I did come home frothing after seeing an offending slogan and posted on facebook. Some of the ideas from this post are from my funny peeps there, and are duly attributed with their first initial.

Bumper Stickers that I hate:

Electoral

I am an anarchist. I do not believe that voting actually works. Publicizing that you vote for someone that I fundamentally do not trust fails to impress me.  It is kind of rubbing my nose in how bad the system is.  Additionally, as N- so eloquently said, “Girl I am with you… Mainly that people don’t take the political ones off after the election…Go Dukakis! :)”   You know those crusty looking worn away ones that are either half chipped off or so faded you can barely read them…

My Dog is Smarter than Your Honor Student

Why dis people that are all proud of their kids? Okay, you like your dog, a lot.  It isn’t really funny and it certainly isn’t true.  I see that the parent of the honor student is making themselves vulnerable for some sort of a class attack. They are almost inevitably middle class white people driving a Subaru Outback less than 2 years old.  You, on the other hand, with your beat up red pickup expose yourself as a young, unattached guy (well, you are attached to your co-pilot dog) from Connecticut who will probably be driving your kid around in an Outback in less than 10 years.

Do No Harm

Just explain this. It is on a car, which is basically a harm machine.  You can just add any sort of environmental message to this part of my list.

The Mystery Spot

I went to the Mystery Spot, when I was 8. Isn’t that when we all went? My favorite part was the painting that had eyes that followed you while I walked in the room. Second favorite was water that ran up hill. I stopped being charmed by this little gimmick shack when I was 9.  But I must not be all cool and retro.

A fish of any kind

If you have a desire to compete with Christianity, more power to you…but it isn’t funny anymore.

Bumper Stickers that get a pass:

Cheney-Voldemort ‘08

Even though I usually don’t like Electoral stickers, this one is funny AND true.

My Other Car is a…

You’ve got a schtick and you are excited about it, there is nothing there to offend anyone.  That is cool, dude. I would love nothing more than to see you hanging 10 down Shattuck Avenue someday.

Hang up and Drive

We’re all thinking it, anyways.

Found cache, Lost car

A little self-deprecation is always appreciated.  Considering this has happened to me more than once when I have wandered away from my car, with my nose in  my GPS…and the fact that this seems pretty hilarious, this one gives me a chuckle.

As long as you are riding my ass, at least you can pull my hair

Okay, so not only does this get a pass, but it may go down as the best bumper sticker I’ve ever heard of. Thanks S-…hahahaha.  If kids weren’t required to sit in the backseat, it sure would be a good intro to the birds and the bees.

ShareThis

I am not a huge traveler, but a combination of factors has made the call of a few places that I have always wanted to go too loud to ignore.  The fact that J- and I will likely be parents again sometime during the next year and will not be able to travel for while after that, cheap air prices and an accumulation of flyer miles has me doing my small-town-girl version of jetsetting for the next few months.

I also have a theory that some places are going down.  The economy, the environment…they may be irreversibly changed and I want to see them now:

Glacier National Park

Well, okay, in this case, it isn’t actually MY theory that Glacier National Park is going down, it is pretty well supported scientifically that the glaciers are melting.  And even the most conservative folks are now pretty much on board with this.

Actually, it looks like I missed the heyday of seeing the glaciers of Montana.  Even my parents did.  Still, I have had several reports from friends over the years that this is one of the best places that they have seen and it has long been on my list of places to see.

Enter my caching friend Binky del Mar, who moved to northern Idaho not too long ago.  Binky is one of my few female caching partners and I love that about her.  It takes a special kind of lady to cache. One that is comfortable on her hands and knees, looking under dumpsters. One that is more interested in 1) finding the cache and 2) the story she will be able to tell later than 1) how difficult it is or 2) how dirty and gross it is.

Visiting Binky is the perfect opportunity to head up to this great area and visit 2 states that are new for me.  Binky and I are going on a caching extravaganza between Spokane, WA, Sandpoint, ID and Glacier National Park, MT for 4 days.

