Salty San Francisco

After several weeks of phone tech support and three visits from Cablevision technicians, our home Internet is functioning again. Probably not for long though! I can hardly believe how manipulable this high-speed service is. I'm about to go back to dial-up. But while it's operational, let me share the rest of the pictures from the west coast trip, which have been languishing on my laptop for the past month.

From the plane we saw this amazing thing:



Which turned out to be salt evaporation ponds in San Francisco bay, just next to the airport. Click on the picture for more images.

And here's a summary of the other days we spent in the city, mostly in the company of my friend Ann, who shares my fondness for great bluegrass/folk music and has the lightest, zippiest bicycle I've encountered.



The weirdness of the San Francisco fog really lived up to our expectations. As we cycled across the Golden Gate, the bridge kept disappearing and reappearing in front of us!

Jessie

Jessie went to the vet last week to have a growth removed from her eyelid. Now she looks like a lamp (with the lampshade on backwards)!!!

View from the top of Mount Scott, Oct 05

View from the top of Mount Scott, Oct 05
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don.

A view down the mountain, on a beautiful fall day.

A View from the top of Mount Scott, Oct 05

A View from the top of Mount Scott, Oct 05
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don.

Here's one of two views from Mount Scott, taken during a field trip on October 15.

IMG_0161

IMG_0161
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don.

Half-time, and by this point the band was far more interesting than the football, at least to OU fans.

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IMG_0160
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don.

The game begins, and spirits in our section were still high.

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IMG_0159
Originally uploaded by Papa, aka Don.

Here's the scene at the OU-Texas game during the pre-game ceremonies.

The Enchantment Lakes (actual)

Here's a slideshow of the first part of our Washington (state) trip last week. We were in the Central Cascade mountains staying in our friend Aaron's family's cabin in Leavenworth, which laughably fancies itself a mini-Bavaria, as you can see from the flower-bedecked balcony in the first picture. The town square is the Marktplatz, flanked by the Hofbrauhaus and very many Geschenkslaeden. The slideshow is really about our hike to the Enchantment Lakes though, which may be the most beautiful place I've seen in this country. The full route takes you steadily, but not painfully upward for a few miles, winds around Colchuk lake, then takes you steeply (yes painfully this time!) up a one-mile "scramble" to a kind of high, flat plateau. Five or six dark blue, glacier and spring-fed lakes spread out atop this plateau and the trail meanders through them for a few miles before beginning the descent on the far side of the ridge.

Click on the image for the slides.


The yellow trees are larch pines, one of the few trees in the evergreen family to go through autumnal color changes. The white masses on and between the peaks are glaciers. We look so happy in these pictures! Who would guess that I'm losing my two big toenails all the while?!! Let me know if anyone wants to see pictures of that.

The Tiger Strikes Again

An entertaining piece in the Washington Post about the new Calvin and Hobbes book!