Uphill Skiing With Astrid at Ashcroft

We had barely gotten started and Astrid was already done with cross country skiing. “I hate this!” she yelled in frustration, her long, narrow skis and poles splayed in four different directions as she slid slowly backwards down the hill. I was about to launch into another explanation of how to go uphill on cross

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Friends, Horses & Paparazzi in Half Moon Bay

The main reason for our visit to Half Moon Bay was to see Ondine, my twelve year-old daughter, Astrid’s, best friend. Half Moon Bay is approximately half-way between San Francisco, where we live, and Davenport, a speck of a strawberry-farming town along the so-called “slow coast” just north of Santa Cruz, where Ondine’s family moved

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Snorkeling with the Masses at Hanauma Bay

“At Hanauma Bay,” the concierge at our Waikiki hotel told us, “you’ll see more people than fish.” She advised us to skip this popular Oahu snorkling destination and take a kayak or catamaran tour instead. But the tours were pricey and Hanauma Bay, a thirty minute drive southeast of downtown Honolulu, was only $7.50 each

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Fear and Regret at Alamere Falls

Alamere Falls, located on the southern end of Point Reyes National Seashore, spills over the edge of a thirty-foot cliff and into the Pacific Ocean below. A “coastal waterfall” or “tidefall,” it is a fairly uncommon natural phenomenon, with only twenty-five of its kind sprinkled around the globe. San Francisco, where I live, is just

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Wetter Than Ever in Yosemite

Over the course of California’s current “water year” (measured from October to September) epic amounts of rain and snow have fallen throughout the state, prompting Governor Jerry Brown to declare an official end to California’s five-year drought on April 7. In the northern Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite National Park, this has been the wettest water year on

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