Las Vegas, The Strip

It is a bit ridiculous

that I from California and have never been to Las Vegas.  I can’t even tell you how many times that I have been to Reno.  Because I don’t know, I’m not sure that I would be able to count.  Being from Sacramento, that is what we did…we went to Reno.

The draw of Las Vegas has grown in the last 10 years as it has become more upscale and I have become well, uh…more upscale.  Hearing about the art, architecture and shows, seeing Anthony Bourdain’s pleasure while eating at Buchon were all part of the draw. The lights and fireworks and the fake Venice and Paris. I know, it’s kitschy, but it’s fun!  Not to mention that they have caches, like every other place on the map. And it is yet a whole other state that I can add to my “states cached” map.

I began looking at air/hotel packages and seeing deals because I just needed a getaway and didn’t want to deal with a long flight or drive.  Then, I heard about the decline in business there and realized that I have no faith that the economy will get better any time soon, and places like swanky Vegas hotels are going to be some of the first to go down, bigtime.  After a few months of looking, I decided to take the plunge and prices had dropped. I couldn’t imagine them going lower.

Vegas is so overdeveloped, with no solid basis for the economy of decadence, other than some weekend traffic from LA.  I know that Vegas will always be there, but in what condition?  Already many of the more “family-friendly” attractions have disappeared, what will go next?  When will it sink below the level of seediness that it was when I was a child? I am imagining a ghost town of these posh hotels, turned vacant, hauntingly empty, guarded and almost post-apocalyptic.

So, this is how my few months of somewhat opulent splurging has come about. I want to get it while the getting is good.

ShareThis

Enter poison oak.  I had gotten poison oak a couple of times after owning the woods for many years, thinking that I was immune.  Well, you know the school of thought that says the more you are exposed to it, the worse your allergy becomes?  I am a believer.  It started with getting a rash in an area of contact and later became something that spread quickly to areas of my body that were completely covered.  Not only that, but I became so sensitive that I would have no direct contact with it, wipe my dogs down when I got home and I would still get it.  My favorite story is that I did brush against it and got it through my shirt.  I washed the shirt and I got it again.  This actually happened 4 more times until I washed it with tecnu (it was one of my favorite shirts) and could again wear it without consequence.  (Tecnu really is amazing, folks. Apparently, nobody really knows why it works. But IMHO, it is a miracle. If I know I have been exposed to PO and wash immediately with when I get home, I do NOT get a rash!)

In late 2007, I did a bunch of web research about building immunity since I could not imagine giving up geocaching or hiking in the hills.  Being in the hills for long, sometimes all day walks was part of my identity; it is what I did for myself to feel like myself.  I began taking rhus tox homeopathically on my own.

Along the way, I had seen the webpage for a local homeopath who treated poison oak. When I saw his name again in a Sierra Club magazine, I decided to make the call.  He was fantastic, but unfortunately…it didn’t work.  We tried everything and it only seemed to get worse.  I decided the only thing that I could do was cold turkey it. No more hills at all. I wasn’t going to be exposed and neither were my dogs.

Meanwhile, I had several other skin outbreaks that I assumed were  a fungus.  They were itchy and scaly (some areas worse than others). I treated them as such and put anti-fungal cream on. Ate endless raw garlic, grapefruit seed extract and mostly cut sugars out.  It, too ONLY GOT WORSE!  I had treated fungus on my own several times, so I knew something was amiss.  I was at my wits end at this point and went to a dermatologist.  He felt it was a clear cut case of psoriasis.  He took a biopsy (this is now sometime in 2008) and since things like this are never really simple for me, it went through a number of different tests because it did show markers of a rare kind of lymphoma.  In the end, they decided that it was psoriasis and the steroid cream that they prescribed worked. The dermatologist said that psoriasis can run many different courses in people and that it was very common for someone my age getting it for the first time to just go away again.

