Monday, May 28, 2012

The Cabin with Steve & Susan

We had a fun memorial weekend at the Cabin, Yosemite and Bass Lake with Smylie & Susan.  It was much colder than we thought.  We even had a sprinkling of snow while we were at Yosemite.  We certainly had on and off showers which meant that we had lunch at the Awahanee while we waited for the weather to improve.  It is still such a beautiful and majestic place.
Here we are at the view of half dome.  You can see that there wasn't that perfect view.  It was still wonderful. 
 You can see Yosemite Falls in the background.  I like this hike.  It's easy and so beautiful.




 I've never seen so many dogwood blooming before in Yosemite, or anywhere for that matter.  There were hundreds of blooms. 








Here we are at Vernal Falls. 


We took a hike up Willow Creek.  Unfortunately, my cameras battery ran out unexpentantly.  I wanted to take a picture of Smylie sitting in a basket held up by a cable as he thought about crossing the Creek. Scary!   But, instead, you just get a great picture of Db at one of the first pools up the Creek.  This is a great hike.


Here we are out cruising on Bass Lake.  The weather finally warmed up, so it was nice.  We got to see one of the eagles that soars above the lake as we cruised.  I love boating on Bass Lake.


Susan holds the boat while DB parked the car.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Sister's Gathering

My sister's and I decided that we needed to have a sister's gathering.  We usually take trip to interesting places, but too much has happened this year and we decided that we just needed to get together.  So, San Francisco sounded like a good place to do that.  On Friday, we did a walking tour of "City Scapes and Public Places" in downtown San Francisco.  It was fun and we had a great tour guide that gave us lots of San Francisco history. On Saturday, we did a bit of shopping in Berkeley and then Laurel joined us to see "Beach Blanket Babylon" in San Francisco.  That is one of my must see San Francisco shows.  I think we all enjoyed the wild and crazy musical. Sue and Betty also got to meet Ananda. That was important since he is almost a member of the family.  On Sunday we went to church to hear our new pastor preach his first sermon and then went to Eric and Venny's house.  They cooked us a wonderful dinner.  Check out Venny's amazing dessert below.  Then we viewed the solar eclipse from their back yard.  Check out the picture below that shows the reflection of the eclipse in as it shines though the tree in their backyard.  That was totally fun and amazing.  On Monday, we did outlet shopping, Betty and toured the Jelly Belly Factory and then Sue drove home and I dropped Betty at the airpot.  It was a fun weekend and we certainly plan to do another one soon. SISTER'S!  It's a good thing!


 San Francisco City Tour



 At Eric and Venny's for the solar eclipse.  Eric is demonstrating our technique of photographing the eclipse. He was very creative.