Santa Barbara March 11, 2011

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Santa Barbara for the Solvang Century Bike ride. Calvin has talked about doing this ride ever since Rosie started school at UC Santa Barbara, but this year Rosie offered to ride it on a tandem with Calvin and he couldn't resist.  Sadly we have no pictures of the ride.  Our camera was tucked safely away in the car in Solvang, but not used the day of the ride. I opted for a day by the pool at out hotel.  (Solvang is a delightful town, but I have had occasion to tour it many times while Calvin has ridden his bike there.) I had a beautiful view of mountains, palm trees and blue skies from my lounge chair and I even thought about taking a picture, but once again with the camera tucked safely away in Solvang I missed the shot.
Calvin flew home very early Sunday morning and I stayed for another day to visit with Rosie. On Sunday afternoon we went to the Monarch butterfly reserve.  I have been fascinated with the migrating butterflies for years, but have never had a chance to actually see them.  I knew that they would gather in particular trees year after year, but I thought in my mind that the butterflies would replace the leaves on the trees, not gather in clusters, so the trees would look like they had butterfly leaves. It was not what I expected, but remarkable none the less.

This is a picture I took using the regular lens on our camera.  If you look really closely you can see a little patch of orange.

This is that same view using Rosie's telephoto lens.

I'm not a serious photographer, a couple of shots and I'm done.  Rosie makes a more serious effort.

We also took a short walk along the bluff.  Having grown up in Idaho, I never get tired of looking at the ocean.

And I never get tired of spending a peaceful Sunday afternoon with Rosie.

Signs of Spring

It snowed about 6 inches last Monday, today the temperature is 70 degrees, but we are expecting valley snow again tomorrow.  Despite the weather we have seen our first signs of spring.

We have our first crocus blooming in the warmest corner of the driveway.

Another sign of spring is the completion of Calvin's winter woodworking projects.  This year he made, among other things, a gorgeous walnut coffee table for our living room.

I just love it, and not just because I hated the old coffee table.

And the last sign of spring...

Calvin pruned the fruit trees.  We will be safe from low hanging fruit this year.

Peter's ski videos

This is Peter's ski video from a few weeks ago.  We had blue skies and perfectly groomed runs, just my kind of skiing.  Bur Peter and Calvin needed the added challenge of taking a video while skiing down hill.

Winter 2012

Winter has been hit and miss this year.  We've enjoyed so many beautiful sunny days, but we do get snow now and then.

We got an inch or two of snow on Wednesday morning.

And Calvin happily plowed the driveway for us.

We also get to have Friday Fun Day Ski Days.

Peter has a nifty new camera and takes pictures and videos of us.

Here we are with skis planted firmly beneath us.

Here I am with ski not firmly planted.

Here is Calvin gathering up my lost equipment.

The best part of the day..snack time.

Frog Lake Overlook December 26, 2011

In a good snow year we would be skiing the day after Christmas, but this year hasn't been a good snow year, so the day after Christmas Calvin, Peter and I took a hike to the Frog Lake overlook.  We started at the Donner Pass rest stop and the first thing I did was slip on the ice while leaving the rest stop and hit my head.  Not a great beginning, but things got better after that.  The hike is short, a mile or two, but it was uphill, which is not my favorite direction.

You might think that this is the Frog Lake Overlook, but it is not. This is Calvin's artistic picture of Peter and I walking off the edge of a cliff. (We didn't actually walk off the cliff, and it wasn't really a cliff, more of a swell.)

One of the goals of the trip was to use the GPS to locate the Frog Lake Overlook.  At this point in the hike the GPS indicated it was 13 miles north of us.  The good news is that it was only a few hundred yards up the hill and the even better news is that Calvin figured out the reason all of his GPS readings seemed to be 13 miles off.
 It should be noted for full disclosure that Calvin was the only one who actually hiked all the way to the top of the hill to overlook Frog Lake.

Honduras December 2011

We spent the first two weeks of December in this lovely home in Roatan.  There is a blue tile infinity pool at the right side of the picture and a lovely double kayak half way up the steps.  That pretty much covers what I did for two weeks,  a little lounging by the pool, a little kayaking.  Calvin was more ambitious and did a little diving.  It was just a nice place to hang out for two weeks.

There was a green lizard that shared our space.  He's on the branch.

Here he is sitting in the sun.

And here he is climbing a post.

There were some shore birds that we didn't identify.  No bird books in the house.

A couple more views of the house.

 There was a small resort just across the bay called Marble Hill where we had lunch or dinner a few times.

One day we took a dive trip to the other side of the island.  This is BJ's, a local institution where everyone gathers to gossip. BJ also hosts live jam sessions on weekends.

This is Calvin preparing to dive Calvin's Crack, a famous location on the reef.

We also ventured out one day along a washed out dirt road to have lunch at La Sirena, a highly recommended restaurant.  We were the first people to have lunch there in 3 days.

Our lunch choice was lobster with mashed potatoes or lobster with rice and beans.  Calvin had the rice and beans and I had the potatoes.

It was a clear day, so we ventured to the end of the road and got a great view of several other bay islands.

Not  a bad way to spend a few weeks!

Mono Lake or Friday Fun Day 2

We have often driven past Mono Lake and thought that it would be a fun place to kayak, so when we had spectacular weather Nevada Day weekend Calvin and I decided to take a kayak/fall color trip to the eastern Sierras.  We drove south on Friday afternoon, and although we read that you should never start a kayak trip on Mono Lake in the afternoon because of dangerous winds, we started our kayak trip in the afternoon.

Mono Lake tufa

As it turns out, Mono Lake isn't all that interesting a place to paddle once you have seen the tufa.  We tried paddling toward the island, but it was further than it looked and kind of a slog, so we gave up after a couple of miles and paddled back to shore.

This is the view from the front of the kayak looking toward the island.  It looked like this for a long, long time.

I discovered on a paddling break that if I put the camera on the top of my head pointing backwards it takes a very nice picture of Calvin.  Who needs to frame a shot?

After we finished paddling and started to dry we discovered that we were covered with a pale slippery mud from the lake.  The kayak hasn't been resting under a flock of pigeons, this is Mono Lake splashes.  This may not be a destination we need to kayak twice.

We spent the night at Mammoth Lakes and then visited Convict Lake in the morning.  This is a really pretty alpine lake, but it is heavily used with a walking path all along the perimeter.  This Saturday morning it was swarming with fishermen competing in the last fishing derby of the season and one obligingly took our picture.

I had read in Sunset magazine that this area was a good place to go" leaf peeping" in the Sierra and it probably is a little earlier in October, but most of the leaves were gone by October 29.

In the afternoon we put the boat in at Twin Lake and it was just beautiful.  The water was just like a mirror.

Sadly the wind came up and we decided to be prudent and paddle in.  But it was a beautiful way to end the kayaking season.

Life just doesn't get much better than this.