Redwoods

We took a trip to the Redwoods for President's Day. It usually rains a lot up on the North Coast (about 5 hours north of San Francisco), but the weather forecast looked great. We spent 3 nights in Eureka, and did some day hikes along the coast and into the different Redwood parks. The first hike took us to Fern Canyon, which by itself was fairly disappointing. But there was almost nobody on the trail, and we hiked through this great Redwood Forest surrounded by the 300 feet tall giants for 4 hours in awe! The light plays through the trees, and you feel like you're in a different world; amazing:



I brought my "real" camera for this trip, so these pictures are made by Sabine (nice job). The height of the trees is hard to capture, but here's a try:




It is sad to know that these trees were once present along the majority of the coastline until humanity thought they would make great building materials. Some of the trees are more than 2,000 years old.

The area is also very popular with elk, who hang out in groups and are protected within all the park lands. They are used to cars and visitors, so you can get pretty close from within your vehicle:


The next day we hiked around in some more redwood groves, especially the Ladybird Johnson Grove where the National Park was dedicated was very nice:




We also went to the Coast, where it was very cold and foggy. It was low tide, so we went tide pooling and saw some interesting sea creatures, including this sea star:

Elephant Seals Video

I think I got the video thing to work, check out these little films that I took with my digital photo camera. The first one is from one semi-alpha bull chasing the other one after they had been trading threats for a while:



The next one is the alpha bull trying to mate with one of his harem ladies, unsuccessfully :-)

Elephant Seals

Today we went and watched elephant seals in the Ano Nuevo State Reserve, which is on the Pacific Coast about 40 miles south of San Francisco. They come to the Reserve every winter to give birth as well as re-produce, and there is limited access for visitors to keep the animals wild. The males are extremely territorial and fight non-stop to ensure that their genes will make it to the next generation. Some of the explanations made us realize how human behavior is related to that :-) The males have harems which they try to protect from other males. The females hang out on the beach and nurse their new-borns, but shortly after they have given birth, they are ready to reproduce. That makes for an interesting setting, with the pups still nursing and the alpha males looking to mate. The females then leave their pups after about 4 weeks, and, after loosing about 30% of their body weight due to nursing, try to regain their weight. In the meantime, the fertilized egg remains dormant until they are back to their strength, at which point their pregnancy "starts" again.

It was a rainy day (although it stopped raining when our tour started), which made the seals very active. Here are some impressions. The videos are even more telling, I just need to figure out how to minimize their size.

Brown pelicans were scanning the water for food.


These juveniles were checking us out; we could walk up to about 25 feet from them; they don't have the developed nose yet, and look a little funny......


Except for the pups, none of the seals eats anything while staying in this area (for up to 3 months!), so they are very concerned about their energy use. They will lounge for long periods, and only the absolute necessary movement will be undertaken. The males can weigh up to 5,000 lbs and are 14-16 feet in length, the females weigh up to 2,000 lbs at a length of 10-12 feet. Still, they look very cute with their puppy eyes :-)




Here is a bull trying to impressive the local females with his chest and mating noises, which are amplified through his nose.

A juvenile is checking out the scenery....


Two bulls are fighting in the midst of the colony.


... and the winner is....... Foreplay consists of a bite in the neck, then a brief mating session, ended by her biting his nose.....


Nature is so close, and so beautiful! Here is a link to the Reserve if you want to get some more information:

Ano Nuevo State Reserve

Yosemite Snow

New Year, new resolutions :-) Here is the latest from us. We went to Yosemite to go snowshoeing, something that we have come to enjoy almost more than snowboarding: no crowds, no rush, no lines, no overpriced food. So we went to Yosemite NP, and took a trip from Badger Pass to Dewey Point. Because it was a semi-holiday weekend (MLK day, bankers, government and teachers had Monday off), it was fairly crowded, so the aforementioned did not quite apply. But we took the "most difficult" route to the viewpoint and the crowd was completely gone :-) It was Sabine's first hike after her accident, but she did great, and we got to the lookout fairly early.



