You all know about The Racetrack. You've seen it in pictures: the cracked earth scraped by trails of surreally moving stones. The majority of the distance to the racetrack is paved road. But the majority of the time spent getting to the racetrack is the slow going of the unpacked, high clearance, 4-wheel drive.
It's been more than half a year since we were back in Death Valley National Park. Then, the temperature was 120 degrees. Today, it is 64 degrees. Perfect.
When it comes the the Super Bowl, many Americans are faced with the question: who's part should I attend or will we host? Rarely is it a question of how. But for two nomads in a truck, we weren't sure how we could drink and watch the most expensive advertisements of the year without having to worry about finding a place to sleep. Last year, we got a hotel room, only to discover that the hotel did not have the channel showing the Super Bowl. We managed to stream it; but it was a hassle. This time, we wanted to find a location that we could watch the game and then roll into our truck for the night. The first, obvious thought was a sports bar. But many bars are not fans of vagrants sleeping in the parking lot. So, that is when we had to start getting creative. That is when we struck upon the casino.
There are so many ecosystems that we have explored but we have never wandered through a natural palm grove. That is, until we hiked along the Thousand palms oasis preserve.
When a friend's plane was delayed two hours, we had time to kill before picking them up from LAX. Instead of camping out* at a Starbucks, we went to the beach.
We walk through a rural neighborhood where lots don't just include the family home but also some assortment of either goats, sheep, donkeys, or horses.
After disappointments such as the blurry grizzly shot in Glacier National Park, it is time to up my photography game with a lens better suited for wildlife photography. Christmas seemed to provide all the remaining inducement needed. So, I got the lens and went to town.
I have been wanting a Dutch oven for quite a while now. Pretty much all of my cooking on the road has been on a cast-iron skillet. But a cast-iron Dutch oven stands to greatly expand our cooking options. So, when asked what I wanted for Christmas, the answer was easy: a Dutch oven.
Sutro is a name that permeates San Francisco. Roads and civic works were named in commemoration of this mining engineer turned Mayor. But of all of these commemorative locations, there is a set that was our favorite place to take visitors when we lived in San Francisco and continues to be one of my go-to stops whenever I'm in town: Sutro Heights And Sutro Baths.
While we were on the other side of the bay, another box on my "to do" list was to hike Mount Tamalpais. The mountain towers over the bay with breathtaking panoramic views. Tamalpais towers 2,576 ft from sea level. It's summit is part of Mount Tamalpais State Park.