Two Days after Christmas

I have a quite a few photos to post from Christmas. I'll start with the pictures I took on Monday, December 27 on my cell phone (we forgot to take the camera with us that day).

We first went to the Children's Discovery Musuem. There were some really fun things for kids to do with water toys. Since kids love to fluch things down toilets, they had the whirlpool equivalent for kids to send balls down the drain.
The grandkids had a good time playing with the many creative toys.

Paddling in the woven boat with Uncle John.

After visiting the Children's Discovery Museum, we ate at Panera (St. Louis Bread Co).

After lunch, we went to Big Basin State Park, and hiked through the large coast redwood forest. This is in front of the Father of the Forest. It is a pretty fat tree.

John and Dallin are visiting the Mother of the Forest. This tree is the tallest tree in Big Basin at 329 feet tall.We came across several banana slugs on our hike. It was getting late, so there was not much light for this photo. It is pretty obvious why these are called banana slugs. This guy was about 7 or 8 inches long. The Banana Slugs are the mascot for nearby UC Santa Cruz. I wonder if UC Santa Cruz has a track team?? How fast can they be?

It was a fun day. We ended it with pizza from Via Mia.

I'll post other photos when I return to San Jose.

Geocaching along the Bonneville Shorline Trail with Bret

On the Saturday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend, Bret and I went for a hike along the Bonneville Shorline Trail between Rock Canyon and Slate Canyon in Provo, Utah. We parked at Rock Canyon. The round trip hike was 6.5 miles. This was the view of Provo early in the hike when the sun was behind the clouds.
We saw lots of deer along the trail. This one ran past us to join his cousins.

They have fences and poles close together to keep out people that had too much to eat for Thanksgiving. Bret and I both made it through without too much difficulty.

As it was getting dark, the sunset caused some pretty colors and the city lights became more visible.

As it got darker, the shutter stayed open longer making it look lighter than it really was. This shot was taken looking northwest toward point of the mountain.

This shot is looking southwest. The tallest peek in the back is Mt. Nebo.

We still found three more caches after these last photos were taken. We found 10 of the 13 geocaches we looked for. By the time we found the last geocache, it was pretty dark. We then turned around and walked the 3 miles back to the car in the dark. Many of the geocaches we found we from a series called Utah slang caches. Most of them were terms I had heard many times before but some of them were terms Bret and I had not heard before. The cache names we found (in the order we found them) were: Fetchen, Gosh Darnit, Fricken, Sheesh, Dad Gummitt, Let me in, OSH, Golly G. I was not familiar with "Let me in" and "OSH" or what they mean. The others were not new. These caches were all easy to find and right along the trail. Even though it was pretty dark for the walk back, there was snow on the ground and the trail was snow free (mostly) so the reflection of the city lights off the clouds was enough for us to easily find our way back. It was a really fun afternoon/evening hike.

Our New Home

We have signed a contract to rent a home in San Jose. Since it may be a while before we sell our house in St. Louis, and we cannot buy a house here until the St. Louis house sells, we decided it was time to rent. The address of the new house is 1677 Klipspringer, Dr, San Jose, CA 95124. Google maps knows where it is. This photo is the view from the street in front of the house.

There are two cute little Hobbit trees in front of the front porch.

About 200 feet from the front door of the house is a great little park. There is a nice playground for the children in the neighborhood.

Next to the playground is a pavillion for picnics and BBQs.

There is also a large grass area that looks like it might be suitable for frisbee or football.

On the other side of the park from the house is a Safeway grocery store. The church is 0.65 miles from the house, so it is close enough to walk in nice weather. Brian and Annie's house is 0.9 miles, John and Becky's house is 1.8 miles, Mark's house is 1.9 miles and John and Claudia's house is 3.8 miles. We will be in the same ward as Brian and Annie. The others each live in a different ward. Having 4 different wards meeting in 3 different buildings so close is unheard of in Missouri.

Mom and I will be going to St. Louis the week after Thanksgiving and our household goods will be loaded on a moving truck on December 1st. Our furniture will be delivered to the house in San Jose around December 8, It will be nice to have our own place again. We really appreciate those that have provided places for us to stay for the last 3 months, but we are ready to have our own place. We really look forward to having everyone here for Christmas. It will be a good time.

Interesting Sights in San Jose

I went for a walk this morning in San Jose looking for a few geocaches. I only found 1 out of 8 that I looked for, but I found some interesting sights that amused me. What you cannot hear in this photo is that the security alarm going off. I assumed the person that drove the red car in the photo was taking care of shutting off the alarm. But while I was walking by, someone got in the red car and drove off. Meanwhile the alarm continued. It makes me wonder how secure things are at Secure Computing.

A few blocks from Secure Computing is Alan Avenue. I not seen a street named after me before. It was kind of fun and made up for not finding geocaches.

