Kaiser Pass travelog #6
Back Home · Sat, 9 Aug 2025, 11pm

We're back from our quick weekend trip to the Kaiser Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. How quick? Well, it started with our Friday Night Halfway in Fresno and finished when we got home about an hour ago. We were out for fewer than 29 hours. Here's a recap:

Friday night we arrived at our hotel. It's in Clovis, a smaller town adjacent to/a suburb of Fresno. Despite leaving later than I wanted, due to work going long, we got in earlier than I expected, due to traffic surprisingly not being shit on a summer Friday. Maybe it's because school started in many districts this past week and parents aren't taking their kids on weekend trips again yet? Anyway, despite arriving early enough to use the hotel's pool and hot tub we decided we'd rather just stretch out in our room. Partly that's because we used our pool and hot tub, at home, this afternoon.

Saturday morning I awoke with my 7am alarm then just puttered until 8. We didn't leave the hotel until almost 9. I'd have been frustrated about that but we didn't need to hurry. That's the point of Friday Night Halfway: to buy us more time to do things— and not have to rush— on Saturday. I noted as I checked the weather forecast that the high for the day in Fresno would be 106° F. 🥵 (That's 41° C for the rest of the world.) Well, it's a good thing we're not here for Fresno but to drive up into the high mountains. As a rule of thumb the temperature drops 3° per 1,000 feet of elevation, so at 7,000' it should be a warm but not stifling 85°.

Leaving town we stopped at Costco for gas then Del Taco for breakfast. As we got up into the mountains we stopped at a general store in Shaver Lake for snacks.

Our first activity was a drive up a 4x4 road to Kaiser Ridge. We'd already driven to the Kaiser Pass via California 168 and forest road 80. Now we left the pavement behind for another 1.5 miles on a dirt road to the top of the ridge. Up here we were at 10,000 feet with great views down across the Mono Valley of the San Joaquin River and the mountains beyond— or what would have been great views except that there was a lot of smoke in the air.  I joked some time back that when traveling in the West now we need to check not just the weather report but the fire report. It's turning out to be less a joke and more a prophesy. 🤦

Friday afternoon we drove down the Kaiser Ridge to its far side, the Mono Valley. Why? Because buried deep in there are Mono Hot Springs, a cluster of natural hot springs fed by geothermal activity. There's a small resort there but also a handful of pools that are on Forest Service ground. We hiked a short trail to them and Hawk took a dip.

Late afternoon we stopped to hike Rancheria Falls on our way back down the west side of Kaiser Ridge. We've visited there once before, a few years ago. It was definitely worth visiting again. It was mellow in the late afternoon hours, and the light was perfect.

We got back to Clovis a bit after 7pm. We weren't staying another night, just stopping through for dinner and gas. We'd tried for dinner at a small pizza shop in Shaver Lake, but the staff there warned us the wait was 90 minutes to cook a pizza. We figured we could drive 60 minutes to the Fresno area and still eat sooner than that, plus be 60 minutes closer to home.

The last part of the drive home was late. We finished with dinner and getting gas around 8:15, but then it was over 2 hours home. We were both fading hard. I drove for an hour and a half, then Hawk took the last 45 minutes as I nodded in and out. We got home around 11, unpacked the car, then I took a shower and tumbled into bed.

It's been getting warm this week. Not hot, per se, as this whole summer so far has been cool out here in the SF Bay Area, but comparatively it is. Today was 88°, which is a whole 7° above average! Wednesday was warm, too, though Thursday in between barely beat the average at 82. So Wednesday and today I took a break in the pool in the afternoon.



My work schedule tends to clear after 2:30pm most days. It's a combination of people in time zones to the east of us finishing their workdays and people in this timezone avoiding scheduling meetings because they have pick-up-the-kids-from-school type responsibilities. Some days I feel tired out and use this mid afternoon respite as a siesta. On warm days like Wednesday and today I decided instead to turn it into a pool fiesta!

Taking a break for the pool doesn't mean I'm slacking at work. It's been a busy week, starting with a bungee trip to Phoenix on Monday and days packed with meetings from my home office since then.

