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Thirsty Thursday: What a View

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: 2007 Lockwood Reserve Red Blend

Its Thirsty Thursday once again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. I was pretty excited to share one of our adventures from our recent trip to Switzerland, but a busy week and work topped off with a dog who made friends with a skunk on the trail run tonight means I haven't had time to put together a good photo story from our adventures in the Alps just yet.

So tonight I share just one photo. Its one of my favorites from the Alps. It makes me happy. We'd just hiked to the top of Faulhorn above Grindelwald. The view was great, as was the company. Terry. Eiger. Mönch. Jungfrau. Awesome.

Stay tuned for more photos from the Alps. And in the mean time, get out there and do something this weekend...and if you're in California, try to stay dry.

Thirsty Thursday: We Were Here

Rambler: Beth (photo from Terry)
Drink at Hand: Brazin Old Vine Zin

An abbreviated version of Thirsty Thursday tonight because, let's face it, we're ridiculously jet lagged from our ridiculously awesome trip to Switzerland. You'll see a lot of Switzerland in the coming weeks, but tonight I'll just share one image.

On our last day in the Bernese Oberland region, we did a hike from Grindelwald First to Faulhorn via Winterwanderroute 50. Yes, the Swiss actually groom their hiking trails in winter (more on that in a later post), making the incredibly amazing beauty of the Alps accessible to a wide range of winter activity seekers. Pretty cool! On our hike back down from Faulhorn, I found this fun little bump to scramble up, and speed hiker Terry turned around to snap the photo. Look for the little yellow speck in the middle of the photo...that's me! The peak on the left in the frame is Rötihorn.

So while we recover from our Euro adventure, we hope all of you get out there and do something awesome this weekend!

Massey Monday: Needs Her Space

A few weeks ago we took Massey along, as we do nearly every time, for a weekend hike. She's used to our weekend runs and hikes in places like Ft Ord...big, wide-open fields where she is free to run her cute little bobbed tail off. The Juan Bautista de Anza Trail isn't one of those. Private pastures neatly delineated with one of the most impeccably taunt barbed-wire fences I've ever seen forced Miss Mas to stay on the double track trail for the duration of the stroll. She did sneak under once. Just once. She looks like a wild buckin' bronco with her new-found freedom. Wild and free. You'd never believe that she fell straight to sleep when we got back to the car.

Thirsty Thursday Bonus Edition: Snowy Tree

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: 2010 Hallauer Blauburgunder (no idea, but we had to buy a screw top since Terry decided to leave the corkscrew in his carry-on luggage)

That's right, a bonus Thirsty Thursday...and we've gone international. I thought I'd share a quick snap I took from the train between Luzern und Interlaken...the windows on the train opened! Pretty sweet, and well, just plain pretty. Pretty, as in, absolutely freakin' beautiful!

Thirsty Thursday: The Bluest Blue Water You'll Ever See

Rambler: Terry
Drink in Hand: 2007 Scheid Reserve Chardonnay (take a moment and appreciate this one) 

A short post this week, but the drink in hand is amazing. If you ever want to see the blue water, I mean really blue, head down to New Zealand and find yourself a glacier lake. We found this one on the south island while driving to whatever was making the clouds blue (yes, the water was so blue it was turning the clouds blue).

Massey Monday: Hike Patrol

One of the best parts of hiking with Massey is simply watching her. She's pretty funny...always has to be in front, goes into huntress mode all the time, and will suddenly dart off into the brush after birds or bunnies or who knows what. Those darts almost always start with the tilt of the head and a curious look.

Thirsty Thursday: Winter Trees

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: 2010 Tolosa Grenache Rosé

Thirsty Thursday here again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. I dug into the archives for this week's edition, focusing on a subject that is so easy to overlook.

We were lucky enough to go home to Iowa for this past Christmas. Despite the freezing temperatures, yes, I did say lucky to go. I don't often get home to visit the family, so its always nice to see everyone. Besides visiting family, however, Iowa does have some beautiful scenes. That's right, I said Iowa is beautiful. Maybe its not the obvious beauty of wildflower-filled meadows with snow-capped mountains in the background or a frenetic scene of crashing waves and rugged rocks of an ocean shoreline, but still beautiful. I think since I don't get back that often I appreciate the beauty of the rural landscape more now than I did growing up.

