Coming Soon...

Some recent trips that I haven't written about yet (no internet at home and being busy at work makes it tough to keep up to date):

• Two weekends ago (7/15-7/16), Devin and I went up to Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA
  
• Last weekend, we climbed Mt. Lamarck near Bishop, CA
  

Dave's Wedding

This past weekend, Devin and I made the long cross-country trek to Rome, New York to attend Dave and Kim's wedding. We left early Friday morning, flying to Atlanta, Georgia, where we met up with Zack, Zach, and Reuben, and all took the same flight to Syracuse (crazy enough, we paid about the same for our entire LAX-ATL-SYR ticket as they did just for the ATL-SYR leg). When we got to Syracuse, we met up with Neil and the airport, and then went to downtown Syracuse for dinner. We tried to go to a place called Dinosaur BBQ (on Rusty's recommendation)...well, it turned out to be a biker hangout (which Rusty knew and conveniently "forgot" to mention) with a wait of over an hour for a table. So we found somewhere else to eat, which actually had the Yankees game on (I miss New York!!). We then returned to the airport to pick up Jimmy, and in our rented minivan, all seven of us headed for the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, where the wedding was being held. Well, it being a casino, and with lots of our friends attending the wedding, we of course stayed up until 5am. On Saturday, we pretty much got out of bed in time to shower and get dressed for the wedding.

The actual wedding was at a church in Rome, NY, where Dave and Kim grew up. The actual wedding was very nice, and the weather couldn't have been any better. The reception was back at Turning Stone at the Golf Club. It was amazing! They first had a reception outside with drinks and hors d'oeuvres, complete with an ice sculpture of the Space Shuttle and launch tower! We then went upstairs for a sitdown dinner (filet mignon AND salmon!) and all of the typical wedding festivities. The wedding ended at midnight, after which we all headed back down to the casino. Devin and I had a 6:30am flight (part of why we got such a cheap fare), so we stayed up until the taxi came to pick us up at the hotel. Needless to say, we slept away pretty much all of Sunday!! It was great to see everyone though, the wedding was beautiful, and Kim of course looked great :-)


Left: Dave and Kim leaving the church (you're not allowed to throw rice anymore so we had to blow bubbles at them)
Middle: Jimmy, Zack, Neil, me, and Devin at the wedding reception
Right: Space Shuttle ice sculpture complete with launch tower and smoke

Vegas Pictures

A few pictures from my trip to Vegas a few weeks ago...


Left: Walking on the strip during the day (it was soooo hot!!)
Right: Devin and I in front of the Monte Carlo, where we stayed.


A view of the Strip at night.


A view of the Strip during the day from atop
the Stratosphere.


Gelato at the Desert Expo...yummy!

4th of July in SEATTLE

Okay, so after much insistence, Devin finally convinced me to take a trip to Seattle, to see the greaty city that he grew up in. First of all, I apologize for the hard time I always gave him, because it turns out that Seattle is actually an awesome city. And, despite how many days it rains there, we actually got a beautiful weekend, so I had nothing to complain about. We were super busy, but unfortunately we forgot a camera, so all I have to report is in words:

Day 1, Thursday: This doesn't really count as a day, since we were scheduled to fly out of LAX at 9pm, but it turns out that all the flights were way overbooked (imagine that - overbooked flights on the 4th of July weekend). So, we decided to give up our seat to get a free roundtrip ticket on Alaska Airlines, and we were able to get on the next flight up to Seattle, which left only 45 minutes later! So now we're going to go to Alaska or Mexico, which will be sweet...

