More fun in Reno & Fort Wayne

Isn't this a wonderful picture?  She had a coyote run towards her at the Hot Springs in Markleeville.  We went for the weekend, spending the night at a small place in town.  A great hike to the waterfalls, a long soak and a delicious dinner.

This was at Tahoe on the way home the next day.

We had a great visit in Fort Wayne Indiana again, and even had a chance to do some sightseeing.  The Cord Deusenberg Auto Museum was a blast, I want all the cars, and the botanic gardens downtown were great too.

We were lucky to spend so much fun time with Grandma Koehlinger as well as Dave's parents.

This was downtown Reno after watching a movie by the truckee river, and our walk in the city afterward.
We also had a beautiful day at Donner Lake in California with a nice long hike, barbecue and scenic drive.  Lots of sun!

We are currently finishing up our packing and gearing up for our hike.  We start this Sunday!!! We're going by train to Bakersfield, then by bus to Tehachapi and hitching to the trail head. We've been running and hope that we are in shape.  Dad's going to have us weigh in before and after the trail. :)  And I'm hoping that our poison ivy from gardening goes away enough by then. 

This is going to be EPIC, and I'm going to capture as much as possible on video and pictures.  We might get messages when we're in cell phone range if the battery doesn't die completely.  Our cell is 208.315.1939.  We'll send you postcards and you'll definitely hear from me August 8th, because I have training in Texas then and will be out of the forest.  Big hugs and always our best wishes to you!!!

Epic Roadtrip or Jobless, Homeless & Carless

Our amazing road trip started with a visit to dear Stacie (you saw pics from Palmer, Easter Island and Palmyra) in Seaside, Oregon.  We had a blast, ate like kings and had wonderfully relaxing beach time!  I think our next reunion should be in the Pacific again, some small island. 
N. Head lighthouse is close to the Columbia River and looks perfect.
Beautiful hike between lighthouses.
This is my favorite lighthouse pic, at Cape Disappointment. 
Classic beach time, with goat cheese, apples and wine.  

Feeding the birds in style.

More fun on Cannon beach, and searching for puffins.  This is one of the only places in the lower states that they visit.  

It was just awesome to catch up!
And this here is the loveliest of lovely camp spots.  After saying adieu to our dear friend, we drove north on 101 toward Olympic National Park.  This campground (Klaloch) is actually in the park, as the park has a portion along the beach and another large amount of land in the forest and mountains.    
Our beach stash includes the first sand dollars we've ever found.  It was a great 2 hour walk along the beach too, one of the longest beaches I've ever seen.  We were so lucky, perfect weather for days.

Dave trying to find the perfect stone.

The last hero picture of the Suzuki.  Notice the lack of spare tire, which happened during a flat in Hells Canyon in Idaho with Dave's parents.  Such a sexy beast (both Dave and the Suzuki).
Most of the trees were old growth cedars, but there were maples too in the rain forest as well as sitka spruce.
Classic Pacific coast shot.  

My favorite part of the park was this rain forest, which was unlike any place in the world that I've seen.  That and I had no idea we had forests like this in the States. 
Do you see mini Dave in this photo?  That's how huge the trees are and the mosses, lichen and ferns totally cover every branch of every tree.  
Scenic lunch spot in the middle of the river.
Still hiking along the Hoh river in the rain forest.  We saw tons of elk and even had a northern spotted owl fly by way close to our faces.  Magic!

And this would be the second prettiest camp site that we've had, with a perfect river view.
Another awesome hike, this one called lovers' lane, wound through a lot of snow covered ferns, as odd as that pairing is.
Skunk cabbage rocks!  Looks like water lilies, smells like bologna and photographs beautifully.
The Olympic range was breath taking.  The mountains seemed to encircle us.

This is Port Angeles, where I think we all should move.  It's on the Strait of Juan del Fuca, so it is a quiet port town, but it also has two entries to the National Park and a stunning view.  Also, the best darn Thai dinner we've ever had.  It's not pretentious, and is a 10 minute ferry from Victoria, Canada as well as a longer but scenic ferry to Seattle (and it has 10 fewer inches of rain per year than the Seattle area).

Dave's fern photo is so pretty.
Trilliums and skunk cabbage, on our third day's hike.  Lost my hat, took this picture, and am now over losing my hat because for some reason, I'm in love with this picture.
And here she is in the car shop, after we emptied our belongings.  Doesn't look like $5K of damage, but then again I'm not a car mechanic or a crooked insurance company.  It totally sucked, and it's a hard image to get out of mind, but we thank the heavens that we're safe.

Easter, Haircut & The Mining Trail

Change is always terrifying but great, and we've had quite a bit of it in the past month.

We celebrated Dad's birthday at BJ's Brewery, and had a delicious as usual meal there.
Here I am, post-chop.  I've wanted to cut my hair for a while, but I have that horrible trust issue and the timing just became perfect.  I didn't want long hair for the trail, and I've always wanted to donate my hair to Locks of Love.  They only ask for 10 inches, but got a full 11 from me. 

Mom made a huge and wonderful Easter brunch, followed by an even bigger Easter dinner. Both so good!  I enjoyed making the Easter eggs and then eating almost all of them.


We had Grandma & Grandpa over the next day for dinner and had a great time with them.

Spring is quite gorgeous here in NV, with all the fruit trees in bloom.  Below is a gorgeous grass that we discovered near the American River near Auburn, California.

We went on a scenic hike along the river and stopped for Gracie to have a dip.

It's the highest bridge in California!

The California poppies were everywhere.
We stopped in a historic gold mining town called Coloma to catch up on some mining history and a pretty walk.  Learned a ton about the California gold rush with Coloma being in the heart of it.


We took the longer, scenic route home from Auburn on 50 by Tahoe and pictured above is the Strawberry Lodge and Lovers' Leap.  Tibor and I used to go climbing there a lot back when.  Do you remember the collect calls we made from here about why we got held up and why we were climbing in the dark?  :)

More mining fun in Virginia City (very close to Reno), the heart of the silver mining rush.  It's a historic town that is about the size of McCall, with quite a bit of tourism.  We shopped, visited historic sites and even took a mine tour.  It was a great day, and finally a place that Dave hasn't been; we enjoyed it very much.  The old saloons and Mark Twain memorabilia (he started his writing career here) were awesome!  

Right now were still working on physically qualifying for work in Antarctica. Dave is at the doc. right now, and after going to doctors and the dentist daily I just have one visit left.  It's a bit troublesome because it's the blood exam, which also has the cholesterol test.  And as you can imagine, after a month of traveling and visiting family and eating way too much wonderful food, I'm worried.  So we've been eating healthy the past week trying to fix whatever we did to ourselves.  Wish us luck!  Aren't the camel pictures the best?