This weekend we hiked to a place that we have missed all these years. Right here in Palo Alto there is the Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve with 10+ miles of trails and a cute and beautiful lake in the middle of it.
We also happened to pick a beautiful morning to hike here. The skies were just lit yesterday!! The sunbeams and purple clouds were a treat to the eyes!
There were lots of benches in the park..
that is probably our most beautiful “bench photo” to date ! The rest from this trail are here.. including a few cheesy ones of us making a heart. I was upset with San on the way to the park.. so our friends were giving me a hard time for being so finicky.. At times my OCD tendencies get the better of me. She is my world and I cannot stay mad at her for more than 3 minutes tops. At this point I am pretty much her pet dog or something like that.. <vent>still one needs to fold all other fingers in when making the heart and it has to be presented parallel to the plane of the camera.. </vent"> (that should be a legit html tag!)
Not possible to be angry with this one..
A few vertical shots of this lake..
A gallery of pictures of the beautiful skies and landscapes from the days hike.. We hiked only 6 miles as I had to do some unplanned last minute singing with the local Smule group! It was a packed day of activities for a regular saturday!
Surprisingly did not take any videoclips on this hike!
We will definitely revisit this place and cover the few trails that we missed within this park. The bay area is just amazing. There are still a lot of trails we haven’t hiked, given we hike new trails all the time.
Every year there is a well planned long grand hike. Last years highlight was the grand canyon! Hoping this years grand hike will be something to write about!
While eating the tamarind rice and choking on it, I asked San "arent we supposed to be on a boat tour today as well?" and she goes "In the interest of time I did not book it!".. a few tears and sentimental dialogues that would seriously make Sivaji Ganesan hand over his Chevalier award to me, we called the tour operator and were confirmed for the 5PM (last) boat tour of Antelope Canyon. We were asked to be at the dock 15 minutes before and the dock was 15 minutes from our hotel.
We decided to take a power nap for an hour and head out..
it was Antelope canyon day.. a tour all morning, a tour all afternoon and now for the evening a boat tour.
We realized while entering the dock that the boat tour fees did NOT include the entry to the dock which was part of the National park service. If you don't have a National park pass, you have to pay 30 $.. if you do enjoy national parks, strongly recommend you get the annual pass for 80 bucks. It is always a good thing to support our national parks!
Seeing natural wonders gives me more goosebumps than visiting any temple. Keep telling my family that if you want to realize god, go to a National park and take a look from any vista point! Or look at the smiling face of your spouse or children.. while the second option makes you mentally happy, you don't get the exercise.. so go to the parks!
The boat tour was great! we got waterbottles on the boat and a tourguide who was local and gave us a personalized tour as we spent an hour on a boat going through the canyon on water!
Loved it through and through!
a photo gallery of the nature pics..
Once done, we decided to go find dinner in Page. The first mexican place we went to had a 45 minute wait. So we went to the second one and were promptly seated. The food was amazing as was the service.
my models did not disappoint!
Video highlights reel of the boat tour and back..
The next morning was going to be an all day drive back to Phoenix after a few stops. So we decided to hit the one big super Walmart in the area before going to bed. Have not seen a store this big in my life! Stocked up on some yogurt, bottled water etc. for the return trip and made it back to the hotel.
The original plan post seeing Northern lights was to go on a viator tour to Casper glacier to visit a naturally formed ice cave. Even by viator description, it said that this was a moderately difficult trip and only "able bodied adults" were to come for an approximate 3 mile walk on snow and ice to get to the cave.
After the previous nights experience, San decided that Alaskan standards to rest of US standards are like US system to metric system. An "able Alaskan body" was a 6 foot 2 inch plus, 250 lbs, pure muscle body with a heavy beard that could fight Commando or Rambo for at least a few minutes and live to tell the tale.. or something close to that.. We did not fit that description..In short, she bailed on me.
Now for a backstory and the title of the post.
One of my favorite songs during college days was by Franco de Vita, "Golpeando en el mismo lugar", which translates to "you get hit in the same palce again and again". We have a similar saying in Tamil "patta kaal-laye padum" which is "you get hit in the same leg again".
