Just got back from a trip to PCOC, the Pacific Coast Origami Conference in San Francisco, and along with it a fantastic vacation in California. Last time we visited the Bay Area was almost fourteen years ago. Oh oh, what I want to know is, where does the time go?
Jeannie and I flew out from New York on Friday night. Last few times we flew I’ve felt pretty anxious about the whole airport thing, but this time I’ve been so busy with work the last couple months, it was actually a big relief to be hanging around waiting for our flight.
We stayed the first couple of days at a hotel on the peninsula that we knew from previous trips. It was a cute place with a courtyard and giant pots of succulent plants. Saturday we met up with my friend Dazza, who lives in Oakland. He took us to a park near his home with a lake and a very cool botanical garden with all kinds of plants you don’t see back east, and in the middle of that a bonsai garden with carefully grown miniature trees, some of them hundreds of years old. We went back to his place, in a condo complex with all kinds of fun amenities, then out to eat at a really good oriental place with yummy dishes featuring great big rice noodle. I must say, Oakland has become trendy and quite nice since we lived in the bay area in the ’90s, much like Brooklyn. Or maybe I just never had been to the nice parts of Oakland before.
That afternoon we helped Dazza out on a very special beer run. He had ordered several cases of a Polish porter, that apparently is very hard to get, from a wine shop in San Mateo back on the peninsula. So we gave him a lift out there to pick it up. After that we took Dazza for a drive around our old haunts in Silicon Valley in Palo Alto and Redwood City. We went for a hike up to the radio telescope in Parcel B at Stanford, and then a drive-by tour of the office park where Interval Research Corporation used to be, right near the HP campus. Strangely, there’s now camper vans and RVs parked all along Page Mill Road and El Camino Real. One of the most rich and prosperous places in the history of the world full of people living in their vans. At the end we went back to our hotel and Dazza shared a few porter ales with us and we talked on into the night.
Sunday Jeannie and I went up Skyline Road to Sky Londa intending to go for a hike at Windy Hill for a hike. But as the day unfolded it turned rainy. We did a short wet hike up to the summit the view obscured by clouds, and not the long winding one we had in mind. Apparently it was the first rain of the fall. The day before we noticed all the hillsides were yellow with dry grass, a hue you don’t see in the landscapes at home. Since we were already up in the mountains, we thought we’d cross over and see the ocean, where it was not raining. But, being the first rain of the season, there was an accident up ahead (apparently a very bad one, judging from the number of ambulances and fire trucks that passed us), so the road was closed and we had to turn around. There’s only a few roads over the coastal mountains, so we went up to the next one twenty miles away, but it was backed up with traffic too. So we decided instead to light out for our next destination, Lake Tahoe up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one of our favorite places in California. It was raining pretty heavy for most of the trip, all the way past Sacramento and a ways up into the mountains. In case you’ve never been there, the Sierras are way bigger than anything on the east coast. The pass over the mountains is above 7,000 feet, and the mountaintops are well over 10,000.
We stayed at a really charming hotel right on the beach, and since it was off season they upgraded us to a suite with a fireplace and view of the lake. Very nice. There was a restaurant in walking distance out on a pier with a view of the sunset over the lake. We were still kinda on east coast time, so next morning we watched the sun come up over the lake from our hotel room. We took a walk on the beach, where I found a massive pinecone from a ponderosa pine, which must have just fallen and washed up on the shore. The main activity of the day was to hike up to Eagle Lake in the Desolation Wilderness Area, above Emerald Bay. This is beautiful forest and mountains with great views. It was a pretty big hike, over 3 hours, and 800 feet vertical, about 5 miles of very rocky terrain. Afterwards we went into town to the area of the base of the Heavenly gondola, right near the Nevada border, which is all built up compared to last time we were there. That evening we went to the casino, but the scene there was beat.
Next day we drove to Yosemite National Park, another one of our favorite places in California. This was another long drive thru the mountains. We took the back way thru Nevada, past Lake Mead where Kamasi Washington did one of his album covers. The last half of the trip was into Yosemite via Tioga Pass, which gets above 10,000 feet. We stopped at a scenic overlook where you could see Half Dome far away. We have a picture from that spot with the kids when they were 10 and 7 or so, last time we passed that way. After alot more driving thru winding mountain roads we arrived at Mariposa Grove, home of the giant sequoia redwoods. These are the larges trees in the world, and grow over 300 feet tall and over 30 feet across at the base. They’re thousands of years old.
We had expected to get lunch there, but instead things were under construction and there was no food, the road was closed, the parking was two miles away and the tram wasn’t running. I guess it’s good that they’re redoing access to the area with an eye toward forest conservation, but it added 4 miles and several hundred vertical feet to the hike. By the time we reached the area where the parking lot used to be, Jeannie was pretty tired and had to sit down for a while. Luckily, we met some kind fellow travelers who shared some trail mix with us, and our energy rebounded. We got to talking and the dude was a Consumer Reports super fan, and was asking me about the auctions they have for the used cars they test, and if I could get him in on it. The redwoods themselves were amazing and the whole glade had spiritual vibe that reminded me of La Familia Cathedral in Barcelona. The kind of thing you just can’t capture in photographs. Overall the hike was about 4 hours, 6 miles and over 600 feet vertical, but not nearly as stony.
We were staying at the Yosemite Valle Lodge, and the was another hour drive back the way we came (Yosemite is huge). This is the first time we stayed in the park in a building with solid walls and running water. By the time we got there it was dark. Had excellent cocktails and steak and wine at the bar and restaurant there. The breakfast place had for some reason computerized kiosks where you order food instead of telling a person what you want. However, some food was not on the menu, so when I wanted a banana they just gave me one cuz no one could figure out how much it cost or how to pay for it. I can hardly wait for the fad of having computers everywhere in situations where human interaction works perfectly well breaks and starts to recede.
Anyway, the main hike that day was up the valley towards Vernal Falls and Nevada falls. Interestingly, the first mile or two of the trail was paved, which made it faster. Last time we were here it was pretty natural, dirt with some stony sections. The middle part was still like this. The last part before the falls was a huge uplift that was mainly stairs made of hewn and stacked up natural rock, a serious Cirith Ungol vibe, but in a beautiful forest, not an orc-infested wasteland. Naturally, going down was harder than going up. This was the longest hike yet, over 7 miles and nearly 1400 feet vertical.
Next day we left the mountains and drove back to San Francisco. This was the most adventuresome drive yet, another long and windy one, with one memorable section descending several thousand feet in just a few miles. Had to go like ten miles per hours thru endless switchbacks. I feel like this may be where they filmed the opening scene of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. We made it safely back across the central valley and thru the Livermore Pass (the windmills have grown quite a bit in the last twenty years) and finally over the bay. We made another attempt to get out to the ocean and this time we were successful. We went out to Half Moon bay, where we found a burrito place and got our lunch to go, and ate yummy California burritos on the beach. We walked around a while and stuck our toes in the Pacific, then drove up the US 1 coastal highway thru Pacifica to San Francisco. We dropped off our rental car and checked into the hotel for the origami convention, and immediately met some friends in the lobby.
But that’s a whole ‘nuther adventure.
