When you visit a place more than 20 times..

We visited "The Mystery Spot" in Santa Cruz for the 20+ th time with the BIL family on the way to Monterey beach.

Think I toppped the number of visits list on this group by a wide margin. I was not alone in visiting this place multiple times. There were other folks who were bringing family and friends for the 10th or 14th time.

Still this place never loses the wonder it brings.. you get to experience something different and weird for that 30 minutes. The high school and college kids who act as guides for this 30 minute tour try to one up their jokes and now they have a cafeteria outside as well! So the place is doing well.

we checked the level.. it is still almost the same after 20 years.. not much earth movement! 

Here is BIL doing the MJ thing..

and if you are wondering what happens at the mystery spot... we start walking with a lean without realizing it. the video below says it all..

The outside has some decor added with a couple of cars completely covered in mystery spot stickers and bunch of US flags now and that adds a little color to the entry!

Something tells me we will be visiting this place again in a few years when more guests show up!

Cataract Falls - tough but enjoyable

Last week we made it to Cataract Falls. Had posted the waterfall pictures taken with the long exposure option on the iPhone. Never got the time to write the blog post as work just caught up and kept me busy.

Finally get around to it!

This falls is in the Mount Tamalpais park north of San Francisco. You have to go on the windy Bolinas Fairfax road a fair bit to get to this park. It took us an hour and forty minutes to get there. We parked next to the Alpine lake edge and started walking the trail. There were few other people that day on the trail and it was beautiful. The highlight is this MGR Saroja Devi moment captured on camera!

We went along the creek and were treated to at least 5 falls on the way. Once we went up the trail there is a meadow we end up in where there is a restroom. We took a short break there and decided to do the extended loop through High Marsh trail. This is a trail where only one person can walk on the edge. Single file walking is not a strong suit for our hiking group, but we did reasonably well and were treated to amazing views. 

Then we went on the Kent trail and Helen Markt trails to reach the lake. We had the entire lake to ourselves and took pictures and enjoyed the scenery.

Then the reality hit.. we had come back down to lake level and that meant, going back up to the top and coming down to the parking lot on the other side of the lake in what was the most challengiing climb this group had done to date. We huffed and puffed, called out for mommy, thirupathi Balaji, etc. etc. and at one point walked one step at a time and finally made it towards the parking lot. This was totally doable, but the fact that we had already been hiking up and down for the last 2 1/2 hours made this very challenging. 

Eventually we got the food down to the lake and ate a very late lunch there before the long drive back home.

Thachchi mammu never tasted so good! No, I am kidding. It always tastes good!

We went to the lake front on the logic of "we never know when we will visit this park next or we will ever visit it given we are seeing a new place every week! might as well...".. next time somone in the group starts using that logic.. I am going to have a prepared speech ready with all the talking points!

We did have a great time at the lake and the pictures don't do justice to how beautiful the day was! We should have started an hour early and that would have made it easier for us. 

Cataract falls and Alpine lake get two thumbs up!

Dry Creek Regional park - a hike to remember

Last weekend I was given a surprisingly low estimate for an afternoon hike to a place called Dry creek.. the name was not a best seller. Was also told it was past Fremont and an hours ride away. No shade and mostly dry hills but with a nice view of the bay. 

Was even given an option to bail out of this at first.. San then did what she usually does.. bat her eyelids and make a face about me being sore company and I thought, what the hell! We are going on a Sunday evening so it is not going to be hot by the time we start and we will come down watching the sunset! 

It ended up being one of the best hikes in recent memory, thanks to a surprising bloom of yellow and orange flowers everywhere on the first hillside. Then we ended up crossing the place where all the local Afghanis fly kites and run a flea market of sorts from their suitcases... (we had read about it in Khalid Hosseni's book Kite Runner, but got to see it first hand!) 

It didn't end there. We managed to go up all the way to the rim, catch a view of the rolling green hills, see all the way to SFO and Oakland and crossed a creek to get to a little lake that was beautiful.

The photo below is my attempt at some artistry, trying to catch a shadow of the four of us walking on the rim of a hill that was cast all the way on the other hill..

Then we walk down watching the sunset, while taking pictures!

Only downside was that the sun was on our face the entire time and my face became a bright orange the next day.. and as luck would have it, made it into the hot room the next day and flushed myself inside out with sweat. The Aloe Vera lotion was no longer required! 

a shot of our friends as they came up the hill..

Green never looked this good..the sunset made everything so vibrant!