Two weeks prior to this Alaska trip, I hurt my right knee. A knee that already was cracking from a skin issue. After coming back from yoga class, I had the mat towel etc and was trying to go through a narrow gap between the car and the fridge in the garage. License plate holders are strategically placed in cars at exactly knee height. If you bang your knee sideways on the holder, you are guranteed a horrific experience for weeks. After realizing that, promptly iced the knee. While on the couch, my daughter wanted me to do something for her. Given the bandage around the knee, didn't want to fold the extended leg on the couch and in a brilliant move thought I could just step outside of it and get down. Bad ideas come in twos. Promptly banged same knee on the coffee table, just an hour after the first hit. Sometimes a picture is worth a long paragraph.. so here you go..(the gaps have already been fixed in the photos below and credit has been given to the accident causers!)
The next two weeks were spent trying to make every effort to recover, with yoga, ibuprofen, ice, triple pillows under leg, crepe bandages, etc. just so I don't screw up the Alaska experience.
I really wanted to go through that ice cave!
San saw the disappointment on my face when she cancelled the ice cave tour. To make up for it, she was checking with Viator if there was some other activity that did not involved walking on ice. There were two options. A dog sled experience where huskies pulled us on the snow for 30 minutes and we got to see the kennels, which was promptly rejected for her fear of dogs. Another trip where we got to ride a snowmobile on a frozen lake and ride into the sunset in the Arctic circle. She agreed to do that and off we went.
It was a 40 minute drive to North Pole, Alaska where we met an amazing dude, Frozen Tony! He ran what appeared to be a one man operation on a weekend as he was our receptionist, trainer, and guide.
After explaining the operation of the snowmobile and going over the warnings, he started assigning vehicles to the folks in the group. When San shook her head and said "I will be a passenger, don't ask me to drive!" and also said "Can I just drive with you?" .. Tony said "Your husband passed the test! You ride with him!" Then he realized that not all vehicles he had were two seaters. So he gave me his vehicle and said "this is mine and the controls are different but you can do this!" and went over the control differences in his vehicle. San was not exactly sure of my mobiling ability. We had 7 other folks in the group, 4 from New York and 3 from Columbia!
Fortunately we found some gear that was large for our size but still covered us. Helmets, goggles included. In spite of all this gear, the outside temperature was -5F after 4 in the evening and we were to go see the sunset at 5PM.
Tony was just amazing. He guided us and made sure we went from simple to complex terrain and gave enough time for everyone in the group to reach the next point before proceeding. After the first 15 minutes, I was gunning it and racing across the snow and ice at 40 mph. Turns out, I am a natural when it comes to flying over the snow on this thing! When you go at 40mph in -5F, the wind against your face makes it a lot more below zero and the water that drips from your nose becomes ice and you look like a mini walrus! San could not hug me as our helmets clash at that speed.. so she had to hold on to the mobile hand grip and hang on for dear life. Apparently she was screaming for me to go slow but I could not hear it, given the helmet and the wind in my face.
Tony took some great pics of us and even a video clip.
Frozen Tony even had a great Pano shot on my phone which was a pleasant surprise!
There was one tricky place where he had to make us wait and get every snowmobile through a point.. then we all got back on to return. There we got to take some pics by ourselves..
Driving towards a sunset in Alaska is an amazing experience!
A video, thanks to Tony! It was not easy to drive without gloves.. so had to ask for the phone back and keep going! My knuckles were feezing and burning without gloves!
We got back in one piece and I was clearly very happy and San was happy for me. She said I reminded her of Bond movies. She didn't know that my nickname in high school was Sundar Bond. Was happy to live up to that name after many years.
We had called a Lyft and no one showed. The rest of the group had left as they had their own cars. We had arrived in a taxi. Tony realized our issue and helped call a local North Pole taxi, who is the only guy who comes to pick up folks after sunset. We were talking to him on and off about Alaskan life for 30 minutes while waiting as he was closing shop. We got some hot cocoa during the wait!
Would strongly recommend this adventure, especially thanks to Frozen Tony of Alaska Wildlife guide! He made this whole thing an evennig to cherish and remember for a long time!
Finally we got the taxi to take us back towards Fairbanks. We were in for a treat before reaching the hotel..