While living in the mild coastal climate here in California is great, I do miss seasons. One of the things I miss most from the Midwest is the amazing dawn and dusk color gradient of the sky during winter. The lack of humidity brings out an amazing palate of pinks and purples and indigo at sunrise and sunset. The colors are so intensely vibrant on a crystal clear morning or evening. Frigidly cold, but vibrantly beautiful. I don't see those colors here at home. I also love the shape of the naked trees during winter. The trees look so different in winter, stripped of leaves, twigs twitching in the lightest breezes.

Enjoy some images snapped on a very cold day at my parent's house. My fingers may have suffered some minor frostbite, but I didn't mind. I couldn't resist the stark skeletons and brilliant colors.

Get out there and find something beautiful this weekend!

Massey Monday: Crazy Adventures

So, what can I say...Massey is a great puppy (I mean dog). She puts up with our crazy adventures, like driving two or more hours to some trail that we don't even know if it really exists. Driving to the tops of mountains and joining somewhat random wineries. But at the end of the day, I think she likes our crazy adventures. Here's a few shots of her on one of them. Perhaps some of these shots will make a Thirsty Thursday sometime.

Thirsty Thursday: New Idria Adventure

Rambler: Beth with some photo contributions from Terry
Drink at Hand: Rail to Rail Chardonnay

Thirsty Thursday here again. Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. This week's post is an interesting one. Its the story of a trip we took about a month ago, but had to keep the story in quarantine until we were sure we weren't going to suffer any ill effects...and on that note, I'll dive right in.

About a year ago, we took a little afternoon road trip through rural Monterey and San Benito Counties. It was a gorgeous drive with some interesting photo opportunities. So when we still had a day left on a Borrow Lenses super awesome camera rental for a wedding we shot on New Year's Eve, we decided to go explore that loop again, only this time I pulled out my trusty (so I thought) DeLorme California Gazetteer. I found a new "red" road, so I was sure we had a fail-proof route through the rural backcountry of San Benito County. I mean, most of the paved roads that I knew of were red on that map, so I figured we were safe. Off we went!

The day started off pretty typical with barns and fences and stuff. We headed into the Clear Creek Management Area, which had signs that said "Emergency Closure" but we never found an actual closed sign or a gate stopping us, so we just kept going. Soon we found ourselves driving through this odd lunar-esque landscape, which it turns out was an abandoned asbestos mine. Awesome (sarcastic tone there). At this point we were on this crazy double track fire road with no room to turn around, so we just kept following the road up and up and up. So much for that nice "red road" in the gazetteer. Terry noted that there were a lot of pine cones, as he said, "just chillin'" along the road. I don't know what else a pine cone does after it falls from a tree...perhaps Terry was inhaling too much asbestos dust. We popped over the top of the Diablo Mountain Range with a sweet view across the Central Valley to the Sierra (tough to see, but they were out there). We'd already made it this far, so why not keep going down our "red road"? Besides, according to the signs, there was a little town called New Idria just ahead. So down we went. The road quickly became more "intense". While the drive up the west side of this 4x4 park had been relatively straightforward, the east side descent was a 4x4 death road...barely wide enough for Ellie with big rocks, 1,000' drop-offs, and mud holes. While Ellie is equipped with 4-wheel drive, I would call her a 4x4. It just kept getting worse. The concerns about inhaling asbestos and dying quickly faded as we plowed on down this death road. My favorite part was the double track with the ditch down the middle. Terry had to get out and guide me. No idea how he snapped a photo of me smiling at this point. Every time we made it through some sketchy section, something more ridiculously loomed around the next corner. Then we saw this tree. We stopped and snapped photos and said, wow, that's a cool tree. How does it even hold itself up? Little did we know that as we rounded that corner we would say the same thing about our car! Just around that corner was a sharp little turn where most of the trail had washed down a 500' ravine, leaving me to drive at a ridiculously scary angle above the drop-off. I think there are permanent finger dents in the steering wheel and a wrinkle in the driver's side seat upholstery from puckering. I'm not even exaggerating. Death Road. We finally made it on down the Death Road to the town of New Idria. I was more than ready for a break. As it turns out, New Idria is a ghost town at the site of an abandoned mercury mine. Just to recap, the road trip had now visited an abandoned asbestos mine and an abandoned mercury mine. Awesome (there's that sarcastic tone again). Given my obsession with photographing old, rundown buildings, I was pretty excited about our little mining town find and quickly found my groove snapping photos of the weird stuff you find left behind in a ghost town. The town had a creepy sort of quiet quality to it. Just as I was snapping that last photo of the random 1970s cancer book (weird, right?), Terry calls out to me in a very concerned, very worried voice. "Hey hon, I don't think we should be here. We need to go now!" I'm thinking to myself, huh? Terry always wants to push the the limits of not trespassing to questionable levels. I was confused as to why he thought we suddenly need to leave the public road from which we were taking photos right this minute. Keep in mind that Terry speaks absolutely no Spanish, other than "pelota aqui por favor" which he had to know while playing soccer around here. He saw this sign in Spanish. He figured the words "virus mortal de Hanta", "mortalidad del 50%", and "no anti-virus" couldn't be good. Then we found the English version. While neither of us knew what the hell the Hanta virus was, we decided we should move along and Google it later. So we trudged back to the car, across a creek with water of a very strange shade of reddish-orange, and headed out of the death town. Fitting that the death road would end at the death ghost town. (Side note: later that night we we got home we Googled the crap out of Hanta virus and New Idria mine. The virus is deadly, transmitted through rodent feces, and rarely reported in the US while the New Idria mine is on the EPA's top 10 list of most dangerous post-industrial environmental disaster areas...awesome). Fortunately the road turned back to pavement and wandered through some pretty pastured hillsides...what we expected to see along the entirety of our trip through San Benito County. Lots of cows, an encounter with a local, and not a single other car for miles and miles. The sun was quickly bringing the day to an end, and we figured we were out of luck for finding a good sunset spot. Then out of no where the sky suddenly turned unbelievably colorful--pinks and oranges that we rarely see at sunset. Unique cloud formations. We pulled over and started shooting. Now it was dark and we were still 2 hours from home. We headed home and monitored ourselves for signs of Hanta for the next few weeks. We survived the death adventure! Unfortunately, this was one of those "get out there and do something" adventures that I can't really recommend to anyone, but we did get a couple of cool photos out of it...and one crazy story!