We had lunch and enjoyed the view: we could look into the Valley and saw El Capitan and Half Dome (picture is El Capitan, 3000 ft high and the largest piece of granite on the planet):


Some more pictures from the viewpoint during and after lunch:





We got back after a total of 4 hours and were really tired. After a good night's sleep in a local motel, we decided to drive into the valley the next day and walk around some more. The sun came out most of the time, and it was beautiful as always. The rocks in the Merced river were snow-covered, and the reflection of El Capitan in the river looked great:



We took some pictures with our new little monkey tripod that can be tied on tree branches for example (thanks, Michael and Ewa!):


We walked around and saw (small) Yosemite Falls reflect in the river:


From close by, the lower half of the waterfalls looked like it was spring though:


Half Dome looked as beautiful as ever, and although Sabine keeps telling me that the 285724587248 pictures I already have should be enough, I couldn't resist:


On our way back to the car, we saw a little bobcat hiding a few feet from the sidewalk; the local wildlife clearly enjoys the lack of tourist on winter days:

Hot Rods in California

In August, our visitor marathon started and we first welcomed Michael and Ewa, good friends from my hometown Koblenz in Germany. We were very excited to have them here, both had never been to the U.S. before. Of course there is so much to see around here, and I was happy to learn that just one of the weekends that they were in town, happened to be the weekend of the Hot Rods in Pleasanton. Michael is a car freak, so what better place to be for him? It was a very hot weekend, but the trip to Pleasanton did not disappoint us. What beautiful cars....

As if the Hot Rod Show wasn't enough introduction to the American past and present, we stopped for a really nice. yammy BBQ at our friends' Shannon and Brian's house. What was so special about the BBQ? Well, we introduced Micha and Ewa to our new favorite BBQ game of horseshoes and had a phantastic evening.

Triathlon

In sunny Santa Cruz, I finished my first Half Ironman Triathlon yesterday :-) It started at 7:15 in the morning, with the sun barely up, with a 1.2 mile (2 km) swim around the Santa Cruz Pier. John was kind enough to join me and take some pictures; unfortunately Sabine couldn't make it since she was traveling to San Antonio for a conference. This is me at the start with the Boardwalk in the background.


The water wasn't too cold with the wetsuit, although it took a few minutes before I could get a decent breath due to temperature adjustment. As most of you know, I don't like swimming for the lack of scenic enjoyment, so I was doing the breast stroke. It is not the most efficient use of my energy, but I was still able to be faster than 30 people out of 845 participants........ (I suck at swimming). When I finally got out of the water, I had to run a quarter mile to the transition area, where I had to get out of my wetsuit and in my bike gear.


This took me quite a while, as I am pretty clumsy..... But I finally got going on my favorite part, the 56 mile (90 km) bike ride along the beautiful California coast on Highway 1.


It was overcast during the whole ride, and I averaged 20 miles per hour (32 km/h), which I was very excited about.

During the second transition from bike to run I couldn't locate my gear, which was very frustrating. I finally headed out on the half marathon run, 13.1 miles (21 km) along the Santa Cruz coastline.


The sun had come out, and it got fairly warm, so I was happy with all the water stops provided. After 5 hours and 52 minutes, I finally made it to the beach for a grueling finish in the sand.


I was very happy with my time, I finished 458th out of 845 participants, not bad for my first time.

Chicago

In early August we decided to finally use our free Southwest flights that I had accumulated thanks to my work gigs in So-Cal and spent a long weekend in Chicago. I know, August might not be the best time to visit Chicago, but we went nevertheless and learned to appreciate our nice and cool San Francisco summers. Sven had been there before and I had heard a lot of good things about the architecture of the City and how beautiful it was with all the art deco and the lake etc. We were able to get a hotel in downtown and from there we started walking to explore our surroundings... and we walked... a lot....

I was surprised to find the City as clean as it was, I guess there are just less homeless people due to Illinois' really inhuman winters. Water bodies such as rivers and lakes or the ocean always contribute to the quality of life for me so that Chicago scored on that one right a way. We walked along the shores of Lake Michigan where a huge boat party was happening and people were swimming and enjoying the beach.

Again, the architecture is breathtaking and so Sven went a little crazy with taking pictures (specially since he got a new toy: a digital camera). From the Tiffany Dome at the Chicago Cultural Center to the Sears Tower, the Wrigley Building and the Navy Pier as well as the Hancock Center where we enjoyed a bird's eye view of the City at the 96th floor while sipping cocktails, take a look at the pictures and you know what I mean with great architecture.



One of the highlights and a quick and easy way to see the Loop and the great buildings within was a boat tour named the "architectural river cruise" run by the Chicago Architecture Foundation with a very knowledgeable docent explaining the history, significance, and architecture of all riverfront buildings. I highly recommend to check it out.