This was taken at a place called Gossip rock..

kept clicking every 5 minutes as we raced down.. we wanted to get at least close to the parking lot before it got dark. Sunset was 7:30! We had to make it down by 8. Used iPhone flashlights to practically run down the last mile and a half.

and my favorite shot for the evening..

Even for March this was not easy in the heat. We hiked form 5-8 in the evening and were way more tired than any of the previous hikes. So definitely wouldn't go again during the day unless it is in winter and on a cloudy day. The area is pretty barren. So no chance for shade anywhere! We didn't see any kids on the trail either. It was a pretty steep climb that reminded us of the climb to Mission peak. 

Breathtaking views of the bay at sunset. On a cloudy day, it would be even more spectacular.

We keep finding these interesting places within an hour from our place, after living here for more than 2 decades! It took a pandemic for us to explore home! 

SFO-day trip- Painted steps

This is a continuation of yesterday's post on the San Francisco day trip to Presidio Park and the hike on Lover's lane. 

After our lunch at Gracias Madre, we went to visit the Painted steps on 16th avenue also refered to as the Painted Mosaic or Tiled steps. 

This is our second visit the steps and I remembered visiting the steps within a few months after they had just been created and opened to the public. We had visited this with San's cousins family and had a lot of fun taking pictures. Kept searching the blog and found nothing! Then saw a few photos from FB. Then spent an hour trying to figure out why I never posted anything, or if it was one of those things where the submit button was never pressed!

Turns out our first visit was on Labor day of 2014. That 4th of July was my fateful trip to India (the plane with engine failure trip as I call it), followed by a last minute trip to Jaipur, flying to Taiwan with 3 hour window after landing in Mumbai, coming back to bay area only to realize MIL had a cancer scare, presenting at a conference while all this was going on.. it was a rollercoaster of a month and somehow, there was a "post backlog"! This photo stood out!

Looking back we visited the hidden garden stairs which was done in 2013. There are three such tiled steps in SFO. Two around 16th street and one 4 miles away in Lincoln park. We visited the two steps in 16th street yesterday.

The first one goes up from Moraga and 16th up a block. It is beautiful and has no bends. you can see all the way to the top. Once you go to the top, you go right a hundred feet and there is another step that leads up to the next street and a staircase that takes you to the top of that hill. 

The views from this point are amazing! you see the ocean, downtown, the layers of buildings on the hill and it takes your breath away!

This is from the top after climbing the 16th avenue steps. 

Once you go to vista point two roads up you see this..

Once we spent some time at the top, we came back down to 16th Avenue and after walking two blocks, we walked down the hidden garden steps. This one bends around and is also very beautiful. 

Took some pictures on the stairs.. (San did take some pictures of me for a change and that moment was captured!)

We had some homemade tea and snacks, courtesy of our friends and drove back. San Francisco is beautiful and we suburbanites have not explored this big city at all. Having lived here for more than 2 decades, we have come to the realization that there is plenty of sight seeing left to do in SFO!

We can do it, one vista point at a time!

SFO- day trip - Presidio - Lover's lane trail

We had a great time today at SFO. Went with friends to a lot of different places.. First stop was Presidio park. The highlight was Lover's lane..

This photo of a photo in the making was captured by my neighbor and friend. Think she is starting a trend of taking pictures of folks taking pictures during the hikes. I for one, like it! There are not that many candid shots of me in the last few years as I am the one taking pictures all the time. 

Left early from Cupertino, parked next to Inspiration point and caught a view of Alcatraz and everything in that general direction!

From there we walked on the Lover's Lane trail down to Lyon street. Stopped to take pictures on the way. It was such a beautiful and pleasant day and the colors were just vibrant everywhere. The wildflowers were in bloom on every slope giving everything a yellow and orange hue!

that picture made my day! 

This place was just amazing.. eucalytpus trees on both sides and a zig zag trail. The smells, the shadows, everything was perfect!

The trail ends at a gate.. then you have to cross the street and go down some manicured shrub lined steps that end up in a heart at the base. If it was not for alltrails, we would have definitely missed a lot of the stuff! 

I had some fun posing in a relief wall..

This was followed by a walk on the lake trail to see the lake. We were late for lunch, so we did not spend much time there. Just took pictures and rushed back to the parking lot.

Had an amazing lunch at the vegan place on Mission street called Gracias Madre (this is our second trip there, our first was last Valentines day just a month before everything shut down!). How things have changed in a year?! 

From there we went to see more sights.. topic for tomorrows blog.. 

Time to edit some photos..