The skies opened and we got a chance to do a last minute trip to enjoy the day. The plan was to drive all the way to Limekiln State Park (which is almost near San Simeon, 3 hours away), spend time at the falls, see the stacked stones and stop at McWay falls on the way back.
Have to always put a picture up front in the blog so it gets picked up for the preview in other media! Really wanted this to be the pic for this post and possibly a summary for the entire year! Our friend Priya took this shot.. watching the waves even if for a few minutes and just enjoying the moment is what life is about!
We didn't know that all trails in Limekiln were closed and the falls were inaccessible. It was a bummer.. so we just took a photo at the entrance and turned back.
There was also a landslide which we had to cross. We waited for a good 15 minutes for the area to clear and started back.
We thoroughly enjoyed the vista points on scenic Route 1 on the way back. You can see some of the pano's.
There is this private beach between McWay and Limekiln that also has a waterfall going into the ocean. We were told there are only 4 falls that go to the sea in the continental US and two of them were in CA and they were McWay and Alamere.. guess that is not true!
The view of the bridges and Route 1 itself as it bends around the mountain side is in itself a treat to watch!
We stopped at Mcway falls, ate a packed lunch and found that here too landslides had made the path restricted. we could only go so far on the trail. Luckily we could get a view of the falls.
We walked through this tunnel to see McWay falls and I got a rush of old memories.. of taking a picture of Jr. with her cousin as they walked through the same tunnel many many years ago!
The photo and smiling faces is the trip highlight..
We decided to stop by Paddington Cove on the way back. It was a really good trek down and we enjoyed the little waterfalls, the coves and the water going into the sea! The photo below is from the creek that goes to McWay falls.. we were a crisp red after being in the sun for an hour..
The walk to the cove is along the creek and there are many little falls that make it beautiful!
Then I tried to do Yoga on the edge..
and almost slipped trying a toe stand
and the group let out a shriek.. I promptly balanced myself and said "that is my last try" .. and the group was happy again..
It was six plus hours of driving between 7:30AM-4PM and some hiking but was worth it all!
These days the kids don't show up for hiking trips and that is that..
2021 has taught me to accept a lot of things.. Hope 2022 is a better year!
Here is to a healthy and happy new year to all of you!
It has been years since we went to Disney. Given we have been there almost every year, this has been a long break. There have been many Disney or Disney related posts in this blog...
We wanted to go somewhere, anywhere as a family. The only place the Kids agreed to go was Disney! The happiest place on Earth! We had hotel reservations but no confirmed tickets till the last minute. The way it works now is that you check availability on that day and if it opens up, book the tickets. It is total headcount based per San's information! The Disney main park is booked solid. We did get an opening for the California Adventure on Friday for a Sunday visit. We took it!
The road trip itself was fun. I got to drive and drive and clear my head after a long long time. Long drives are cathartic in their own way. The family has a playlist of songs I don't like and I am sure they wanted to play those so I will not try to sing along.
Disney has changed a lot post COVID. First the prices. We expect that from Disney and were not grumpy. Disney tickets are now variable pricing like United. So no surprises there!
Next the mask requirement and enforcement. There are signs everywhere, things being said on the speakers and by the folks who are working the lines, but... there are a lot of folks who simply are not following mask guidelines. So you go at your own risk! Again, expected to see this given the demographic in the US.
Then the demographic of the crowd. Normally we see a colorful crowd. This time the crowd we saw was less than 20% of colored folks. Most of the folks who were working in the restraurants, kiosks and the folks responsible for line management were black/Hispanic/Asian. The walking, riding crowd was not. We saw 4 desi families total from 8AM-4:30 PM in that park! That was interesting. Maybe all the desi folks are risk averse and don't want to risk COVID by coming to Disney? Maybe the ticket prices are ridiculous that not many follks think it is worth the trip? Don't know!
Then there was the fast pass..we could reserve a fixed time window for a ride and go at that time to save time instead of standing in line. There were restrictions but it still worked. You needed some planning skills. Now there is no fast pass. It has been replaced with the "lightning pass". You pay 20 bucks a person and you get to go through this line for the top three rides in the park. Then there is another 20 bucks a person pass for all other rides. Think "special Darshan" queue at Thirupathi..
Initially we thought maybe maybe we could go to guest services and switch the ticket from California Adventure to the main park, but it was not meant to be. So after spending 30 minutes after park opened to try switch tickets, we ended up walking into the California Adventure park. The minute we walked in though, the kids eyes lit up. The Avengers theme area was in this park!! We always wanted to see this since it opened. So we ran to the first big ride and realized the wait time was 90 minutes. We stood in line for 105 minutes to see a 3 minute ride. It was great, but we promptly bought the lighting pass and the other paid fast pass. Then we covered the next two top rides in the next hour. As soon as you use the pass, it lets you book the next ride on the App.
we just love this "Radiator springs" area which Jr. used to call "Gladiator springs".. the attention to detail to the Cars movie series is just amazing!
