Yosemite 2013

We attempted to spend the Labor Day weekend in Yosemite, but only stayed one night after smoke, from the Rim Fire, entered the valley on Saturday.  It was a little smoky, but blue skies on Friday.  By Saturday morning, it was raining ash.  We started driving home, but all came down with food poisoning and ended up staying the night in Fresno before making the rough drive home on Sunday.  We all slept 14 hours once we got home!!

 

 

More photos:  https://picasaweb.google.com/FreqTravelers/YosemiteAug2013#

Fun at the Fair!

The San Diego county fair comes to town in June.  I usually curse the fair every year, because of traffic.  But this year, Rylee and I braved the traffic and crowds and went to the fair 5 times!  We had a great time visiting the animals and eating cinnamon rolls.  Maybe next year, we will go on some rides.

Turkey leg

 

Lemonade

 

Feeding goats

 

 

 

And cows

 

The cinnamon roll was a favorite

 

Palomar Mountain Camping

Father's Day weekend fun...This was Rylee's second time camping and she's becoming a pro!

Our site

 

Helping start a fire

 

Ready to hike

 Observatory Trail

 

Keeping Cool

 

S'mores!

 

Happy Father's Day!

More photos: click here.

Torrey Pines Hiking

Rylee has been getting her fair share of hiking in at Torrey Pines.  On this last hike, we walked a little over 3 miles and she didn't fuss one bit.  She just put her head down and fell asleep while in the Bjorn.

 

Christmas 2011

Mike and I took his grandmother, Enid, to her favorite place for Christmas Brunch.  They have the best crab claws and dessert in town!  It has warmed up nicely this week, so we took advantage of walking on the beach to burn off some of the calories afterwards.

Park Hyatt Aviara with Enid

The beach was really crowded with people walking.

Christmas Day SoCal style

Mike took this cool picture of me.  I'm 28 weeks.

Happy Holidays!

We are planning on a nice quiet Christmas weekend in sunny southern California.  It's supposed to be sunny and 70, perfect!  We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!  Merry Christmas!

Blackout Thursday

For those of you that didn't hear about our blackout last week, we were without power for about 10 hours last Thursday.  I had just got to work and the power went out all throughout San Diego county up to Orange County over to Yuma, Arizona and down to Ensenada, Mexico.  I sat at work for 2 and 1/2 hours before they let us come home.

The drive home was interesting, because a lot of people in California don't know or forget that you have to stop at intersections when the lights are out.  People were just flying through intersections.  No working lights also meant a longer than usual drive home.  Mike was off work for the day and walked across the street to see about getting ice to save some of our stuff in the freezer and frige.  He said it was like Armageddon, people were panicking and trying to buy stuff, but all the stores were closed.  The only place he found open was the liquor store, so he bought some beer.  We had a nice evening in the candlelight and watched a couple episodes of Dexter on what power was left on Mike's laptop.  Eventually, we didn't have anything else to do, so we went to bed early.  Other people were have blackout parties in their neighborhoods.  It was funny how everyone was being all neighborly during the blackout.  We had people in our complex all in the courtyard grilling out and sitting out on their balconies talking to each other.

We were to fly out of San Diego the next morning and thought for sure we'd have to stay home all weekend, but the power came back on at about 1:15am Friday and our flight went out without any delays that morning at 10:30am.

Having something like this happen makes you think you should probably keep canned food, a battery powered radio and cash on hand.  Things we are told to keep on hand for emergencies anyway.  Maybe keeping your gas tank full too, some people were stranded without gas after sitting in traffic.  I couldn't even use my cell phone to call or text.  I thought you were supposed to be able to text at least in emergencies...not the case.

At least the ice cream truck came by....

Yosemite National Park

We visited Yosemite over Labor Day weekend.  We couldn't get a campsite, but we got the next best thing.  We stayed in canvas tents at Curry Village in the valley.  It's so nice and convenient staying inside the park and waking up every morning to the magnificent cliffs on both sides.  You also don't have to worry about driving in the crazy traffic.  We arrived on Saturday and did 2 short hikes and Sunday we did a long hike that took most of the day.

Our tent in Curry Village

On the Taft Point and the Fissures hike

Sentinel Dome hike

View from the top of Sentinel Dome

Cute deer

Yosemite Falls

Hiking the valley floor

A break for swimming the freezing cold Merced River

Another swimming break, it was so cold it took my breath away.

Tunnel View - the first sight of the valley (which we took on the way out)

Beach Day

It was a nice day for the beach and grilling hamburgers with our campstove.

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Theresa!  We took a quick trip up to Temecula for one of Theresa's favorite activities…“tasting” wine.  We hit up 4 wineries and had a great time.

Joshua Tree National Park

We went camping and hiking in Joshua Tree over the weekend with friends, Ben and Erin.  We camped in Black Rock Campground and broke in our new camping stove.  It was awesome, although we still cooked on the campfire a little.  On Saturday, the four of us hiked Rattlesnake Canyon and 49 Palms Oasis.  On Sunday, Mike and I stuck around and hiked Barker Dam and Ryan Mountain.  It was actually pretty cool, temperature wise, mostly because of the wind.  It was actually warmer back at home in San Diego than it was in the desert.

Our campsite.

The view from our site.

Our new campstove

Scaling Rocks in Rattlesnake Canyon (not my favorite terrain)

49 Palm Oasis

Ben and Erin in the Palm Oasis

Enjoying the Keys View

Joshua Trees

Snow capped San Jacinto Peak - 2nd highest peak in SoCal

Tough climb to Ryan's Peak

View from Ryan's Peak

Skull Rock

More photos:

Joshua Tree Apr 2011