Hike! Leo Carrillo Ranch

So, I've been here in San Diego for 4 weeks now, and though I'd joined a gym, I felt like I was missing something.... Like - THE SUN!

Well, the other day I met my dad for lunch at a place described as a "cool and nice outdoors area" by an old friend. The place was Leo Carrillo Ranch. According to the google map, it just looked like another housing community, with just a little extra space around it... It looked like that driving up to it too...

The park ended up being closed on Mondays... so we had lunch at a picnic table we found, by a day care just off to the right of the picture above. Afterwards, I was going to go to the gym, but on our way back to our cars we noticed a sign for a trail - saying 2-mile loop. Exercise AND SUN! Perfect! So, I said goodbye and changed my clothes in the car!

At first, I was really confused... You start down this very steep hill, and there are a few forks in the road - but there are no signs telling you which way to go. I took all rights, just to be consistent, which led me to a main road. Again, there were no signs to where to go, so I just headed up the hill to the left, thinking I could loop around eventually. After following the road to the left again (so as not to cross the road), eventually I found another entrance to the trail. At this point the trail was nice, partially paved, partially packed sand/rock. Again though, there were more forks... and not many signs... I actually popped out onto roads many more times, but these times, I just turned around and went the other way on the previous fork.

After 40 minutes, 2.4 miles, and a bit of help from my smartphone's google map app, I found my way back to the entrance. The hills were STEEP, and frequent. There isn't much shade. But its pretty, and though according to the map, you are surrounded by houses and business, you stay blissfully unaware.

I will definitely go back. Its a very nice, varied, workout, with lots of pretty all around. Also, the trail is awesomely dog friendly. Though there were no directional signs, there were TONS of poop bag/disposal stations. Also, parking is super easy. I recommend not going on a Monday, so you can explore the whole area. 

Here's the address:

6200 Flying Leo Carrillo Lane

Carlsbad, CA 92009

Have fun!

Uninspired, but Busy

I've been finding myself 'drafting' a bunch of blog posts, but never loving them enough to post... I feel uninspired at best...

Here's a quick, what's been going on:

• Staying with the brother & sister-in-law, which is going great!! 

 

• Took a quick flight to Boise, ID to visit with my mom and step-dad, pick up my dog, and drive back down to San Diego with our other car. Milli and I had a great trip back down, stopping by the Ely, NV, Train Museum and staying in Las Vegas for a night.

 Milli hated Las Vegas, obviously.

• Joined a gym
• Spent 1.5 hours in our wonderful CA DMV... ugh....
• Chad promoted to Staff Sergeant 

• I turned 29

My super cool present from Chad!

•  Chad was awarded Navy Commendation Medal - his highest honor to date.

• Put our first offer in on a condo... weird to think someone thinks we have a couple hundred grand to spend on something...

And that's our life to date :) Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Welcome to Granite SW!

Today marks the last day of Granite NW... Chad and I have officially relocated to San Diego... the definition of SW...

Here's a quick recap:

During the Fall of 2012 Chad went to San Diego for Drill Instructor Training. Come December 19th he graduated with flying colors (of course). Which meant, we were moving to San Diego 45 days later.

Instead of taking a bunch of time to prepare for our move, we decided to postpone thinking about it till the very end... I worked for another three weeks... we took a week long vacation in Florida... THEN we started to pack. Knowing we couldn't do this move on our own, we called on my family for help - a BUNCH of my family! We flew my Dad up from San Diego to help us drive the big ole moving truck down. We flew my Mom over from Idaho to watch the cat and dog and take them and the other car back to ID until we were settled enough to pick them up. We were lucky enough to have my Aunt Leanne and Uncle David come over to help with the heavy lifting and pack up our moving truck! We even had our friend Melodie and Leo come over to help with that part! With all this help, we were able to pack, load and relocate an entire 3 bedroom house in just 4 days. 

 My Aunt Leanne!

To get to southern California we took the 5 the whole way down. Luckily, we never hit any snow. It did however rain and fog on us all the way until we hit California...

Our second sunrise.

Chad's first time driving the Jeep with the trailer

The awesome fog we hit on the Oregon pass... this picture makes it seem clearer than it actually was...

 While I was driving there was lots of singing going on!!

After a long... long drive. We made it! We are now living in an apartment in north county. Its hot here - up in the 50s! And there is a lot of traffic - like a lot. But there is also a lot of family here, a lot of good Mexican food and a lot of sun.

So this will be good. This blog will still be here, it will just be written from a different place in the US.

Taking Advantage of a Beautiful Day Off

I woke up this cold, November day, and I couldn't believe my eyes: It was Sunny. It was not only sunny, but it was my day off too! A sunny day off in November!!! What a treat!!

 

Did I mention it was cold! There was snow like frost on the roof across the street!