Big Basin state Park

Last Saturday, Mom and i went to the beach in Santa Cruz. This week Mom is in Utah, so I was on my own for an adventure. It has been over 21 years since I last visited Big Basin State Park. Big Basin has some really great trails through some large costal redwoods. We used to go there for picnics, hikes and even camping.

Today's weather was sunshine and temps in the low 70s, which seemed like perfect weather for a hike in Big Basin. When I first arrived, I hiked on the short trail that is marked with some of the really cool trees. This first photo shows the Chimney tree on the right. A fire burned out the inside of the tree without killing it. It is living with branches and leaves growing, even though the inside is brned out.
This photo is looking straight up inside the chimney tree. The light circle is looking out the top.

The tree named Father of the Forest is estimated to be the oldest living tree in Big Basin at 2000 years old. It is almost 17 feet diameter at breast height and 66 feet circumference at the ground and 250 feet high.

This is the a little higher view of the Father of the Forest.

Close by is the Mother of the Forest. This tree is the tallest in Big Basin at 329 feet.

Standing at the bottom of the Mother of the Forest looking up, it really does look tall.

From a little way off, it is clear that it really is a tall tree.

There are some other trees that look pretty cool.

This one looks like it might be an ent. I expected it to say something as I walked by. It did not say anything and I was OK with that.

When we went to Big Basin many years ago, we went to a picnic site where there were cool trees that kids could climb on. I found our old spot. I parked close to it and then hiked from there. When I got back, there were some kids climbing on this big log.

There are a lot of really cool picnic sites here.

A short walk from our old picnic spot was a large tree across the creek that was at least 5 feet in diameter. I found it. This is looking down the hill from above. The downhill part was well worn and slipery with wet shoes. It is safer to get on the log at the bottom of the hill

We had a family on the log photo taken once on this log, but there was a lot of recent brush and small trees that got knocked down to partially cover the tree, so the long span is not as obvious now.

Very close by, there was another log that was easier to walk on to cross the stream. Once on the other side, the large log was easier to climb on top of.

There were some other cool logs crossing the stream, all within a quarter of a mile of the large one.

It was getting dark early under all of the tall redwoods, but fortunately, my cell phone camera has a flash to take of photo of this really cool looking mushroom. It was over a foot across.

It was a fun day. If people are interested, it might be fun possibility for Christmas time, providing the weather is nice.

I love Japanese Food

A few days ago John told me about a large Japanese store in San Jose on Saratoga Avenue just south of I280. I looked it up on the Internet. It is called Mitsuwa. This is a full sized grocery store that is entirely Japanese items. This is a photo of the large bags of rice.
This is the shelf of the various kinds of rice in smaller bags, including Haiga and partially polished brown rice.

There is an entire shopping center that is focused on Japanese stuff including a large book store and and a few restaurants. There are two restaurants that are suppose to have good gyoza on their menu. One of them is called "Hana". It is a small place but they make their gyoza in front of the front window.

I went there for dinner tonight. They serve the gyoza steamed (sui) or fried (yaki). I ordered the yaki gyoza with rice, broccoli, salad, and sweet and sour mushroom soup. I also ordered Calpico to drink.

It was quite good. The gyoza was good, but not quite as good as the stuff we have made ourselves. It was good to hear people speaking Japanese. Like many of these small Japanese places, I did not see any forks in the restaurant.

A Visit to the Beach...and other fun things

Mom and I went to the beach yesterday at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz. We were not able to stay very long but it was a very enjoyable visit anyway. The tide was really low and you could walk under the bridge. Mom walked out a ways but stayed in shallow water.

She did run into a wave while staying mostly dry.

We walked over to the tide pools and saw some sea anemones.

We only went to the first few pools and did not have time to go to the best ones that require a little more walking. It was good to at least get to see these and experience the beach again after being away for a while. I believe a trip to the beach while people are here for Christmas would be a good idea. I will check to see what the tides schedule will be. Low tide is the best time to go. While we were at the beach, there was a wedding. There were lots of people in suits and tuxedos and nice dresses. There was an Elvis impersonator that was singing "Can't Help Falling in Love" during the bridal procession as we were leaving.

After we left the beach, we went the movies and saw "RED". It was a great entertaining movie, even though the plot was a little cheesy. We loved it and highly recommend it.

After the movie, we went to "The Fish Market" to eat. Mark was stuck on his couch with back pain, so we ordered take out for all of us, including Mark and then went to Mark's house to eat. The food was really good. I had skewered shrimp and scallops with bacon cooked over mesquite. For the sides, I had Au Gratin potatoes and steamed vegetables. Sourdough bread and butter also came with it. Mom had a Mediterranean shrimp dish that was really good...and sweet potato fries.

Overall, it was a really pleasant day and we enjoyed it a lot.