The sun is finally coming out in the rainy (usually , this year) Bay Area. That combined with the fact that we had to say goodbye to our winter cabin in Tahoe last weekend has given way to spring training!

Last weekend we headed out to the Briones Reservoir for a 15.5 mile hike. The trails that we used are on East Bay MUD land. I’ve always wanted to visit them but until recently (at least we discovered recently) you needed a hard to obtain permit to legally hike them. Now, you still need the permit but they are much easier to obtain. A quick trip to the EBMUD website and you can buy a 1 year permit for $10, so we did.

And off we went. The hike was lovely and the day ended up being perfect for it. The sun was shining and the temperature was kept in check by a sometimes stiff-ish breeze. The hike was a circumnavigation of the reservoir. The first half followed old fire road up into the hills north of the lake providing awesome green California hill views. The second half was on trails the hugged the lake, ducking in and out of coves full of, usually clear for the Bay Area, blue green water. The hike was great and at 15 minutes from our house, a great treat too. This is the closest to us 15+ mile hike that we’ve found and certainly worth the $10 price tag alone. The best part is  that we have a year on the permit to explore the multitude of other EBMUD trails in our backyard!

This spring we’re hoping to get some good flying days in to finish shaking out our gear and to kick off the flying season. So far, the spring has been a bit difficult with delivering really good flying weather. But things will improve. In the meantime and in between we’ll keep on hiking. We’re hoping to get a 15-20 miler in every weekend and are doing dinner hikes on Friday evenings. If either of these sound appealing, be sure to get in touch and come out and join us!