Sunday, March 25, 2007

What has the NIA been up too?

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything to my blog. This does not mean that I have not been doing things, just that I have been lazy to post anything. To start things off again here is a post I was supposed to finish and put up in January when my Uncle Mike and Aunt Patti were in town:


My uncle and aunt from Colorado were in town last weekend. My dad made the trip south from Humboldt county to hang out as well, which means the stage was set to do some hiking! The last time the three of us were out and about was back in August when I was in Colorado for my cousin's wedding.

I was only able to hang out with the fam on Saturday but everyone had gotten in to town the previous Thursday. After a little discussion about where we wanted to go, it was decided that we would head on up to Marin county and try to hit a couple of waterfalls in the Mt Tamalpias watershed. We started by picking a waterfall called Dawn Falls in the Baltimore Canyon Open Space preserve.

My grandpa dropped my dad & uncle off at my house just before 7am on Saturday morning. After a slow start on my part we were off and running by a little after 7:30. We drove north up and across the Golden Gate Bridge to the trailhead. Parking was a bit crowded but thankfully I was able to grab a space. I was glad that I had an all wheel drive car because my dad was a bit slow on the signal that I was running out of road for my front right wheel - meaning I did run out of road and my wheel was hanging out over open space before he told me to stop.


The trail runs along a creek and that morning it was really really cold out there. We hiked along for a while and soon came to a fork in the trail. My dad was positive that we needed to cross the creek and head uphill. After following that trail for a bit we determined that since it was going away from the creek and didn't look like it was heading for any waterfalls we turned around to go back and stay on the trail that continued along the creek. We did get to see a woodpecker which I though was cool. When we finally made it to Dawn Falls I was pretty impressed. The falls drops off a ledge in a free fall which is very nice - sort of looks like a Hawaii waterfall.

After we returned to the car we took a drive through the Marin watershed. We drove over Alpine dam at Alpine Lake and then up to the top of Mt Tamalias. The view was beautiful from up there. There was no fog and we could see for miles. At this point we were all pretty hungry so we made our way down to Stinson Beach to have fish and chips at the Surfer's Grill right on the beach. Very good fish and chips! After that it was the return drive home to share our tale!



I will be posting more of my adventures in the past two and a half months soon!

2 comments:

Treats said...

Fish and Chips!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Sweet chips and fish from Stinson. Better than a poke in the eye.