San Francisco, day 1

This past weekend R and I took an extended long weekend to head to San Francisco. I've wanted to go there for a while - the rest of my family and a few friends have been and raved about what a cool place it was, and really, almost anywhere south of us has better weather than we do right now!

We woke up insanely early for a vacation (ready and out before 9am!) and were astounded with the gorgeous sun. It was warm too, like that first warm spring day where you can't decide if you need a sweater or not, but it's sunny so you try desperately to suck it up in a teeshirt.. definitely one of those days.

We started our San Francisco adventures by wandering through Chinatown.

Chinatown dressed up for Chinese New Year

Chinatown

The gates to Chinatown

From there, we wandered through town, looking for the cable car museum and Lombard Street. We were enjoying the weather and the opportunity to see a different city.

Union Square

A cable car! So picturesque

I think this symbolizes San Francisco quite well; hills, cute houses and a cable car.

We ended up wandering a lot further than we thought the first day, and decided to go see Coit Tower. I'm sure there's lots of interesting history behind it, but it's (in my opinion!) kind of an ugly building! The bottom floor is interesting because many artists have painted scenes from Californian life, which is kind of cool. We didn't end up paying the $7/person to go to the top.

Coit Tower

We eventually made it to Lombard Street, the self-proclaimed crookedest street in the world. I think it has 9 curves in one block. Kind of insane! It was pretty entertaining to watch people driving down taking photos and videos of themselves.. We chose to walk (way cheaper than renting a taxi, even for a block!).

Lombard St

That's the end of day 1. We did lots more, but that's enough to get an idea :)

Snowshoe Trail: Black Mountain Plateau

Last weekend six of us headed to Cypress to try out a new snowshoe trail. We found it on the BC Parks trail update - it wasn't one of the ones that shows up on blogs.


I tried out a new app during this trip too (see below!).

Black Mountain Plateau

EveryTrail - Find trail maps for California and beyond

The hike starts out by going left instead of right at the first fork in the trail (going right will take you to the Bowen Island Lookout trail, St. Mark's Summit, and eventually the Lions.. best for the summer!). The first hour or so is switchbacks, but at the top is a nice plateau with lots of little hills and fun places for sliding. If you haven't snowshoed before and you are .. smart enough to climb up a hill, make sure you bring a crazy carpet, plastic bag or are wearing snowpants that are slippery enough to slide down on. It's so worth it!

At the top of the hill, there's a nice 1.6km loop trail that was really fun. Small hills, both up and down, good places to slide and generally beautiful scenery. After walking the loop, we stopped to have some tea, hot chocolate and to feed the adorable gray jays and somewhat intimidating raven.

The trip down was really fast - we slid on our butts/crazy carpets for as long as could, and walked the rest of the way. I think going down more than made up for having to walk up.

Stats:
Time: 3 hours (including a 15ish minute snack break)
Length: 4.7 km return

A new beginning..

I've decided that I'm going to change what I post on here, which means cleaning up stuff that I no longer really care about. That will include my book updates, updates on my "25x25" list, and my running stuff. From here on out, I'll post about books only when I feel that the entire world should read them and it will mainly focus on hikes, things that challenge me, and the occassional photo. Hopefully it'll be more interesting, and a better resource for myself.

November Book Update

This was not a fantastic month for reading books...

Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling - Michael Boccacino. This book was a bit too fantasy for me, but I read it. Enough said.

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley. This book started off kind of slow, picked up, and then dragged on. I'm not sure how I feel about it! I read somewhere that 1984 is the 'hard, mean' future and Brave New World is the 'softer, happier' version. I'm not sure I want either.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Helen Simonson - I'm glad I finally read this book. It was really good, well-written, entertaining and just overall good! I'd recommend this to someone who wants a light read.

The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood - This was a really good book. Technically it's the second of a trilogy (first is Oryx and Crake, and the third isn't out yet). I was so engrossed in this book that I missed my bus stop at work and didn't notice when R sat beside me on the bus.. This is our November/December book club book.