Between the big rides the kids would take us to the little rides in each area!
The extra money was well spent as we pretty much covered everything by 4:30 PM. The last ride we went to was the Guardians of the Galaxy (which used to be the drop tower now converted to a new themed ride).. except.. except.. instead of one drop, now there is 7 drops and you just keep going up and down for 3 minutes. Haven't screamed like this in a long time and my fingers were white from holding on to the arm grip the whole time. The funny thing is that the lightning pass for this had a wait of 30 minutes. Guess by 4PM everyone paid for a lightning pass! The regular line wait time was 2 hours!! Reminded me of United Airlines again "All group 1 ready to board!" and you see 400 out of the 420 people on the plane line up as group 1! It is just a question of time when they introduce the Thunderbolt pass which is 100 bucks a person and an escort will walk you to the ride and sit you there and put the seat buckle... you heard it here first!
Was telling the family "Thirupathila kooda mottai adichcha sandanam freeaa kudupaanga.. Disneyla sandanam sold separately!" (even in Thirupathi, when you go tonsure your head, they will give you sandalwood paste for free to apply on the head.. if it was up to Disney, they will charge for that separately). They are trying to make up for the park closure during COVID by charging for everything.
The kids were extremely helpful in using the App, planning, making us run from place to place, ordering food on the App, etc. It is great when your kids are old enough and they tell you what to do! Told them that for the first time they moved from the liability to asset column and they both rolled their eyes!
We just decided that there was enough exposure to unmasked people for the day, or for our life and walked out at 4:30. The small parade was fun to watch on the way out!
You can no longer take pictures in front of special props. For every such place, there is a Disney Photographer and a line! They take the picture and you pay for it.. we just clicked pictures as we walked along.. with our phones. For once I didn't even edit these pictures from the phone to post in the blog!
We did not stay back for the fireworks. We had seen it the previous night from the restaurant where we had dinner. The kids were like "we covered everything thanks to the paid pass! Let's go get some rest!"
On the whole it was a nice day, pleasant weather, great rides. The food at Disney sucks and it has gotten worse over the years and the unmasked crowd is a little scary.
They have redone a lot of rides and it was good to go on these.
We will still recommend Disney to anyone as it is guranteed fun for the day! The happiest place on earth is accessible only to folks who can shell out a lot of money at short notice and the more you fork out, the happier you are!
A video of the day.. Have captured the cars thing here.. the kids wanted to go on it again.. so we took the single rider option where we are all separated and went back to the line for 30 minutes and did it twice. This is one ride that makes the California adventure worth it! Truly amazing!
Disney is still king.. just need to improve on the food options, especially for vegetarians! No better place to enjoy the holiday spirit!
Had a nice dinner at a local Italian place to made up for the bad food in the afternoon, and called it a day!
Our drive back was interesting thanks to a great rest stop!
2021 definitely wrapped up nicely with this one day adventure!
The best part for me was to watch the girls talk to each other all day, jointly plan what to do next.. it was like watching them be kids again and that alone was worth all the driving!
This weekend hiking plan was to go to Rhus ridge. Rest of group has already gone there.. so it was supposed to be a new trip for me. It was 34 degrees out and there was ice on our windshield.. so by the time we defrosted and drove there, the parking lot( which has only 10 spots) was full! This was at 7:15 in the morning in freezing weather. Enough folks beat us to that parking lot.
Then we tried to go to PG&E and that had no parking. So the plan changed again and we decided to go to Maisie's peak. It is in our local preserve. We drove back home, parked and hiked up!
We spent a good 2 1/2 hours hiking, drinking tea at the top and chatting on the way. Next time the plan is to take some samosas to the top and have it with the tea.. and leave earlier.. freezing or not!
Some pictures..
To make it interesting and slightly longer, we went up and down three little lookout points. Maisie's, Hunters and Srisie's point. Word in the local circles is that people used to mistake Srisie's point as Maisie's point for many years. Imagine going to keezh Thirupathi and thinking you have gone to Thirupathi?! It is a beautiful lookout.. but not the main deal! Thought this blog should capture such special moments..
Enjoyed the weekend morning hike! Need to start earlier and defrost for the next hike!
We finally made it to Alamere falls. It has been on our wish list for a long time and we were planning to do this with the full group sometime in spring.. A last minute pre birthday request from wife to give this a shot, made me say yes!
This was the longest hike for me in post Covid times. I am told that I have now graduated to try Black mountain and Falls rest. We will see about that.. have managed to pull the muscle on the left leg and have been limping around since yesterday. Hopefully the hot room will heal this quickly!
Started at 6AM sharp from Cupertino and drove almost 2 hours to the Palomarin trailhead which is past the Point Reyes bird observatory. Got to see the sunrise just as we were crossing SFO into Marin on the golden gate bridge!
Drove past a lot of scenery and started hiking exactly at 8AM...
