I hope everyone had a great New Year! The family (including Pepper the Golden Retriever) went for the first two hikes of the year and these didn’t even require a long drive from our house. The first one was on New Years Day. We went for a hike in the hills behind our neighborhood. We forgot to keep track of exactly how long we were gone, but it was about an hour. Next time I will wear the pedometer / look at a clock before we leave the house.
The second one was a short drive away. In a normal January we would not have been able to do these hikes without snowshoes or dealing with mud.
The worst part of these hikes was realizing how badly California and Nevada need some rain / snow. I heard the other day that one of the Cross Country Ski areas near Lake Tahoe closed due to a lack of snow. Right now they think it is similar to the droughts in the mid-1970s. In California, we had a large trash can in our bathroom to collect the water that was run to warm the bathwater so we could flush the toilet, etc. I have no idea what it was like in Nevada back then, but I know at least a lot of the houses around here did not exist.
Sierra Nevada Mountains in early January 2014
I can’t believe that we are so warm and dry and back East is getting so much snow.
Want to trade? Later – H
A Creative Engineer In Nevada 
I would happily trade you!
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I figured you would 🙂
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