365: Balance

One latte & one bottomless mimosa. Good start to my morning with my peeps. However I was not informed about the impromptu hike after breakfast. If I would have known I might have ordered differently. Hopefully I don't fall off the trail into more poison oak.

365: Spreading the Love

I took my good friend MP geocaching today. It was super fun which was not surprising. I love geocaching, love being outside on nice days, had good conversation and spread some geocaching love to another person!

This sign, however, I did not love. Luckily it isn't summer so we didn't have to worry about snakes. Ewwww.

365: Labor Day Weekend

Had a fun day at Bidwell with Ange, Mom and Dale. Until Ange broke her finger. Womp, womp.

Sycamore Pool: Bidwell Park

Ange and I are both covered in very itchy, very uncomfortable poison oak. I woke up last Monday and my eyeballs were nearly swollen shut. It was not good to say the least. After a trip to (not so) Prompt Care I am on some high dose steroids and antihistamines and am starting to finally feel better. Ange is suffering through and is on the better side of things as well.

In our quest to find relief we decided to check out one of the local "swimming pools" in town. It's a tricky thing because the sun and heat and sweating makes it feel worse, but cold water makes it feel better. Luckily Sycamore Pool in Bidwell Park let us find relief with a perfect combination of factors. 

I must say, Sycamore Pool is pretty bad ass as far as pools go. It is actually a portion of Big Chico Creek that has been blocked by a dam and has a large concrete area that creates a pool-like atmosphere. It is of course filled with creek water instead of chlorinated water and it doesn't have heaters or filters or anything fancy, but because it is blocked at two ends it is cleaner and less treacherous than you would expect a creek to be. It is also GIANT. Much bigger than most community pools. It goes from a fairly shallow children's end to a fairly deep end before it returns back to the creek. 

The pool has to be cleaned weekly due to the build up of silt and gravel from the creek and the Friends of Bidwell page has a really great description of the process. We went on a Wednesday (the pool is cleaned on Thursdays) and it was definitely slick and a little icky feeling on the bottom of the pool. After going in and wallowing around in the algae and silt I opted to put my Tevas on and go back in. Much better. The best part is that it is in the middle of a park so there were lots of shady areas both away from the pool and in the pool (where trees were close to the edge of the pool) so we could stay out of the sun. And the water in Big Chico Creek even in the middle of summer is quite frigid so it felt wonderful on our itchy skins!  Oh, and like pretty much everything else in Chico that is awesome, the pool is FREE! Sweet!

Here are some pictures from the pool:

Swimming Holes!

The other day Ange and I took a drive through Bidwell Park and we noticed that there were several swimming holes located in the park. We had just been talking about how we'd love to go swimming so like a good researcher (or maybe a cautious chicken :)) we decided to do a little research on these swimming holes and then possibly check them out. Sadly the Bidwell Park website was pretty useless when it came to information about the swimming holes other than general "be careful" advice. Luckily I stumbled upon this cool blog post that gave a lot of detailed information about each swimming hole and after reading up on them we were ready to tackle some swimming!

We set out for Bear Hole to check out the place. We had our suits and Teva sandals as we had read that it was best to have shoes on to navigate the rocks. We ended up creeping on some girls walking down the path in front of us and they ended up leading us to probably the furthest end of Bear Hole which was just fine with us. There was a very tall concrete wall in between the natural rock walls that people appeared to like jumping off of into the water below. It was probably about a 20 foot drop (I'm terrible at eyeballing measurements) into the water below. 

Here is a picture from the top:

It is a big drop but what makes it even worse is that there are giant rocks everywhere! You have to have pretty good aim or you could jump right onto a giant boulder and break your legs in 87 places. We did not opt to jump off of this wall. BUT! I did get some crazy teenage boy to do it for me so I could video it. He was a little excited to get going so it wasn't as long as I would have liked, but you get the idea:

There were some "steps" that led down to the water. I use quotation marks because they really used to be steps but over time they have broken down a bit. The first few steps are pretty good and then they kind of morph into a rocky slide until you get to the bottom. Luckily I've reached a stage in my life where I don't care if I look like a idiot so I crab walked down the last half of the steps. Going back up was much easier!

Ange was thoroughly enjoying being a little mermaid in the water and I took a chance to snap a few pics of her swimming like a fish!

After about an hour and a half we decided to walk back towards the other end of the Bear Hole and see what other spots were available. There was a big section in the middle that was swamped by a lot of teenagers so we skipped that part. It is really a gorgeous area so we stopped to take some pictures of us enjoying our new surroundings!

