.the gpb kids. » Nature

Japanese Maple in Autumn

Mike — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:32:11 +0000

Japanese Maple in Autumn

Originally uploaded by ** Krissy **

I miss visiting Portland with Jules. Maybe we should take a trip soon.

Huckleberry Preserve

Mike — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:42:21 +0000

Jules and I went on a hike up in the hills yesterday. I brought my video camera and shot random things during the trip. Here they are:

Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve from Mike Horn on Vimeo.

The Great Outdoors

Mike — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 05:11:21 +0000

Cho siblings at the entrance

Went with the Cho siblings today to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach. The redwoods were as grand as ever, except one which fell recently. It was a big one too. It fell over one of the trails near the entrance so I wonder what they’re going to do with it.

Jules in a redwood

We were pretty touristy and took lots of pictures of the hollowed out redwoods that you can stand in. After the redwoods we traveled north to the Hog Island Oyster Farm where we picked up 50 fresh oysters of various sizes. With seafood in tow we traveled back down to Stinson Beach and spent the rest of the afternoon scarfing down grilled oysters, corn, veggies, potatoes and cheesecake.

We made a mess

After the eats we bore witness to the most people I’ve ever seen on Stinson Beach. But… lame-o me didn’t take a picture of the masses. So this crazy Cho picture will have to suffice.

Crazy Chos

After all of that we drove back to Oakland, freshened up, and then went out to Mangia Bene out in Martinez for some delicious eats. Now I think it’s time for a nap.

The Beaver State

Mike — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:14:12 +0000

Jules and I are in Oregon this week for a wedding. I just thought I’d drop a note and mention that it’s really pretty up here. Not too many flowers blooming right now, but the grasses are all very big and green (much to Jules’ dismay) and the weather has been pretty nice.

The other day we went for a local hike with Jules’ parents and family friends and once we we past the treeline it was like we were in another world. The trees and foliage were dense for most of the hikes, but some parts thinned out and you could see a hundred yards or so of foresty goodness.

Jules and I took the featured picture after the hike when we were waiting for everyone to catch up. More pictures soon perhaps!

Yosemite With the Lindow Lab

Mike — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:22:07 +0000

Jules invited me to go with her lab to Yosemite again over the weekend. I have mixed feelings about Yosemite. On one hand it is such a touristy place full of people, cars, pavement and garbage that you don’t feel like you’re really enjoying nature. On the other hand Yosemite Valley is such an amazing, awe-inspiring place that you can overlook the hordes of people.

The more popular trails to destinations like Yosemite Falls and Half Dome are lined with people, but on this trip Professor Lindow took us to Taft Point and Sentinel Dome which had very few people. For those of you who don’t like to hike very far, both trails are only 1.1 miles from the parking lot. The picture with this post is of Taft Point. From the edge there is a wonderful view the valley including Yosemite Falls and El Capitan. Apparently there’s a pretty good view if you look straight down too, but I didn’t get that close enough to the edge to look over. It made me queasy just seeing other people do it. It pretty much drops off to the valley floor.

Hiking around Yosemite made me want to take an extended backpacking trip. I’ve pretty much decided on going back to Desolation Wilderness. I went there for a trip once as a Boy Scout and I think about due for another one. I’m thinking late July or August. I can get Jules ready by then right?

Flower Power

Mike — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:01:04 +0000

I went to Point Reyes National Seashore with my mom yesterday and took a bunch of pictures. Here are some of the wildflower ones.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather.

Cactus Jules

Jules — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:22:40 +0000

As a thank you for coming in on the weekend to rescue samples from our malfunctioning -80C freezer, I was given this round cactus ball by my prof. By given, I mean it was thrown at me while she said, “Catch!”.

Now back to work

Gonna eat you!

Mike — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:31:34 +0000

My mom got me a pitcher plant that I brought to work. I can’t say how long it will last, but it looks happy after one day. For those of you who don’t know, little flies go into the pitchers… and never come out! Mwahahahahaaaaaa…

Also, the stache is gone. Good riddance!

Not your grandpa’s farm

Mike — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:40:45 +0000

Is that not the coolest farm you’ve ever seen? Apparently it’s a design for a downtown Seattle plan to integrate urban farming. The design is by Mithun, the makers of the REI flagship store in Seattle. You can read more about the farm at An Off-Grid Vertical Farm for Downtown Seattle or just check out Mithun’s fancy proposal.

A Post and a Picture

Jules — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:49:58 +0000

Since Mike just posted so many pictures, I shall have to post one of my own. Tada!

This was while we were waiting in line for the wanda sykes comedy routine at Punchline. I was extremely hungry, but no food places were open in that area of SF at 9 30. So I had to make do with a bag of caramel corn from a nearby theater. As you can see, I became very irate and attacked mike with it.

In other news, we headed to Lake Anza today and took a short hike. It was a really nice day, so I was surprised by how much parking there was in the parking lot. We attempted to name as many plants as we could, but realized that we had forgotten quite a few. It’s pretty sad. Maybe we need to start going on hikes with notebooks in hand. Our future hikes will be punctuated with shouts of “Polystichum!” “Cucurbitaceae!” “Saxifragaceae!”… doubtless startling hikers into hightailing in the opposite direction from two deranged, notebook waving humans.