Southwest parks in 5 days.....Ready.....GO!

It is a blustery, rainy day in So Cal, and David has just been whisked off to Korea for the week. It's a perfect day to curl up in a blanket, drink hot chocolate, and tell the tale of our epic national park adventures of yesterweek. Please forgive me for posting a bajillion pictures in the telling of the tale. The Southwest is just a seriously beautiful place.

I feel a timeline will best capture the insanity...

DAY 1: Leave after work and drive straight to David's Aunt Jane's place in St. George. Thanks to ever-reliable LA traffic, we made it there by 1:30am. And thanks to Aunt Jane, we got to sleep in a bed instead of having to set up camp in Zion.

Of course, we couldn't resist taking a drive down the strip as we passed through Vegas...

DAY 2: Zion National Park. I should say now that I have never before been to any of the parks we visited on this trip. It's kind of an embarrassment, given how close I was to these places all though college. But I've done what I can to make it right.

We took a little jaunt through a portion of the Narrows, because we're crazy.

The Narrows is 16 miles of river. So you're basically walking down a river on slick bowling ball-sized rocks. Given the season, the river was quite fast. And quite cold. And also magical.


We probably only did 1/2 of a mile of the Narrows. After all, we had to save our energies for the race the next day...

DAY 3: Canyonlands half marathon in Moab. David has done this particular race 9 or 10 times. It was my first. Which is the only explanation I can come up with for why he totally rocked the race, while, I, running by his side, was completely destroyed by it. I also blame my sissy sea-level lungs.

That said, sometimes I took a moment to look around, because the view was actually pretty spectacular.


As I mentioned before, we're crazy. Which is why, before the day was over, we popped on over to Arches National Park and hiked up to Delicate Arch.


DAY 4: Get up to see sunrise at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. On the way out, get sidetracked by Negative Nancy at the front desk who tells us it's useless to try because it's foggy, and besides, the power is out. (Still trying to figure out why we would care about having power for a sunrise.) Start driving toward Canyonlands, then turn around once the rain starts and the wind picks up. Sneak past the front desk, and back to bed.

DAY 4 (second attempt): Back to Canyonlands. It was still foggy, and once we got deeper into the park, it started snowing. Undeterred, we kept driving along anyway to see some killer lookout points. When we got there, we were tickled that we could see this much:

And by the time we left, we could see THIS much!!




Next stop: Monument Valley in Navajo Country. This trip was a constant race against the clock in reaching our next destination in time for sunset, or before it got cloudy, or whatever. We made it again for this one:


We had planned to camp in the valley that night, but it was so bitter cold (there was a snowstorm that followed us for most of the trip) that we wimped out and found a hotel nearby. Same thing happened the next night. Frankly, I feel great about the decision.

DAY 5: Canyons. The first set was of the Antelope variety, outside of Page. This is upper Antelope:




And this is Lower Antelope - you literally crawl down through a crack in the earth to get there.




After that it was a quick jaunt (and another hike) to Horseshoe Bend...

...and then we were on our way to the next destination. Remember all those summer trips to Lake Powell? Turns out, all these things are right outside of Bullfrog Marina!! We were going to take a picture standing next to a Bullfrog sign, but we had places to be. (Remember that sunset deadline!)

Next stop: The Grand Canyon!

Please note the little bits of snow you see here and there along the rim. I was literally wearing 8 layers, with handwarmers inside my gloves. And I was still freezing. I feel kind of ignorant for not knowing it snowed at the Grand Canyon. Apparently it's not that atypical.

The plus side: nobody likes to hang out at the Grand Canyon right after a snowstorm! Much of the time, we basically had the place to ourselves.

DAY 6: Get up to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. This time, we were not foiled by the clouds.





After that it was just a long drive back to home sweet home, all the while scheming about when we can hit up another national park. We may or may not already have the next trip scheduled. It seems we've got the bug.

:)

Big Sur-ification

David and I took advantage of President's Day weekend to get out of dodge.

