Berry Creek Falls

Leon Furnball

Who doesn't love waterfalls?  There are a bunch of places within driving distance where you can get your feet wet. Here are our favorites.

Berry Creek Falls, Big Basin State Park

Leilani's iPhone.

I hate to divulge my neighborhood's best-kept secret for a quick outdoor fix, so I must apologize in advance to all my Presidio Heights homies for inviting the masses to overrun our perfect little walkabout. Here goes: To get to the Ecology Trail in the Presidio, I jump over the wall at the northernmost point of Cherry Street, and prance just a few paces to the first of many Hansel-and-Gretel moments on this 1.4-mile hike: a trailhead flanked by towering, vine-covered eucalyptus trees.

Jim Denevan goes round and round.

JimDenevan.com

What do star-crossed lovers (thanks, Shakespeare), a black fly in your chardonnay (merci, Alanis) and Santa Cruz artist Jim Denevan's elaborate sand drawings have in common? They're all prime examples of beautiful irony. Denevan's doomed artistry—which can be found, on any fair-weather day, on SF's Ocean Beach or Santa Cruz's Cowell Beach—is front-and-center in this month's Sunset magazine.

Get a little closer in the Sexy Hotness sleeping bag, designed for couples.

With so many great natural spots within an hour or two of driving, the Bay Area is a camper's paradise. But even as we pack our organic local edibles, throw on our Timbuk2 backpacks, and cover up with a locally-designed raincoat, the gear we take with us is pretty much the same as the rest of the country's: blandly designed, more functional than fun. That's why we were excited to see the new spring product line from Alite, a Mission-based manufacturer of outdoor gear.

Climbing for dates. We've done worse.

Oniangel at Flickr

Imagine, if you will, a world where shortly after being introduced to your future sweetheart, you are forced to view their bottoms. I'm proud to say that my local rock gym, Planet Granite San Francisco, has invented a version of speed-dating (whereby belay-certified lovelorn singles are randomly assigned to climb with other belay-certified lovelorn singles) that makes this normally covert act of tush-peeping not only possible, but necessary.

Okay fine, it's not in Malaysia, it's in Berkeley. But you'll still feel like this.

Lululemon at Flickr

Let's be clear: I'm not dedicating my first official post as the new travel/outdoors/any-pursuits-of-the-active-kind blogger to yoga because I'm some kind of self-proclaimed guru who finds enlightenment through sun salutations. Oh, no. I trudge to class three days a week and subject my body to all manner of torturous twists, bends and inversions only because I'm chasing the flexibility I attained in the summer of 1985 when I took gymnastics classes in a misguided attempt to become Mary Lou Retton.

Three recommendations if a fixie isn't the ride for you.

@Ethan Bloch's

We could totally parachute off this plane.

Dream vacations: they're what every respectable mind should be wandering towards the afternoon before a three-day weekend. And we've just stumbled across the gold mine. For their 20th anniversary, sustainable travel company Gap Adventures is running something called the Create Your Own Adventure contest. And there are some seriously awesome vacations on there. The top ranked one right now? A spy mission in Europe.

boonejag75 at Flickr

It's President's Day: Tahoe's second busiest ski weekend. And conditions on the hill are poised to be shredtastic. Recent storms and a few mid week dustings have kept the groom crews busy the past couple days. That means your favorite trails and lifts will be open and well maintained. Sunny skies, calm winds and temps in the 40's will set you up for outside lunching and pit stops, which is always a win.

For those of you fretting about the weekend VDay plans (we've got you covered here, here, here and here), stop immediately. There are more important things to worry about. Like world class sporting events.