I’ve never been much of an open-toe footwear person. I like my socks. And I never learned how to walk in flip-flops. So it was with some anxiety that I recently decided to pick up my first pair of sandals after a visit to REI recently. I had been eyeing the Keens, but the guy there sold me on the indestructible Chacos. I ended up ordering a pair of 9 wides from Zappos because they had the color I preferred. Stephanie also picked up a pair, which I thought looked surprisingly elegant on her feet (for being so hardcore).

Well, we decided to put them to the test on what was supposed to be an eight mile hike around Tubbs Island, in the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. Turns out part of the trail was closed, so we didn’t make it all the way around the island, but just getting down there and back we hiked about six and a half miles. In sandals.

What were we thinking?

We spent practically the whole time talking about how the sandals felt, adjusting the straps, picking little stones out from under our feet. Even though we could have waded through the “impassable” section of trail, we were happy to have an excuse to turn back because our feet hurt so much. By the time we made it to the car, I had three blisters on one foot and two on the other. Ouch.

Not sure what we’re supposed to take away from this experience…

1. Sandals are not a replacement for good hiking shoes
2. My pampered feet need to gradually work up to this
3. Chacos are not a good match for my feet
4. Sandals are not intended for long treks

Anyway, it kind of sucks, because I thought they looked pretty sweet. For sandals.

Went skiing for the first time in Tahoe last weekend, and my second time ever. Had a little trouble getting there—on Friday night Caltrans closed I-80 at Colfax—but we adapted and found a hotel for the night before continuing on our way to Squaw Valley the next morning.

Spent Saturday afternoon trying to find my ski-legs, and then retreated to a rented house we shared with eight other loosely joined friends and acquaintances, including Tony and Visda. Much food was consumed, stories were told, until we finally collapsed, bellies full and muscles newly sore.

The weather was much better on Sunday, and we spent time enjoying both some easier and more challenging trails, including one that starts at the top of Emigrant Peak with views of Lake Tahoe in the distance. It felt a lot steeper in real life!

Panorama of Lake Tahoe from the top of Emigrant Peak

Never ventured further south along the California coast than Morro Bay before (which is just north of San Luis Obispo). Given the three-day weekend, we decided to see how far we’d get. Los Angeles wasn’t out of the question, but Stephanie had her sights set on Channel Islands National Park. Besides three and a half days of Zipcar, we had no plans or reservations.

We left late on Friday night after an unusually eventful evening (after-work drinks with a departing coworker, dinner with an out-of-country friend staying at our apartment). So we only made it as far as Salinas before pulling into a Motel 6 for the night (the same one we stayed at on a previous whim). The next day we stopped in San Luis Obispo for a quick walkabout and lunch “creekside” at Novo. Though we had half a thought to check out Santa Barbara, we decided to continue on to Ventura, to better our chances of making it to the Channel Islands.

We arrived at Island Packers in Ventura Harbor on Saturday evening, 30 minutes before closing. There was an “all trips full” sign on the door. I went in anyway and asked if they had space left on any boats heading out the next day. They said they were full up, but after checking again, discovered that two spots to Santa Cruz Island on Sunday morning had become available. I signed us up.

We were on the boat at 9 the next morning, heading across the deep channel that gives the Channel Islands their name. Santa Cruz Island is over 20 miles from the mainland, which means I got to enjoy 6-9 foot swells for a solid hour. Suffice it to say I was a little queasy. Stephanie seemed fine.

We arrived at the Scorpion Anchorage, got a short orientation on the island, and then took off on the Scorpion Canyon Loop Trail. The weather was perfect. It was in the 80s with a gentle breeze, and the sky was completely clear. The trail was flat for a while, and then it started heading up. And up and up and up. We made it to the Montañnon Ridge trail, and followed it for a while before settling on a spot with a panoramic view for lunch. We had to be careful with time, as the boat would be leaving at 3:30pm, with or without us. This made us a little less adventurous than normal. We wound our way back down the loop trail, with time remaining to shock our sore feet in the cold water and sit on the beach.

