Christmas photos

We are wrapping things up here to finish out the year. I know I just said it in the last post, but what a year it has been…

Anyways, we enjoyed talking with family on Christmas. But since we are out here on the West Coast, I thought I'd share some photos of all of us from Christmas Eve.

I had to get my camera and the lights set up for Christmas morning, and part of that was getting everyone in front of the camera.

Leah loved to get Catherine and me in front of the camera for a change.

Happy New Year's everybody!

Marc

Life in super Technicolor(r)!!

Yesterday I loaded up the family and we headed just south of Portland, Oregon to a little town called Woodburn. They have a beautiful tulip farm, and put on a nice little festival that was fun for the whole family.

I was gambling that the weather would be nice. I lost.

It started out rainy, and ended up intermittently cloudy and sunny, but all in all was a very nice day.

There were tractors out in the fields (old-timey tractors) that the kids were able to play on, in addition to some silly Dutch-themed cut-outs that the kids had fun in.

And thankfully both kids played nice when it was photo time!

I even got Catherine to drop the umbrellas and pose for a couple of photos.

There were the standard rows upon rows of same-style tulips, but then there was a very large couple of sections where random bulbs were thrown in together that I found to be just amazing. There was also a large kid-play area with swings, slides, rubber-duckie races, and other fun stuff. It made for a very nice day for everyone.

It was a big day, but definitely worth the drive time to get there. Have a wonderful day everybody! Cheers,

Marc

Happy New Year!

Catherine's mother, Nancy, is here for a visit. She kindly agreed for a snowshoe trip at Paradise in Mt. Rainier National Park. They've had more snow since last weekend, with more than 130 inches of snow still on the ground this season.

So we packed up the car and made the trip to Mt. Rainier. The roads were a bit worse than last week, but with blue skies and sun-drenched snow-covered mountains we couldn't pass it up. We haven't seen the sun in quite some time, so it was nice to get a very big dose of sunshine.

We passed several tents and abandoned campsites on our little trek, which has me really thinking...

We stayed long enough to catch a beautiful sunset, and then made the drive back down the mountain. No avalanches, no frostbite - all safe and sound!

I'm thinking of taking Ian back up there tomorrow for some more fun in the snow. I won't be able to publish another blog before the New Years, so I'll make this my official Happy New Years wish. Have fun everybody, and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!

Marc

Columbia River Gorge

Christina's trip is rapidly coming to an end. She basically has all day tomorrow with us, then she flies back home. There are so many different outdoorsy paradises here, that with unlimited time is very hard to decide where to go and what to see. Do I want to see the wild Pacific Ocean, or a temperate rainforest? Mountains? How about waterfalls?

Well, when forced to decide, Christina chose waterfalls. So off to the Columbia River Gorge we went.

There are already plans underfoot for a return trip next summer, where a trip to the Olympic Mountains, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier will be a much better prospect. The mountain passes have already had several inches of snow this week, which means that the higher elevations had even more. It would have been an even colder trip had Christina decided on either of the other options.

We've had a very nice time with Christina here, and I'm pretty sure she has had a nice time too. Cheers,

Marc

Vacation is officially over!

Like the title says, vacation is officially over. Boooo!!!!!

So after Disneyland, we did a day at Knott's Berry Farm just down the road. The next day we headed north to visit some family in San Francisco. Since it is a very long drive from LA to SF, we stopped at Big Sur for the night, staying at a state park cabin. A quick internet search the night before let me figure out that a waterfall that I'd been wanting to photograph was just a couple of miles down the road from where we were staying. Catherine chooses the best places to stay!

The waterfall actually plunges straight into the Pacific Ocean when the tide is up. It is McCay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Beautiful!

The next day we drove to San Francisco and enjoyed a walk around Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square. The Pumpkin Spice Caramel Chocolate squares are to die for. We had a very nice time with Melissa, getting to tour the art gallery where she works and then having a nice dinner.

