Beach and Skiing!

This weekend I went to the beach on Saturday and I skied on Sunday. Yay California!

I TA'd the Sediments and Strata class field trip to Bodega Bay on Saturday. We made four stops along the beach so the students could collect sand samples to identify and classify back in the lab, and they also saw sed structures and made paleoenvironment interpretations.

On Sunday Pascal, Bryon, and Mike picked me up at 7:30 to go skiing at Northstar, a ski area at Lake Tahoe. The temperature was between 19-29 degrees and it was extremely snowy! Before we even got to Boreal Pass we had to put snow chains on the tires, and we didn't get to Northstar until just before 11 (It's only supposed to be about a 2 hour drive from Davis to Lake Tahoe in good weather)! I love skiing- I love going really fast down the slopes. After skiing all day I'm pretty sure that I'm going to buy my own skis and try to make it out there as much as possible this quarter. It was snowing most of the time we were on the slopes, which was pretty fun. We had to really bundle up, and I'm going to have to invest in one of those face masks that covers your mouth and nose. Midway through one of the runs we stopped on the slopes and watched the snow fall for a little bit, and then the weather started to clear and all of a sudden we could see the valley and mountains in the distance! It was beautiful (see the pictures below of the same spot- the first is while it was snowing and the second is after it cleared). We stayed until the lifts closed around 4, and then made our way back to Davis. There was a lot of traffic going less than 10 mph all the way from Truckee to a little past Boreal Pass, and it started snowing really heavily so we had to put on the snow chains again. Because of the snow and traffic we didn't get to Davis until 9, but once we finally got there we had some pizza at Woodstock's before the guys dropped me off. I can't get over the idea that I can ski somewhere so close to where I live! It's so cool.