Images by John 'K'

A couple of years back, after being introduced to the place by a friend, I took out family membership at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and each year since then we have renewed that membership. Although it’s a bit of a drive, it has provided us and a steady stream of family and friends visiting us with many hours of enjoyment, and each time we’ve gone there something new has been added.

 

A few days ago we received a reminder of a members only event. The aquarium has been working on a major new exhibit about otters, and it opens to the general public on March 31, but as members we were invited to a preview opening. Judging by the interest shown by the members who turned up yesterday, I can only think this new exhibit will be a major success for them. We loved it, and the otters are soooooo cute!

 

If you’re within driving distance of Monterey, or visiting the area at any stage, make sure to visit the aquarium – it is well worth the money you’ll spend on the entrance fee!

 

As you are probably coming to expect with me by now, some pics are in my photo albums…

Last week I had my first business trip away from the office in over 2 years! For the last few days of last week I had the pleasure of travelling on business to North Carolina to go meet a bunch of folks at our support and engineering centre in the Research Triangle Park near Raleigh, NC. I won’t go into details of the business side of the trip, but it was the first time in the nearly 8 years I’ve been with my current employer that I’d travelled to this site, and I can see now how we managed to get tagged as RTP’s number 1 place to work in 2006. The site is amazing – very ’employee-friendly’.

 

We flew out on the Wednesday – spent most of the day travelling. As there is no direct flight from the Bay Area to North Carolina, we ended up flying via Phoenix. We had a 45 minute stop-over – barely enough time to visit the rest rooms and go from one gate to another, so fortunately the flight wasn’t massively off-schedule.

 

I’d never been to Phoenix before, so was glad I’d managed to get into a window seat for the first part of the flight, and all I can say is the scenery was stunning. I tried to get a few photos of it as we flew in, but the window I was sat next to wasn’t particularly clean and only a few came out well.

 

North Carolina itself reminded me a lot of Belgium. The number and types of trees were very reminiscent of a number of family vacations we had been on in the forests of Belgium. The climate was pretty close too. The only real difference was the architecture, which is very ‘colonial’. It was rather odd seeing lots of bricks being used in the architecture after seeing predominantly wood-constructed properties in California.

 

Wednesday night we ate in an Indian restaurant relatively close to the hotel we were in. Nothing amazing, but it wasn’t bad either. Thursday night we ventured into the Chapel Hill area and ate at a small Italian restaurant called 411 (named after the street number of the building). The meal was lovely, and I’ll be sure to eat there the next time I go visiting our offices in North Carolina.

 

The weather was a stark reminder of why we chose to live in the part of California we are in. For the first 2 days it was sunny and warm, but also very humid and sticky, and then for the last day the heavens opened and we were faced with the sort of rain that makes it difficult to see more than about 10 feet in front of your windshield when driving.

 

The oddest thing about this trip for me (keeping in mind that I’ve flown rather a lot in my working life) was that this was the first trip I’ve taken by air where I have not had to produce my passport to be allowed to travel. Something about that just did not feel right….

 

Anyway – a few pics are up in amongst my photo albums….

Just off Calaveras Road (see last blog entry) is the Sunol Regional Wilderness Park. Having spotted the entrance to the park while driving the road recently, I decided to take my wife there to kick off our somewhat belated new years resolution to go on regular weekend hikes. We’d had an earlier attempt at this while on our Pacific Coast drive in February, but hadn’t kept it up.

 

So we headed out in my little commute car (go-kart on steroids), and I started by taking her on the Calaveras Road drive itself. Unlike the times I’d driven it during the week, this time we encountered many modes of transport coming the other way – cars, motorbikes, cyclists – all out enjoying the lovely weekend we had. Many twisty miles later we turned onto the approach road to the park. After paying for entry (we really will have to look to get park membership if we’re going to do this regularly), we found our parking spot and started to head out to what we thought would be a nice introductionary hike in the park. After a couple of false starts picking up the start of the trail (my fault – never have a man do the map reading if there’s a woman who can do it for you!), we headed off up the Indian Joe Creek trail.

 

What we didn’t realise is that it was all up-hill. Ugh. A mile and a half of up-hill hike later, with encounters with lizards, frogs, butterflies and an occasional hiker with dog, we decided enough was enough, so we stopped at an interesting rock formation, had a little climb, sat and had a drink and a snack and just took in the view for a few minutes before we started back down towards the car.

 

It’s funny how even though you think you’re making good progress uphill, the downhill stretch is always quicker – perhaps because we didn’t keep stopping to look at everything that moved, and perhaps because we didn’t end up detouring off part way along because someone (NOT me this time) thought the trail went off to the left whereas it continued up the hill in front of us!, but whatever the reasons, we god down in about half the time.

 

While walking, we met a couple who had obviously been to this park a few times, and who pointed out that there were many more scenic trails, including one that takes in a waterfall. There’s also a section on one of the trails called ‘Little Yosemite’ so will be interesting to see how it compares with the real thing, so we’ll be back there again for sure. Just need to sort out that park membership first.

 

….and to whoever it was who left the plastic lizard on the rocks in the middle of the trail, thanks for giving us a laugh half way up the hill!

 

There are a few pictures in my photo album section.