Yosemite reunion

Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

Last weekend I got together with four friends from high school and went camping in Yosemite. We had a complete blast. We camped in Hodgdon Meadow, to which I'd never been before. It turned out to be a great choice, because it was at a higher elevation than Yosemite Valley, and therefore less HOT. Also, it was significantly closer to Tuolumne Meadows, our hike destination of choice.

The hike we went on was to Elizabeth Lake, which lies at the base of Unicorn Peak. The ranger at the Big Oak Flat Wilderness info center told us it would just be "muddy", but if you click on the picture you can see that it was slightly more rough going than that. In the end we didn't quite make it to the lake, but still had a great time hiking in the snow :)

The following day included a trip to see the most massive living things in the world, ever. The giant sequoias can live to be over 3000 years old! I've seen them before, but it's always amazing to behold a tree that large. We then headed down to the valley for a brief lunch stop at Bridalveil Fall, and then headed on to Wawona for a look at the historic Wawona Hotel. It was 105 degrees when we got there!

All in all it was a great weekend, and we're hoping to make it an annual event, albeit with different destinations every year.

Scary!

After having my camera for nearly a year, I finally decided to bite the bullet and send it in for warranty repair (especially since my warranty runs out in a few weeks) to fix the slightly defective "up" button of the 4-way controller and the noise it makes when it zooms out slowly. I'm really hoping to get it back before I go to Yosemite, but if not, I always have my old Fuji.
 


Update 06/27/06: My camera finally made it back to me, and it's really, really fixed! The up button works great (it now "detents", according to Peter) and the zoom no longer makes its weird noise. I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm kind of overly pleased with the results. Plus, I'm so excited to have my camera back :)

Goals

House across the alley: gone!

Got home from work today to find that the house across the alley had been completely demolished in one day! Perhaps not that amazing a feat, but when you've been watching the slow excavation of the site of a new lab building like I have for the past few weeks (at work), one day seems fast.

What's next? Condos? Townhouses? A new single family home (ha ha ha). I just hope it doesn't block our view of Mt. Rainier...