Sorry, no snow this week after all. I bailed on snow-camping at Lassen Volcanic National Park because the weather was too, well, snowy. I ended up goofing off most of the weekend, but did manage to get one hike in…
California state parks
A quest for snow
by tmangan • February 19, 2006 • 1 Comment
The snow we got over the weekend was heaviest above 3,000 feet. Since I’m all about the snow outings these days I decided the place to go to see more snow was Mount Diablo, which summits at over 3800 feet.…
A few hours on the Falls Trail
by tmangan • February 12, 2006 • 1 Comment
Mount Diablo State Park seems aptly named if you visit in summer, when dry, sunny afternoons in the high 90s are a fixture of the environment. It’s another world, however, in winter and spring, when the hills green up and…
A chilly day at Mount Diablo
by tmangan • December 4, 2005 • 0 Comments
We got a bunch of rain last week; typically that’ll knock a lot of the crud out of the air and create amazing vistas from the hills around the Bay Area. Sunday morning we could see San Francisco from the…
On the rocks
by tmangan • October 30, 2005 • 0 Comments
Castle Rock State Park is a gorgeous little place in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It’s not especially large and the main trail is a nice five-mile loop with just enough hills to give you the sense that you’ve gotten some…
Too hot, too hilly: A day at Henry Coe
by tmangan • August 29, 2005 • 0 Comments
If you read up on Henry Coe State Park, the first things you’ll learn are a) the hills are hell; and b) hiking there in late summer is madness. I was one of a few brave fools to hit the…
Hot day at Angel Island
by tmangan • July 26, 2005 • 0 Comments
Operative adjective of the past few days has been "scalding." Well, scalding by our standards. It’s not like the brutal 95/95 (degrees/humidity) that we’ve known in Tampa or the insufferable 103/92 we’ve known in Peoria, but even when there are…
Touched by an Angel
by tmangan • June 5, 2005 • 1 Comment
Angel Island is this hunk of rock poking up out of the middle of San Francisco Bay. The island’s a state park now, but over the years it’s been home to an anti-aircraft missile base, a prisoner of war camp…
Among the giant trees
by tmangan • May 22, 2005 • 0 Comments
Big Basin Redwoods State Park is one of those places where you walk into the woods thinking of trees as expendable implements of human intent like any right-thinking Republican but you walk out of the woods a confirmed tree-hugger. The…