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Halloween night: Action Bats V at Arwa's!

I've been driving in to work as the sun rises the past few weeks (and leaving after the sun sets... sigh) but there have been some really beautiful skies lately. Too bad I've been driving so I can't take pictures -- this photo is from the parking lot at work.

Chris & I went for a walk at Milagra Ridge, which is conveniently located 10 minutes from us and overlooks the ocean, and is a nice little hike.

There is quite a bit of history there, some of which is pretty evident (like the WWII bunkers and where the guns were) but no signage about what any of it is, but I found this on the NPS website:

"Native Ohlone people inhabited the land we now call Milagra Ridge and Pacifica for thousands of years. Their lives probably included seasonal harvesting of seeds, greens and fruits and harvesting local animals.

In the late 1700s, the Spanish missions of San Francisco de Asis established farms in the area, and the hills of Pacifica became part of Rancho San Pedro. Livestock grazing began a agricultural era that lasted until the mid-1900s. Artichokes were grown atop Milagra Ridge until 1938, and the furrows can still be seen today.

 In the late 1930s, the United States Army acquired Milagra Ridge as part of a project to defend the San Francisco Bay. In 1948, several 6-inch guns were mounted at Milagra Ridge, only to be removed between 1949 and 1950.

 In 1956, Nike Missile Site SF-51 was established at Milagra Ridge. These surface-to-air missiles were protection against attacking aircraft during the Cold War. The site was converted to the nuclear-capable Nike-Hercules system in 1958. The entire area was fenced with barbed wire and patrolled by guards with trained dogs.

 The National Guard managed the area from 1963 through 1974. The buildings were demolished, the launch elevators were buried, the asphalt was removed, and the site was given to the City of Pacifica as an open space park. In 1987, Milagra Ridge became a part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area."

It was DWA's 15th birthday (not PDI's - we're way older...) which meant we got cute cupcakes and champage!
Lori got photos of the better ones:

...which is conveniently located across from the Palace of Fine Arts, and it was such a gorgeous day in the city that we wandered over to check it out:
That night I made a brief appearance at Arwa's for some ladies-only reminiscing, before I went to go pick up Miss Jane from SFO:

The next day, Miss Jane wanted to go for a hike that was a.) hilly and b.) near the ocean which was c.) not a problem, so we headed over to Pacifica to check out Mori Point, which was lovely and verrry windy:

After the hike, we needed to replenish our carbs, so we stopped by Raymonds for a little sourdough action:
And then it was off to wander around the Mission and procure some Mexican food of some sort:

















So we went to El Metate, where I hadn't been for awhile, and we had the best agua frescas ever (and everything else was delicious, too, of course):

We then just wandered around a bit before heading home and onto the East Bay:
Kathy & Josh hosted the evening's festivities, which included lots of snacking, boozing, chatting and karaoke:

A good time had by all, and a lovely time with my ladies!

We camped in the southern part of the park, in Wawona, and were greeted by a fat little squirrel, who was verrrry interested in our food (and got into our food and opened a bag of chips!)

The next morning we drove up to Glacier Point to see the view of the valley:
Lots of tour buses up there, so it was pretty crowded and we didn't stay long. And sorry folks, I am not as dedicated as getting good photos as this guy:
I like to stay inside the railing, not on it...

From Glacier Point, we went down into the Valley and wandered around, saw El Capitan, the Merced River and Bridalveil Falls:

We saw these signs throughout the park and found out it was the 'Red Bear, Dead Bear' program - everywhere that you saw one of these signs, that meant a bear had been hit by a car and died in that area. Sad sad.
And at our campground, there was this sign posted about bear activity (and that 23 bears had been hit and killed in the park this year...)


It was a warm week -- mid-90s around 4000 feet (where we were camping) and cooler as the elevation went higher, so that limited our hiking ambitions so we just tried to stay cool. After cruising Yosemite Valley with all the tour bus tourists, we headed back to our campground for a bit and explored the Merced River:

The Mariposa Grove is near Wawona and we thought it might be cooler there with all those big trees (it wasn't), so we went off to investigate:

There were lots of squirrels and chipmunks everywhere the whole trip, and I was trying to catch a little chipmunk to bring back for the kitties to play with... Didn't happen. But since we were kitty-less, we kept ourselves amused with the squirrel antics:

Friday morning we got up early and drove through eastern Yosemite, through Tuolumne Meadows and out to Mono Lake. Amazing views everywhere:
I had never been to Mono Lake or to the eastern Sierras, so it wasn't what I expected at all (and now I can't remember what I expected) but still amazing. We stopped at the Mono Lake Visitor Center where we found out that the lake has 3 times the amount of salt as the ocean, very high alkalinity, and is the nesting ground of 80% of California's sea gull population. Armed with the facts, we headed to the South Tufa area to see the salt columns, which are called tufas:














After checking out South Tufa, we went to the Panum Crater, which is a volcanic crater very near the lake, and you can actually hike in and around the crater, which we did until we lost the trail, climbed around on lots of loose rocks and I felt like we were going to end up on that night's news for being stupid-tourists-hiking-around-very-unprepared-and-with-one-bottle-of-water-between-them-in-the-heat-of-the day-and-had-to-be-rescued. But we survived and made it out without more than a little sunburn:
In little spots on the drive back, we could see that the leaves on the aspen trees turning - little spots of color on otherwise desolate mountains:
We drove back into Yosemite, stopped at a nice creek-y area to cool our dusty selves, and then saw smoke in the sky near Tuolumne Meadow (still don't know what it was):
We stopped at Inspiration Point to get a last look at the valley, since we would be leaving out of the south entrance the next morning and not see it again. I made Chris trek through the tunnel there out to a spot where we could get our own view of the valley that not everyone knows about - I'd been there before in the winter, and we'd had it all to ourselves then, but this time there were a couple other people out there and some bear, um, evidence, so it wasn't as cool as I'd remembered:

Saturday morning we left early enough to see cows get led to pasture by cowboys and their cow-doggies out past Oakhurst on Highway 49:

Here are Nine & Ten pondering what it is to get older:
And here is Nine's more mature nap pose:












And here he is cuddling with Chris on the couch:

All that pedaling worked up quite an appetite, so we went to Tacos Por Favor which was muy delicioso! I loved it because they had a ton of veggie options (!!!) and didn't use lard (yay) and it was cheap (yay)

And then we went to see myboyfriendJasonBateman in the movie Extract (for the second time...) and being in LA, I was hoping for the chance to see him for real... No dice.

Sunday we walked around Pacific Palisades Park and the weather was perfect:

The walk and sunshine had us thinking food (us? what?) so we went to Father's Office, where Virginia said they had the best burgers -- I can't speak for the burgers but w-o-w for the non-burger-food:

So good friends, good eats, good weather and a good time had by all.