Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

Ah, vacation.

Nevermind that my boss texted me to get the number for the ant exterminator. This blemish was quickly forgotten completely and I can barely remember it at all. Likewise, yes, I want to postpone the week-long event until later. Don't fret colleagues, on Monday I will be among you again.

Meanwhile... Ahhhhhhh.

We hiked and saw a bunch of nature stuff like this:

The young tree on the left is honoring the ancestor tree on the right. Seriously, the forest is booming with new little trees.

When the old trees fall in the forest, they crack and break into bits so I'm pretty sure it makes a HUGE sound.

Sugar pine cone. Do not stand beneath the trees.

OMG MEADOW!!!

And we ate out for dinner a lot. :-) I think I will need to buy new pants.

Oh, and we replaced the screen door that the bear trashed with a more adequate one. We traveled to exotic Reno Nevada to go to the Home Desperate to get the door which, though nice, really isn't worth a picture. Trust me; it's made of wood and screen and it has hinges.

And there was lake swimming. Yes, Virginia it was cold.

The lake is hella high

And friends and family came and stayed too.

Jen explains, something

And we (Jen, Scott, and Bob) went for a little (ill-advised) trip in kayaks which was super fun (first half) and super hard (second half) which featured 25 MPH headwinds, whitecaps on the lake, and lots of quitter-talk like, "We should go ashore and walk." The five-mile round trip will now be known as the "Bataan Death Paddle". Apparently when Jen and Scott stopped by the kayak rental place later they told the stoners workers at the place that we went to Tahoe City and back they stopped what they were doing and said, "We never recommend that to people who rent kayaks. There is always a strong southwesterly wind at that time of day." Let the record show that it was my ignorance of the winds that led us to this foolishness.

So that was "arm day". We joked that "leg day" would be next. It was; just later in the day.

Since I had made Sharon wait patiently about four hours longer than I initially said for me to come back from morning kayaking, I readily agreed to go on a hike that she's been wanting to do for a couple of years; down and back to Vikingsholm by the secret service road. The road is two miles instead of 1 mile for the popular switchback trail but that makes it 1/2 as steep on average. Also, the views of the moraine itself are about as spectacular as the views of Emerald Bay. See for yourself.

The rock on top is about 15 feet wide.

Natural rain gutter

Sugar pine for those of you playing the home game.

MOAR ROCKS!

This last picture was so inspiring that Sharon painted it in watercolor today. So cool!

Tomorrow evening we head back to our regularly scheduled lives, our kitty, and our youngest who has been busy keeping the cat amused. We'll miss it here but we'll be back soon!!