Back from vacation
Warning: Lots of photos and endless talk inside
First we went to LA, and rushed to the wedding rehearsal dinner, and then rushed back to the hotel in Santa Monica. DH failed to take any pictures of me dressed up.
The next day we took a long walk on the beach, ate a nice lunch, and then headed off to the wedding. The wedding was really lovely, but maybe I'll devote a whole entry to that topic later. Again no pictures of me dressed up at all.
Sunday we drove down to San Diego to see my friend Natalie, now 8 mos pregnant. We had a nice lunch, a good hike in the "coastal scrub" and a long walk on the beach.
Monday we drove off into the desert headed to Joshua Tree National Park.
Here is a picture of me with this strange tree the looks dead until it rains, which is almost never.
Here is just a shot of the desert
And here is a picture of the coyote who stopped our car to ask for food
In Joshua Tree we saw lots of cacti, and we hiked "Hidden Valley" which is an isolated area of pinyon pines within the desert--it's walled off by huge rocks and is slightly moister inside than the desert. There were lots of little lizards, and of course Joshua trees which just look like tall yuccas.
Then we drove on, and had to spend the night in Bakersfield. But the next day we drove to Sequoia National Park.
Here is Sean, standing inside a sequoia.
We climbed to the top of Moro Rock, which had a railing, but was incredibly scary to me. Here we are.
We spent the night at the lodge in the park and went on two beautiful hikes the next day.
We went along the river. Here I am, sitting on some rocks
We saw some very nice water falls
And then we hiked up "Little Baldy" a granite domed peak. We were very high up again, but I was a lot less scared because the rock we stood on was huge, so even without a railing I wasn't terrified. Here is Sean clowning on the edge of Little Baldy.
After that we were pretty tired and we ate the worst pasta marinara I've ever had in my life. But we slept fine at the lodge and the next morning we set out to leave, not before snapping a few shots on one last hike.
I'm not thrilled to be having my picture taken while I'm gooped up with sunscreen and I have messy hair.
On the drive down the mountain we saw a bear.
We spent one last night in Santa Monica, and then left the next morning--the trip took all day, but Greg Brady (or the actor who used to play him) was on the first flight.
Here I am, looking insane, in the beautiful foyer of our hotel in Santa Monica, with Spanish tiles.
