In Which I Explore Carr Valley
Nov. 19th, 2017 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aIt's been almost a month since I got back from Berlin. If the lack of journal entries isn't a clue, I was tired when I got back. I've been doing well at work, in large part because I've had a very busy schedule that is just now lightening up. But in my after hours I've been mostly laid back. I wrote a few Mechanics & Meeples last week, and I've been slowly muddling around with TSR product histories, but mostly I've been reading.
And on weekends, getting out.
Thursday, Christopher brought me a newspaper article on Carr Valley, a 600-acre former cattle raunch southeast of Moraga that was purchased by EBMUD last year. It officially opened to the public on November 11th (or at least to EBMUD's extremely limited definition of the public), and Christopher thought that I'd enjoy seeing a natural area that was still almost virgin. He was totally right.
The Carr Valley is right in the middle of a bunch of other EBMUD lands, pretty much filling in a big gap. As such, it's a bit challenging to get to. It takes about an hour to get to the Valley along EBMUD's secret trails, leaving from Rancho Laguna Park. You walk the Rocky Ridge Trail east, alongside a nice creek, then up a relatively steep ridgeline, then you drop down to the canyon on the other side. Across another creek there's now a new path that leads into Carr Valley.
To a large extent, I've seen lands just like Carr Valley before. Part of it is (another) nice creekside trail, part of it is hillside, and part it runs along the ridge at the back of the valley. But, I always enjoy getting to explore somewhere new, and so even if the terrains were familar, the experience wasn't. And there were quite a few exhilarating views, of the beautiful valley, of the hills surrounding it, and of the lands eastward.
The wide paths were clean and well-cut, though oddly enough they were the greenest areas in the valley. Much of the brush is still brown up there, since we're just on the edge of our rainy season, but the paths often had a light covering of grass. In fact, when you saw the trails from afar, they were green pathways, snaking up and down the hillsides.
I was surprised to not see much wildlife. I thought that with the land being so untouched, animals would be everywhere, but perhaps they were more afraid of humanity for that same reason. I did see one squirrel, who looked pretty shocked to see a human in his domain, and dozens of cows, a common feature in EBMUD lands.
And there were almost no peoples. I saw two heading back up the trail when I went in. It was between 1 and 2 o'clock at the time, I thought how much smarter they were than I, because I knew I'd be fighting the sun to get back out of the park by dusk. But then when I saw a couple heading into the Valley at 3.45 or so, just when I emerged, I thought better of myself. (There's no way they weren't walking those trails out in the dark, unless they turned right around; as was I saw the sun set twice on my way back out, once before I climbed out of that canyon outside the valley, and once afterward.)
Overall, a few pleasant experience. (Thanks, Chris!) I've been meaning to explore more of the EBMUD South paths, and this gave me an excuse. (Last Christmas vacation, I'd planned a walk on an adjoining path, beginning at St. Mary's College, but I decided it was too cold.) I've got two years left on my EBMUD permit, though I think I long ago got my $30 worth out of it.
With that said, it was a challenging trip. I left the house at 10am, which is the earliest I can go and get a sandwich at Cheese 'n Stuff. I got back at 6.15, an hour after dark. That's because to get there I had to bike to Rockridge BART, take BART to Lafayette, ride the Lafayette-Moraga trail to almost the end, and then bike southeast a ways beyond that. (Obviously, the return was the reverse.)
I was out and active the whole time, with just the exceptions of waiting for BART, sitting on BART, and having my lunch. I totaled 36,000 steps and 323 flights of stairs on my Fitbit, both outstanding numbers (though that includes some of the biking).
When I was biking up the Lafayette-Moraga trail, I was a bit worried if I could still do that sort of hill. (It's not super steep, but there's a lot of it.) Last time I was out there, I barely noticed the hills, but the last two years I've been doing less biking, and almost no hill biking, preferring hiking instead.
But, the biking turned out to be OK, with me only getting a little tuckered at a very steep bit just before the top of the hill.
The one problem with the Lafayette-Moraga trail is that it's still partially closed.
I'd actually seen that the last mile of it was bloccked off on my visit to Moraga 11 months ago, but I thought: there's no way it's still closed.
Ha!
And after almost a year (maybe more), the East Bay Regional Park District still hasn't offered any reasonable detour for their one and only major thoroughfare down to Moraga. They dump you out into a neighborhood with no notice, and there's no way out of the neighborhood (unless you backtrack). I spent 15 or 20 minutes riding down dead-end streets before I finally hopped back on the Lafayette-Moraga trail and rode back to the previous street.