After a cup of coffee, some delicious leftover Thanksgiving stuffing and eggs, off we went! Just Milli and me - we were on our way to the Olympic Peninsula. The goal was to hike. I put two destination on our agenda - we were gonna visit the Dungeness Spit and Railroad Bridge Park.

Since Chad and I moved up here, people have been telling us to visit the Dungeness Spit. Its the longest naturally occurring Spit in the US at 5 miles long. I read on one of the interpretive signs that the spit is actually growing around 19 inches a year. At the end of the five mile long hike, over rocks and drift wood and birds nests, there is a lighthouse.

There is the slightest white dot in between the two pointy foreground trees... thats the lighthouse...

 

I didn't actually walk the 10 mile round trip spit... we drove along the coast to see most of it. Luckily, I had read before we left that since the Spit is a wildlife refuge, dogs are not allowed to hike on it. I figured Milli and I would just pull over somewhere and have a walk - what I didn't expect was that JUST as you turn into the Dungeness Spit property, there is a hunting ground.... and along that hunting ground there is a trail - a DOG FRIENDLY trail! A beautiful trail that travels along the beach for most of it, and allows you glimpses of the spit and its surrounding campsites and what not. The trail actually takes you straight to the entrance to the Spit trail (where we had to turn around). It was the perfect 3 miles hike.

 The first half of the dog friendly trail - it was so pretty.

The second half... along the water with the spit in the background.

 

Once we got back to the car, Milli passed out, so I drove around, back to the Spit trail entrance. Leaving Milli in the car (which I think she was totally grateful for) I walked down to the beach/Spit. Just to warn you - there is a $4 entrance fee - totally honor system and the money covers four adults. Once I got down there, I realized I had no umph whatsoever to actually walk ANY distance on the Spit itself, but I took a few pictures and walked along the beach a bit. It was amazing. The wind was blowing, it was cold but not TOO cold, it was beautiful.

The beginning of the Spit. aka, as far as I walked down it...

After my little hike, we got back on the road and went to the Railroad Bridge Park. This place was cool. The park is centered around an old railroad bridge (duh) - that was built long ago to allow trains to cross the Dungeness River for a railway between Port Townsend and Port Angeles.

The park is small and it includes the Dungeness River Audubon Center, a small picnic area and a mile or so long trail. The old bridge is beautiful. The river below is even prettier. Luckily, the hike was short cause Milli and I were tired.

 Dungeness River

Milli and I finished the day up with a cup of coffee (for me, water for her) and a nice drive home.

Looks like the perfect end to a perfect day, to me :)

 

There wasn't a drip of rain. There was no traffic. Almost no people at either place. The day was wonderful. It was the perfect day off.

Smile! Chocolate

I saw this in the store today and I JUST HAD TO get it!!

 

P.S. If you LOVE sweet, sweet food (like I do) it's totally delicious!!

Pallet Garden: The Crop

Now that you know what a pallet garden is, you may want to know if it was successful. Well, success is defined by Google as: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And, now that the growing season is over, I TOTALLY feel like I can apply that to word to our pallet garden.

Oh. My. Goodness. Can I ever.  Let me start with what we planted.

Early in the year, Ashley and her son planted one of the gardens with cold crop vegetables. They planted: snow peas, broccoli, and cauliflower.  We were gonna plant some cabbage, but the dogs ate the babies before they got planted...

 These are the cold crop babies :)

After a month or so....

Peas galore!!! Ash even put up a little stick and twin trellis up for them! The broccoli also produced, but.... not in the typical grocery store fashion. I think she may have purchased a florette plant, cause that's about the size of the broccoli heads that came off it. They were sweet and delicious! Again, nothing like that store bought junk. The cauliflowers... those were duds... but hey! We'll take 2 out of 3!

Ok, so the garden was at that state at about mid-June. Our growing season here is a bit unpredictable, but I figured that was pretty close to the time we should plant out summer crops. So into the other garden went 3 bell pepper plants, a jalapeno plant (or two), and a tomatillo plant... that I grew at my house from a seed. At this time we also supplmented our garden space with a couple 5 gallon buckets with some holes drilled into the bottom for drainage (remember, we were on a budget!). In one bucket went a tomato plant and in the other another tomoatillo. We also threw in some leek and carrot seeds, just to see what would happen.

 

Second garden planted!! 

Well.... it happened to be a late season start.... and the plants (especially the peppers) looked all but dead... and then we forgot to water the tomatillo in the bucket... and I arrived one day to the top 8 inches of it hanging on its tiny trellis totally detached from the 4 inches of stem still in the dirt.... Ok... we weren't off to a good start....

But then something borderline miraculous happened - summer came! The next thing I knew, I was getting texts from Ash "you have baby peppers!!" and "the tomatillo is taking over the whole garden!!" She wasn't exaggerating... not in the least... here are a couple pictures she sent me:

 Baby peppers!

Huge tomatillo plant!!

