greetings from the air

I get to pick up Pat from the airport today! I am super excited to see him and am extremely thankful that he doesn't have to travel for work all the time anymore. I am also thankful that I woke up feeling much better this morning than I did yesterday. It looks like my sickness is over just in time.

Earlier this week Pat texted me this gorgeous picture. He had to fly Redmond - Seattle - Phoenix - Huston, and snapped this shot of Mt. Rainier in Washington from his plane ride over. Such a clear picture!

[[ mt. rainier from pats plane ride to huston. ]]

brasada ranch :: part VIII

(7/6 - 7/8)

Back in July (on the weekend of 7/8), me and Pat decided to take advantage of his parents vacant house at Brasada Ranch. This is nothing new, as we tend to get over there as often as we can. This time we brought our friends Alex and Drea with us.

The weekends activities were nothing out of the ordinary... firepit and drinks at night, delicious dinners, relaxing and having coffee on the patio, me sneaking in some work in the morning, and a dip or two in the pool. One thing that was kind of awesome was a thunder and lightning storm that happened (along with a torrential downpour) while we were sitting outside of The Range getting a drink. I could not snap a picture, so I decided to take some video, and after many many attempts at capturing a screen shot at the right moment, I managed to capture some lightning... and the gorgeous sunset. Enjoy.

[[ sunset. mountains. furry friend. scales. bumbles. hummingbird. purple. beetle. painted sky. poolside. double rainbow. storm. ]]

california adventure 1 :: part 5 san francisco & a giants game

On Saturday (6/23), me, Pat, my cousins Ashley & Nicole, and Ashley's boyfriend Jake had made plans to drive in to San Francisco and spend the day exploring the city and catching a Giants game against the Oakland Athletics. 

We all got together early in the morning and headed downtown to make our reservation for brunch in the city. Jake is a chef by profession, so obviously he is very interested at pursuing good eats and took us to a hidden little restaurant called Bar Tartine. Us girls ordered Mimosas right away, and I ended up with the restaurants twist on Eggs Benedict for breakfast. While we were eating, Nicoles friend who lives in the city, met up as well. With the addition of an extra person, the driving situation was a little tight and we ended up pretty crunched in the back seat trying to figure out where to go next. We ended up at the San Francisco Ferry Terminal and Pier Building since we only had a little bit of time to kill before we needed to make our way to Oakland for the Giants game that my uncle got us all tickets to.

((( Funny side story... while me, Pat, Ashley, and Jake were all crowded in to the back seat of Nicole's car, Jake started rubbing Pats knee thinking it was Ashley's! This went on for a solid 10 seconds before he realized what we were saying. It was hilarious! That is one way to get quickly acquainted with someone and was an on going joke and cause for bursts of laughter throughout the day. )))

The Pier provided great views of the Bay Bridge, and the interior and reminded me a lot of a little market near The High Line that Leah had taken us to last summer in NYC. The boys, who we left alone for a few minutes, managed to find a little beer and wine shop, so we all stopped inside to try some fancy beers. One was around thirty dollars and tasted more like champagne. I thought it was delicious, though I think Pat preferred the more classic beer varieties. We stuck around here until it was time to head for the game, but picked up a few bottles to tail gate with.

[[ around the pier. wind blown. inside the market. the bay bridge. beer & wine shop. the group. ]]

This was only my second professional baseball game, the first being at Yankee stadium last summer. It was a major bummer (*major bummer* <--- you will only get that reference if you watch How I Met Your Mother regularly) that the game was not in the Giants home stadium which is a LOT nicer and I totally wanted to buy a hat to wear. The game was still a lot of fun though. We found our seats, grabbed beers and hot dogs (of course) and sat down to watch the game. They were ahead almost the entire time but started having some serious issues towards the end and after a couple extra innings they finally pulled it together for a win. Jake, as you will see from the pictures, was very excited.