The following day we made the very long drive from San Francisco to Crater Lake National Park. Despite an early start (we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge at about 8:30 or so) we didn't arrive at the Park until just before sunset. We literally drove straight to the rim for some photographs, and then made our way back down to our cabin for the night. Part of the delay was our own fault, we stopped at Regusci in the Napa Valley to go pick up some of our favorite wine along the way.

The photo above is from sunset and the one below is from a bit after sunrise the next morning. I'd really love to come visit when the rim is cloaked in snow. It would make for an excellent winter camping trip...

Catherine's sister, Christina, is visiting us for the week. I'll have some photos from our Oktoberfest adventure posted in the near future. Cheers,

Marc

More Disney Fun, Revisited

So I'm going to delete my last post with the same photos since my post was pretty lame!

The kids had a great time at Disney, as you'd expect. They got to ride the rides they wanted (with some cajoling at times), but better than that they got to meet the characters. While they aren't the biggest Mickey Mouse fans, they did thoroughly enjoy getting to meet him and getting their photos taken with him.

Ian had his big day with the Jedi Academy, so Leah deserved a bit of time with her favorite Disney character: Tinkerbell! She got to meet her sister, Periwinkle, too. But Tinkerbell was definitely the highlight of her trip, more so than any of the other princesses.

The Disney photographer was busy with another family for this photo. I ended up taking the photo of another lady and her child, and she kindly took our photo in return.

I tried to take another photo Leah-style, which worked out okay. What can I say? I'm a work in progress!

After three days at Disney we took a day to go visit Knott's Berry Farm. It was ridiculously under-crowded! I waited a maximum of five minutes for each of the major rollercoasters. And I have two new rollercoaster buddies. Leah will ride anything that she can fit on. Ian likes the metal twisting/flipping coasters. Either way, I don't have to ride alone!!!!

At one point in time, after a particularly fun ride, Ian said "I have never felt so alive in my entire life!". That pretty much sums up our Disneyland/Knott's Berry Farm/Southern California adventure.

Cheers,

Marc

Having fun at Disneyland

Well, the internet was down yesterday when I was going to attempt to blog, so I'm running a bit behind. We've had several early mornings and late evenings while here, trying to make the most of the time that we have here. I have a ton of photos from yesterday and today to go through, as well as some video that I'll be uploading in the next couple of weeks.

Below Ian and Leah are sitting in the comfy chairs provided in the hotel lobby. We'd later go on the spinning tea cup ride which I got spinning to a ridiculous rate. Ian and Leah both wanted more, but Catherine and I were both fine to just let the ride spin itself out without any more assistance from me once I was done.

I tried to take many photos of us on the rides. Just like the last time I tried this, I am nowhere near as good at this as Leah is. I had to cull through a bunch of these to find one with all of us in it. Somehow I am out of focus, but I like the pure joy on Ian's and Leah's faces. To say they've had a blast at Disneyland is a wild understatement.

Cars Land opened up a couple of months ago at Disneyland. The race they have there is a huge hit with the crowds. It was one of the few rides that we did twice, and we won both times. Someone we ran into at the park has a theory that the car with the loudest cheering is the car that wins. Ian and Leah probably won those races all by themselves if they go by volume!

We rode several of the rides at Cars Land, including Luigi's Floating Tires, where I took this Hall of Mirrors-type photo. Only on this one I tried to be a bit more sneaky!

To finish off our first day at Disney, we wondered over to one of the entrances where a kind employee offered to take our picture. This was not the first time, I think it must be a part of the customer service training that all of their employees cast members go through.

We are moving on in our California vacation. Tonight is our last night at Disneyland. Tomorrow we will visit Knotts Berry Farm, where hopefully I can talk Ian or Leah to ride some of the rollercoasters with me. Have a wonderful day everybody!

Cheers,

Marc

Labor Day Weekend Fun!

I'd seen some photos of Mt. Rainier and the wildflower bloom that made me want have to go there. So I packed up Catherine and the kids and we drove to Paradise, which is aptly named at this time of year. There are a boatload of trails around the Paradise Visitor Center, but we chose the Deadhorse Creek Trail to the Skyline Trail.

