i finished reading a book!  definitely a  quick read… if i had gotten the book earlier i probably could have finished it  in  one day… anyway… definitely interesting  reading about someone’s life… there’s a sequel to this one so i guess i’ll be reading that next…. along with the (i think) 6 other books i’ve been “reading” ah well..

i’ve been a bit MIA from xanga… a little too lazy to write stuff and hadn’t uploaded any of my pictures… been to la a lot for weekends…wedding, basketball, relaxing, more basketball…. that’s all i’ve been up to… nothing super exciting to report….

yeah… for home! straight back to work after coming home… still
kinda jet lagged… i totally passed out the last 2 nights.. . this one
included… and now gonna try to go back to sleep for normal hours…oy!

• TOKYO consisted of a lot of business and shopping
• quick day in KAMAKURA (chappy’s home) and met new people and tried okinawan food (someone from okinawa was visiting)

okinawan noodles…mmmm..okinawan pineapple…mmm

• shinkansen (nozomi..the superexpress) to KYOTO

nozomi pulling in…view from the shinkansen…another shinkansen passing by

• FUSHIMI INARI… mosquitos!  ahhhhhh!

tori gates…kitsune (fox)…more gates…

view of kyoto…where i decided to stop… too hot and getting dark…

fushimi inari is pretty awesome… you
could probably spend a whole day there… but we got there later in the
day so didn’t spend much time… got to one place and pretty much got
eaten alive and from then on sped up and kept on moving… it’s pretty
amazing… many business people come here during the new year to pray
for their businesses…next time… i want to do the whole trail…oh
yeah.. and kitsune are the guardians of fushimi inari… so they had
lots of foxes all over.

and dessert…i forgot what it was called but it consisted of green tea
ice cream, green tea kori, azuki bean, and mochi….mmmmm it was
sooooooooo yummy!  rest of kyoto trip to be continued… must go
to sleep now!

in japan was this…

it’s one of those must take pix of the moment… typical subway ride in
tokyo…majority of the seated people are sleeping or “sleeping” …on
one of our trips i can recall this one girl was totally leaning her
head against my shoulder…

view from our hotel room…

one thing about the time change… i wake up early…. and what sucks
is i can’t go back to sleep….so here i am writing and updating my
xanga… ah well….

the plane ride….i sat right smack dab in the middle the whole 10.5 hours of the flight (well
not the whole flight… bathroom breaks and walking around the plane
included)… which was actually nice b/c i had NO ONE sitting in front
of me… that was awesome… except a larger woman was sitting to my
right so i didn’t get to use much of my right armrest which had the
controls to my audio/video/etc… so i had to maneuver around her…
luckily she left that part of my errr.. HER armrest slightly
uncovered… so i was happy that i could pick my movies… didn’t eat
much of the main course meals on the plane…stuck to the fruit and
surrounding food…an uneventful plane ride…. just glad we got here
safely….

this trip was a yearly trip we take with pat’s friends… this time we
headed down the coast where we had been a little over a year ago….
luckily one of pat’s friends claimed a campsite WAAAAAAAY ahead of
time… only problem was she never called us…

figured she’d be at this one camp site, which luckily she was… had cake that night for her belated birthday!

woke up and had a yummy breakfast in the fog… and headed down to the
beach (sorry no pictures except this one b/c didn’t get a chance to
upload them before i left)  went through some cool tide pools and
caves… saw some interesting sea anenome hanging from a rock…

came back and headed over to salmon creak for a hike to a
waterfall….i don’t have any pictures of this anyway since i had left
my digital camera at camp. DOH!  anyway it was definitely an
interesting hike… the waterfall was pretty….and we decided to check
out the top of the waterfall… that was crazy bascially no trail
through potential poison oak (luckily no one got any) we made sure we
were all covered…

went back to camp and made an awesome dinner… tri tip, corn on the
cob, salad… i’m probably forgetting something but it was definitely
YUMMY… OH YEAH… made strawberry daquiris with our new vortex
blender we got from our wedding… it was pretty awesome and
entertaining at the same time… had another yummy cake in celebration
of pat’s friends recent engagement! hung out a bit and realized a
racoon ran off with a bag of sun chips…

the next day packed up and headed up to big sur for a short hike to
another waterfall… not as impressive as the one at salmon creek…
had lunch and headed off… but not without using our ice cream ball
thing… put in the ingredients and we wre off… stopped for an ice
cream break at the bixby bridge and went home!

woke up and decided to look out the back side of the tent and off in
the horizon we could see the sierras…. packed up everything and was
about to go, when we were distracted by marmots…  pat took some
nice close-ups… none of which i have…so when i have the time i can
steal them from him…. i won’t bother posting mine b/c you can’t
really see them… anyway… so we had a slight marmot detour and we
were on our way back to schulman grove…but not with out two other
detours…

the first one was just going off the more managed 4×4 road…. hiked
around a bit…and found some really cool rocks…pat was reminiscing a
lot since this was his summer field area….

white mountain and bristlecone pines below

the second detour was to crooked creek… more reminiscing for pat…

the sign.. and pat in front of the clarence hall lodge…..

had a lot more stops and realized it was pretty cool looking straight at the sierras instead of up at them….

