Recent weekends

[philena]

Mr. Philena and I have been rediscovering the beauties of Tilden, our regional park. We have also been cooking. Which pictures would you like to see first? For the homebodies, click on the link labeled "for homebodies," and you will see images of domestic cookery. For rugged outdoorsy people, click on the link labeled "for rugged outdoorsy people" and you will see pictures of rugged outdoorsyness.


Here is Mr. Philena cooking pancakes. Note how carefully he measures the sugar.


Here I am making biscuits. Note how carefully I set the timer.


Here I am dancing to the radio while the biscuits bake. I can't explain the somber expression on my face. I remember grinning the whole time. Maybe the camera caught me as I was taking a breath or something.


And here are the biscuits, just out of the oven. They are double-layered biscuits, with chopped apples and brown sugar and orange juice and cinnamon and allspice between the layers. They were okay, but not very interesting. I think next time I will brush the tops with butter and sprinkle turbinado sugar on top before I bake them.




First, here is a trail map showing the trails we took. It is important to be situated when examining photographs of outdoorsy terrain. The trail that we took today is marked out in blue, but we have also explored other areas.


Now that you know where we are, here is Mr. Philena examining the view on the Laurel Canyon trail in Tilden.


Here is a nice little lake called Jewel Lake, where we ate lunch when we hiked here two weeks ago. It is not on the blue trail on the map above. Look in the upper left hand corner of that map, just below the scale, for a smaller body of water in the middle of some yellow trails. That is Jewel Lake. Very pretty.


Next, here is a nice view of a little cove, both with Mr. Philena and without him. It is located on the Wildcat Gorge trail, just north of Lake Anza.




We also have Mr. Philena sitting under a tree with brilliant yellow flowers. This is on the Curran Trail, on the way up to Inspiration Point.


From Inspiration Point there is a lovely paved road called the Nimitz Way, part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail. It is great for biking, even if you have a 30-year-old bike from your mother-in-law* instead of your wonderful old mountain bike that was stolen by scumbags. I haven't biked there yet, but I certainly could, and the views are lovely, as shown below. If you look closely in the top right-hand corner, you can even see the Golden Gate Bridge. It was caught by the camera, which is 8 megapixels! I just made the image smaller so as not to overwhelm your computer screen. babylon_poet has a computer screen roughly the size of a highway billboard, so she could probably see the whole pictures, but not everyone is so lucky.


Finally, here is an image of Lake Anza, where we started and ended our hike. There are lots of waterfowl, and even some caninefowl. See?


If you don't see the canine swimming around, I'll point him out for you. He was a golden retriever, of whom we saw many, but the ducks don't seem to be alarmed.



*And absolutely no offense meant either to my mother-in-law or to her bike. She was lovely to give it to me when my old one was stolen, and I'm very grateful to have the bike, which works perfectly and rides smoothly. It's just not my old one, which I still miss.

Comments

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Mmmm.

Biscuits!!!