Moreover, just because I go for a dip in the pool doesn't even mean I'm done for the day. Both Wednesday and today I got back to my desk around 4pm and still had work to do. Today I even had a customer meeting at 4:30pm. It was the customer's idea. Who TF wants to have a meeting at the end of the day on a Friday? "Tell me," I wanted to ask at the start of the call, "How long have you hated your family?" 🤣

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #9
Fort Bragg · Sun, 27 Jul 2025, 4:30pm

We wrapped up our morning on the Lost Coast a bit before noon, drove inland to Highway 101, then south, then dodged back out to the coast along Route 1 to Fort Bragg. Just north of town is a spot we always enjoy hiking, MacKerricher State Park.



There's a beach here, which attracts the attention of, I'd say, most of the park's visitors. But when the typical summer weather is somewhere in the 60s and kind of cloudy, there are better things to do than sit in the sand and be cold. We always like walking the trail out to the bluffs. It starts with this boardwalk (pic above) into a forbidding looking forest of sea-swept trees. Just like you can't judge a book by its cover, though, you can't judge a trail by its first 150 meters. The trail cuts through the stand of trees to open bluffs not far above the ocean.



Out here the boardwalk loops around and doubles back. It's not clear if it's an official trail anymore, but it's still marked on the maps... so we jumped off the boardwalk and onto well-worn footpaths along the edge of the bluffs.



The clouds in the sky made today not my favorite visit to MacKerricher State Park. Oddly it's sunny over in Fort Bragg, a mile inland from this craggy point, but out here it's overcast. The weird and interesting thing, though, is how colorful the plants clinging to the cliffs are in this light. Known as ice plants or sea fig, they're invasive to the California coast but— for better or worse— grow really well here. At least they're pretty to look at with their bright colors. 🙄



As we walked along the bluffs we had the area mostly to ourselves. Out her we passed on family and one solo hiker. That's way better than near the parking lot, which was full of people whose loud conversations were all about (a) which caliber of ammunition is best for their guns, (b) driving illegal and loud go-karts around the parking lot, and (c) having to take a shit. Yeah, we're always happy to leave the parking lot behind. Sometimes all it takes is that first 150 meters to get far from the madding crowd.



After a while of walking the bluffs we took a shortcut back through that stand of trees to an old rail trail. The rails have long since been removed, but the old rail bed runs arrow-straight through the area. It took us back to the edge of the parking lot, where we crossed back down to our parked car and packed up to drive into town.

August is a busy month for me travel-wise. As I posted several days ago, I've got 5 trips this month. Except now I've got just four. ...And no, I don't mean that my bungee trip to Phoenix on Monday leaves four more to go. I mean that trip #2 of 5 has gotten postponed to September.

This weekend Hawk and I were going to go to Mammoth Lakes, on the eastern side of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. We'd stay in a nice hotel— the same one we stayed at a few years ago in Mammoth—  and go hiking in the area both Saturday and Sunday. But I hurt my foot during my trip on Monday so I'm not sure I'll really be up for two days of hiking this weekend. Plus, with trip #3 on my docket, a 4-day trip to Chicago, having me leaving on Monday morning I had second thoughts about whether I wanted to come home tired and achy late Sunday night only to have to pack a new suitcase and get up before 6:30am. I decided we should cancel postpone our trip to the first weekend in September. That's the next weekend we have free!

It's good I chose to postpone that trip as of about 3:45pm today, because by 4pm two new business meetings had dropped onto my calendar for this Friday afternoon. Those wouldn't have worked with the trip, as we were planning to leave at 1pm. Well, silver lining, now I'm available to work those meetings. 😒

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #7
Shelter Cove · Sun, 27 Jul 2025, 10:30am

Life's a beach. Sometimes it's a dreary beach. Alas that has been our experience this morning on the Lost Coast. We drove out here yesterday afternoon on our North Coast roadtrip and stayed last night at a nice inn perched on the cliffs. Alas all we've had to see for the high cost of lodging and food out here is fog. We knew fog would be a thing, but our weather apps promised us there'd be some clearing in the afternoon. Nope. Not while we've been out here anyway.

We lingered at our room at the inn this morning to see if the fog might lift like the weather forecast even today said it would. Still nope. So we decided to go visit some beaches in the fog. Nearby Shelter Cove are Black Sand Beach and Little Black Sand Beach.