Day 2, Friday: We got up early Friday morning and drove up to Anacortes, which is about 80 miles north of downtown Seattle. From there, you can take a ferry to the San Juan Islands, but instead, we decided to go whale watching. Turns out the orcas were about as far as you can get from Anacortes, near Victoria, Canada actually. So we had to spend about 2 hours on the boat just driving out to their location, which wasn't so bad since it provided me a nice tour of the entire San Juans. We finally arrived at the location of the orcas, and it was amazing!! There must have been at least 40 orcas out there, since there were two pods that were crossing paths (which is highly unusual apparently). I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first, but it was definitely worth the trip to see them. After watching the orcas swim around for a while, the ferry made its way back to Anacortes. Devin and I then drove back over Deception Pass (instead of driving back down I-5), and stopped for dinner in a cute little town called Langley. We then took a car ferry from Clinton to Mukilteo, and drove the rest of the way back to Seattle.

Day 3, Saturday: This was our whirlwind tour of Seattle day. We were going to get an early start, but after missing both World Cup quarterfinal games the day before, I couldn't stand to miss both on Saturday as well. So we watched as Italy beat England in penalty kicks (I sure was glad I didn't miss that game!), and then headed out. We first went to Pike Place Market, which is an amazing farmer's market right on the Seattle waterfront. We bought some fresh raspberries (yummy!) and then had piroshkis for lunch. We walked around some more, and then headed up to see the Space Needle. We then drove over to the University of Washington, Devin's alma mater, and got some more food in the U-district. Next was a stop at Gas Works park, and finally a trip over to see the Hiram M. Chittendan locks, complete with a fish ladder so that the salmon can still swim upstream. Finally, we headed back downtown to see a Seattle Mariners game at Safeco Field, which happened to be an amazing game (Mariners were down 7-2, and ended up coming back to win 8-7). I even bought a Jamie Moyer Mariners shirt (see, I told you I was becoming a Mariners fan)!!

Day 4, Sunday: Sunday was a bit more relaxed. We slept in a little later, and then went to church. We stopped at the original Whole Foods in Bellevue for lunch, and then went to the Boeing Museum of Flight for the afternoon. Devin's parents then took us on the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train (along with Devin's brother and sister), which travels from Renton (where Devin lives) to the Columbia winery for a tour and wine tasting, with dinner on the way. This was a really fun way to get to see the beautiful scenery and eat some yummy food. When we returned, Devin and I met up with two of his college friends to play some pool.

Day 5, Monday: We were pretty exhausted by this point, so we slept in pretty late, and then went out for a short day hike in the Cascades. On the way back, we stopped at Snoqualmie Falls, which are actually about 100 feet taller than even Niagara Falls (although much less volume)!! We then went over to Devin's sister's apartment and cooked dinner and watched the Mariners game.

Day 6, Tuesday: Our last day in Seattle!! Well, it being the 4th of July, we figured we might as well do something patriotic, so we went down to a park in Renton to hear Devin's parents and brother play in the Renton Community band. We were so exhausted after our busy weekend that afterwards we just headed home for a nap and to pack our suitcases. We then went to Devin's college friend's house for a little while in the evening, and then to Gas Works park to see the fireworks. I have to admit, it was one of the best fireworks shows I've ever seen, especially right over the water and with the Seattle skyline in the background.


We left for L.A. on a 6am flight Wednesday morning (that was a tough day at work!)...no free ticket this time though. I had a great weekend, and absolutely loved Seattle...although the gorgeous weather helped things. But overall, I think it's a great city, and definitely somewhere I would consider living in the future. :-)

Backpacking in Sequoia National Park

Last weekend (June 16-18), Devin, Ravi, Katie, and I all went up to Sequoia National Park for a 3-day backpacking trip (that's right, I skipped out on work on Friday...). It was about a 4.5 hour drive from Pasadena, but about an hour of that was driving the last 25 miles to the Mineral King Ranger Station, where we began our trip. Our planned destination was Florence Peak, but we were not able to reach the peak or even the pass due to snow conditions. But overall, the hike was amazing, even though we didn't make it as far as we would have liked. On the way in, we drove through Sequoia National Forrest, where we drove by some very impressive Sequoia trees. The picture at left shows me sitting on Ravi's shoulders, completely dwarfed by two side-by-side Sequoias (we actualy took this picture on the way home).

