle Bob's house in Fairfield, CA was not very interesting or fun. We hopped from parking lot to road side rest stop for four days as I came down with the flu. Most of the time I spent huddled under the covers shivering and blowing my nose, or when we had to drive for a while, I wrapped up in Betsy's warm sleeping bag and sat in the copilots seat, trying to sleep. The most interesting part was coming through the passes in the sierras and seeing all the windmils. There were thousands of them. See, Californians are smart, they think, hmm. . . wind makes power, wind is free, wind is clean, wind doesn't cause cancer, we should have windmills and they do. Lots of 'em. The picture on the right is just one little section. When we finally arrived at Karen and Bob's it was very nice to have a non-moving bedroom in which to recover. That's pretty much all we did for the first few days we spent with them, for Betsy had come down with the dreaded Joshua Tree campers disease as well. Thus, there aren't really any pictures, cause we mostly layed around and watched golf. In the evenings we mustered up enough energy to eat one of the fabulous meals that Chef Bob created.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Betsy and I were on our feet again. Though still a bit sniffly, we were ready for the much anticipated trip up to Tahoe to meet my parents and brother for a week of skiing in the Sierras. We decided to do this trip instead of christmas presents this year, and none of us had ever skiied anywhere but New England before, so this was a special treat.

When Karen, Bob, Betsy and I arrived in Truckee in a very tightly packed car, it was beginning to lightly snow. By the time we had picked up my cousin Chris and his girlfriend Katie at the train station, gone grocery shopping, and waited for the house we were renting to be ready, there was at least a foot of white powder. Fortunately we only did one 180, and did not go off the road in the process. By the time my parents arrived in the Reno airport that night, a good three feet of snow had fallen. They wisely decided to stay in the airport motel until the next day. The next day it snowed all day as well and by the time the storm blew clear, I think four to five feet had come down. In Tahoe, they don't have plows, they have giant snowblowers.

So after the family all arrived safely and we weathered the storm, of course there was only one thing to do. . . hit the slopes. The mountains here are pretty awesome. I've never skiied places that are just so open, easily going across an entire mountain and back again before hitting the base. And that's just one mountain face out of nine at that resort. There were also a lot of bowls, which were alot of fun, and of course glade skiing is cool. Even the intermediate trails incorporated alot more trees to give you a more woodsy feel below the tree line. My only complaint was the sticky snow. It warmed up to the fifties after the storm and became quite sunny, so sometimes it was a little mash potatoey, and on one occasion, when jumping into powder, my skis stuck and I did a complete summersault, landing on my feet again. That is not an experience I've ever had in freezing cold New England. We also got to meet up with some more family. My cousin Mike just moved to Reno for a job as a resperitory therapist, and his folks were out for a visit at the same time as us, so we managed to catch up with them and do a few runs as well. Mike is a pretty extreme dude, having his own parachute and claiming domination of the mountains around him by saying, "I've done every chute here." FYI, chutes are scary, and if you mess up, you crash into rocks and then slide down a steep, icy cliff. I did one very mellow chute while in Tahoe, it was scary, but fun and I went very slow.

When we weren't skiing, because our legs would have fallen off if we skiied every day, we were finding other ways to play in the snow. Betsy, Kevin and I dug a twenty foot snow tunnel that doubled as an ice slide. Bob built snow sculptures and Chris, Dad and Kevin went on a very scenic snowmobiling trip. (does anyone else think hybrid snowmobiles are a good idea? very quiet so you don't scare wild life and fuel efficient for longer range in the woods). Anyways, I think it's safe to say we all had a blast and will remember this trip for a long time, plus we don't have a bunch of christmas junk to throw away now, and it was nice to see Kevin and the parents again. Here's some more pictures.