We started with a drive to Little Black Sands Beach (photo) because it's just up the road from where we stayed. There's not a lot out here; just an end-of-the-road gravel parking/turnaround area and a crumbling bit of old road that serves as a footpath down to the beach.

That beach isn't really black sand, by the way. It is gravel. It's not particular fun to spend any time on. And it's not helped at all by the fact that a) the temperature is cool, b) the fog makes it so that we can't see much, and c) the water is super dangerous— as attested to by warning signs that caution visitors not even to dip a toe in the water, the ocean is so dangerous!



After visiting Little Black Sand Beach we drove up the road two miles to (big) Black Sand Beach. It was the same thing but... bigger. I actually preferred the smaller scaled of the little beach. It felt more intimate and more like a place we could have to ourselves. The bigger beach was far from crowded but there were usually a few other people in sight at any point. And the water was just as murderous.

In beauty I walk. In dreary, murderous beauty.

Today I've taken a day trip to Phoenix. Similar to a day trip I made two years ago— wow, was it really that long ago?— I got up this morning, drove to the airport, caught a flight to Phoenix, traveled across town to meet a customer for several hours, then traveled back to the airport for my flight home.

My timing's gone something like this so far today:

6:15am: Morning alarm. Get up to start my usual weekday morning process, albeit 30 minute earlier than usual.

7:15am: Heading to the airport. I opt to drive instead of hail a ride because parking at SJC in a lot from which I can walk to the terminal is just $30/day, versus Uber and Lyft which are now usually at least $30 each way. Plus, I get the certainty of driving my own car on my own schedule, rather than waiting who-knows-how-long for a driver to be assigned only to cancel a few minutes later and make me wait for another assignment.

7:45am: In the terminal. The walk from my parking spot took 6 minutes. I didn't get as nice a parking spot as last time. Security took a few minutes with PreCheck. I have time to grab a bagel as second breakfast.

9:30am: Whoopsie at 35,000'. We're en route to PHX. I've got one of the few empty middle seats next to me, yay! But I'm also surrounded by crying babies, boo. And one of my neighbors ordered a double vodka-tonic that the flight attendant just poured all over my pants leg. Yeah, that's going to go over well, walking into my client's office smelling like I came straight from the bar.

10:45am: Landing in Phoenix. The flight was scheduled at just under 2 hours and arrived about 10 minutes ahead of schedule. And you know what comes after I had second breakfast a few hours ago, right?

11 am: Elevensies. 🤣 Yes, I have time for an early lunch at PHX airport.

11:45am: Sync time with colleague. Mike arrived on a later flight, and we meet up and sit down for a while at the airport Starbucks to sync on what we'll cover in today's meeting. I research a few issues to be ready with answers in case the customer gets testy.

1pm: Arriving to meet my customer. They're on the north side of town. It's quite a haul out here from the airport.

3pm: We're done beating around the bush! I've spent the past 2 hours with the customer being cagey and asking us trap questions about how we count users. Nearly the whole time I've realized that what they're really fighting about is the last 3% of the user count. Like, is it 11,100 or is it 11,400? Finally I feel they've come around enough for me to ask, "So, can we agree that 11,100 is a reasonable number to base our cost planning on?" They agree.

4pm: Headed back to the airport. We had another meeting, a brief one, with a senior VP. Guess how much he cares about whether the number is 11,100 or 11,400? Pretty much zero. He's ready to talk in terms of, "Okay, what's the value your solution delivers to my business?" Which is what we'd much rather talk about.

4:45pm: Time for the airport shuffle— and a beer. Clearing security is quick. There's nobody in the PreCheck line ahead of us. Mike and I post up at Four Peaks, a local brewery that has a franchise at the airport. Mmm, beer!

6:20pm: Walking to the gate. And PHX airport is so spread out this is like, half a mile, from one part of Terminal 4 to another. And it's not even one-third the length of the terminal!

7:25pm: In my seat, ready for takeoff. We're running a few minutes late for our 7:25 scheduled departure but we should start rolling within 5 minutes.

Update: Home slightly ahead of schedule, before 10pm!

This past weekend was pleasant. In addition to going wine tasting on Saturday— which was my first wine tasting trip since before the Pandemic 😧 if my blog is accurate, yikes!— I got in some #PoolLife on Friday and Sunday.

