Cedar Creek Falls

This past Saturday, we went for a great hike to a waterfall and swimming hole in the mountains about an hour away near the town of Julian. The waterfall was called Cedar Creek Falls.
We went with a few friends, and our dog Kylie.
We had to first drive 8 miles on a one-lane gravel road to get to the trail head. Then the hike was a 2 mile downhill hike into the canyon of the upper San Diego River and Cedar Creek. At the end of the trail is a great 90' high waterfall with a swimming hole. The swimming hole is about 100-150 feet across and can be up to 10' deep, perfect for a refreshing swim. Even though the outside weather was sunny and warm, the water was very cool because it is fed from snow run-off from higher up in the mountains. (The waterfall can dry to a trickle in the summer when the snow has all melted and the weather is drier.)

Our dog Kylie had a blast swimming! We would throw a tennis ball out and have her fetch it. Then us humans got brave and swam across the cool water over to the side by the waterfall.
Every time someone jumped in the water Kylie would swim out after them to greet them, it seemed like she was nervous about people being in the water and she was going out to try and save them!

What made it really interesting was...unknown to us the "San Diego Off-Leash Dog Group" decided to make a hike down as well that day. At the waterfall waiting for us was about 50 people and 30 dogs all off leash, so Kylie was very excited! She was the only dog who was swimming in the water though (one other lab did for a little bit).
After playing around in the waterfall we ate a light lunch then began the hot uphill 2 mile hike back out of the canyon. We then went into the town of Julian for a late lunch/early dinner.

Our Vacation Day!

Because we are in California, we get a unique holiday off, Cesar Chavez Day, every March 31st. We decided since we had the day off (and it was a picture perfect day out) to enjoy it like a vacation!

We woke up and did our weekend routine of getting bagels and coffee at Einstein Bagels with our dog Kylie

Then to get our dog some play time we went to the dog park at Balboa Park
Kylie met a friend, this husky named "Buddy". Kylie found a big stick and played with Buddy:
Then we headed over to Coronado to go to the beach. Luckily they have a dog beach there where dogs can run off leash so we got to enjoy the beach without leaving our dog at home. Kylie loved playing in the water and got soaked! We enjoyed being in the sun, but the water was cold so we only went into the water knee deep, we aren't as tough as the dogs

It is funny seeing all the dogs running around with Coronado Hotel in the background, they are living a life of luxury!

It was nice to be at the beach on a weekday when it wasn't so crowded, it actually was enjoyable and felt like a vacation because we are usually so busy on weekends getting our chores and errands run that we can't relax and enjoy the day as much
After the beach we did a mile or two walk through the neighborhoods of Coronado and saw all the beautiful houses. We both said it reminded us of that movie "Pleasantville" where everything is picture perfect. Everybody's lawns are perfect, there isn't one pothole in any street, and everybody seems to have a perfectly kept house. It sure made us wonder who all the people were that had all those houses and how they made their money to be able to afford to live there.

After that we dropped Kylie off at our condo and headed out for some fun downtown

We went to a new bowling alley/restaurant named The East Village Tavern. Jim even used a Miller High Life bowling ball which our friend Kevin would surely love
After bowling, we went up to our roof top pool and hot tub to catch some rays, swim in the pool, and dip in the hot tub

After the pool we had to make a quick trip to the vet for Kylie then dropped her back off at home again. We then headed to our Tuesday night tradition, "Tightwad Tuesdays" at Luigi's Pizza in Mission Beach. We brought our camera but forgot to take any pictures. But they have really cheap pizza and beer ($1.35 giant slices of pizza and $1.50 pints).

We are now sitting at home relaxing after our busy day! We are going to try and get some pictures downloaded from last weekend's hike to Cedar Creek Falls, a 90' high waterfall with a large 150' wide swimming hole complete with a rope swing!

More Pictures from Tahoe

Here is a link to our shutterfly site with all the pictures from our Tahoe trip, in addition to the ones in the blog post below

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Tahoe

We were really excited to head to the Lake Tahoe area for some winter wonderland, fun in the snow, and relaxing in a cozy cabin!

