Just spent a few days playing at The Pinnacles, which is a place I absolutely love. It's so close to San Francisco, but still feels worlds away. It's nice for me to have a refuge like that since I'm not much of a city girl.

Highlights included a tasty dinner of S'mores and beer and a 13 mile hike that included dark, scary caves, a sucky hill, warnings about being eaten by wild pigs, fence climbings, rain, and tons of gorgeousness. We hiked the Chalone trail to the highest peak on the North side of the park - only about 3,500 feet, but it was pretty tough. This trip also proved my theory that penis-shaped rocks are always funny.

We stopped at the climbing gym on our way home despite the fact that we smelled a little like alcoholic bums who had been set on fire (it was below freezing at night, so we spent a lot of time by the campfire).

As for today, looks like some more climbing, and then I'll head out for a nice long run while Ant goes kiting or surfing.

It's a good life. Just wish some of my friends were on this section of the globe so I could share it with them.

I don't know about the conditions where you guys live, but over here in my little corner of the world Mother Nature has some seriously bad PMS. Foggy, raining, and I've never seen the ocean so angry before! Yesterday, Ant and I strolled to our favorite spot on the cliffs at Fort Cronkhite to watch the waves pounding the shore, and it was an awesome display! We were at least 150 feet up, and we were getting sprayed by waves on a regular basis. Check out the video:



Pretty cool, right? And here's a few more pictures.

If you could marry an inanimate object, I would totally run off and elope with breakfast.

Ant, Taylor, Todd, and I recovered from last night's festivities with some coffee and eggs benedict at the Americana Cafe, which, despite its name is actually a Vietnamese restaurant.

It was a good way to fuel up before our brief but awesome hike at Fort Cronkhite. Pics later...I'm late for naptime!

Just got back from a 3 day trip to Songnisan National Park. It was an awesome trip, and if you're in Korea and you enjoy hiking you should really make it a priority to get there. If you're in Seoul you can take a direct bus from Nambu bus terminal, but the schedule is a bit inconvenient so we took a bus from EBT to Cheongu, then a different bus from Cheongu to the park entrance. Took a little over 3 hours, cost about 12,500 won each way. We left a little later than we had planned, so Saturday was pretty much a bust in terms of hiking. We tried, but there were a ton of park employees at the gate telling us it was closed. Instead, we walked around the town, found a place to sleep, dumped our bags, and went back out to explore the town a bit. Had some Dong Dong Ju and seafood pajean for a snack, then walked around some more until stopping for dinner. A few pics of the town, as well as the truck that was driving around selling all sorts of goodies, including dog meat: We found a cute, cheap minbak to stay in. No beds, so we slept on padded mats (called yohs, and quite common in Korea) that the minbak provided. The place seemed to be run by one lady, and she was super friendly and the whole place was spotless.

After being denied access to the park, we wandered around town some more and spent some time making fun of the sculptures in the sculpture garden outside of the campground. Dinner the first night was awesome! I unfortunately can't remember the name of the dish we had, but it was some sort of mushroom stew with all sorts of mountain vegetables, and of course the usual side dishes, rice, and beer. It was a family run place, and the Korean ajumma who runs the place actually goes into the mountains herself and gathers the mushrooms and veggies. We ate soooo much!

After dinner we wandered a bit more, then headed back to the minbak to see if there was anything in English on the TV. We found The Bourne Ultimatum. Total score!!!

Weekly totals 25 July 2009 - 31 July 2009:

Running - 26
Biking (Grrr!! I hate thieves!) - 12 (thanks for letting me use your bike, Ant)
Hiking - 0 :-(

My unscheduled rest day kept me from reaching my goal of 30 miles this week. Next week 35 fo' sho'!!!

Total weekly mileage 18 July, 09 - 24 July, 09:

Running: 24.28
Biking: 23
Hiking: 8.63

Not fantastic by any means, but a shit load better than I've done in a long time. Off for a long run now - hopefully next week I can break 30 miles in the running department.

