Yosemite Day 2

Happy Birthday Steven!

Today we had a lot planned. We woke up and ate cake. Not technically birthday cake, but apple coffee cake I got for free at my knitting group. Then we went for breakfast at the cafeteria place near our room. 

Morning View

Someone doing some passive aggressive protesting...

After breakfast we went to do the lower Yosemite Falls loop. It was a short walk, so we wanted to squeeze it in before our official tour. It was a nice walk, very wet at the end.

Our winter gear proved useful afterall.

The tour was really nice. Since it was cold and raining we had a bus, not the open seat shuttles. We got there early as we tend to do, and had a stop right at the front of the bus. We could see right out the front window, and get off first at all the stops. We really liked our tour guide. There was a lot of interesting information about how Americans have caused problems with the valley. 

Another classic Yosemite View

Deer!

Coyote

After the tour we grabbed our hiking gear and went to check out Mirror Lake. Sadly with the rain it wasn't mirror like as I would have liked. It was still beautiful. The trail there was a mile round trip, so easy hike... Expect we decided to do the walk around the lake too. It isn't just around the lake it was way upstream and the trail became less maintained as we went. It ended up being about 5 miles. My foot hurt in it's formerly broken spot, and my knee was starting to hurt. Despite my being exhausted at the end of this it was a lovely hike. Going out past the quick hike areas was nice. 

Steven proving that his shoes are waterproof.

The first of many makeshift creek crossings.

Steven pondering on a rock. 

Since it was Steven's birthday I made a dinner reservation at the fancy place at the Ahwahnee Hotel. The dining room is really beautiful in the early evening. We dressed up per the dress code. We started out with their onion soup, which was delicious. Steven very unsurprisingly ordered the prime rib roast. I went with the ravioli.  

After all the hiking 15,010 steps, but as we confirmed the next day hiking poles greatly interfere with step count by almost half. I was so tired I fell asleep by 9:30.

Squirrel!

Yosemite Day 1

This year for Steven's birthday I planned a trip to Yosemite. He took the Friday off and we made it a long weekend. The plan was to get up super early spend as much time in Yosemite as possible and then leave Yosemite late Sunday afternoon, just before it got dark. 

We stayed in Curry Village (technically Half Dome Village now due to some complete stupidity), which is what I would call halfway between camping and a hotel. We had a tiny little cabin with two double beds we pushed together to make a normal sized bed, and bathrooms just a short walk away.

Our first stop in the park was Tunnel View. The hiking site I was reading said if you don't have a picture of this people won't believe you went to Yosemite. So, just in case... It was a wonderful view, but a bit crowded. This picture also clearly shows the thunderstorms the weather people predicted... We packed warm clothes for the weather and we a bit concerned about how warm it was when we arrived. 

The next stop was just down the road a bit, Bridalveil Fall. It was very short and easy walk, paved the whole way. This made this hike very crowded too, but easy enough to get our picture taken. We quickly figured out that the nice fancy camera I borrowed from my mother was not going to work for waterfalls. In about 2 seconds the lense was covered in water. Our phones managed well enough. 

Next along the road was the Swinging Bridge and this lovely meadow. We almost missed this because the bridge area came up so fast with no parking. But just up the road was meadow parking, so we stopped there and walked back. I don't know the name of the meadow, but the waterfall is Upper Yosemite Falls. 

Along the walk back I saw a big black bird. Someone who was also photographing this bird said it was a raven. Some googling later confirmed that this person knew what they were talking about. They were a fairly common sight. 

This is the view from under the "Swinging Bridge". It doesn't swing anymore, because they replaced it with a non swinging bridge and didn't bother renaming it. This picture is interesting because one day later it would not be possible to have taken it. It rained so much overnight that the water level went up considerably.

Me poking the water.

Here is the first of many waterfall selfies. After taking this we went on a short walk through the meadow path, hoping to find a scenic route back to where we parked. It was mostly successful.

While waiting for our lunch buzzer from the Ahwahnee to buzz, we took a short walk to check out this little rock thing. (The hotel was renamed, but the buzzer was not.) Steven wanted me to take a picture of him behind it, but I took a bunch and google GIFed it for me. He also climbed up to the top of it. 

After lunch we still had some time before we could check into our room. So we went to check out the museums and science places. We ended up getting tickets to see a movie later that evening. The movie was visually stunning, but it was narrated by a climbing guy who sounded like he was stoned. 

Yarn Basket!

Apparently arrowheads are projectile points now...

Despite being in the car for 3 hours I managed to get 14466 steps. This wasn't even with dedicated hiking.

Home Cooked

Another cookbook on how to cook the old fashioned way and why it is so much better. This seems to be a trend, but one I am enjoying. 

This book had some things I will never eat, unless I am literally starving to death and for some reason it is the only option. Maybe some people are into them, maybe they do taste good, but it just isn't something I'm going to eat. On this list I did put the blood orange salad, but I recognize that more people will eat that than roasted chicken hearts. 

Ignoring the food I consider too weird to eat, I liked this book. There are some things in it that I do plan to make. I might even have been a little inspired to try tomato canning once tomato season comes around. If the inspiration lasts anyway. 

I think this is a nice book to have around if you ever feel like having a big cooking day. It isn't the best for situations where you want to make dinner and are looking for recipes. 