The sights and the scents were sublime! There was more color here than what I had experienced at the Hurricane Ridge area of the Olympic National Park, but that was because I went before the peak of color. We (that's the royal "We") decided to hike up to the Panoramic Point from Paradise. It gained a lot more vertical than I had anticipated, but everyone hiked like a champ.

The trail got quite steep at a couple of points, with sheer drop offs to one side. This guy, below, was climbing up to his girlfriend. The photo was taken at one of those steep-trail points. It looks a lot worse than it actually was, but had he fallen it would have really ruined his day.

We eventually made it to Panoramic Point, but the Skyline Trail we were following had a sign warning of ice and steep trail conditions. So we had to climb some more to the High Skyline Trail to avoid the snow field. The photo below is from us finally starting our descent, however that wall of snow is not the snowfield we were avoiding.

We saw some folks sliding on their bottoms since our trail overlooked the Skyline Trail. It would have been fun, but just for me. The high trail eventually met up with the low trail, but the going was still fairly steep. Below you can see the kids with the Tatoosh Mountains in the immediate distance and Mt. Adams in the far distance.

At one point, I took a different trail so I could go see the wildflower show on Mazama Ridge, which added a solid 3-4 miles to my trip. Since everyone was good and tired, it was a good choice to separate here. The photo below is one of my favorites from Mazama Ridge looking south towards the Tatoosh Mountains. Since the Skyline Trail was soooooo crowded, this trail was awesome. Once I turned off, I literally never saw another human until a quarter mile from the parking lot. That was nice, except for when I encountered a bear. Luckily, I scared that one off too!

Not far from the photo above, I turned around and took this photo of Mt. Rainier with a bunch of wildflowers in the foreground.

All in all, it was a long but glorious day. Not a bad way to put summer to bed! Enjoy your Labor Day everyone, we are. Cheers,

Marc

family fun

So a little background for the final post from our summer vacation: a couple of years ago (2010/2011) while we were still living in Thallichtenberg, Leah used her little camera to take this photo. See how everyone is in the photo and looks normal? Yeah, me too. 

I thought I'd take a photo of all of us in our tent at Grand Teton before we went to bed. So I held the camera out Leah-style, and this is what I got. I chimped the photo and saw that Ian's eyes were closed and my head/neck looked weird, so I gave it another go.

This was an improvement?!? No, no, no, no. I had to try again.

Only, everyone was laughing so hard at my "improved" expression, that we couldn't settle down for several minutes for another photo.

I think Ian's and Leah's stomachs must have been hurting we were laughing so hard!

But we finally settled down and I took an okay photograph.

You'll notice that it took me well over five attempts to Leah's one for a photograph. Oh well, we have a nice enough photo but a wonderful memory of a fun time while camping. Cheers,

Marc

Glacier National Park

After Yellowstone, we made our way to a buddy of mine from waaaay back in the day - my old roomie from Battalion. He and his wife have two daughters roughly Ian's and Leah's age, and they have just started a distillery in Ennis, Montana. The facility was beautiful, as was the country around Ennis, and it was great to catch up on what everyone has been doing in the many years since we've gotten out. We had a nice lunch together, and then we headed out to spend the night in a hotel in Helena. That was a much needed break to do some laundry and sleep in a warm, soft bed.

We drove to our corner of Glacier National Park the next day, which was easily the prettiest National Park we've seen (though Olympic National Park does come close!). We got to our camp site, set up our tent, and then went on up the Going to the Sun Road for a little bit of exploring before dinner.

We went to the Sun Point pull out, and hauled out the stove and made a nice dinner there, while we waited for the sun to set a bit (so I could get some nice photos). It was a very short walk from the parking lot/picnic area to the Sun Point point. The camera is set up just next to the plaque pointing out the various mountains. I love the timer for whole family photos!

And this is the view 180 degrees from the photo above, just a bit later in the day.

The next day we went to the Many Glacier part of Glacier National Park. We did some hiking (Ian and I saw a hawk from very close up, some grizzly bears from very far away, and some other less interesting fauna), then caught a nice lunch followed by a birthday-boy ice cream. There was a brief, strong thunderstorm while we ate in a restaurant, which meant we got to stay dry. After it cleared up, we met up with a park ranger for a guided hike, where we met up with this guy below.

