Pirate Adventures

This is Melanie. She recently turned 30 and decided to "turn 30 sailing the high seas." Which translated into a weekend o' pirating. Naturally, this included camping. So, a group of us packed up our sleeping bags and went looking for adventure. Six hours later we finally made it to our campsite at the Big Trees State Park in Calavaras County (Calavaras means skull in Spanish. Rather fitting don't you think?). We made s'mores and then slept under the stars.


Saturday was full of pirate adventure and pirate miracles. First, we went to see more of these "Big Trees." Indeed, they are quite large. Here we are sitting atop a tree that was over 1000 years old when they (sadly) cut her down. Along the trail we "walked the plank" (a boardwalk built over part of the trail) while some practiced their pirate accents. Later we went to the "Moaning Cavern" which turned out to be rather anticlimactic, except for the pirate gold. Someone had found a bag of the chocolate gold coins and left them throughout the cave for Melanie to find. Melanie called it a pirate miracle, but only later realized they were meant for her and were not normally found in the cave. Later we wandered around the historic town of Columbia, an old gold mining ghost town that has been recreated.

The climax of the day came when we stopped at the Ghirardelli Outlet where we I had an amazing fudge sunday with dark chocolate fudge. Yum!! Overall, it was a deliciously exciting weekend.

Rain or Shine

There I was, on my way to the 'Sunshine State' when I found myself in the middle of a blizzard. My friend, Jennia, and I had made it to Reno around 2am Sunday morning. We were out the door again at 8am and were making great time...until we hit Donner Pass. That's when they stopped traffic and would only let you through if you put chains on your tires. $80 later we had chains. We spent the next 20 minutes complaining that the California patrol was overreacting, ripping us off and slowing down our travel time. And then we hit the summit. We made it through just fine but I was glad we had the chains, after all. For $15 we could have someone take the chains off for us on the other side. Already feeling ripped off, we decided to do it ourselves. However, I was in a dress and heels while Jennia was sporting a skirt and flip flops. Although the roads were manageable, we were still in the middle of a snow storm. Poor Jennia took the brunt of the miserable situation. We both got the outside hook free on one of the tires but then Jennia had to unhook the inside of both tires while I steered. Her poor fingers and toes were frozen when she climbed back in the car. 45 minutes later she got them free and we were back on our way. Don't you worry, we still drove through 3 rainstorms and 2 hailstorms before finally making it to Palo Alto where the sun was shining in blue skies.