mt diablo or bust

Or bust. After a leisurely morning on Saturday, we decided to head out with klaus for a hike to the summit of Mt Diablo. It's about 20 minutes from our house and has the most expansive vista in the world second only to Mt Kilamanjaro. As we pulled up to the entry gate, we realized we had no cash and it cost $6 for day use. We quickly tried to think of a way to rectify this when the ranger informed us that dogs were not allowed except in the picnic areas. Oh. Problem solved. He points us in the direction of a Castle Rock Park down the road where dogs can go on the trails. Castle Rock Park was basically a series of really steep up- and down-hills for horses that were very dry and very brown and very very hot. Klaus mustered up the energy to chase some squirrels, but we were all happy to get to the air-conditioned car.


We made some pizza that night and made some fake cheese out of nutritional yeast. Sounds gross, right? Wait til you see the pictures. We've almost cut meat out of our diets entirely and we're working on decreasing our dairy intake. Since we went out for the biggest ice cream sundae of our lives the night before, we decided to skip the cheese. We brewed up this liquid concoction and drizzled it on the pizza. Amazingly, it had the texture of real cheese, melted like real cheese, turned brown like real cheese, and kept all of the stuff on the pizza moist like real cheese. Did it taste like real cheese? Hmm, it didn't have a whole lot of flavor, but then we thought that real cheese doesn't add a whole lot of flavor to pizza, either. Mostly just texture.

Devin drizzling the "cheese" on to the pizza

On Sunday we had brunch at the Buddhist Temple in Berkeley. I forgot the camera so no pictures. It definitely needs some pictures to do it justice, so I'll save that post for another time.

After some brunch, we headed up to Sebastopol to hang out with Scott and Sarah and go to the Gravenstein Apple Festival. We walked there, and for those of you in PA, it was a little bit like an outdoor farm show on a much smaller scale. We had a blast. Sebastopol has a great dog park so we took klaus there after the festival, made some dinner, and then watched the olympics and marveled at the 16 year old chinese gymnasts who cannot possibly be any older than 12.

This one is for Aiden. We didn't win.

Scott touched an apple with his dart so we won an apple to share.

Some goat giving a lady (yeah, it's a lady) hard times.

Devin trying some honey

Scott shading himself from the hot sun

On the walk back to Scott and Sarah's house, we walked up a street that had a sculpture made from recycled goods in every yard on the street. Here's a sample. Hope everyone had a great weekend!