trip photos

we are home and rested from a lot of time on the road. our trip was wonderful and varied. these first photos from the beach are mid-trip photos. i have a lot more to upload from the early part of the trip and a few from Christmas. soon...

in the meantime, laura and i had a wonderful time in the city. on friday that we were there we had a wonderful 60 degree day and we met up with a friend of hers from berkley for lunch. from there we headed to the marin headlands to bask in the sunshine and enjoy the pebble beach. it was my favorite point in our time in the bay area! i saw what i insisted was a dolphin out in the bay, but emily was certain was actually a shark. we didn't stick around long enough to see what the sea creature was, but hopefully the surfers managed to avoid it regardless.

laura's friend emily was so much fun--full of energy and immediately comfortable to be around. she was an exceptional tour guide, even showing laura new things in her "home". over lunch she talked about a trip she went on a few years back and how she was going to do it again. according to laura my eyes lit up hearing about it. i certainly felt inspired and couldn't wait to tell brandon all about it. so now we are beginning to make plans for a post graduation adventure. as the trip solidifies and the time draws near, we will share more. at this point, it is all just exciting talk and a thing to stow some money away for each month.

the beach was beautiful and surprisingly empty for such a rare, clear day.

who knew the city could be so close to the country? it was gorgeous!

a lot happened between the beach photos and these, but i have yet to get those uploaded. we had a great time in oregon with our families and were royally spoiled over Christmas. it was wonderful to have special moments with everyone at home and enjoy catching up, even if it felt rushed at times.

one of my many wonderful gifts was a new zoom lens from brandon. i am pretty certain he was tired of hearing me say, "ah! my lens is so lame. i just can't zoom at all!!!" anyhow, the lens he got me is awesome! we took it out yesterday on a x-country ski adventure and had fun playing with it for the first time.

as harvey is usually my favorite subject, i had a good time catching him in action, bounding through the snow. he reminds me of his fox and coyote cousins when he leaps around like this.

on our drive home from oregon, we had to go back to northern california to collect data for brandon's field work. we spent the day on the shasta river measuring 300 rocks from the riverbed. i was glad my job was just to stand on the shore and record the numbers he called out to me.

after that was done we headed to reno for the night. on this trip we hit both las vegas and reno and we only gambled once, per aunt kris' advice. on our way out of town we stopped at the "nugget", which was apparently my grandma's favorite place to go in reno/sparks. i could totally envision her there and got a little teary-eyed thinking about her. we had breakfast at the casino and then i sat down at the wheel of fortune game and promptly lost $1. i knew i couldn't be in grandma's old stomping grounds and not play aunt kris' favorite game--i would always think "what if i could have won a million dollars?". but apparently i don't have the few family gambling luck!