Exploring & climbing

Continuing to explore and enjoy the eastern Sierra.  We’ve been here 3 weeks now.  We had our first visitors last week.  Petch (friend from  Strawberry Lodge days),  Heidi and their daughter Rocky stopped for a night on their way to a family reunion in Las Vegas.  It was great to see them and gave us the motivation to finish up a couple of moving in details.  Before they left we all went down to Alabama Hills (40 minutes south) for some climbing.   

Rocky has her own harness & shoes

Malia, Rocky, Paolo

Petch dashed up a couple of climbs and put up top ropes for us all to play on.  Heidi’s sister and family are also climbers.  The kids really liked the scrambling.  They are amazingly comfortable on rock already.  It was a good time and more climbing than we have done in years.

Bite of lunch in the desert

We have identified our favorite hiking/training area for winter (so far).  We can’t get up into the high country until snow melts in spring.  And many of the hikes available now are deserty.

Rock Creek Trail

The one we like follows Rock Creek for 8 miles on a good trail right next to the creek.  You can access it in a couple of places where it crosses a road so we are checking it out in sections.  Near the bottom, it crosses the creek several times with walking bridges.  Buddy freaked when he saw the first one and put on the brakes.  I carried him over the first one.  On the next, he manned up and crossed on his own!  It’s a beautiful place, but north of Bishop, so not real convenient.  It’s nice to combine with ‘a trip to the city’ if we’re not  too tired.  We’ll look for something similar up Big Pine Creek next.

We’re having warm weather this week.  Yesterday was supposed to get up to 72 so we went down to climb at Alabama Hills.  It was T-shirt weather!  Had great fun, will let Chuck tell it.  Chuck:  the difficulty in getting back into climbing is that someone has to lead the climb in order to get the rope up.  So Wednesday we chose the easiest climb we could find, and tried to lead it.  Chuck led it first, then Trish led it and was stoked to have made it to the top!  We were whooping it up, and patting each other on the back,  but our egos were deflated somewhat when we noticed that the dogs had scrambled up the rock right behind Trish!  Wish we had a photo.

I found a fun morning walk/jog loop starting at the house.  It passes a pasture with about 50 horses.  One morning they were all chasing and playing for some reason (Vanessa?).   Another morning a horse in another pasture ran with me on his side of the fence and wanted to be petted.   The other side of the road has cows and lots of calves right now.  I’m seeing lots of flickers, hawks, quail, even a great blue heron (ubiquitous creek nearby).    

Checking out the Big Pine area

   Right now, mornings are cold here.  We get a slow start and let it warm up until 9:00 or so.

Some things never change

   Then it's time to go out for a training walk/jog.  We live on Crocker Road about 2 blocks from highway 395.  If you walk out the door and turn west, the road starts climbing into the hills. Within a few blocks it's a beautiful place to walk....very little traffic, spectacular view.  There's not much civilization up there but many dirt roads, campgrounds, eventually high country.  It's a very inspirational place to be...especially with tunes!

Road up Big Pine Canyon

   You can also drive all the way up Glacier Lodge Road to a trailhead during the snow drought.  It snowed here a couple of weeks ago.  The snow is sparse enough that you can even hike in a bit wearing regular shoes.  That's an area we hope to do some longer hikes in come summer.  That's one of the goals of our training.  We both (& dogs) did about a 1 hour loop from the house this morning.  Dogs can be off leash for about half the loop.  We were tired!... a long way to go before we're ready for any peak bagging.
   We checked out the mountains on the east side of the road this week too.  Route 168 goes into the foothills then White Mountains.  A branch off that goes to the Ancient Bristlecone Forest.  We turned back when the road became snowpacked/icy.  Some of this looks great for biking.  We seem to remember off-loading a couple of people and their bikes from the van back in the 90's.  Wasn't that Rob? 

Most of our views were from inside the car looking around Sophie while Buddy snoozes in Chuck's lap.

Why now? Why Big Pine?

   I really enjoyed my 5 years at FitnessWorks.  I was constantly studying, learning, teaching, training and just interacting with wonderful people.  When we decided to leave Culebra, one of my goals was to get certified to teach some sort of exercise.  I had a Pilates book at the time and that was a vague goal.  Working at the front desk put me in the center of things and I decided my most useful contribution would be working with seniors.  I feel like I made a difference in the lives of several people, accumulated great experience and made some lasting friendships.  I'll let Chuck talk about his golfing goals in Morro Bay. 
   I think there is some gypsy blood in me that likes change.  The central coast is beautiful, has moderate weather year 'round, has some great dog walking venues.  But we were ready to get back to some mountains, hiking, maybe climbing, seasons, lots to do for visitors.  Part of what we loved about Culebra was enjoying visits from friends and family because we were in a beautiful place to visit!  We started looking at options and soon realized that the Bishop area has everything we were looking for.  It is high desert (4,000') surrounded by mountains every direction you look.  Hiking abounds nearby including high country alpine lakes in summer.  World class trout fishing is something we plan to try.  Climbing has boomed here.  We used to climb at Mt. Whitney and Owens River Gorge.  Now there's even more developed....we're starting back with bolted 5.7s at Alabama Hills and will see how it goes.  It gets cold at night in winter, but warms up into at least the 50s daily so you can bike (finding nice rides), climb, golf etc almost any day.  Snow does not accumulate.  We didn't want to be shoveling as much as we did in Boulder!  If we want snow or winter sports, we can drive an hour up to Mammoth.  AND its more affordable here.  Especially in Big Pine we can afford to be retired and have a 2 bedroom house! 
  

Photo of Big Pine house

Moving on & learning to blog

   So.  We loaded the truck on Wed., Feb. 1.  Liam and Steve did an amazing job of cramming all of our stuff into a 20' U-Haul.  Chuck had analyzed it and knew it would be close, and it was.  We were done by noon, finished the clean up and went out for some lunch.  By 2:00 we were on the road.  C driving the truck and T behind in the Kia. Weeks of preparation had made it relatively easy.  Unfortunately, Liam had to crash into the bush by the front door carrying the front end of this massive sofa.  The delivery guy had done the same.  But all survived.
    I (Trish) loaded a book on CD into the player, dogs in the car and off we went.  C got used to the truck quickly.  We drove about 4 hours and got thru Bakersfield to Mojave before spending the night (as planned).  Next morning we hit the road again and arrived in Big Pine around 11am.  The house was unlocked and ready for us.  Our helpers on this end, the Santana brothers, were able to come help by 1pm.  The 3 men got all the boxes and stuff into the house and it was time for the moment of truth....would the sofa fit?  YES! We are in.  While unloading, 3 ladies from the church (our landlord) came over to welcome us with a big basket of goodies...including organic dog bisquits.
   It snowed a few days ago.  They say a couple of feet.  Only tiny piles remain in edges of parking lots where it was plowed.  It gets up into the 50s every day.