Thirsty Thursday: Featured Warrior

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: 2008 Query Grenache

Another Thirsty Thursday here again...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. Thirsty Thursdays are all about getting out there and doing something. In that light, tonight we highlight a true Thirsty Thursday warrior.

Terry and I were out on our after-work trail run tonight when his phone rings. Its my sister, and considering she is known for her total randomness, I was surprised Terry answered...especially considering we were about 50 yards into the ridiculous climb up the Goat Trail. As I'm listening to one side of this conversation, its becoming more bizarre by the second. My sister needed to know how to use the "Find iPhone" app because she had to go find some guy very quickly and didn't know how. Terry hangs up and says "you should probably call your dad when we get done. He crashed his bike." Umm, huh?

So I finish the run and call Dad to get the full story. He told me he crashed his bike. But that's only the beginning of the story. Keep in mind that my family lives in Iowa. Its winter. Its freakin' cold. Gravel road riding is all the rage in the Midwest these days. I guess that's what happens when you want to hit the dirt but don't have swoopy singletrack through mossy forests. My dad says, well, some guys got together tonight to do an indoor training session, but I wanted to get outside, so me and another guy went out to ride outside. Turns out that besides gravel, the rural roads of Iowa currently have a little snow and ice on them right now, too. He hit a patch of ice and went down. I'm waiting for the official verdict, but initial diagnosis by my nurse-in-training sister when she arrived on the scene is a broken collarbone. I told him he's officially a true cyclist now...and to go by a wedgie pillow.

Its incredible and a bummer all the same time is that this happened to Dad tonight. About a year ago he took his morbidly obese self (that was the actual medical term, not mine) to the hospital and had gastic bypass surgery. About 7 or 8 months later he'd lost about 125 pounds (that's an entire Beth)...and is still going strong. Over the last few months, he's really gotten into cycling and has competed very well at indoor roller races (Midwestern winters, who knows!) across the Iowa. He's even rode himself into good enough shape to ride with the "A" ride during the week. Its pretty cool to see his progress and enthusiasm about being fit. Plus, Mom has gotten in shape, too. My parents could probably drop me on a ride now!

So after all those words, just a couple of photos from a ride in Colorado this summer. It was great to ride along with the family instead of waiting for them. Heal up quick Dad! We've got mountains to climb!

And the rest of you...get out there and do something this weekend! Just keep the rubber side down.