We started at the trailhead about a mile up the road from the Ranger Station (we had to leave our cars by the Ranger Station due to marmot activity). The picture at right shows the view near the trailhead looking towards our destination. Florence Peak can't be seen from this vantage point, but we would be heading in the general direction of those mountains. As we began our hike, it was very sunny and warm, although we could see the snow-capped peaks in the distance. Because of the heavy snowmelt, the environment was very moist and green. As we began our hike up the trailhead, we soon encountered our first of four river crossings. The rivers all had plenty of water, and were flowing very quickly. And of course, the water was FREEZING!!! That's what happens when the entire river is made of snowmelt... All of the crossings required us to stop and change from our hiking boots to our sandals - one of them was almost knee-deep! The pictures below show one of the rivers we had to cross, along with me attempting to run across another as fast as I could. And of course Devin had to be all tough and walk across slowly as if the cold water didn't bother him at all...



As we ascended higher along the trailhead, we began to come across patches of snow. As we climbed even further, the snow began to become more and more widespread, until it covered a fairly large portion of the ground. It became more difficult to follow the trail, because it was covered in snow in many places. So we basically had to head in the general direction of the trail, and then catch up with it later once the snow thinned out again. We had to be very careful when crossing the snow fields, because one slip, and you would slide down a long ways. The snow was also very soft in some places, so you had to be careful not to post-hole. I took one step where I sunk in down to my waist, and Devin had to pull me out! The interesting part was that it was still very warm, so as you can see, we were hiking in shorts and t-shirts over snow...that was pretty cool!

Well, after a VERY long day of hiking on Friday (it was definitely the longest 6.5 miles I've ever done), we finally reached camp by Franklin Lakes. We were originally supposed to camp overlooking the lakes, at a site with a pit toilet and all, but we weren't able to find it easily with all the snow cover, so we settled for a campsite just shy of the dam. We ended up finding the campsite the next day, and it turns out that we just didn't hike far enough along the trail before turning around. But it was late already when we got in, so didn't want to spend hours looking for it then. The campsite we stayed at was very nice though, and we set up camp and cooked a quick dinner, as it got very cold very quickly as soon as the sun went down. Because we were camping at ~9500 ft., it got down to around freezing both nights, which was quite a change from the previous weekend in Vegas, where it was over 100 degrees!

On Saturday, we made our way towards Franklin Pass, pretty sure we would not be able to ascend Franklin Peak due to the snow conditions. The going was very slow though, because we could not see the trail at all, except for a couple of places. So we decided that we wouldn't even make it to Franklin Pass, and instead we'd head for an alpine lake that was on the way to Franklin Pass. We stopped by the lake to have lunch, before turning around to head back to camp. All of the lakes at the altitude were still mostly frozen, and had a very bright blue color, that you can see in the picture. There were even fish living underneath the ice in the lake, which was interesting to see. How can fish live in water that cold?!! The bowl that this lake was in beautiful, surrounded by snow-covered peaks on all sides, except the one side where you could see all the way back down the valley. Unfortunately, we all got pretty burnt (yes, we wore sunscreen!!), because the sun was pretty intense and the reflection off the snow made it that much worse...

When we returned to camp that evening, we discovered that we had a visit from some marmots (they were all over the place in that area!). Ravi's sandals had been eaten!!! We tried to fix them up with duct tape, since he'd need them for the river crossings on the way back to the Ranger Station, but were only marginally successful. Those little buggers will eat anything!!



Overall, it was a great trip, and I'd highly recommend it to anybody. I'd love to go back later in the summer, when there is a little less snow cover, so that I could have hiked all the way to the peak. Here are some more pictures from the trip:


On the day hike towards Florence Pass.


Katie and I in our matching shirts.


Devin and I chillin on a rock.


Devin and I cooking couscous (we made way too much!!)



Beautiful sunset over the valley.


Finishing off the trip right :-)