End of story?  Of course not.

I never really thought of myself as vain until I got a rash on my face.  For most of 2009, my face was somewhere between dry- irritated and swollen- red-oozing.   I was very surprised how much it disturbed me and how self-conscious I became. Using a topical steroid would help, but only for a week or so.  Eventually, my skin became reactive to metal, I had trouble wearing my glasses and my wedding ring.  Although psoriasis typically spares the face, my dermatologist and I both attributed my issues to that, for lack of any better explanation.

I tried a few things to help including changing my facial products and accupuncture, but when my face was better, it didn’t seem to last long and I was beginning to feel more dependent on steroids.  I began to wonder if what I was dealing with was eczema and not a product of psoriasis.  I thought back to all of they lifestyle and diet changes that I have underwent about the same time that I started having issues with my face.  After a bit of research I found this:

The most common food triggers for eczema are eggs, milk, peanuts, soy, and wheat. Among these, eggs are probably associated the most strongly with eczema.

Well, I hate to give such a complicated story a anti-climatic ending, but I think I am allergic to eggs.  About two weeks ago, I eliminated them from my diet almost completely and my skin has been remarkably improved.  It is still too soon to tell whether it will stay improved, but it has not felt this good in some time, especially for this long of a time.

ShareThis

Day 1: We left town in the late morning, stopping by Peets for some Fair Trade ground coffee. At a roadside produce stand in Manteca, we bought Doradita’s potato chips from El Monte, CA, locally grown nuts, blueberries and cherries along with some other treats.

We arrived at the house, which we expected to be a tract townhome, since we looked at a map and saw that it a huge complex. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. Even though the place is a gated community (and huge) there were obvious differences between the places and a huge amount of space between each one. Plus, there are many vacant lots, which adds to the effect of open space. About 20 minutes after we arrived, we noticed a baby deer about 5 feet away from the garage.

We decided to go to dinner and the grocery store that night. Dinner was at the Iron Door Saloon, the oldest bar in California. I discovered before the trip that it was actually owned by the family of a friend, who happened to be working the night that we went.

But first, we arrived around 4pm and dinner wasn’t to start until 5. We had already spent a few minutes looking around the tiny town. Not being shoppers, there wasn’t much to entice us. It was time for some geocaching! I had thought that I had seen a cache in town when I was researching, but maybe it had been archived. We headed East, toward Yosemite and started grabbing one by one, as long as they were close to Hwy 120. We visited a Hanging Tree, which apparently had killed many folks back in the gold rush days. We grabbed a couple of others when I saw that we were near one called Spelunkelite, with a terrain difficulty of 4. Well, I was wearing a dress and clogs to go out to dinner and have been having back problems, so I knew it was a sketchy proposition, but still couldn’t resist a cave. There were many warnings in the cache description about having 2 flashlights and having to crouch and being very careful. It also had a nudge in the cache description to the area that the cache was. Unfortunately, it also suggested the number of steps required to get the cache. When we arrived at the described area, we hadn’t really had to crouch, didn’t really need a light and had taken less than half of the steps that the cache page recommended. So, we thought we had to keep going in order to find it. J- started to, but decided he was not up for doing it alone. This part DID involve crouching and one light per person (when we only had one). I went instead. When I got to the recommended number of steps, I started looking to no avail, so I went about 20 steps further, found nothing and looked all the way back. I was still looking when I arrived at Jeff and found it about 10 feet from where he had been sitting. I had made the mistake of carrying my purse over my shoulder and my hat in my hand. I had dropped my hat at some point and my purse (which wasn’t in great shape before) was a little wet and covered in cave dust. My hands were VERY dirty.

So, back at the restaurant at 6 we washed up and the menu looked great. We kept it simple with fish and chips, salad and water. The fish and chips were well done with a light beer-type batter. We had been disappointed recently when going to a new shi-shi southern restaurant in Oakland with the breading, so we were relieved to like this.