Hike: Seymour Canyon

Last weekend we tried to do the Two Canyon Loop through Seymour/Lynn Valleys, but there was a sign and trail name for everything but this one. I hadn't written it down beforehand so we just walked..

Gorgeous trees!

 R overlooking Seymour river with his fancy new backpack

 Gorgeous alders!

 

 And more..

 And one 'glowing' yellow tree, among the conifers

And a deer.

I think we ended up starting on the Homesteader's Trail, walking up the Fisherman's trail and then down the paved road.. for no reason other than we couldn't find the trail again... I'm not sure how!

It was really nice to be out hiking even in late October. I'm looking forward to doing some of the easier/lower elevation hikes this winter.

October Book Update

This month I finished a bunch of stuff and read a bunch more. I also joined goodreads, username Christine L.

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins. Final book of the Hunger Games trilogy. I'm not sure that I really liked this one all that much. Sure, it tied up some loose ends and stuff, but it wasn't the best.

Letter from a stranger - Barbara Taylor Bradford. This is probably one of the worst books I've ever read. I hated the way she wrote, I hated how cheesy it was, I hated that I paid money to read it.. ugh.

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese. This, on the other hand, was probably one of the best books I've read. I loved it! It was a really well told story, and it was really different from what I was expecting. Definitely recommend this one.

Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card. The second book in the Ender's Game series. I liked this one too, although an almost entirely new set of characters did take me a while to get into.

Extras - Scott Westerfeld. This is the fourth book from a series that I read a long long time ago. I just found out about this one, so I figured I should read it. I'd say read it if you are young and enjoy 'teen talk'. If you're older and mature, and prefer words to be written out in a normal way, and all that.. don't bother.

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield. Another really great read. This was the book club book for the month and I'm not sure how everyone else feels about it yet, but wow. What a twisted tale! It's one that I'd recommend, although it's not for those who don't like a bit of wacky drama in their books.

Dreams from my Father - Barack Obama. I really enjoyed learning about Obama's struggle to identify himself as black (his mom is white, his dad is black).. or his struggle to identify, period. Really well written and really good overall. I hope he wins this election!

The Birth House - Ami McKay. This was amazing! Good month for reading, for the most part. This was the story of a midwife during the time when science became slightly more important and midwives less so. Very well read, and it was set in Nova Scotia. Another book I'd really recommend.

Dragon Seed - Pearl S Buck. I read the Good Earth a long time ago, and really enjoyed it. I didn't enjoy this one that much and it took me a few weeks to finally finish reading it. I wouldn't bother (but if you want to read it, it's on my bookshelf!)

September Book Update

I started out this month reading a book that I've picked up many times, and always set it aside for another time. This time though, being on a trip and not necessarily wanting to take the book home with me at the end, it seemed to work out.

She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb. This was a really twisted, weird, captivating book. It was the story of a girl who becomes so obese that it rules her life.. and how she deals with it. It was actually a pretty good read, although I wouldn't read it again.

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak. This was our August book club book. This was one of the few that I really loved. The story took place during the Holocaust. It's hard to say much without giving a lot away, but the main character becomes a book thief. It's not at all what I expected (I've taken to not read the back of books lately  - it's kind of fun, really not knowing what to expect). I'd highly recommend this one - and while it's classified as a YA book, it wasn't childish in writing style or anything.

Every Little Thing - Pamela Klaffke. Clearly not a memorable book - I had to google it to see what it was about. Clearly wouldn't recommend this one! ;) It was about the daughter of a famous columnist who had died, and how she turns into her mom.. Exciting.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card. I really liked this book. It didn't seem as sci-fi as I thought it might be. I've already got the second one out to read, and I'm planning on starting it within the next few days. I think R is planning on reading this one soon, too.

We're having another book club meeting this month after not meeting in September, so I'm hopeful that more fun things will be read this month :)