The ride home was great. Almost all downhill. The downhill on the Lafayette-Moraga trail heading toward Lafayette BART is especially fun. It was a little darker than I like, but on the other hand the path was much more empty of people as a result.
And on weekends, getting out.
Thursday, Christopher brought me a newspaper article on Carr Valley, a 600-acre former cattle raunch southeast of Moraga that was purchased by EBMUD last year. It officially opened to the public on November 11th (or at least to EBMUD's extremely limited definition of the public), and Christopher thought that I'd enjoy seeing a natural area that was still almost virgin. He was totally right.
The Carr Valley is right in the middle of a bunch of other EBMUD lands, pretty much filling in a big gap. As such, it's a bit challenging to get to. It takes about an hour to get to the Valley along EBMUD's secret trails, leaving from Rancho Laguna Park. You walk the Rocky Ridge Trail east, alongside a nice creek, then up a relatively steep ridgeline, then you drop down to the canyon on the other side. Across another creek there's now a new path that leads into Carr Valley.
To a large extent, I've seen lands just like Carr Valley before. Part of it is (another) nice creekside trail, part of it is hillside, and part it runs along the ridge at the back of the valley. But, I always enjoy getting to explore somewhere new, and so even if the terrains were familar, the experience wasn't. And there were quite a few exhilarating views, of the beautiful valley, of the hills surrounding it, and of the lands eastward.
The wide paths were clean and well-cut, though oddly enough they were the greenest areas in the valley. Much of the brush is still brown up there, since we're just on the edge of our rainy season, but the paths often had a light covering of grass. In fact, when you saw the trails from afar, they were green pathways, snaking up and down the hillsides.
I was surprised to not see much wildlife. I thought that with the land being so untouched, animals would be everywhere, but perhaps they were more afraid of humanity for that same reason. I did see one squirrel, who looked pretty shocked to see a human in his domain, and dozens of cows, a common feature in EBMUD lands.
And there were almost no peoples. I saw two heading back up the trail when I went in. It was between 1 and 2 o'clock at the time, I thought how much smarter they were than I, because I knew I'd be fighting the sun to get back out of the park by dusk. But then when I saw a couple heading into the Valley at 3.45 or so, just when I emerged, I thought better of myself. (There's no way they weren't walking those trails out in the dark, unless they turned right around; as was I saw the sun set twice on my way back out, once before I climbed out of that canyon outside the valley, and once afterward.)
Overall, a few pleasant experience. (Thanks, Chris!) I've been meaning to explore more of the EBMUD South paths, and this gave me an excuse. (Last Christmas vacation, I'd planned a walk on an adjoining path, beginning at St. Mary's College, but I decided it was too cold.) I've got two years left on my EBMUD permit, though I think I long ago got my $30 worth out of it.
With that said, it was a challenging trip. I left the house at 10am, which is the earliest I can go and get a sandwich at Cheese 'n Stuff. I got back at 6.15, an hour after dark. That's because to get there I had to bike to Rockridge BART, take BART to Lafayette, ride the Lafayette-Moraga trail to almost the end, and then bike southeast a ways beyond that. (Obviously, the return was the reverse.)
I was out and active the whole time, with just the exceptions of waiting for BART, sitting on BART, and having my lunch. I totaled 36,000 steps and 323 flights of stairs on my Fitbit, both outstanding numbers (though that includes some of the biking).
When I was biking up the Lafayette-Moraga trail, I was a bit worried if I could still do that sort of hill. (It's not super steep, but there's a lot of it.) Last time I was out there, I barely noticed the hills, but the last two years I've been doing less biking, and almost no hill biking, preferring hiking instead.
But, the biking turned out to be OK, with me only getting a little tuckered at a very steep bit just before the top of the hill.
The one problem with the Lafayette-Moraga trail is that it's still partially closed.
I'd actually seen that the last mile of it was bloccked off on my visit to Moraga 11 months ago, but I thought: there's no way it's still closed.
Ha!
And after almost a year (maybe more), the East Bay Regional Park District still hasn't offered any reasonable detour for their one and only major thoroughfare down to Moraga. They dump you out into a neighborhood with no notice, and there's no way out of the neighborhood (unless you backtrack). I spent 15 or 20 minutes riding down dead-end streets before I finally hopped back on the Lafayette-Moraga trail and rode back to the previous street.
The ride home was great. Almost all downhill. The downhill on the Lafayette-Moraga trail heading toward Lafayette BART is especially fun. It was a little darker than I like, but on the other hand the path was much more empty of people as a result.