The next day, we invented a new term: “Bourdain-worthy”. We have read several of Anthony Bourdain books and also enjoyed several of his TV shows. His taste are not necessarily hoity-toity, although one of the things he enjoys is when a chef devotes particular attention the his dishes that makes them perfect. We were in Sonora and stopped at the Blackthorn Grill, which focuses on local and sustainably grown food. One of the dishes that we ordered was the special: Grilled Citrus and Cilantro half game hen salad. Definitely Bourdain-worthy. This piece of meat was cooked so absolutely perfectly. The skin was crispy, salty and a little sour. It was served on a bed of arugula and we couldn’t imagine that piece of meat being seasoned, cooked or serve any better.

Later in the trip, we went to Rainbow Pools. A client had told me about this place and it is such a find. It is a day use area maintained by the National Forest Service and is mostly a place for locals, there is no sign or anything. It is a wonderful spot off the Tuolumne that has a swimming hole and cliff jumping. When we were there, a summer camp was there and it was people-watching at its finest.

On our last day, we went to visit the spectacular Yosemite Valley. We ate at The Grill in Yosemite Village. The meal was not great, but it could have been worse. The did offer a veggie burger (although I can’t recommend it) and they served sweet potato fries instead of french fries, which was a nice touch.

buy xanax without prescription Where Can I Buy Ambien Online ativan for panic disorder
“buy ativan 2.5 mg from india” Xanax For Sale No Prescription “online sales valium”
buy ambien online without rx? Order Xanax Onlineno Prescription buy alprazolam online
cheap ativan buy pharmacy online now Xanax Online Consultation Shipped Ups cheapest alprazolam!
buy valium phillipines Buy Valium Online Canada Buy alprazolam buy xanax without prescription 227.
buy valium us pharmacy Xanax Buy No Prescription buy non genaric ambien online,
xanax order online no prescription Cod Phone Order Oklahoma Ambien xanax cheap no prescription
xanax sales online, Generic Ambien Cr what color is generic xanax
buy xanax without perscription Buy Diazepam 10mg cheap alprazolam order now no prescription
ambien fedex Cheap Xanax And Phendimetrazine discount generic xanax
buy brand name xanax Ambien Cr Buy Cheapest xanax pills super cheap valium 510.
ativan lorazepam buy cheap ativan online Ambien Generic Brand Lorazepam on line fedex ativan by fedex 377.
ambien cr buy fed ex delivery Valium For Sale buy alprazolam from mexico
cheap generic overseas ativan Cheap Online Diazepam U S Pharmacy cheap ambien without prescription?
buy diazepam saturday delivery Order Xanax No Prescription buy valium madre natura
Ativan for sale lorazepam sale 614. Lorazepam 2.5 Sublingual Medspricedright Site Post cheap diazepam
xanax generic price Search Results Wholesale Mg Xanax order ambien from canada
cheapest xanax no prescription Buy Lorazepam Online xanax peach pill!
valium cheap? Sublingual Lorazepam Medspricedright all about buy xanax!
buying xanax without presciption Xanax Cod Fedex ambien blue pill
xanax compare prices Order Diazepam No Prescription prices for sleep aid ambien
valium online order Order Buy Valium Online buy xanax from india no rx?
buy cheap ambien Ordering Alprazolam Without Prescription pharmacies that send xanax by fedex!
order xanax online! Cheap Lorazepam Online lorazepam depresses hiccups,
buy ativan from discount store? Order Valium Pay With Mastercard cheap ativan online discount pharmacy
buy xanax by electronic check Ativan Prices ativan for panic disorder
“buy ativan 2.5 mg from india” Buy Valium Buy “online sales valium”
buy ambien online without rx? Buy Lorazepam Without Prescription buy alprazolam online
cheap ativan buy pharmacy online now Names Of Generic Xanax cheapest alprazolam!

