This. Best 360 video of aurora in real time I've seen so far. Ok, it's the only one I've seen so far. Ignoring the huge watermark, this is the best video that captures the experience of tourists viewing the auroras. The ooooohhhsss and aaahhhhss... perfect. The auroras slowly and gracefully dancing around, with short bursts of energy, triggering orgasmic cries from the crowd.... absolutely perfect.  Another gem while panning around: A fellow photographer snapping away in the dark.


Do view this in full screen. Despite this not being super sharp HD, it still looks amazing. Do pan around!

Now if only I had a VR gear.

Folks living in the Bay Area are spoiled for choice when it comes to scenery of green rolling hills during spring. Remember the famous Windows XP wallpaper "Bliss"? (Wiki link here) Yeap, you can get plenty of  those in the Bay Area on a nice clear spring day. For this post, I'll be covering one of them: Sunol Regional Wilderness.

Sunal Regional Wilderness is a wilderness area in the East Bay, beyond the popular Mission Peak. Getting there takes a while, but it's worth the drive (in spring). Like most hiking trails in the bay area, I got to know of this gem from the awesome hiking site Bay Area Hiker: http://bahiker.com/. For this trail, I pretty much followed the featured hike from the Sunol entry on the site: http://bahiker.com/eastbayhikes/sunol.html. The site has most of the needed information and description, so I will just be posting mostly pictures here.Some highlights from the site:

• Hiking trail site: http://bahiker.com/eastbayhikes/sunol.html
• Official park site: http://www.ebparks.org/parks/sunol
• Trail map: http://www.ebparks.org/parks/sunol#trailmap
• When to go: Spring, as recommended by the site. Most of the trail is not shaded, so it can be unbearable come summer, since the park is located inland for away from the Pacific breeze. Furthermore, the hills turn dry and gold/yellow in summer, giving a totally different feel. 
• Highlights of the trail: Scattered California poppy fields. Nice barn serving as the foreground to a beautiful hilly background. 

It was a pretty long drive from where I used to live. There's a particularly long stretch along Calaveras Rd after exiting from 680.

Most of the trail is wide open, offering expansive views of the surrounding hills.

Scattered California oaks dot the landscape. With human for scale.

Interesting tree stumps/logs.

Pond for livestock

First view of the picturesque barn.

Feels so bucolic. The view gets even better.

The emerging clouds from the horizon further complements the picture.

Everything looks epic with awesome clouds in the background, including cattle.

Small flowerbed. Sunol is known for impressive wildflower displays, but it hasn't peaked yet when I was there.

Trail moves uphill, offering better views of the barn and surrounding area.

Amazing spring view.

More of the picturesque view.

As most photographers would say: "One last shot" Followed by lots of shots.

Trail leading to Flag Hill, with humans for scale.

Butterfly on California poppy.

Pretty oak with human for scale.

The end of the trail, Flag Hill, before heading back down using a different trail.

Lots of poppies near the peak.

Looking down at the parking lot. Time to head back.