Broomball

When I used to do precision skating I would sometimes see people playing Broomball at the rink. I never got a chance to try it then, but I always thought it looked fun. A meetup group I am a part of was organizing a group game so I signed up for it. 

Broomball is like ice hockey, but no skates and it uses a ball and things that look like brooms without bristles instead of hockey sticks. We started out wearing helmets, but quickly learned why helmets have chin straps and gave up on them. Also being on a ice rink is much easier in skates... 

Very few people in the group had any idea what they were doing. I think some of them may have played other sports before, but mostly it was a chaotic mass of people swarming the ball. Despite it being exhausting and the falling hurting it was fun. Steven even made a goal. :)

Now that I have tried this once I am happy to never do it again. :) I would like to be wearing skates next time I am on the ice...

Book Review: The more of less

I didn't not like this book. It was a quick and enjoyable read. The book is written by the creator of a minimalist blog. I'm not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it didn't seem overly helpful. It made the idea of minimalism seem nice, but since I have already been wanting to get rid of my extra stuff that wasn't a high bar to reach. 

I think the problem with this book is that it isn't a book about how to be a minimalist; it is an autobiography about a man who became a minimalist. In his book he shares his personal stories and other stories he has come across, but there is very little practical advice. One chapter about halfway through the book gave a starting suggestion about getting rid of some of your stuff. 

Another book about minimalism I read recently was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Her book also shared many of her personal stories, but she also had a lot of actual advice. I didn't agree with it all, but it was at least there. The more of less doesn't have that, and I think without more actual methods or practical advice it isn't very useful of a book. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Not a hat...

My latest project is not a hat, but it is a way to enable me to make more hats. One of my knitting needles sets is HiyaHiya. I like the needles a lot, and they are the ones I always use for hats. The case they come is is pretty, but useless. 

Here are two pictures of it from the internet. I was too lazy to take my own. But these even have the same print. 

 

I originally liked the case, because it was pretty and not bulky. After using it for awhile I have noticed it isn't very good at the one thing a case should be good at: holding my knitting needles. The little flap goes over the needles, then the top section comes down, then the needles fall out the side. One time I lost one in a book for about a month. I have managed to not permanently lose any, but still not good. 

I wanted a case that looked like this case but had an all around zipper. As well as two pockets for the stuff that goes in the two pockets of the original case. I decided to make one. After searching the internet for patterns I found one I could modify in a book I already owned. Mostly I needed directions on how to do the all around zipper part. 

If I am being a perfectionist there are things to complain about. But, I'm still new to sewing and my case works for what it needs to and manages to look like the original as much as I think it could. 

I started by making the needle pockets. This was mostly a figure it out as I went. I made one big pocket and sewed lines to make smaller pockets. I got them the right size by drawing lines with fabric chalk and then sewing on them. It seemed to work out ok.

The top I tried to mimic the design of the HiyaHiya case. My embroidery machine wouldn't let me easily squish my font, but I think it was close enough. I pieced together the front mostly by sewing scraps of fabric at the angle I thought matched and then trimming to size. 

The outside came together pretty easily despite by having almost no pattern. When I tried to sew it all together and add the all around zipper, things stopped being quite so easy. I think that is something that will get easier once I've been sewing longer.

Here are the pictures of the finished project.

And here is a picture of the huge mess I made. Luckily my cat didn't eat it. I think...

Last minute trip

We realized we had a mostly empty weekend, and couldn't let that happen. We decided to squeeze one last ski trip in. Our original plan was to go to Sierra at Tahoe since there a lot of easy routes there. A bunch of things happened, and we ended up going with a different friend to Northstar. I had a bad impression of Northstar because the last time I went there someone mistaken my rental skis for theirs. I was also concerned because mountain map had mostly blue and black trails. Our friend assured us that their blue's weren't as hard as other places blue's. 

In order to avoid getting up at 4 am, we drove up Saturday afternoon. We got lucky and found a cute little place near the lake. It had a table big enough to play games, and lovely view of the sunset. I will consider staying there again. Maybe even in the summer, since it is right on the lake. 

It turns out Northstar has all the runs Squaw is missing. Squaw has great beginner runs, and I assume great black runs, but not so much in between. Northstar's blue's are a lot easier and wider. It was a lot of fun skiing them. We even managed to do a Black Diamond route, partly because our crazy friend tricked us. We spent the whole day doing blue trails. It was nice having things that were just the right amount of challenging. Northstar is my new favorite place to ski.

We had lunch mid mountain. This is a picture of my overpriced, but delicious burger, and the view I had while eating it. The hill behind my burger is the one we went down after lunch. Crazy! It was the first time I ever skied on the back side of a resort. 

Here we a picture of us courtesy of Northstar that proves I made it to the top of the mountain. They have a place called Tȱst. It has fire pits and waterproof beanbag chairs you can rest in while admiring the great view. At 2 pm they have a champagne toast. I wasn't sure I was going to make it because I was really tired after the back mountain runs. The timing was perfect, so right after finishing the back mountain I could head right up there and then just one more run down then I could rest. I'm glad I went, but getting down was crazy. Of all the trails to not be a easy blue... It was crazy, narrow, crowded, right near an edge, and since it was the end of the day it was slushy bumpy snow. I think going down the black route may have been easier. 

It was a fun trip. Hopefully I remember how to ski next year.