Thursday after work we flew to Reno and then we made the 1 hour drive to our cabin near the lake. Here are some pictures of the inside of the cabin. It was a cozy 2 bed / 1 bath cabin with a fireplace, a hot tub on the deck, and a very cozy feel to it.

We were staying near Tahoe City, CA on the northwest side of the lake away from the cheesy casinos and crowds in South Lake Tahoe. Most of the ski resorts are on the north side of the lake too, so it was a great place to get a cabin.

We woke up Friday morning ready to ski and ride at Homewood Ski area. Homewood normally has the best views of the lake since the base is right on the lake front and the runs all have panoramic views as come over each ridge. However, it was snowy and foggy on Friday and you couldn't see the lake at all from the mountain. The visibility was down to probably 200 yards at most. That was OK though, Homewood is a very low key area with short lines on the lifts and wide open runs with not many other skiers around.

That night we found a great local cafe called The Fat Cat. They were a locally owned coffee shop and bar/cafe. They have performers come in and they have open mic nights sometimes too. We highly recommend it if anybody is staying in or near Tahoe City! Here are some pictures of Colleen in Tahoe City, it is quite the quaint little village on the lake.

Each night we relaxed our sore muscles in the hot tub out on the deck. It was so nice to be in a hot tub with snow falling on our heads! It was very cold trying to run 10 feet back into the house though!

Saturday we were sore from skiing the day before so we decided to have a more relaxing day. We went ice skating at Northstar ski resort. Here we are on the outdoor rink in their village at the base of the mountain.

We wanted to go snow tubing but we saw the tubing runs at Squaw Valley ski were really lame, which is crazy because Squaw Valley is a huge ski area (The Olympics were there in 1960!). And Northstar was sold out of tubing tickets for the day so we just spent time exploring the lake and taking pictures. It was another foggy day, you can see from this photo that the normally there is a great view of the mountains across the lake, but you can't see the other side due to the fog.

The lake is about 21 miles across so there was no way were going to see across it on that day either!

Sunday we woke up and saw the sky was mostly clear so we headed back to Homewood to ski and ride again. It got cloudy right away again but the visibility was good because there was no fog. Here are some photos of us on the mountain 1000' above the lake, what a beautiful place to ski! Each ridge made it look like you were going to drop into the lake!

Colleen snowboards and Jim skis, and Colleen is definitely better than Jim! She usually has to wait at the bottom of each run for Jim to make his way down!

Later that night we played air hockey at Rosie's cafe in Tahoe City. Jim won 3 games to 1 and was very proud of his victory of Colleen (the usual air hockey champion!)

Monday we went skiing and riding at Alpine Meadows. We woke up to a true winter wonderland. Over night the area received anywhere from 10-36 inches of snow depending on if you were low at the lake or high up on the mountain tops. We had to take 20 minutes to brush all that snow off our car. They are very quick at plowing the roads though and there was only a dusting left on the roads by the time we headed out to Alpine Meadows.

Alpine Meadows is a larger resort than Homewood with lots of un-groomed trails, with bumps, rollers, and powder. The powder was so deep from the previous night's snow that it made you really work hard, our legs were burning after each run! It was a ton of fun though, Jim fell a bunch of times that day in the tough conditions, but had fun falling in the big fluffy piles of snow each time! It was like landing in pillows. Both of us had a time when we fell into the deep snow up to our waist and had trouble getting moving again through the deep powder. It was like being a little kid again!

After our legs were too tired to continue, we headed to Northstar to try and go snow tubing again! Luckily they had some extra availability and we headed up to the mid mountain snow tubing area. We were very disapointed at how lame the snow tubing run was! Here is Colleen, you can see how short the tubing run is. They have almost 3000 vertical feet of ski runs (the base was 7000' and the peak was 10,000') but they only had 300'-400' for tubing. We only did it for 20 minutes and decided to head back for happy hour at the Northstar village at the base of the mountain.