The moose was a good bit away, but just on the edge of comfortable. Any closer and we would have been making our way away from him. I took a couple of photos of just the kids and the moose, when another photographer asked if he could take a photo with all of us in it. Sure!

The next day we drove the Going to the Sun Road all the way up to Logan Pass and the continental divide. The kids had completed their Junior Ranger Badge requirements, so we stopped at the Visitor Center at Logan Pass and got the kids sworn in as the newest Junior Rangers. We then hiked to the Hidden Lake Overlook. I had wanted to hike all the way to the lake, but it was closed due to bear activity which was just as well since the hike took a bit longer than expected. The ground squirrels were out in force, as was the stunning scenery.

And the mandatory post-swearing-in ceremony photo with the kids proudly wearing their badges.

Of the many parks we've visited this year, Glacier is easily the most stunning park we've seen. Even Catherine remarked at how beautiful it was! The photo below is from the very popular Wild Goose Island overlook. It was packed the first morning I went, and I was literally never alone here even when Catherine and the kids were "sleeping in" while I was out. It is the kind of place where I'd go back to time and time again - even though I'd like to explore much of the park under a backpack.

Ian asked several times if we could go back to Glacier for his birthday next year, to which I answer with an enthusiastic "YES"! We'll see what time brings, but I don't think I'd ever say "no" to a trip to Glacier.

Cheers,

Marc

Yellowstone National Park

We're home now, vacation is unofficially over. BOOOO!!!!

We had a great time. Catherine and I got to relax a little bit and the kids had a nice time earning their Junior Ranger badges at all of the National Parks we visited. I'll recap a bit from each Park, then I'll wade into the weeds a bit with the animals and a funny (to us) story in future posts.

So last National Park I wrote about was Grand Teton, which was very pretty. Next up was Yellowstone which is jam packed with all sorts of outdoorsy goodness. It wasn't a long drive from Grand Teton to our camp site in Yellowstone, which was nice. We were able to set up our tent site and then head back up the road back to the Old Faithful area to go see the geysers in action. We stayed for a dusk geyser "eruption" at Old Faithful - but I gambled and lost. The kids and I went for a walk around the upper geyser basin anticipating Old Faithful's eruption at a specific time, which is plus or minus 10 minutes. In this case, early by 10. Which is why all you see here is steam, because the water was already gone by the time we made it to where I wanted to photograph Old Faithful. The timing never worked out again for a nice sunset eruption, which was a major bummer for me.

The next day we explored the rest of the geyser basins, to include some hikes. This geyser below is Riverside Geyser, which is apparently impossible to predict when it will erupt. Luckily for us, it was when we were walking by it.

Same place, just a hundred yards or so further up the trail is Morning Glory Pool, which was one of my favorites.

We decided to treat ourselves with a swim in the Gibbons River that ran right by our camp site. We even had our own hot spring to help keep us warm, but it wasn't necessary. The kids and I had a nice time swimming in the swift current, while Catherine enjoyed wading.

Good thing the kids' camera is waterproof!

And yes, both Ian and Leah earned their Junior Ranger Badges from Yellowstone. Total parks visited so far: 3. Total Junior Ranger badges: 3.

We made our way to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River on our second full day, which was an early morning for all of us. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, but that could have been because it was almost freezing. Literally. It was in the low 30's when we first arrived, and it didn't improve much while we were there. Which was true pretty much every morning. It made for some cold sleeping, but nothing that we couldn't handle.

Once the sun came up though, the tourists started arriving in great numbers. Catherine tells me that three buses arrived while I was tinkering around trying to get a good photo (this one above is from the afternoon, so no - my morning shots did not turn out). I believe her, and I must say that my behind will be the most famous butt in all of Asia judging from the number of people taking their pictures next to me on the overlook to the falls. I kept taking my own photos through the whole ordeal, which was a bit funny while it was happening.

Next stop, Glacier. I don't want to ruin the surprise - but trust me, if you haven't made it to Glacier National Park, start planning your trip now!

Cheers,

Marc