stopped off at schulman grove and took the bristlecone cabin trail….
had lunch and said buh bye to the ancient bristlecone pine forest

drove around mammoth a bit and picked up some groceries and decided to
camp at the same place the first night… which luckily was the way we
had left it…

the previous site from the first night..sloppy joe’s for dinner… pat making ice cream… the final product

after a yummy dinner pat made ice cream… and it’s definitely
YUMMY!  packed up and the next morning headed over to yosemite b/c
pat has never been there… mainly i wanted to take him to the valley
b/c we had driven the high sierra portion earlier…. i hadn’t been
there since the cascades trip we all took in 2001…so my memory was a
bit fuzzy…

anyway… we stopped off at bridalveil
falls… and i can tell you there was WAAAAAY more water than the time
we had all went… it was awesome! (obviously…we had all gone in
september…. and it’s july and there was so much snow this year…)

stopped off at the first picnic spot… which turned out to be the
worst… i do NOT recommend stopping near the sentinel…. at first i
thought it was okay… nice picnic bench in the shade… pat went to go
to the bathroom.. and i was taking our food out… a few minutes later
i hear some buzzing… and then i realize i’m being eaten alive… so
i’m frantically looking for the bug spray at the same time i’m swatting
these mosquitos away… and we try a picnic bench near the river…
also not a good place b/c the mosquitos are still around… luckily had
the bug spray… but still… i ended up with at least 15 bites or
so… it was funny b/c there was a family eating at the picnic table
nearby…and there was a kid that was complaining about why mosquitos
need to live… and the other two kids were wearing their sweatshirts
and running away from the mosquitos….

after the lunch the mosquito’s feast on us…. we headed over to the
visitor’s center and watched the movie….and walked to yosemite
falls… which was also awesome as well….

yosemite falls (upper and lower)…and lower yosemite falls…

and
then headed up for the traditinal yosemite valley picture… but this
time it was more beautiful then the last time b/c there was a beautiful
rainbow coming off of bridalveil falls…. my zoom sucks, but if you
look really closely at the falls you can see the bit of rainbow…

drove home… and had a low key 4th….

the end….

this took me awhile to get to…but finally….

we decided to head out to the eastern sierras (ah… the memories)…
packed up pat’s field-mobile with our gear and we were off…passed
through yosemite (not the valley portion) and over tioga pass and into
inyo national forest… stopped at the mono lake visitor’s center…and proceeded to look for an open camp site….
unfortunately, no luck down the hill…. stopped at mono lake to talk
to the rangers about camping restrictions and whatnot…. no luck
around june lake area, but it was definitely pretty passing through….
finally found something near obsidian dome….i think there weren’t any
marked spots open but we ended up finding a perfect place… in a nice
opening where someone obviously had been b/c there was a fire ring and
a dead log right nearby… free firewood!

our set up….steak for dinner… mmmm fire

does this place look familiar to anyone?

poked around obisidian dome… drove around a bit… passed a few
campsites and pat and i passed a few people…and as we drove passed
them… we saw them with yellow field notebook and mapboards in hand….

drove into bishop for some extra water and gas… then spent a lot of
time in the mountain light gallery… and headed up to the ancient
bristlecone pine forest in the white mountains.

at sierra viewpoint…deep springs valley and poleta in the distance…

pat and snow…. patriarch tree…bristlecone pine forest (the saddle in the back is where we parked the jeep)

drove a few miles from the visitor’s center (at schulman grove) to
patriarch grove…there was snow in the road so we had to walk the rest
of the way… but it was fun…drove north out of the forest to find a
place to set up camp for the night…

dinner… at 12,000 feet… unfortunately the chicken was a bit old so tasty a bit nasty… bleh…

hiked not too far away to catch the sun setting…i took A LOT of pix (will not bore you with ALL of them…just some)

to be continued….

made a trip to la this past weekend for a wedding… it was a nice, relaxing stay….

friday we drove down early since pat had to work last
saturday…although he was still busy getting phone calls and
whatnot… i was totally out….i went to sleep late and i couldn’t
keep my head up!  anyway… made it to la and of course our first
stop was ucla…. bought myself a new t-shirt (to replace one of the
ones i have…it has a hole from ash campfire…although i still wear
it) anyway… ucla’s changed a lot… doesn’t seem AS familiar…pat
was sad to see that taco bell was no longer there…but i thought he
had seen that it was gone last time… anyway… it’s hard to believe
that it’s been four years!

then we headed over to our hotel…at the last minute we decided to
stay at a hotel…one of pat’s friends said there was a deal on
expedia… so we booked 2 nights at the mondrian on sunset in west
hollywood… it was really nice… i think we got a handicapped room
b/c it had the railings in the bathroom and the super high toilet….

walked down sunset to have dinner at sushi dan’s with some friends…
we all ate outside…but didn’t get our candle until later… so it was
pretty dark once the sun went down…. anyway.. it was decent… walked
back and checked out the site formerly known as dublin’s is now going
to be some sunset beach something or other…

view from our hotel room…view of la… and billboards on sunset and sky bar below…

saturday, we took it easy and had a nice brunch at jinky’s and
walked
up sunset and back… headed over to the church b/c we thought we were
late… but realized we were half an hour early… phew! (we had left
our invitation with everything at HOME! DOH!)  the ceremony was
held at our lady of the angel’s church in downtown la… i can tell you
that this church is IMPRESIVE…

after the ceremony we walked across the plaza to where they have
giftshops and conference rooms… and there was a cocktail hour before
the reception… the room they had the reception in was HUGE… i think
there were about 38 tables with about 10 people per table… it was
pretty crazy… there was a mariachi band and then a filipino cultural
dance…. it was definitely a fun wedding… dancing at the end… and
i got to hear a maná  song…woohoo!  i maná… anyway
it was a lot of fun… drove back, quickly changed and walked over to
mel’s for a late night dessert with pat’s old roommate…

woke up sunday morning, packed… and had lunch with pat’s friends at
sky bar… it was really nice… view of la..in the SHADE… with a
nice breeze… was so nice… a nice leisurely lunch… and drove back
home for father’s day dinner!