Dew magic - Gray whale cove trail, Pacifica

We have hiked Gray whale cove trail once before. We were inexperienced hikers then, confusing bike paths with hiking trails and taking on steep slippery slopes without hiking shoes.

Decided to revisit the trail this weekend with some friends who are not part of our usual hiking group. There were no views. The place was completely foggy once we hit the cloud line. The skies cleared up only when we almost came down. Definitely recommend this as an afternoon hike if scenery is your thing.

That said, our hikes are all about the joking, giggling ladies, taking pictures of whatever comes our way and Chaifies when we reach the summit. This time we had Chai, cookies, pakoras… they all taste divine after hiking a few hours , standing in condensed dew and sweat on a windy summit. There were many bench photos..

The dew and condensed mist made magic. The flowers, the webs, buds.. I was just taking macro shots everytime we stopped. Here are the pictures..

A few other shots..

a short video clip of the foggy experience

Blogging can be fast if you keep at it.. editing photos and videos, uploading them and doing a write up used to be so fast for me.. after a three month gap, takes me longer.. like my yoga teachers say “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Glad to be writing again.

This hike is tricky at places but strongly recommend with good hiking shoes, having all trails (still two members missed a cut off and kept walking) and taking the safer options. The two folks who kept talking and walked almost a mile ahead and turned back were made to stand up on the bench and do thoppikaranam for ummachchi. The offenders faces have been blocked out like in Indian news media so the blog audience cannot know who they are..

Now I have to be more careful on the trails and not get lost. As the person who is most likely to get lost, this new protocol might actually be bad for me!

Go try this hike! We have. never gone down the beach on the other side of the freeway yet. On our next attempt definitely plan to do that.

Another hike for the long weekend

Saturday was 2 back to back yoga classes and a 9 mile hike. Sunday was just one yoga class followed by a 6 mile hike. We are slowing things down.. by Tuesday physical activity will be restricted to a yoga class if we are lucky and some walking up and down office buildings..

This time we went to Quicksilver with a different group, thanks to the little one.

We have hiked this park before but this time there was a lot of water in the creek. The colors were vibrant after the rains but the trail was a little bit tricky with slush covering most of it.

We got to see a lot of turkey vultures and red tail hawks as well as a solitary deer.

Enjoyed the hike..

A few pictures..

A short video highlight reel..

We are fortunate to have these lovely places to hike in within a 30 minute driving distance!

Red Tail trail to Arastradero Lake

This weekend we hiked to a place that we have missed all these years. Right here in Palo Alto there is the Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve with 10+ miles of trails and a cute and beautiful lake in the middle of it.

We also happened to pick a beautiful morning to hike here. The skies were just lit yesterday!! The sunbeams and purple clouds were a treat to the eyes!

There were lots of benches in the park..

that is probably our most beautiful “bench photo” to date ! The rest from this trail are here.. including a few cheesy ones of us making a heart. I was upset with San on the way to the park.. so our friends were giving me a hard time for being so finicky.. At times my OCD tendencies get the better of me. She is my world and I cannot stay mad at her for more than 3 minutes tops. At this point I am pretty much her pet dog or something like that.. <vent>still one needs to fold all other fingers in when making the heart and it has to be presented parallel to the plane of the camera.. </vent"> (that should be a legit html tag!)

Not possible to be angry with this one..

A few vertical shots of this lake..

A gallery of pictures of the beautiful skies and landscapes from the days hike.. We hiked only 6 miles as I had to do some unplanned last minute singing with the local Smule group! It was a packed day of activities for a regular saturday!

Surprisingly did not take any videoclips on this hike!

We will definitely revisit this place and cover the few trails that we missed within this park. The bay area is just amazing. There are still a lot of trails we haven’t hiked, given we hike new trails all the time.

Every year there is a well planned long grand hike. Last years highlight was the grand canyon! Hoping this years grand hike will be something to write about!