We hiked 12+ miles over 5+ hours with a 20 min eating break at the falls. There is a shortcut where you can climb down and climb back up to the falls, but it is not recommended by the park service. Lots of accidents in that section as the shale rocks break into little pieces on the cliff sides.
We decided to go through the coastal scenic route, bypass only the last 0.1 miles to avoid the Wildcat campground and walk along the beach the last mile to the falls. As fate would have it the tide was closing in on us even as we made it to the falls.
We hike past two lakes, Bass lake and Pelican lake. They were both really beautiful!
We crossed the creek like three times and the rushing water was good to hear.. last few hikes, we didn't see any water in the creeks!
You can see Point Reyes from the high point on the Coastal trail (if you take the shortcut you will miss this!)
The fog, the water spray from the falls, the overlapping cliff faces.. the approach to the falls on the beach side is simply breathtaking..
But, there is a catch.. We had to time it and run through stretches to avoid the waves as they came all the way to the cliff faces!
Have to try long exposure shots when we are a waterfall !!!
Could not get all three upper falls in one shot with long exposure.. too many people. With photoshop averaging, can try it.. but don't have the time. There is a definite chance we will revisit this while we are still able to climb up.. will give it a shot then!
Given we had wet feet and pants, there was no way to walk back along the beach and we decided to climb up to make it back to the trail. This made the 14 mile hike into a 12 mile hike which was also welcome! It was challenging to climb back up but we were glad. Got to see the three upper falls (which you can only if you do this climbing up business). You can see it in the video below..
Some more photos..
this was my attempt at an artistic shillouette..
Once back in the parking lot, we got to eat a packed lunch, have some hot tea and drove back for 2 1/2 hours as we got caught both in local traffic around Stinson beach and San Francisco city.
We expected to see more people given it was a long weekend. There was not much of a crowd. We practially had the beach to ourselves on the way to the falls and were met by 10 people, all of them had taken the shortcut climb down!
Strongly recommend this place! However, try to read tide timings and go along the beach to the falls and climb up to see the upper falls. It is worth it. That said, wear the right shoes and gloves if possible so you don't cut your hands while climbing up. Also it would be a good idea to switch to sandals for the walk along the beach!
Strongly recommend this for a day trip, on the right day with the right tide!
Last time we visited the Pinnacles National monument turned National park, was in 2013 and it was in May. We promised that if we ever return, it will be in cooler time of the year!
Our hiking group has been planning this for a long time and given my new penchant for singing, the trip was interesting for me. I was in a live singing class (more on that later) from 4:30-6 AM and we left Cupertino at 6:30AM and came back at 4PM. The place is almost an hour and 45 minutes away. We climbed 2200 feet and walked for 3 hours with almost an hour for photo breaks and lunch!
It was beautiful.. clear skies, cool weather and just before it got really hot we were on the way down.
As a bonus, we got to see three California condors, one at close range.. wish I had lugged my camera bag to capture close ups of the Condor.. these days I am just going with the iPhone.. the conversation and the laughs on the hike are the star attractions as are the views from the top..
Got some artistic shots, thanks to a crappy work phone which has some lens defect!! Still, the laughs were the highlight!
We did get to see the sun rise through the fog as we drove to Pinnacles.. it was amazing.. it was like we were driving into a fire!
the rock formations here are amazing!
beautiful views from the top..
and we kept going..
we saw three of the condors.. one came within 200 feet and sat on this tree.. Thinking of going to a personal iPhone 13 and have separation of work and home numbers.. if you use your phone for more than work, it makes sense to have one with a better camera!
The condors are amazing to watch in close range! Majestic birds! The way they take off effortlessly and cover distances is a treat to watch!
we were debating the logic of using pinnacles in plural.. maybe it is pinnacles because the top has four or five little humps?! that is still being debated within the group!
giving the finger to everyone in the park... this rock sticks out!
One thing that is not obvious on the zoomed out nature shots is that when you walk on the trail, every rock is very colorful.. it is like walking through fall colors on rocks..
The "we were here!" photo..
My cap was wet.. had to make a bandana out of my handkerchief to avoid sweat from going to my eyes! It was reasonably strenous at places because we were stop and go.. to make up for photo break times, we had to walk faster.
Once we get to the scout lookout, it is all downhill from there..
walked past more scenic points..
and to the reservoir trail.. we saw what was possibly the largest natural ganesha in rock on the way down.. pullaiyaar rock rocks!!
the place is popular for mountain climbing.. we watched folks climb.. you can see one in the right on the top in this photo..
after a brief break at the reservoir, we continued down through the bat caves..
it was nice and cool in the caves! no bats, but saw nicely camouflaged lizards.
We came out, had a nice lunch at a picnic table and drove back. It was a day well spent!
A few panoramic views..
and a video of the trip..
Strongly recommend this park for a day trip in fall. If you start early enough, you can have a fun time and be back down by lunch time! Kids can make it too if you go at a steady pace!
Friday, December 31, 2021 at 1:08PM ;)
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