Friday I cut out early from work, heading out to the pool around 3pm. Hawk was already out there with our friends Barbara and Jesse and their son. Jesse had cut out early from work, too.



Since I was late to the pool party I stayed late, too, after everyone else headed in or headed out to their next thing. Visiting with friends for a while was fun, but so was enjoying the peace and quiet next to the pool alone. I've felt drained from work a lot recently so taking it easy relaxing quietly by the pool was just my speed.

Cooler-than-normal weather this summer in California has continued. Friday was another cooler-than-average day. It was just as well I wasn't gung-ho about swimming in the pool because it wasn't quite warm enough to enjoy it. It was a beautiful day, though, for soaking the hot tub— which I did— and then sitting in the shade, reading.

Sunday afternoon I spent a while out by the pool again. Again it was a few degrees cooler than normal— and even this weather is warmer than much of the past week. This time I decided to use the pool for a while despite it not being quite warm enough. It was okay for a while, but I tired of it quicker than on a warmer day. We soaked in the hot tub for a while after that then stretched out on lounge chairs to read while drying.

Now it's Monday, which means back to work for me. And it's an early-ish day because I'm headed to the airport for a day-trip to Phoenix. Here I am grousing about it being shy of 80° at home... it's been 110°+ in Phoenix lately!

I've been trying to get a wine tasting trip going for a while. Not a big trip, just a local trip, as there are more than a dozen wineries in the foothills and up the near side of the Santa Cruz mountains near where I live. (There are also multiple dozen wineries 45-60 minutes in the other direction, in the Livermore Valley, but I toured that region extensively several times years ago. I've spent way less time visiting wineries in the mountains I can literally see from my house.) And when I say I've been trying to get this trip going for a while I mean both "for a couple of months" and "for several years". 😰

The "for a couple of months" part is because I've been waiting for the right opportunity: a weekend with nice weather when we didn't have conflicting plans and when, ideally, I could find a friend to do tastings with.

Yesterday was finally the day! A buddy and I visited a few wineries in the mountains and had a great time, enjoying the wine, the camaraderie, and the weather. Our first stop, after grabbing a quick lunch together in town, was David Bruce Winery in Los Gatos, in mountains above San Jose.



Why wait for nice weather? I mean, why not? 😂 But seriously, wineries are definitely open in shitty weather, too. And I've had some memorable experiences doing wine tasting when it's gloomy and cold outside but warm and intimate inside an old time-y building with a fire going in the fireplace and a glass of good red wine in my hand.

My idea for this trip was to go on a warm, clear afternoon so we could drop the top on the convertible and enjoy the drive through the mountains as well as the wine. And that's exactly the weather we had on tap for this weekend. ...The last few weekends, too, but I either had conflicting plans for those or didn't make plans in time.

Speaking of making plans in time, it was only Friday night I called a couple of friends to see about going wine tasting on Saturday. Damn procrastination. One already had drinking plans for Friday night and didn't think he'd be able to get up in time Saturday. The other, Anthony, also had drinking plans Friday night— in fact, he choked on a shot of liquor when he answered the phone and said "Hello" 🤣— but he's a lot younger so he figured he'd snap back just fine by Saturday morning. 💪



David Bruce is a beautiful winery. As you can see in the first photo above it's not much to look at from the parking lot. It looks kind of like a stone behemoth half-buried in the hillside. But that's also part of its beauty. The designers created natural cooling for the winemaking process by using heavy natural materials and locating it half underground. And all the greenery around it helps it blend into the natural landscape of the hills. The second pic above I took as we walked along the terrace to the tasting room.

Reservations Required (Also: We're Married Now)

I'd had to call ahead for a reservation for wine tasting. That's one thing that's different about wine tasting now vs. years ago.... It used to be you only needed an appointment for a private, high-end tasting or a tour— and even those you could even sign up for on the day of, very often. Now wineries ask for reservations even for basic tastings. So I made reservations with 3 wineries for Saturday.