Although we knew the long weekend was coming, we didn't get around to planning much of anything in advance. On Friday night, we chose Big Sur as our destination. Saturday morning, we packed up all our camping gear, stocked up on camping-type food, and headed up the coast. We didn't even allow ourselves to consider the possibility that all the camping sites may be gone since it was, after all, a holiday weekend.

Don't worry. We got a spot. Shockingly, we found a spot at the first place we stopped. I'm chalking it up to David's carma.

Big Sur is SO. BEAUTIFUL. Words cannot do the place justice. And David did his homework, which meant we stopped at all of the most photogenic places. All I can do is say, LOOK!

Now go to David's blog and LOOK some more!

Stay tuned for more adventures on the next edition of "ACDC's National Park Blitz, 2012!"

It's always fun when family comes to town

Even for Los Angeles, it has been an unseasonably warm winter. Not like I know any different - it's the most unseasonably warm winter I've ever had in life. All the better to take advantage of family visits!!

My parents came to town to play for a weekend. We had a grand old time – we got to kick it at the beach, we paid the Knapps a visit, and of course, we spent some quality time playing cards.






We also visited Huntington Botanical Gardens. David had to work that day, so I had to take over with the photography. We’ll definitely have to return in the spring, when the Japanese garden is open and David can capture some quality shots.

Emily also came to spend some time with us.

And we went sailing! This Saturday was 80 degrees and clear – perfect conditions. Uncle Brad got certified to sail a catamaran, so a bunch of us joined him for a nice leisurely jaunt up to Palos Verdes and back. (See David for more pictures.)

Then we got some pizza and got back on the boat and dined with the Queen Mary and the Long Beach skyline as our backdrop.

It was lovely.

And as an aside, sometimes when I’m stuck in traffic sometimes I have killer sunsets.

I didn't have to dream of a white Christmas

Because I GOT ONE!!!

David and I went running in the Christmas Eve snowfall. There is nothing in the whole world like running in the middle of a snowfall. The way all sounds are muted. The sound of your shoes crunching in the snow. The way the sky and all of the trees are covered in a fluffy, white blanket. It was stunningly beautiful. It was utterly peaceful. It was pure magic.

It was two miles all downhill and then two more all uphill!!!

We spent our Christmas in Spokane this year with the VanderLouws, the Colin Croshaws, and my parents. On Christmas Eve everyone spent the night at the Croshaw's so we could all be together on Christmas morning. And so we could all be together to open our Christmas Eve jammies!!

Thank you Jack and Naomi for looking my way. :) (And thank you DC for making sure I too had a pair of Christmas Eve pj's!)

Christmas morning! Let's all play with everyone else's toys!!

This was definitely the least organized Opening of the Presents I've ever participated in - which one may expect, with the army of kids we had present that morning. David and I just sat and watched for awhile - we were enjoying witnessing the pandemonium. Plus, we figured all the well-behaved adults would be opening their own presents in a more orderly fashion once the kids got through their spoils. Then we looked around and noticed that even the grown-ups were tossing organization to the wind and had already begun digging in! It was every man for himself!!

P.S. Yes, David grew a beard. The Proposal Beard. Chalk it up to workplace camaraderie - they found a way to commiserate together through the insanity at the office. More on that later.

Once again, David has shown the world that he truly can sleep anywhere.

But it's okay - he was just building up energy to play with this little bundle of goodness!

So David is kind of like the Pied Piper of children. As soon as he enters the room, they respond to the siren sound of his footsteps and come running from all over the house to vie for his attention. That said, you can imagine their glee when he asked them if they wanted to help him shave off the Proposal Beard!!

Oh yeah. We went through phases. First there was just taming down the beard...

The foo man chu...

The soul patch...

And whatever this is...

And the clean-shaven eye candy!!

(Good thing it was out of focus. You’d all have to hold yourselves back if you could see the real thing! Just take my word for it.)

Thanks everyone for helping!

It goes without saying, but I LOVE getting to spend time with all those kids. But, I also really love when I get to chill out with the adults.

Thanks to everyone in Spokane for letting us come play and providing the snowy backdrop that these LA residents were craving!