Are you ready for spring yet? This week has FINALLY started to suggest that we might be heading towards spring and leaving behind all the rain for the season. Yay for filling up reservoirs and all, but COME ON ALREADY. Nevertheless, we shall demonstrate hope for the very near future by focusing on some wildflower…
Wintertime can be a warm, cozy time to cuddle up with a good book near a warm (only on good air quality day) fire but let’s be real, that’s more likely to happen in the book you are reading than on a rainy winter day in the Bay Area with an extremely active six year…
If you’re reading this and you’re from Oakland or San Francisco, suggesting that you go hiking in Pinole Valley will probably leave you saying, “Huh? Where’s that?” (I mean, SF residents treat even going to Oakland like it’s heading to Tahoe…) Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have known where Pinole Valley was either, so there’s…
OK. This post is not quite Bay Area-centric. It’s Northern California, but close enough that Bay Area families could head out for a weekend to this locale. You may or may not know that I am a huge fan of the Google. I love looking up new places to go, and Fire Tower Lookouts have…
We’ve talked about how much we love #CitizenScience on this blog before. And it’s true. We do. We participated in the Northern California v. Southern California citizen species identification challenge (hope they’re doing it again this year…) and in this current political climate, we can’t do enough to promote science, if you ask us. The…
This summer, my goal was to get out on the water more- in some kind of watercraft. By the end of the summer, we had done a kayaking excursion, a pedal boat and two canoeing days- pedal boat and canoe with children. Our big winner out of this sampling menu was canoeing on San Pablo…
OK, my friends! Tomorrow, June 1st, is the first day of 30 Days Wild! What is 30 Days Wild, you ask? It’s a thing (movement? experience? challenge?) that was started by The Wildlife Trusts, in the United Kingdom. The goal is to get outside in some kind of wildness (totally subjective and open to interpretation)…
This past weekend, the youngest hiker and I partook in an “Animal tracking for families” workshop at Lake Merritt, put on by the California Center for Natural History and Oakland City Parks and Recreation. Participants met at Lake Merritt and spent two hours learning how to look carefully at the world around us to begin…
“The Earth Moved Under Your Feet… Resting beneath your feet are the ancient remains of a volcano that erupted 10 million years ago. Strange animals once roamed here, like long-necked camels and three-toed horses. Today they are replaced by grazing cattle, deer, and domestic dogs. Slowly, over millions of years, this volcano uplifted, tilted on…
If you have been out on the trails lately, you might have noticed that certain of them are flanked by fungi. I do not claim to be a mushroom expert, but I do encourage you to get out soon and look for some of these fantastic growths. (Let me be clear– I am not encouraging you…
Bay Area Families Outside 