It was an early morning Tuesday, we woke up at 5am, left the cabin at 5:30am, drove to Reno, flew to San Diego, and we were in our office by 9:30 am. We are very tired today but we had a great time up in northern California!

Lake Tahoe is a very beautiful area that is very unique.

If you like interesting facts then read on, if not you can skip this paragraph. Some of the unique things about the lake are:
-The watershed is very unique because the water from Lake Tahoe does not flow to the ocean. There is only one outlet--the Truckee River--which flows north then east into Pyramid Lake which is in the desert of northern Nevada. Pyramid Lake has no outlet, the water just evaporates. There are very few water systems like this in the world.
-Lake Tahoe is the 2nd deepest lake in the U.S. at 1,650 feet deep. It is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. There is more water in Lake Tahoe than the 10 biggest man-made reservoirs combined.
-Lake Tahoe's water is so clear, that if you dropped a white disk the size of a dinner plate into the water, you could see it even if it was 78 feet deep and you were on the surface. (They actually use that method for a clarity test, they used to be able to see the disk when it was over 103' back in 1968.)
-Lake Tahoe's water surface is over 6,200' above sea level. The surrounding mountains can reach well over 10,000' above sea level.

More adventures with Kylie

A few weekends ago we went hiking with Kylie. We hiked up Iron Mountain which had a vertical climb of just over 1,000 feet, and was 3.5 miles each way (7 miles round trip). It was a hot Santa Ana day in January (we had a really warm and dry January). We figured it would be a good way to let Kylie explore more of the outdoors and to try and make her more tired at night. She has so much energy that she is up and ready to go usually between 5:30 and 6:30 AM every morning! No more sleeping late for us.

Anyway, we had bought a doggie back pack from REI and decided to put a couple water bottles in it thinking the extra weight might tire Kylie out even more. Well, she bounded right up the 3.5 mile trail, up 1,000 vertical feet, right to the top of the mountain! Here we are taking a break at the top of the mountain. The pictures are all from our cell phone so they are low quality...
















From the top of the mountain you can see out to the ocean and see to downtown, although the pictures aren't high enough quality to see.

Kylie did indeed seem tired by the end of the hike and she slept in the car on the 45 minute drive home, but alas she was up and ready to go again first thing next morning!

Also, the other day we took Kylie to the off-leash dog park at Balboa Park. It is a fenced in area where dogs can run off leash. Well, they have this drinking fountain with two spigots, one up high for humans and one down low for dogs. Obviously dogs are not clean drinkers and the water gets everywhere and the ground is really muddy in that spot. Within 5 seconds of having her leash off she was rolling around in that mud! We were so mad, but she was having fun. We learned from animal experts at the zoo that was a behavior from when dogs were wolves (domestic dogs evolved from wolves as humans bred them over the last few thousand years. Wolves roll around in the mud so they can hide their scent when they are approaching animals. That is why you see lots of dogs still flop in the mud!). Here is a picture of what she looked like after we wiped her down with our beach blanket that was in our car. She was still really dirty. She got the back seat of our car really dirty when we left. So, we took her to a dog wash, and while Colleen cleaned Kylie, Jim cleaned the back seat at the car wash across the street. When anybody saw Kylie while she was muddy, they always said "Oh looks like somebody had a lot of fun!". It was both frustrating and cute at the same time because we know she is so happy to be outside playing.

This weekend we are going to Tahoe for a few days of skiing! Jim got Colleen the trip as a combined birthday / Christmas present. We have a small cabin, with a hot tub on the deck! There is nothing better than hitting the slopes during the day and then relaxing in the hot tub at night while snow falls on your head. We can't wait, we'll take some good pictures of Colleen speeding past Jim on the slopes!

Also, we are still waiting on the North Carolina jobs. The City of Durham is ready to present Jim with an offer, but they have a hiring freeze in the City except for this position, so Jim's potential boss has to jump through extra hoops to get the offer letter from the City Manager. The US DOT will be contacting interviewees in mid-February so we are keep are fingers crossed that Jim will get a call in a week or two from the feds. We'll keep everybody updated if we find out anything new!