Just a few more pics from our little jaunt to Dobongsan. Dobongsan is said to be the most popular mountain in the Seoul area for hiking (although I've heard that said about Bukhansan as well), and the first time we went was waaaay back when we first got here, when Ant was still a little unsure about this whole life in the ROK thing, and we were both so overwhelmed by the crowds and having to stand in line to even get to the trailhead (not to mention that I was already crampy and grumpy) that we just checked out one of the many temples in that area and came back home without hiking. Not sure if it was the 60 - 70 mph gusts on the summit or the serious downpour that kept everyone away, but once we got out of the food stall area we barely passed another person the whole time. It was awesome!! The type of person who will hike in that kind of weather is the type of hiker who just wants to get out on the trails, so their trail etiquette is usually better than the typical groups of drunken ajummas and ajushis you have to deal with on a lot of hikes in nicer weather. Almost everyone we passed summoned up every English word they knew to ask us what we thought of the mountain, or to suggest a trail to take, or to tell us we definitely needed to turn around and get ourselves on a real trail.

Ant, who has since morphed into a true Korean, carried an umbrella the whole way and dutifully finished his makkolli and shin ramyeon after the hike!! I was so proud!! :)

I forget the names, but first we hiked to some lookout rock, then to one of the summits (Obong peak, maybe?), and then down a path that followed a bunch of waterfalls, and thanks to the monsoons they were awesome!!! Mapmyhike listed it from subway to the point where we stopped as 8.63 miles, but that seems a bit - though not too much - longer than we both thought it had been.

You guys simply MUST check out Ant's awesome write-up of our hike up, down, and all around Dobongsan! It's sooo cool! And make sure you take a moment to really appreciate my snazzy new pink raincoat!

Hey, look at me!! I'm on The Great Wall!!! Do you guys wanna know the best thing about The Great Wall? It really is pretty freaking great!!! Hiking on The Great Wall was just one of the many, many, many items on my bucketlist. I don't know why, but I've always been fascinated by it. Probably all those rumors about being able to see it from space, which NASA says isn't true but the Chinese government still insists it's the only item on Earth that the astronauts can see from way up there. I'm not inclined to think the Chinese government is built on the value of honesty, but I'm also not inclined to think the U.S. government and its' various agencies are any better, so who knows? When I grow up and become an astronaut, I'll let you guys know for sure if you can see it or not.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling and get back to the point: I went hiking on The Great Wall! It's a few hours outside of Beijing, so for much of the ride there I was trying not to get my hopes up so I wouldn't be too disappointed if it sucked. I mean, how great can a wall really be? I'm surrounded by walls everyday, and I spend most of my time counting the seconds until I can get away from them. Well, I should've just taken a nap, because there was no disappointment involved. I had assumed it would be crowded, but once we got past the first tower (about 15 minutes in) there was maybe one or two other people that weren't with our group. I had also thought it might be kind of like hiking in Korea, but it was actually quite challenging and probably the most physical exertion I'd had in a long time. They offered ways to shortcut, like taking a cable car ride to the top and a zip line back down, but I passed on both and completed every step of the hike on my own two feet (sometimes with the assistance of my hands when it got super steep). Yay me! It wasn't really too far - probably only 10K, but man oh man, there were some steep hills with zero footing involved. The whole time I was hiking I had about 3 thoughts running through my head, "How the H E double hockey sticks did they build this freaking thing?!?" "I wonder if I'm walking over the part where they buried all the dead people?" and "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, PEOPLE ACTUALLY RUN A MARATHON ON THIS FUCKING THING?!?!?" They say that The Great Wall Marathon is the toughest marathon in the world, and I gotta say that they probably aren't joking.

Anyway, here's a gazillion more pics:

And, finally, a well deserved beer at the end of the hike, and me later that evening, after some shopping at the silk market and a yummy dinner of all things involving duck and beer - exhausted in a good way, sunburned, and happy, happy, happy!