Desert excursion

The specific Joshua tree that inspired U2’s album by that name is actually located in Death Valley, but that didn’t stop R and me from playing the album a few times while driving to and around Joshua Tree National Park over the weekend. The park is located southeast of LA, making for about a 4 hour drive for us if you include a stop for lunch along the way.

We arrived in the early afternoon on Saturday, set up our camp, and hiked to 49 Palms Oasis. This was pretty cool… a group of towering palm trees growing in the middle of the desert thanks to a fault-created spring. Following that expedition we got back in the car and drove around the park, stopping at a few sights along the road and eventually at a star-gazing party. I wish we could have stayed there longer, but we gave into our hunger and went back to the campsite for some chicken sausage, couscous, and a bottle of red wine that disappeared way too quickly. We’re still trying to decide if the bottle tipped and we didn’t realize it or if we were just really thirsty from the dry air. My money is on the latter.

We didn’t quite have the courage to try an overnight hike yet, especially in an arid climate we knew very little about, so instead we slept next to the car in a campground. The idea of carrying everything we need for a night or two on our backs and finding some solitude appeals to us; being attacked by a coyote/snake/scorpion does not. Thus backcountry camping will have remain a goal for 2009 a while longer. We’ll get there.

On Sunday, we broke down the camp and drove to Key's View, from which we could see as far as the Salton Sea. Then, before beginning the drive home, we got out for one more hike, this one up Ryan Mountain. The scenery really was amazing and very distinct from any land we’ve seen before. There were huge flats littered with the namesake trees and other little bushes. Wildflowers are in bloom this time of year, making for colorful little highlights over the otherwise dry land. There are number of outcroppings of what R so perceptively called “cartoon rocks” because they look like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon. The rounded, cracked boulders were easy to climb, and I had some fun clambering on them, as you’ll notice in our photos found right here.

The weekend went way too fast, but it was great to get away. This was a brief, initial visit that we made without any advance preparation. Heading back to the park for a more in-depth exploration sometime in the future is a must.

Love (for wine) is blind

Last Saturday R and I drove up to Lompoc, CA for a wine tasting event with the younger subset of the Newcomers group. What made this tasting unique was that we didn't know what was being poured into our glass. We sampled seven chardonnays and rated each of them without knowing how much each bottle cost, what the label looked like, or what flavors we were expected to taste. It was an interesting experiment, and for the most part, the better bottles rose to the top of the results.

I'm still learning how to distinguish good wine, but it was easy, even for me, to identify the one that was spoiled due to a defective cork. And Trader Joe's "Three Buck Chuck" didn't rate much higher. After that there was some variation in the group's rankings due to personal opinion, except for the top wine, which won by a long shot. It just so happened to be the one R and I contributed. It was a $22 bottle of 2006 Lafond Chardonnay purchased and given to us by R's mom during her recent visit to Santa Barbara. I guess Linda has some good taste!

We have another bottle of the same wine in our rack at home; it came in the latest shipment from the club we belong to. I'm looking forward to taking a closer examination of it sometime soon. Does anybody else get the impression that living out here is going to turn us into a couple of wine snobs?

Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody. No, I'm not Irish. I just listen to a lot of U2... and visit an occasional Irish pub. On Saturday afternoon we hit 5 of them during a crawl with the younger members of the local Newcomers group. I took a few pictures but lost focus (literally -- quite a few turned out blurry) and dedication after the first two beers, so the gallery isn't anything too impressive. The outing was a good time with a group of people who are still relatively new in town, like us. We probably drank too much, but that's one way to get to know each other better.

The 'rents

My parents were here for five nights, and I must say I really enjoyed their visit. We hit the usual Santa Barbara attractions -- wine tasting, whale watching, people watching (on the always entertaining State Street), a sunset hike up to Inspiration Point, a couple of good dinners out -- but I think the best part was simply having them around... to sit on our porch and eat oranges off the tree, to take a morning jog with my dad, to see my mom's face as she tells me about their new granddaughter. My dad kept joking about how they were going to move out here or come and visit every month, as if he expected a negative reaction out of me, but I would actually like that. I do miss them quite a bit, and since family and friends are our only real tie to Minnesota, if they all came out here we wouldn't feel compelled to move back :-)

Photos from the visit have been added to this gallery, if you want to take a look.

Okay, I'll admit it does feel good to have the place to ourselves again. That was quite the series of visitors. Now we can let the place get slightly more messy, I can have my office back full-time (since it doubles as the guest bedroom), and we can plan some new activities for our weekends. We do have some fun events coming up with new friends, so we're excited about that.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the video shoot I helped with earlier this week. Back before Christmas I met this guy with some Hollywood filmmaking experience, and he recently invited me to assist with a small-scale documentary he's working on around here. On Tuesday we met at the Museum of Natural History where we followed some kids on a nature walk. I carried the equipment along the trail for him at first, but after a while he let me take the camera and capture the kids collecting frogs and insects near a little creek. Lucky for me, he uses the same camera I own (the Canon XH-A1), so that helped with my confidence. It was a fun shoot in a gorgeous setting that inspired me to do two things (1) get outdoors more and (2) shoot more video!

Gaffe

I probably watched my "Fake Empire" video a hundred times during the process of editing it, and somehow, over the course of all of those viewings, I managed to miss a clearly visible piece of production equipment (as well as R's hand holding it) in one particular shot. Now it's all I can see. I'd post a still from the video to point it out, but I want to make you watch the video again instead. So if you want to see what I'm talking about (and there's a good chance you don't), the gaffe is just past the two-minute mark.

This is all you're going to get for a blog entry this week. We had a good weekend last weekend--with bowling, biking, and hiking--but I'm going to skip the detailed recap. I haven't even had the chance to look at the photos I took during the hike yet. Time is just speeding along. I'm heading down to LAX in a few hours to pick up our next set of guests. Expect a full report on their visit sometime next week.