Lisa Krieger’s latest Wanderlust report covers ground trodden many times over around here. She starts at Grant County Park and ranges over to the Skyline Boulevard open space preserves. While the pioneers who toiled on our old family farms are…
Blogs
Mass link payback
by tom • November 17, 2008 • 13 Comments
Ever so often I get around to updating my list of “A-List Hiking Bloggers” over there on the right-hand side. I’ve added a bunch in the past few days — if yours isn’t there or you know of another hiker’s…
Blogs
Oakland hiker’s blog: Dilettante
by tom • November 17, 2008 • 5 Comments
Rebecca Bond is a graphic artist with a get-out-under-the-trees bent. Just last Friday she was haunting Redwood Regional Park, one of the few big Bay Area parks I have yet to check out. Starting out on a ridge at the…
Orienteering
An idiot’s guide to orienteering
by tom • November 16, 2008 • 6 Comments
You’ve no doubt heard of the pastime of orienteering, in which you dress up in your finest hiking regalia, navigate miles of hairpin-turn mountain roads to an appointed trailhead, hit the trail with maps designed to get you lost, and…
Wildlife
Weasels at Point Reyes
by tom • November 16, 2008 • 5 Comments
I’m talking real weasels, not the metaphorical kind who always seem to be in the men’s room when it’s their turn to buy a round of beers. I’ve never seen one in the wild, or even on somebody’s blog, until…
Ed Levin County Park
Bonus hike at Ed Levin County Park
by tom • November 12, 2008 • 15 Comments
I saw the little black angus calf wandering about, baying for its mom, about 100 yards down the trail. I wondered where mom was because the only time a cow will trouble itself to stop grazing is if you block…
Gear
Hiking gear: the best birthday present
by tom • November 10, 2008 • 7 Comments
Every year my mom mails me a birthday check, which I promptly squander on hiking gear. This way I get to pretend like I’m a smelly, unshaven (but way-cool) outdoors dude who’s so broke he still needs checks from home…
Wildlife
Excellent wildlife shots
by tom • November 7, 2008 • 3 Comments
Stumbled across a great photo stream on Flickr kept by a guy who posts under the handle fitznatty. Here’s a slideshow of his stuff: More great shots at his web site. A fave: his encounter with a mountain lion in…
In the news
About those benches
by tom • November 6, 2008 • 0 Comments
You don’t have to be Wallace Stegner to get a bench named after you in the Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve, and a fat wallet alone won’t do it, either. In case you wondering how one gets one of those benches,…