Dinkey Creek Falls (1/2)

Saturday we made it a hiking twofer, first hiking Rancheria Falls then driving a slight off-road adventure to get to the Dinkey Lakes trailhead. Our main objective at Dinkey was not the lakes loop but a small waterfall not far up the trail. We figured we might hike past that to the first lake and back, time permitting.

The trail notes for getting to the falls seemed simple. Walk a bit, ford the creek, then look for "a weird, striated rock surface" on the left and walk across it to the falls. Seems simple, right? But then we saw this...



This was definitely a "weird, striated rock"! It looks like highly weathered wood but it's actually all rock. It's not even petrified wood. It's volcanic. And it was on the left... except it was not across the creek. And walking across the rock would just take us back to the parking lot. So... where to go?

Well, fortunately we could see a waterfall just off the trail, on the right.



I scrambled down the hill to take pictures. Hawk's back was starting to bother her, so she stayed on the main trail.



After taking pictures of the pretty little falls from various angles and shutter speeds (the last pic above shows water motion blur with a 0.2 second exposure) we discussed whether this was the falls in the book— and the book was mistaken not just about distances but about "right" versus "left"— or was a bonus falls the authors of a guidebook for waterfalls forgot to mention. We decided it was more likely the latter. Note, BTW, this guidebook is not Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls, aka "That Dratted Book"; it's by an author who writes well and is generally very accurate.

Were we right in our guess about the book failing to mention these falls? Well, I gave away the answer already in the title. Stay tuned for the other Dinkey Creek falls! 😅

Update: continue reading with Dinkey Falls part 2!

Costco Joins 2018 - Flash at the Pump

Costco has finally caught up with the times! ...The times being, in this case, approximately 2018. When I went to Costco to buy gas this past weekend I saw something new: signs advertising that the pumps now have the ability to scan your digital membership card from the app on your phone, rather than you having to slide your membership card in the slot like it's still the 1980s.



The app scanner is in that small enclosure at the lower right of the photo, next to the credit card slot.

What made this new capability even more surprising is that Costco has had these scanners installed on its gas pumps for, like, four years now. The hardware has been there, but Costco whiffed on getting the software infrastructure set up. (An acquaintance who works at Costco says the IT project was a victim of the pandemic, which I find to be a wholly unsatisfying explanation. As a person working in IT I can validate that so many companies used the pandemic to catch up on 5 years of technology in 6 months. Meanwhile Costco Rip van Winkle'd the whole thing? Embarrassing.

Anyway, now they've caught up with what their main competitor, Sam's Club, had working literally 5 years ago. And I'm glad this last, holdout reason to have to carry a stupid plastic membership card around has been solved.