Our second trip up to Big Sur to spend Christmas at Ripplewood cabin resort… We had lunch at Nepenthe, hiked out to the ocean at Andrew Molera State Park, ate a divine Christmas dinner at Deetjen’s and then built a cozy fire to drink the ever-amazing Pip Pinot Noir while we watched movies.
The weather is finally starting to act a little more like fall, with its lower intensity light and cool afternoon breezes – and fall is my favorite time to go hiking! So I went out and bought some new Nikes as a little inspiration to hit the trails more often and then took the afternoon off to break them in. Jesusita is a pretty mellow trail if you just take it to the water fountain and back… Not many hills to climb, some wide open meadows and easily navigable paths – one of my faves!
The last day of our visit, Christmas Day, we went on a hike on the Chuckwalla Trail to Paradise Rim. It was a fantastic scenic trail with lots of interesting rock formations, places to rock climb and my favorite: an arch! We hiked up to Paradise Rim and ate a sandwich overlooking the community below. We took our time coming back knowing it was our last day of hiking in such beautiful scenery for a while…
Snow Canyon, on the edge of town in St. George has Red Navajo sandstone and ancient lava rock as far as the eye can see! We hiked the Petrified Dunes trail, which is a really easy hike up on the slickrock. We had fun taking jumping & handstand photos and channeling our inner Ansel Adams.
Won herself a pass to some far off moon
It was second class but what’s to lose
I woke up with a wild hair this morning & decided it was high time for a new adventure! So we packed up the backpack and headed out to Fillmore, CA to check out the Tar Creek waterfall hike. Generally, I can make & execute plans pretty well, but this was not one of those times. The directions I had on my phone seemed good enough, but they really explained nothing & since I didn’t have a signal, we were lost 80% of the time. We fumbled our way all over the back country and never even found the purpose of the trip: the waterfall. FAIL. Better luck next time?
Second rule of travel (behind sampling local fruit): take a hike! Palm Springs has a surprising number of options for hiking, but we settled on the Palm Canyon hike in the Indian Canyons Reserve. ($9/each to get in, but worth it… Thanks for sharing your land!)
We rented bikes from Banana Azul and went exploring first thing the next morning. The town of Puerto Viejo is probably 2km from the hotel, but you can ride all the way to the end of the road at Manzanillo – about 20km one way. (Which we did on this day!) We were really hoping to go snorkeling, but as we rode around it was obvious that the ocean wasn’t in snorkeling condition: fast sets on rough seas… Either way, we had enough to keep us occupied with beach scouting and scoping out the little shops along the way.
The drive from La Fortuna to Puerto Viejo takes approx 5 hours, so we were picked up by the Interbus bright & early to set out on the road. Since all of the roads are two-lanes and not very good for passing, when a semi drove across our lane and landed in the ditch, it added an extra two hours onto our drive. The joys of the road!
More swimming, cartwheels, pina coladas, sunsets. Great place!
After another fantastic breakfast at Hotel Arenal Manoa, we took a cab over to check out the La Fortuna waterfall (approx $15 each way). Apparently I was too excited to read anything about this hike and just jumped straight to the photos, because I didn’t know about the major stairmaster workout ahead of us.
One of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had to date: shark diving!
I woke up in Hermanus before dawn and drove the long, dark stretch of road over to Kleinbaai to meet up with the White Shark Projects team for a morning dive. Even the drive there seemed a little eerie, with bicyclists and people on foot popping up out of the darkness on the side of the road, making the drive pretty harrowing. I was lost in thought imagining all sorts of scary shark scenarios and they were forcing me to pay attention to the road! Thanks for keeping me present, roadside people.
