Camping Weekend!

We spent the weekend in gorgeous Sequoia National Park. It's a really nice park: not too crowded, plenty of hiking options, and not too far from LA! I would highly recommend it to others.

The best part of the trip: hiking on relatively empty trails with pretty things to see

The worst part: no showers. At least we had running water and nice bathrooms though!

Vacations

I've been bitten by the vacation bug! I like vacations. Specifically, I like seeing someplace new. I did just go to Hawaii last October, but right now that seems like eons ago. Plus, it wasn't a new place: I'd been to the same exact place twice before. Now I want to do something new! The biggest problems are that vacations take time and money. I'm already crazy busy, and we're trying to save money, not spend it!

For the past, oh half hour or so, I've decided that I've come up with the perfect solution: take a backpacking vacation! Drop the dog off at my sister's, and we can just go explore the wilds of California. (I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but we do have mountainous natural areas that are far away from LA and urban sprawl). We could go for just a few days, plus the only costs would be to get some gear.

We could see pretty things like this:

Of course I'm currently very optimistic about the physical effort involved in backpacking, and

I'm thinking of it as a good opportunity to get a workout :-)

Has anyone gone backpacking? Would anyone recommend it? I think it's something I'd like to try. But there's a lot of things i say that about.

Are You Kidding Me?!

That is the thought that passes through my mind 95% of the time that I map a hot vegan spot I've heard of. Why this thought, you ask? Because all of these places are SO CLOSE to my old apartment in Hollywood. The apartment that, when I lived there, I wasn't vegan. I was becoming a vegetarian, and I was way too removed from the LA veggie web-world to read blogs that talk about all these veggie food gems.

So now I'm stuck miles away, in a vegan food desert. Well, we have some options, but they're pricey. I'm stuck in "Whole Foods Vegan World" and the hollywood area is "Cool Inexpensive Vegan World with a Million Choices". I'm about 25-30 miles away from these great places, and in LA traffic that's a decent distance.

I know a lot of vegans would like to be "only" 30 miles from many vegan restaurants, but it's really not close enough to conveniently visit these restaurants with any regularity. We stopped at one place on the way home from visiting family last weekend, and it was still a good 40 minutes from the restaurant to home. Today's had a lot of bummers, it's one of those days, and reading about yet another vegan place in Hollywood was just too much.

21. Go to a shooting range (again)

DONE

Oh my gosh, apparently I don't even know what's on my list! Please see the post a few posts back that reviewed my recent shooting range visit. It goes to show how well I made my list: I want to do the stuff on it even without the motivation of crossing it off the list!

To see the original "50 Goals in 500 Days" list, click here.

Those Paper Men Had No Chance

So this past weekend my spouse and I had a fun adventure: we went shooting! Being in LA, of course this was at a range. It was at the LAX firing range, to be exact. It was so much fun!

We shot a couple different 9mm pistols. For those who don't know, a 9mm is on the smallish end of the handgun category. It's a pretty standard and popular gun. We tried a Glock, with wasn't that great, and then a Sig Sauer, which was easy to shoot and be accurate. A quick intro to guns: the heavier the gun and longer the barrel, the easier it is to be accurate and shoot the gun. The weight of the gun helps to absorb the recoil, and the longer barrel helps with aiming.

We spent about an hour at the range and went through 100 bullets between the two of us. It was kind of expensive, about $60. For those who're interested in just going occasionally, the Los Angeles Gun Club in downtown is a bit cheaper and is just as good of an experience. The LAX range would be ideal for regulars who purchase the club's annual membership, as that's likely the best deal in town if you go 2 or more times per month.

Wherever you end up going, I highly recommend that everyone go out and shoot a gun! It's fun and not at all difficult. The people who work in these places are really nice. Going to a range a few times is not going to make anyone a sharpshooter, but guns are a major part of our national culture and it is good to have a first-hand experience. I look forward to my next trip to a shooting range! I'll post a picture of our targets next week, so keep an eye out for that!