February 2nd, 2025 - The month got off to a strong start with a late night squidding trip on the Seattle waterfront. We were only a couple months late to catch the migration of the larger, non-resident squid but there were still a few locals loitering around the piers (both squid and squiders). It seems that the more miserable the weather, the better the fishing so we didn't complain too much about the wind or snow flurries.
We didn't have any luck for the first hour and had moved across our pier to shelter from the wind. We continued to get skunked while watching folks on the next pier with a massive LED light suffer the same fate. It got so bad that the owner of the light came over to our pier and turned our luck around.
I only ended up with four in the bucket, well short of the one gallon limit but it was still a personal best. Even the little guys can cycle through an amazing kaleidoscope of colors and patterns. I went with a basic calamari preparation while my fishing partner went with a quick pan fry sans batter.
A couple days later we got our only real snow of the year and got to experience tablet school... Then it was time to build a couple bat houses. I'm not sure why the boys were stuck on this particular project but we recycled some 80+ year old tongue and groove boards from the house and got to work. I'm suspicious that the one bat we see fly by the house every few years will settle but the second bat house is sitting in a wetland at the beach property and I have higher hopes for it.
February 18th-24th - We planned a trip down to the desert to see the sun but I also suspect desert won out just so that everyone would get a full week without me bringing up mushroom hunting. We started off our winter break vacation to Joshua Tree National Park with only one healthy individual and things would only get worse... But at the time, three people fighting the flu and a bonus pink eye case had us feeling low enough.
Our Airbnb was a cool, little place out on a sand road, surrounded by what we had come to see. Even sitting on the outskirts of the town of Yucca Valley, the night sky was awesome, don't judge it based on my poor camera skills.
Day 1 - We rallied for the first day of exploring the park and immediately realized that the true draw of the park is not the trees but the rocks. The boys sounded like a mobile bubonic plague as they climbed around but they couldn't get enough. So for the rest of the week if a trail or an outing did not immediately result in rock scrambling, they viewed me as a failed parent.
As you might have noticed, a big part of our team wasn't climbing with us. At the time, we thought there was some weird inflammation from the flu causing nerve pain and muscle weakness but after visiting an urgent care pill mill and then a hospital ER two days later, we got an MRI that would confirm a herniated disc was the culprit.
Day 2 - We dropped the patient off at the afore mentioned pill mill and found some rocks outside the park to climb on. Then we all crashed at home in a vain effort to heal everyone up.
Day 3 - With some good pills in hand, we tried an outing back down from the hills to visit Palm Springs and then ride a tram almost 6,000 vertical feet up a different mountain range. You end up at 8,500' and the weather is dramatically different than the 85 degrees in the valley.
Construction on the tram began in 1961 and took two years + 23,000 helicopter trips to carry the supplies for the upper four towers and the mountain station. The original cars are now lawn ornaments and you get to ride up in a giant car that has a spinning floor for the 80 passengers.
Once back at sea level, we headed to Shields date farm. I was so busy sucking down a date milkshake and sampling their different date varietals that I didn't take a single picture... So instead I'll share an internet find that makes it look much fancier than it was:
Day 4 - The pills weren't doing anything to cut into the foot numbness or muscle weakness so we headed back into Palm Springs to get an ER MRI. The initial word was a 16 hour wait for a scan so the boys and I headed for Indian Canyons to see some palm lined canyons. The Indian Canyons is basically a hiker's amusement park and is part of the Agua Caliente reservation. We spent time in Palm and Andreas Canyons but there was a lot we couldn't get to with short legs (and thankfully the MRI wait was only four hours).
Day 5 - On our last full day we turned the boys loose in the Horse Canyon area of the park. It is accessed from the fringe of the park, sparing you the long line to have your pass checked at the main entrances.
We got to see a few of the mortar holes left from some very tough tribes that managed to live permanently in the area, a chuckawalla (big lizard that inflates its body so predators can't pull it from rock crevasses), and the boys found rock slides where the water was infrequently running over the boulders. That reminds me of a key fact I forgot to mention that made the climbing/scrambling less stressful. With so little water around, most of the rock features are as rough as a 10 grit sand paper, if that is even a real thing. We prematurely wore out the bottoms of many pants but nobody was tumbling off.
Even though this particular trip seemed cursed, it was beautiful country and I hope we get to come back soon for a rematch, although only in the winter, its already too hot there for me. The herniated disc was addressed with back surgery upon our return (no discount for using the same surgeon 3X) and we hope to have the full team back together soon.