By the time we pilled out of the stadium it was getting dark and we were all pretty hungry again, so we debated for a long time about where to grab some dinner. After a series of traffic jams and a lot of detours we finally ended up somewhere by Haight Ashbury at a little place called Cha Cha Cha. We got some sangria and ordered a ton of tapas to share. We ate, drank, and closed down the bar. Our driving issues did not however end there. Apparently the next day was the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco, which, is a pretty big thing, so... there were essentially giant block parties/raves happened around every corner and cops posted everywhere. Nicole even got "hit on" by a Jeep full of drag queens. "Oh giiiiiiiiiirl, you are gorgeous!" to which I instructed, "Say 'thank you' Nicole..."

Eventually we were able to drop off Nicoles friend and make our way out of the city and back to Ashley's condo where me and Pat crashed.

[[ us at the giants game. ]]

Admittedly, I was a little sad because I had wanted to actually spend the day exploring the city itself, going in to eclectic little shops, spending some money on small treasures, eating street food, snapping shots of the Golden Gate Bridge... you know, the usual stuff. I suppose I just need to make sure I get another trip to the city so that I can fulfill my San Francisco adventure needs. If only we had one more day... It was however a lot of fun.

california adventure 1 :: part 2.2 joshua tree national park (continued)

Here is the second half of my pictures from our trip to Joshua Tree National Park (on 6/19). 

After we left the Keyes viewpoint, we drove back down and found a new area of the park that contained HUGE solid rock formations composed of what seemed to be sand. This was by far my favorite part of the park! I had never seen anything like these before, and the best part was that we could climb around on them. You will notice in many of the pictures, that me and Pat apear as tiny specks, I wanted you to be able to see how small we were compared to these giants. Just sorting through my shots makes me want to go back to this area.

Next we headed to the Cholla Cactus Garden where a large amount of Chollas grow naturally. These were some of the weirdest plants I have ever seen, and not quite what I expected when thinking about cactuses. They were largely hallow and little tumbleweeds of the plant would fall off and float around your feet. Hayden was the first to try and pick one up, and soon had both me and Pat following him. They are silly fuzzy little things.

Since we entered at the North West area of the park, we decided to just drive through the remainder and exit somewhere to the South East towards the Salton Sea. It is truly amazing how much the terrain changed throughout the park as we made our way through it. From desert with loose rocks and plants everywhere, to an amazing viewpoint surrounded by Joshua Trees, to a sandy canyon filled with giant rock formations, to a wide open valley filled with cactuses, back to mountains and a whole lot of wide open space. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and fully intend to experience a sunset and star gazing here one day.

[[ joshua tree national park part II: giant rock formations. terrain changes. cholla cactus garden.  all photos taken by me & pat in california, june 2012. ]]

california adventure 1 :: part 2.1 joshua tree national park

Tuesday (6/19) Me, Pat, Hayden, and Maggie drove out to Joshua Tree National Park to explore the desert, climb around on rock formations, take a million pictures, and experience something new. I had been really excited about getting out there since we started planning our trip. I think the boys were a bit skeptical at first but I know for a fact that Pat at least, thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Below is part one of our explorations. I had to divide this post up because of how many pictures I took. The really unique thing about this park is how vastly the terrain changes from one mile to the next, so we really got the whole experience. Here is a link to a park map to give you an idea of its size.

Included in this post are the loose rock formations that line the windy road at the West entrance of the park, as well as the Keyes viewpoint, which is several thousand feet up above the park. The nice old man I gathered our park map from said that on a clear day you can see all the way in to Mexico from here. You can also see the Saltan Sea, the San Andreas Fault,  and the entire Coachella Valley below. If we went back here, I would make sure to stay until sunset and experience that up here, I can't even imagine how gorgeous that is. And of course, I had to take pictures of some of the Suessian Joshua Trees before we made our decent and went on to other park areas.

[[ joshua tree national park part I: rock formations at west entrance. keyes viewpoint. joshua trees. all photos by me & pat in california, june 2012. ]]