Lightning Round | August, 2020

Oh, how quickly things change. The hallmark of August was my first-ever backpacking trip, which just happened to coincide with the very unexpected and extreme lightning storms that subsequently lit California on fire. Well, I’m glad to report that we are totally fine. But here’s a look through another wild month of 2020:

Garden bounty from Alex’s parents, and Chinese-style tomato egg.

Caught Lauren while she was making a smoothie. And Alex installing the drawers to our Ikea entryway wardrobe.

Socially distanced picnic in the park.

Before & after of my Ikea Rast dresser.

 

Weekly Whitney chat

New stacking fruit baskets, plus a dahlia and other blooms from the garden. And a katsu sando from Cafe Okawari.

Weekly lunch date.

Office of Accountability, August. I think Chelsea just announced she’s expecting!

More home projects! I printed and framed these ocean-themed photos of mine, (you can order your own here). However, the glass that came with the frames was too reflective, so we went to TAP plastics and replaced them with nonglare acrylic, which was very much worth it.

Happy Hour.

Homemade chashu + ramen, and a whole homemade Taiwanese breakfast thanks to the TAF Cookalong.

Black Lives Matter art from biking around the Mission, and homemade Hainan chicken.

Biking around Oakland to pick up blooms from Lunaria Flower Farm, a Chinese American owned farm in Pescadero specializing in flower medicine. And some stops by Temescal Brewing and Homeroom too.

Weekly lunch.

Surveying the back deck at Alex’s family’s Cupertino house.

Abolition August, still meeting weekly to read and discuss abolition of prisons and policing.

I bought a Cricut machine, and I put my logo on a bunch of notebooks, and I made a bunch of adorable tote bags for my friends.

Check-in call with Jeri and Dan who are still planning to have their wedding this October!

Checking in with Talya in Berlin.

Singing happy birthday to Cassie while Do-Hee surprises her in person with gifts… and then Bri comes on and introduces the Office of Accountability to brand new baby Kaia!

Halfway through the month, it was time to embark on our backpacking trip in Point Reyes! My main concern was walking 5 miles with a giant backpack, in the 90+ degree heat, but off we went!

After much walking, we made it to camp! And I was rewarded with hammock time.

We had our jetboil meals– this becomes lasagna! And then we turned in for the night. We even discussed potentially leaving the rain fly off, because obviously it never rains in California between June and September. But luckily we put up the fly (mostly because of how many bugs there were) and we were greeted in the middle of the night by loud thunderstorms! I had to wake Alex up and tell him to go out and get his hiking boots which were just sitting out in the open. We were both so confused to encounter rain, let alone thunder. The next morning we had a little banana slug friend find our tent as a nice surface to climb up. It looked like there was more wind and lightning than there had been actual rain.

Since we had no cell service, we had no idea if this was just a localized storm or if it was all over the Bay. Of course much later we discovered it had been all over the Bay, and the thousands of lightning strikes started fires all over the place too. Luckily, that all happened after we got out the next day, but all of this area that we camped in and hiked through is now burning/burned as part of the Woodward Fire and Point Reyes is now closed.

We originally intended to hike to Alamere Falls, which you can see in the distance here. But we only made it to Wildcat Beach, and then we ran out of time before our campsite checkout, and I ran out of motivation. So poor Alex will have to return someday to complete the trek. Meanwhile I’m just going to fall back on the fact that I visited Alamere Falls with my friend Dan years ago! We still ended up hiking 11 miles this day, and after this wild adventure I have decided: no more backpacking for me.

Back to our comfortable home in San Francisco, our home projects and new furniture continue to arrive. A new TV console! And a real dining table! We had been using our camping table as a dining table for months, and its crossbars were too low to get your knees/chair under, so we had to put the whole thing on bed risers. This is much improved.

Behind the scenes on a very sweet surprise proposal in Pescadero, with Morgan arranging the setup and Dave helpfully kicking away the blobs of kelp.  

Meanwhile, the hills were burning from those lightning strikes. This became known as the CZU Lightning complex, which burned through San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties and is now 95% contained.

Trying a new Southeast Asian food truck, Rasa Rasa. And trying out a new coffee grown in Taiwan and roasted in NYC… very pricey, but good (according to Alex, since I don’t drink coffee)! Thanks for the recommendation, TaiwaneseAmerican.org. 

The smoke is here. With all the fires burning around the Bay, it was inevitable. 

Monthly Paint Club! I drew Lizzie’s and Steph’s cats that wandered into the frame at some point.

More abolition chats.

We adopted this plant, which was Kait’s and then Deanna’s. It was definitely in a sad state when we picked it up, all droopy and bent.

But we gave it some boba straw casts, and water, and it’s doing much better these days! Meanwhile my fiddle leaf fig, which I thought was dying has instead made some new leaves!

Smoky Bay crossings!

Monthly chat with Tiffany in Sydney. Life sounds a lot more normal over there, with active contact tracing for everywhere you go, like indoor dining and gyms. Alas, the US is still muddling around with no real systems in place.

Smoky sunsets.

Weekly lunch has switched to a weekly evening gathering during Do-Hee’s lunchtime in Korea.

More projects on the cricut: printed text for my new round of garden stakes. Also, welcome new garden babies!

And a mini tote bag with Courtney’s Photoflood Studio logo for her birthday!

A few days down in South Bay means lots of boba! Including this Teaspoon boba which Jeri and Dan brought to me at their engagement session. So sweet.

Suburbia: late night shopping at Target which has this cute mural out front.

Projects for the Cupertino home: new curtains, check! Eat all the Asian food, check!

The Chase Center farmer’s market is back! It’s modest but mighty. We’re happy to support it as much as possible.

Delicious strawberries from the market, and a delicious spicy pie from Casey’s Pizza.

And one more happy hour!

At the end of the month, we headed to Yosemite and Tahoe for a week. Separate posts to come for those mini trips!

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures, even in quarantine. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.