Back in July, Melanie and I went on an awesome camping trip with Marc to Montana De Oro State Park, near San Luis Obispo, CA. The park has a normal campground, but we opted for one of the “environmental” campsites. Instead of being packed together in a typical campground loop, the four environmental sites are spread throughout the park. Our particular site involved parking at the bottom of a hill and hiking 1/2 mile up a dirt road. Once there the site had a very clean pit toilet, a nice picnic table, and plenty of space to spread out. It also had a sweeping 360-degree view of the ocean and surrounding hills. Notably absent from the view were other people; unless you were looking through binoculars, you couldn’t see anyone else. We literally had a whole hill to ourselves. It was wonderful!

We camped for two nights, spending a lot of time soaking in the view and enjoying nature. We also went for a great hike along the coast on land owned by PG&E for the adjacent Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. (Pleasant name, eh?) The PG&E folks were very nice; they simply asked that we signed in and out and agreed to stay on the trail unless we wanted to get shot at. Sounds like a good deal to me! The rugged coastline is amazingly beautiful. None of my pictures do justice to the place, which really must be experienced in person.

We also found time to entertain ourselves with kites. See the photo gallery for a play-by-play account. While we mainly fed on the mountain of food we packed up the hill from our cars, we also headed over to Los Osos for a great burger at a little place called Sylvester’s. If you like a good burger and are in the area, you’ll love this place.

Overall the trip was a blast; I came home wishing I could spend more time out in nature enjoying the beauty of it all. It also renewed my interest in backpacking; I’d really like to do a big backpacking trip one of these days. I think it would be a great experience.

Click on the picture above for the full gallery.

‘Twas a good easter weekend. The weather was phenomenal; it felt just like summer. It was probably in the mid-80′s both yesterday and today. We kept the windows and curtains closed in the house part of the day because it was so hot… We haven’t done that since September.

Yesterday was our monthly top-to-bottom house cleaning day. (We try to schedule a certain day, otherwise we’ll find a good reason to keep putting it off.) Today we started things off with a tasty breakfast. Last night I put the ingredients in the bread machine for the super easy and tasty Amish Bread, and this morning I awoke to tasty bread aromas. We sliced the bread and made french toast and scrambled eggs, then ate out on our patio. Delightful! The scent of flowers was in the air and it was a really warm and pleasant easter morning.

After breakfast we headed out to the Santa Margarita River park in Fallbrook. In all my years of living down here I’d never explored this place, which is a shame; it was great. A nice flowing river (more like a creek by non-Southern California standards) with a great trail beside it shaded by lots of bit oak trees. Overall a very peaceful and relaxing place that reminded us both of places farther north. The grass was nice and green by the river, but it seems that the flowers are past their prime and the grass is starting to turn brown everywhere else. Spring happens quick down here… It’s a good thing easter came early this year.

Hope everybody else’s easter was nice, and you all were lucky and got those tasty round little brown chocolate balls that the easter bunny scattered around my yard. Mmm mmm!

Today I decided to try out time lapse photography for myself. Here’s what I came up with. Made using the “Smooth Interval Recording” feature of my Sony DCR-HC48, iMovie, and Garageband for composing the music.

Click to watch the video!

Drive an hour and half east from the sprawling metropolis of San Diego and you’ll undoubtedly find Anza Borrego Desert State Park; it’s the largest state park in California and the second largest in the country. Covering over 935 square miles of rugged yet beautiful desert, this area has lots of hidden surprises. One of them is the rather uninvitingly named Hellhole Canyon.

The trailhead is located on Highway S-22 about a mile before it turns into Palm Canyon drive in Borrego Springs. Things start off fairly flat, open, and easy. Here it’s all desert; cactus and sage covered mountains lie to the west and a broad valley terminates at the Salton Sea to the east. Even on a cool 65-degree winter day, the sun here feels quite warm and the cacti look quite ominous. Eventually the canyon constricts and the trail fragments, requiring some good rock-scrambling skills. Push on and you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful shady grove of California Fan Palms. About a half mile farther is the real treat: Maidenhair Falls. This is a true desert oasis; an 18-foot waterfall spills into a small pool, boxed in by a mossy canyon wall and sheltered overhead by palm and sycamore trees. While it’s not the most glorious waterfall in the world, it is impressive considering the location.

Watch a little movie of the hike after the jump.

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