All this in literally a month. As soon as it got warm the plants just exploded! So now, here we were, mid-September. I'd been letting them grow and get as big as possible before the freezing nights started... One evening it was warm and  t-shirt weather and the next I was walking around my house in a sweater and slippers. I figured it was time to pick... though I knew it was a bit too early for the plants... but either pick now, or loose the plants to the frost...

The day we picked with an almost 4-year-old in the picture for size reference :)

Here is what we got!

The harvest was insane!!! Eight pounds of tomatillos, 5 bell peppers, 2 tomatoes and a jalapeno (from a plant I thought had been smothered by the tomatillo and died!). It was amazing! I couldn't BELIEVE how prolific these plants were! So, as one could assume... we ate a lot of chile verde and green enchiladas....

So, that was what I thought was that.... but then... it started getting warm again. Like really warm. The nights were still cool, but not in the danger of freeze zone. Come to find out we were having an Indian summer. So, today, I decided to visit our little garden again and this is what I got:

That's right. That is another FIVE POUNDS of tomatillos, two bell peppers, two TINY jalapenos, a tomato and a skinny leek. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? 

This garden was the most fun thing ever. But the best part, was Ash's son excited about the veggies growing. He wanted nothing more than to show me the little tomatillo lanterns and that there was something inside them! or to pick snow peas and just eat them right off the vine. I wish I had gone over a bit more often and helped Ash with the tending of it - maybe caught the tomatillo before it took over and smothered everything else and weeded. But, it seemed to do just fine without us, just  being watered a couple times a week.

I attribute the awesome-ness of this garden to my construction skills and Ashley's green thumb. She attributes the success to her neighbor's soil that we used. I donno, and quite frankly, I don't care. This garden was a group effort and ended up being awesome in just about every way!

This was fun and I can't wait to do it again!

Pallet Garden: The Creation

This blog post has been a LONG time in the making. In fact, I've been thinking about THIS post since at least April - that's 6 months of waiting - six months of gathering pictures and pondering what exactly I should say - or should I say - how I would BRAG ABOUT HOW WONDERFUL THIS IDEA WAS!!!

I had been talking to my friend Ashley for sometime about putting in a garden at her house. She has a gorgeous acre of full sun property that was already the home to marionberries, apple trees, rhubarb and a huge fig tree. It seemed only natural to expand the selection!

Looking into the different typed of gardens we could put in - the raised bed - was our best option (see she has gophers and we needed to put a screen under the garden). Well, I don't know what research you've done on raised bed gardens but... I quickly realized they are EXPENSIVE! Ash and I are cheap, and this garden wasn't that big of a deal, so the project seemed to end before it began. but then it came to me one day, while working at CB's Nuts, when we received a pallet of product.

The Pallet Garden was created - in my head anyways.

I started collecting all the pretty pallets from CB's and Ashley and I quickly went to work staking out the perfect location (we ended up moving it.... but this was still how we staked it out).

Those are bricks we found on the side of the garage - they marked the edges.

Next step was carefully taking the pallets apart - the goal was to keep both the 2x4 supports and the nice top planks intact. Come to find out... this was much harder than we thought. Pallets are apparently put together with special, spiral nails - which make it almost impossible to remove them without damage. So, to compensate for strong nails, Ash and I employed strong boys - only took them two hours to tear apart two pallets.

We ended up with enough boards to make two 5x5 gardens, two planks high (about 10 inches). That means we had 4 center support boards and 16 planks. After that it was a simple cut and drill project!

 

Cut each center support beam into three pieces at the red lines. Discard the center piece.

 

 Then take those pieces and stand them up on end, skinny part down. Attach two boards onto the wide, fat ends (with the curves both pointing in) with three 2-inch wood screws. 

 When finished with that, attach two more boards onto the ends of both sides.

Once the garden is put together, its time to deal with the ground. Mark out where you want the garden on the ground, and start digging. Dig about a food down, for the entire area the garden will cover. Once finished, if you have moles, voles or gophers, lay down some chicken wire. Then just set your wood into the newly, dug hole. It should fit snugly. Then simply fill in the hole/garden with your garden soil. We used a combination of sifted soil removed with the hole digging, store bough compost and store bought garden soil starter (and to fill in the rest, we used some home-combined dirt from next door). The goal is to fill the garden to an inch from the top of the wood.

Green arrow: grass line. Black arrow: where the chicken wire goes. White arrow: how high to fill the garden with dirt after all assembled.

 

Awesome finished product!!!

Don't plant immediately, the dirt will settle and you may need to add more before planting. But I'll talk more about that in the next post.

So lets re-cap. Pallets: free. Labor: free. 1 box of 2-inch wood screws: $3.50. Purchased dirt: $20. So a 5x5 raised bed that would normally cost between $70-$200 (NOT including dirt), only cost us $23.50 and a little elbow grease! Plus, it was an awesome weekend project (well, one afternoon per garden).