ShareThis

I found out about the place because one of my geocoins was placed here by someone.  We sought three caches.  Vya’s Adventure, Hiding in Wait…, and Back In Black (Stone). The first and the last were pretty easy with clues in hand.  Apparently the second provides a photo to help that my palm pilot can’t download.  That was pretty tough, although my new gps pegged the coordinates as right on. Still, J- and I were tromping all up and down a crazy hillside when my gps was basically sitting on it the whole time. I got close to it at one point, but had taken the wrong access point and turned around.

I hope to go back soon and I will definitely bring my camera this time and post pictures.  Check out photos by sdarken on Back in Black (Stone).

ShareThis

So, I decided to organize my own trip to burn off those Thanksgiving pounds as long as the rain was still staying away. I found out that a controlled burn was happening, which would slightly detour our route. It also cut out one of the twelve caches required for getting to a final cache 50sumtin’s Big Basin Park HQ to Sea Baker’s Dozen! . Luckily, we picked up another cache on our detour and Bud was kind enough to let us count it towards our 12…we missed a clue, but it didn’t prove to affect our deduction of the correct coordinates for the final.

I expected it to be a really long day because of the mileage and because we would be stopping frequently for geocaches along the way. So, we met at Waddell Beach at 6:30 am, just as th sun was rising. It took just under an hour to get to the trailhead. Google maps routed me on a gated, dirt road. Luckily, I checked my facts and saw that the only accessible route was way over through Bonny Doon.

We left our car just after 7:30 am. There was a controlled burn happening and soon things got pretty smokey. The rangers kept commenting on what an early start we got. I was surprised since we are getting into the shortest days of the year.

As we walked along the fire road, we were shocked at how much smoke we saw and then we started actually seeing flames. As we turned off the fire road, we were greeted by a whole group of good looking, hairy twenty-something fire crew members. We descended the very steep trail (I believe that it was Sunset trail) and were within feet of burning redwoods.

For me, there were three major highlights of the trip. First off, This may be only the second time (the first being the first time that I did this hike) that I have been in so much contiguous redwood forest, including some old growth. I would get moments that my focus on whatever I was doing would just break and I would have a perfect picture in front of me. Everything still, except for a small creek moving next to me. The goliath trees just everywhere providing shelter, warmth and a soft forest floor of their needles.

The second highlight was Berry Creek Falls. Although the water was certainly not high at this time of year after a very dry fall, it was absolutely jaw-dropping nonetheless. There is something primordially peaceful about watching a waterfall…a place where the beauty and force of nature overcomes anything manmade.

The final highlight was up to the western ridge of the park. We had to go up there for our final cache in the Baker’s Dozen. We debated for a while at a previous fork that we had seen that had confusing signs. It turns out that the trail is only used seasonally and we were off season, so we had to do an out and back from close to the end of the trail. After doing 12 miles, it is not an easy thing to be at the end of the trail and look back and up at where you need to go. We took a nice break and regained our energy. The trip up was well worth it.

It was a narrow, canyon side trail that made a slow ascent and brought us through a completely different eco-system than we had seen during the rest of that day. We took an unmarked turnoff into a memorial grove that had simply stunning views out the canyon opening to the ocean.

We arrived back to the car at Waddell Beach at about 3:45, I think. Being intrepid cachers, we decided to cache along the ocean on our way back and also check out a cache that had been recommended to us along Empire Grade Rd. our cache total was 21.

The last one was off a very rough trail with steep terrain. We had a short sweet view of the valley below (Scott’s Valley?) and scrambled back up with our headlamps blazing. I think that I was the last one over the guard-rail entrance, my leg swinging over, literally, as we lost our last bit of light. We had a challenging drive back to pick up the second vehicle and drove out into Saratoga on the super-windy and narro 236. We were happily greeted by a holiday-lit and bustling downtown Saratoga.

ShareThis