David Bruce I had to call on the phone at 11am (when they opened) because their online ressy system wouldn't accept day-of reservations. The coordinator I spoke to hemmed and hawed as she dug up the appointments book. She sure made it seemed like they were squeezing us in. Yet when we arrived at 1pm the winery the parking lot was less than 20% full. There were only three small groups in the tasting area, and two of the couples were leaving.



As a coordinator sat us on the terrace overlooking the hillside with glasses of rosé to start, we both chuckled as the reservation card set out for us. "We're married now!" Anthony texted to both of our spouses. 🤣

Taste 'em All, Buy a Few Bottles Each

The winery offered two choices for tasting. We figured since we're married now we could each order a different flight and then share it with one another. I even joked that we could intertwine arms as we did so. Spoiler: we didn't. 🤣

We generally liked all the wines poured at David Bruce. The reisling was light and gently fruity. It was on the dry side of the reisling variety but with natural sweetness coming from the subtle fruit flavors. That was nice because it didn't have the syrupy mouth feel that comes along with sweeter reislings due to their residual sugar content. Anthony bought a bottle of that because he liked it and thought his wife would really like it, too. I considered it but opted to spend my chips on the pinot noir.

Speaking of pinot noir, there were four pinot noir examples on the tasting menu. One of the flights was just 4 pinots. Actually five, if you count the freebie rosé of pinot noir they started us with. (The rosé is shown in the pic above.) I generally liked all of them. For me the top two were the Russian River pinot (grapes grown in the Russian River appellation of Sonoma County) and the estate pinot (possibly growing on the hillside in the photos here). The Russian River example had a nicely spicy characteristic that's rare. But the estate pinot is the one I bought, two bottles even, because it balanced a warm, spicy dimension with delicious fruit flavor.

We finished up with a petite sirah. To me it wasn't very special; likely because I've had a lot of petite sirah before when I made regular wine tasting trips to Livermore Valley. I'm not saying it's bad, just that I'm a little jaded on the variety. Anthony was really into it and bought a bottle to take home.

As we stood to leave it was time to pay the piper. Many wineries advertise their bottle prices right on the tasting card, so you know what you're drinking. David Bruce didn't, which seemed a little suspicious. I was prepared for them to hit us with, like $55+ prices per bottle. I remember when I visited David Bruce 10 years ago the prices were all $35+, which was a lot back then. With inflation today those prices would be at least $55. So I was surprised that most of the bottles were priced at $39. That makes David Bruce... well, not a bargain, but definitely a solid quality-price ratio.

Oh, except the wine I liked best turned out to be the most expensive on the list. The estate pinot was $65. It's like they knew which was best, too. 😅 But by that point I'd already decided on it and didn't want to settle for second best. Plus, I figured with them comping the $30 tasting fee for buying two bottles it worked out to effectively $50 per bottle. I've groused before about $50 bottles of pinot noir.... Well, that was before the significant inflation of the past several years. And this one genuinely seemed worth it.

Keep reading: we visit Thomas Fogarty Winery next!

First of all, no, I haven't resumed watching Better Call Saul. I paused the series 2 episodes from the end in May and haven't picked it back up since then. This blog is just me catching up on the last 2 episodes I did watch. The fact that I'm just getting to writing about those 10 weeks later is both a measure of how backlogged I've been and how badly this series lost my attention right at the end.

What happened? What happened is that the series shifted gears for its last 4 episodes. Across the first 5½ seasons we'd seen occasionally flash-forwards to Jimmy McGill's life post Saul Goodman. These were a narrative device similar to flashbacks but instead of filling in details or color about the past they were teasing us with the future. In this case, the future some 6 years later, after the Breaking Series, to which Better Call Saul is a prequel. So it's like the prequel changed to the post-postquel.

In the life-after-Breaking-Bad timeline, Jimmy/Saul is on the lam. He's living under a new identity as Gene Takavic, who manages a Cinnabon store in Omaha. This situation is a nod to a seemingly throwaway line Jimmy/Saul makes in his last scene in Breaking Bad, where he tells Walter White, "With any luck by this time next year I'll be managing a Cinnabon in Omaha."

The brief flash-forwards sprinkled across the series show Jimmy living unhappily as Gene, the Cinnabon store manager. His job is a big letdown from his previously high flying career as a dirty lawyer, and he's constantly looking over his shoulder in fear that both people from his criminal past and law enforcement might figure out his true identity. He lives a quiet life going between home and work, doesn't socialize more than perfunctory greetings, and often drinks himself to sleep at night.