On the boat ride back, we experienced two impressive displays of nature. The first was a flock (technically a “wreck”) of brown pelicans dive-bombing an unseen group of fish below the surface. It was incredible how they managed to avoid each other and the other seabirds waiting for their scraps. The second was a pod of dolphins that started to race alongside the boat as we approached. Since we had a seen a few dolphins doing the same on the way in, I was prepared with my camera. Most of my shots are just splashes, but I managed to capture a single frame of two dolphins jumping simultaneously. And then they were gone.

A certain type of person goes into the woods to hunt for mushrooms, but to me that always seemed like a relatively esoteric, specialized pursuit. And then it started popping up in a number of things I was reading. Michael Pollan went foraging as part of one of his meals in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Peter Mayle described it as a sort of French national activity in A Year in Provence. Georgeanne Brennan talked about friends who foraged for cèpes (porcinis) in A Pig in Provence.

And then there was Danny.

During our sliders party last November, I found him in the kitchen, with a red backpack at his feet, waving around a very thick book as he described to some friends how he was taking advantage of every possible moment to go out hunting for mushrooms—in particular porcinis. He said it had gotten so bad recently that he had actually taken time off from work to go foraging within the optimal window of opportunity, which was only a few weeks long.

I was surprised to learn, given that my only exposure to porcinis was their importance in French and Italian cuisine, that they actually grew in US. And then he unzipped his red backpack and pulled out one of the biggest, densest mushrooms I’d ever seen. It was a porcini he found that morning. It must have weighed at least two pounds, which given what I know now about the prized porcini, means he’d found an $80-100 mushroom.

Danny offered to everyone listening that he’d be more than willing to let us tag along to fully plumb the depths of his newfound obsession. For us, life intervened, but some other friends took him up on the offer and sure enough, they came home with mushrooms. For free! Now my curiosity was really piqued. Once an available weekend presented itself, I sent Danny an email letting him know I was interested. And that is how I found myself waking up at 6:30 yesterday morning, scooting in the rain over to his house, and then driving for two hours up to Salt Point State Park for some truly epic mushroom foraging.

We arrived around 10am, and to our great surprise, several other cars pulled into the park at the same time, other people clearly on the hunt for mushrooms. We made haste up a trail based on a tip Danny had received through a contact on Flickr. Not more than 10 minutes in, Danny was off-trail, having very quickly spotted some hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum umbilicatum). As my eyes adjusted to the underbrush, I started seeing them too. They were everywhere. Not mushrooms as far as the eye could see, but as we scrambled along, we’d see two here, three there, some were very small, with caps two inches in diameter or less.

What Danny was really looking for was something commonly called the black trumpet, or more ominously “the trumpet of death” (Craterellus cornucopioides). His first sighting was right in the middle of some hedgehogs, a black flowery thing, barely poking up above the forest floor, and hardly distinguishable from the surrounding detritus of leaves and pine needles. Again, once my eyes adjusted, I started seeing them more and more.

Along the way we found another edible, yellowfoot chanterelles (Cantharellus tubaeformis) which were taller and waxier than the other two.

Over the course of four hours, the two of us went mushroom crazy. At one point we filled each of our buckets and had to hike back to the car to unload our spoils. And then back out we went, eventually stumbling upon a veritable cache of black trumpets further up the trail. By the end of the day we’d collected nearly nine pounds of mushrooms, just within the allowed limit of 5 pounds per person. When we got back to Danny’s house, we laid them all out to better appreciate our take. It was a truly awe-inspiring sight.

I’ve been wanting to revisit Enchanted Rock for years now, but there’s never been quite enough time around the holidays to make the two and a half hour trek—until this year. And as luck would have it, after several beautiful days in Austin, on the appointed Enchanted Rock day, it rained. A lot. I was about to throw in the towel, but Dad and Stephanie said “Why not?” so we hopped in the car and started heading west.

We arrived around 11. Stephanie figured we were just going to look at the rock. Dad was like “Naw, I’ve got ponchos!” And sure enough, he unearthed two ponchos from the trunk. Stephanie was skeptical. I was worried it would be slippery. We started up the granite dome and discovered we had enough traction. Stephanie’s reaction: “Typical boys…”

It’s not a hard hike, but it’s not easy with a sheet of water running down the surface. Amazingly we weren’t the only ones on the rock that day, but when we got to the top, we had it all to ourselves. After a quick photo of the three of us huddled together, we carefully waddled back down with visions of the warm lunch in Fredericksburg that awaited us.