About

This blog is about sharing with you my passion: 

Nature and Traveling

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

I like nature, and experiencing nature through hiking, running or mountain biking is like a game portal for me. It let me escape from my day to day activity into another domain. 

I know this sounds spiritual, but this is exactly what I feel.

Just few steps into the hike and my body reacts to the physical activity and surroundings and the brain shifts to a more relaxing stage.

 

I like the nature view, if it is a large vista that you can see after long hike to the top of the mountain or it is a small lizard walking on a leaf in my backyard garden … you can have and experience nature everywhere.

 

Another hobby of mine is taking pictures (places, landscape and animals).

I found that taking pictures get you more intimate with nature, it help/forces you to slows down, so you are looking at the details and beauty and what is the best way to capture it.

Sometimes the “taking picture process” is fast as a blink of an eye and in other cases you can plan and wait for long time for the perfect picture conditions and the right moment.

With the pictures, I remember the trip in different levels, from the trip planning, actual trip, and later when editing and selecting the pictures I embedded the experience in my memory.

Later I can relive the moments and the experience every time I’m looking at the pictures.

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

 

Now to this blog:

For many years I was writing trip blogs to myself, sometime just scratching few notes and for other trips writing full discretion and recommendations… but I did nothing more with that…

 

Few years back I started to post my picture on my Facebook page usually without a description, the pictures stand for themselves.

 

I do not know how this is related but once Covid 19 started, I decided to create my "trip guide and pictures" website, it took me 6 months to actually act on that.

I will try to catch-up with all the places I visited during the last 5 years of extensive traveling but I need to start somewhere....

I hope that you will like the posts and pictures, find this site both beneficial for getting your trip destinations ideas and planning information and also to be inspired by the pictures as "pure beauty" that will motivate you to visit the same places.

 

At this website I’m trying to “picture log” my travel experience visiting local parks or taking long road-trips.

 

In the Gallery Page I will have collections of mini picture galleries with pictures that have a specific topic or a theme.

This page is more to provide you a visual nature inspiration and less about trip guide.

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

 

Every travel guide post will have a short description on the location (in many cases I will add link to a map and the location’s website), what you will see, trail recommendation or other visit tips.

At the end of each blog, a collection of pictures taken at the specific place will be presented.

 

With this blog I’m not trying to replace proper web search, travel guides or other source of information on specific location but rather my personal experience at that location, the things I saw and my visual interpretation of nature.

Photo by: Guy Bejerano

Photo by: Guy Bejerano

Photo by: Guy Bejerano

 

I added two trip planning help-tools:

1. Map Page: in this map I marked all places with a link to the relevant blog post. The main park entrance/parking is clearly marked, I added also other interest points or other parking locations.

2. Directory Page: in this page you will find directory sections with all blog posts names, arranged with a specific location commonality (for example: south bay trips) so it will help you to find the relevant sites to visit.

 

I will try, but I do not promise, to have only one blog post per specific location so I will combine all my trip inputs, tips, and pictures from all visits into one blog.

The nature is not presenting itself the same at different hours of the day or seasons, viewing the picture collections share my view of the specific location as I experienced it.

 

You can also look for specific place by tag or text search, hope you will find the tags helpful.

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

 

Few Words about myself:

For the last 4 years I’m living in San Francisco Bay area (Sunnyvale at the south bay), so I do cover in more details the local northern California parks and places.

I’m will also provide trip information and recommendation on my favorite long road-trip destinations.

 

As the one that is usually being behind the camera I do not have a lot of photos, I tried to collect below few of the one I manage to find.

 

Last but probably the most important, thank you to my dear family that encourage me all the time, patient with my "long taking pictures moments" and help me to pursuit my dreams...

Photo by: The guide :-)

Regards and Fun Traveling,

Yiftah

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

Photo by: Or Shahar

Photo by: Or Shahar

Photo by: Tomer Efrat

Photo by: Tomer Efrat

Photo by: Dan Gross

Photo by: Dan Gross

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

Photo by: Ziv Shahar

Photo by: Or Shahar

Drawing by: Tamr Shahar