Yosemite

So to back up even a little further than the weddings. I took two rather newbies backpacking in Yosemite last May. We had quite the adventure and a fantastic time. We drove into Yosemite late one Thursday night put our tent together as quietly as we could manage and went to sleep. Friday morning we all got up packed our stuff had a quickly little breakfast and made sure to make it to the ranger station in the village by door opening to get out wilderness passes. (FYI this is a must because if you don't get there earlier enough there is a very good possibility that you would get to go where you wanted to). In our case not only did we get our wilderness pass we also were able to secure the last three (anytime) passes for Half-Dome that they we giving out that day. SCORE! Once we knocked out all that annoying but necessary stuff we jumped in the car and made the hour drive up to our trail head near Touloumne Meadows.

Once all settled and and paced out we started walking. First hurtle....fording a river! OOOO. 5 minutes into our journey we had to roll up our trousers, take off our shoes and socks tie them to our bags and balance across a, all be it small river but still a river, and man was that water cold. Toweled off, shoes back on and off we went to find our next challenge not too far ahead.

We had been told at the ranger station before heading out that there was still snow on the trail that we were going on but that it was only a maximum of 3 feet and that was spars. I don't know what there idea of spars is, but let me tell you it is certainly much different than mine. It took us the better part of that day to get where we were going. We lost the trail a few times especially through the thick snowed in areas. My uncle would be proud and probably a bit surprise how much of what he taught to me all those years ago when we went backpacking together I still remember, but I got the opportunity to teach the guys about how to read trail markers and where to look for them as well as how to read and figure our direction/elevation/distance from the trail map, and how to use a compass (among other things that I was able to teach them that trip).

In the interest of saving some page space and some of your very valuable time I will make the rest of this quite quick: We didn't quite make it all the way to our first stopping point the First day. Trek member M got altitude sickness, which was not so much fun for him and no party for us either. We made it to the top of a place called "Clouds Rest" and to the top of Half-Dome in the same day! Found that the bus from the valley floor up to Touloumne Meadows doesn't start running until June1st, bad news for us as it was still about a week away. Turns out that hitchhiking is the recommended method by park rangers to get back to your vehicle if it is located up that way.

Anyway it was quite the adventure and we got some great pictures out of it! enjoy!

The Other One with the Frenchies

There are some great pictures from the rest of the Norway portion of the vacation but it's late and I'm tired and so you get the French wedding pictures and maybe later...on the weekend...if I remember, you might get the other pictures from Toulouse and Norway.

Back Date the Norwegian's Wedding

So I have also heard that I owe you people some pictures..... yeah, so about that...not sure where to start with those...maybe Lisa's wedding since that was were we left off at? sound good? Sure why not.

No Excuses....for now anyway.

Well, I am not be the most faithful of writers or have cute pictures of little kids to post as my sister does (her blog is pretty great by the way, but I am a bit biased because I love getting to see all the pictures of my nephews that she regularly posts). However, I can try to be a bit more consistent in my writing, which I have failed so miserably at since I got home from my great adventures in England 4 years ago.

All I can say for most of that 4 years is, "my how time flies." You never realize how quickly it all goes until you turn and looks back and think, "I swear it wasn't that long ago. Really, we were just down by the river last year weren't we?" Nope, not even close.

Anyhow, enough sappy reminiscing. I have been horrible at posting, end of story. If I picked up where I left off this would take more than ages to finish. So we'll do the really quick cliff notes version.

Norway and Lisa's wedding were wonderful. She looked fantastic, the food and music were awesome. She let me drive a manual transmission car in a foreign country (always dangerous even in my own country ...right Jamie - you remember Chicago don't you??). Hated to go, but left for the airport. Got there had to call Lisa to come and rescue me because I pulled a classic Maloney-Baloney move and went to the wrong airport. Nearly missed my flight, only made it because Lisa is a race car driver by night. Oh and when i say nearly I mean had to be escorted through the airport by security and walked out to the plane that was shutting it's doors.

Made it the correct airport and met Leanne in Toulouse. We jumped on a a bus and then a train to Rodez. Oh by the way did I mention that no one in the south of France speaks English? Yeah only minorly problematic, as we sneaked by with my barely passable French. Had a great time at Josh and Vio's wedding. Lots of great people. We made some very lovely friends, especially Marie and Jeremie who were nice enough to drive us back to Toulouse with them.

We had a cute flat in Toulouse. Too bad there was no air conditioning and we had wasp friends who decided our balcony was a lovely place for a home. (We thought so too but would have rather not had to share). Lea and I had a great time exploring Toulouse, but I think next time we will opt for somewhere closer to a large body of water, if we are going to play in France in the middle of summer.

Had a long flight home and then got back to the grind of work.

Rest of the summer, and fall for that matter, was spent doing lots of climbing (rock gym climbing, not quite ready for the big kid, outdoories, rock stuff just yet), hiking and tennis-ing.

Visited my mom and step dad at thanksgiving, spent Christmas with my dad, my sister Kristin, her husband Aaron and their little goober-y baby boys (Elijah and Lucas).

Now it is mid march. Sadly spent St. Patrick's day in Barkersfield, for work (if you know where it is you know why that's garbage, if you don't...be glad. I kid you not, armpit of California, might as well be in Mississippi).

There was a lot more too it than that but as I said condensed sparks/clif notes version, so that you don't fall asleep on me.