In episode 6.10 the show jumps full-time from Jimmy in 2004, right after Kim has left him, to Jimmy as Gene in 2010. Jimmy is panicking that someone from the past has recognized him. Jeff, a cab driver in Omaha who used to live in Albuquerque years earlier, recognizes him through his disguise. Jimmy then perpetrates a series of cons to ingratiate himself with Jeff and his family, starting with Jef's sweet but naive mom, Marion— played in a cameo by Carol Burnett that seems like an utter waste of the legendary comedienne's talent. Jimmy cons Jeff into committing a robbery he plans. The purpose isn't to profit from the loot but to get enough "dirt" on Jeff that he could go to jail for possibly decades if he rats out Jimmy. It's mutually assured destruction.

The thing is, Jimmy is not at all sympathetic in these cons. Younger Jimmy, "Slippin' Jimmy", was somewhat sympathetic when he was conning people because he was typically conning people who were jerks. He played on their greed and turned it against them. Here he's conning Jeff— and his innocent mother— just to protect himself.

Then the cons get worse.

Jimmy goes back to Jeff— after revealing that he conned him just to get "dirt" on him— with another crime proposal. They're going to drug wealthy men, copy their IDs and financial information, and sell it to an identity thief. Why is Jimmy doing this, though? It's not because he needs the money. The flash-forwards already established that Jimmy has a considerable stash of wealth in the form of diamonds. The only conclusion left is that Jimmy's doing it because he's evil.

The worst comes when Jimmy and his accomplices target a man whom they discover is a terminal cancer patient. The sedatives they use, in addition to the medications the man's already on, could be lethal. Jimmy's two accomplices tap out. But Jimmy is determined to see this particular con through, even if it directly kills someone. Evil.

And that's where I stopped watching, with only 2 episodes left in the series. Because why do I care about these characters anymore?

Yeah, I'll finish watching... at some point. But I'm just not that interested anymore.

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #5
Eureka · Sat, 26 Jul 2025, 3:15pm

After driving quite a bit this morning— including a relaxing roll along Avenue of the Giants— and rock-hounding at Agate Beach we'd worked up quite an appetite for lunch. No, we didn't eat at a brewery as the title of this journal entry made lead you to believe. We ate lunch at a regular restaurant. Then we went to the brewery, just for beer tasting. 😅

Lost Coast Brewing is a small brewery located in Eureka, California. We passed through Eureka this morning driving north, driving right past the brewery just south of downtown, then ate lunch just up the street from it. We mulled eating at the brewery, as it has a small food menu in addition to its beer, but decided the eats might be better at a regular restaurant. So we enjoyed Philadelphia-style cheese steaks first then drove over to the brewery.

I'm familiar with a few of Lost Coast's beers. Grocery stores here in California generally carry their Great White and Downtown Brown varieties. Great White is the one with a Picasso-esque shark on the label. That shark art also exists as a huge wood carving in front of the brewery (photo right/above).

I'm not much of a fan of the Great White, and I've had Downtown Brown various times before, so in picking a handful of beers for my taster sampling I chose a bunch of beers I've never seen before. There was a pilsner, a plain wheat, an amber ale, a dry stout and the Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout. I also grabbed a quick taste of the Great White to remind myself of what I'm not missing.

I liked three of the beers enough to want to buy six-packs to take home: the pilsner, the wheat, and the candy-bar-in-a-glass stout.

Beers I didn't even bother tasting include any of their IPAs and overly fruity wheats. I know I don't care for those. I grabbed a quick taste of their best-selling Great White to remind myself of what I'm not missing.

Unfortunately when I went to check their shop, most of the beers I liked were not sold in bottles or cans; they're only available on tap at the brewery. That left the Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout as the only one I could buy to take home with me. So I bought two boxes. 😂

Update: since getting back home I've enjoyed one can of the candy-bar-in-a-glass stout. It really is like drinking a candy bar in a glass. That's why I've only had one. It's delicious but it's so sweet it's not something I find enjoyable to drink too many of. It's like milkshakes. I love milkshakes— but I've never drank two of them in one day.