We got to the other end of the Bear Hole where we discovered an area that had a low rock that you could jump off of into a decent size area with fewer rocks. The only problem was that you had to cross over a little area that had a really strong water flow. I used my long legs and muscles to create a human bridge to help Ange get across so she could check it out.

Once she got over she was excited and ready to leap off the rock into the cold water!

Overall it was an excellent day! We are so glad to be here and can't wait to explore more of Chico and the surrounding area. We really feel like we are in paradise! (And not the town, though it is close!)

Geocaching! Upper Bidwell Park

So we decided to get out of the house today and do some geocaching! This was our first time to do so in Chico and we were PUMPED! We decided we'd hit one at the top of our canyon road and then head over to the upper and eastern most parts of Bidwell Park and grab some of the caches and have a nice hike. 

Of course it would have behooved us to look at a map of the park before doing this, but why the heck would we do that? We instead made our trusty rusty geocache map and took off!

Our first stop at the top of our road was a bust. Looking at the logs it seems like someone hid this cache on private property and the coordinates were tying to point us up someone's driveway. Even if we felt like trespassing we would have had to climb over their fence labeled with "PRIVATE DRIVE - NO TRESPASSING" so we opted not to go for this one. 

We jumped into the car and headed off to the parking lot just off 10 Mile House Road. The first cache of this series (of 8) was supposed to be right at the top of the trail. Well we looked and looked and tried to avoid barbed wire and sticker bushes but we couldn't find it, even with a hint. We decided not to waste too much time and would look for it on the way back. Then we set off for the rest.

It didn't take long for us to realize that we'd selected a trail that went steeply down hill. Uh oh. Going downhill means eventually coming back up. Yikes. We decided to keep going and stay mindful of how far we were going and how long it would take us to get back up and just play it by ear. 

Only 5 minutes into the hike we had our first encounter with wildlife. Ange says happily "LOOK! A snake!" and I almost fainted. Luckily it was a very small snake, not that I wanted to see a snake at all, but it wasn't like it was a big fat rattle snake blocking our path. Because then this blog post would end here. I was on edge for quite some time after that, but I managed to calm down after a while. 

We found the second cache easily and then started hopefully off on a nice flat trail. After a couple hundred feet and consultation with our GPS and geocache map we decided we were going on the wrong path and we did indeed need to continue going down the steep incline. Dag. So we turned around and hoofed it down the path. We passed two guys pushing bikes up the path and after they passed questioned their sanity. We were being very mindful with our feet and we both had sturdy hiking boots on. And we knew we were going to die walking back up the path...why the heck would you push a bike up to the top???

After a bit we got to the third cache and by this time we'd taken a pretty long & steep stroll. We debated turning back. We checked out the fourth cache and it was only 0.11 miles away so we decided we'd go for it and then stop. The 5th cache after that was a bit away so we knew we wouldn't get to that one today. We got to the fourth cache and signed in and then started the long, sweaty hike back up. 

If I had to venture a guess, it probably took us three times as long to get up the hill than it did coming down. We're terrible at looking at the time so I can't say for sure, but we would go about 50 feet at a time, stop for a minute or two to catch our breath and then go another 50 feet. When you are chubby and not in tip-top shape, it's the only way to go! We'd set little milestones for ourselves, like "See the edge of that next shady patch? Let's make it there before we stop." Serious hikers would have killed us, but luckily, Ange and I are at about the same level of fitness and body physique so it worked well for us!

At some point during the hike back up we were passed again by the insane bike men who looked like they were about .5 seconds away from careening down the hill to their deaths. As they passed they said "I think coming down is worse than going up!" Uh, no shit dude (on a bike anyway). We could have told you that when we saw you the first time.

After a million years, we reached the top. We gave the first cache another try and still didn't find it so we trooped back to the car to strip off our hiking boots and throw on some sandals. We were both sweating like maniacs but were happy we made the portion we did! We fantasized about the shape we'd be in (namely, not round) if we did that hike every day. Then we snapped back to reality and giggled about the thought that we would commit ourselves to something so insane and jumped in the car to finish our errands for the day. (Sorry for the smelly sweaty messes you had to encounter if you were doing your Sunday shopping at Winco Foods!)

When we got home we decided to, hey! look at the freaking maps of Bidwell and lo and behold, we found out that we picked one of the hardest sections of the park to hike! Go us!

We figured that we did about 1.3 miles (round-trip) and went over about 500 meters of elevation. No wonder we were tired! But that made us stand a little prouder that we accomplished that big of a hike. Next time however, we'll be sure to do a little more research on the front end.