HopeFamily: February 2010

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Our local snow hill

We had gotten about a foot of snow making for excellent sledding and snowboarding on the local hill. We headed over on Sunday afternoon.

Alex snowboarding down the hill. Those lessons in Canada must have worked.

Bart shows off his technique.

A team from the lab went down to Tulane for some experiments. They closed the facility because it was supposed to snow. As you can see, it did snow. Giant flakes! 0.3 inch accumulation. A blizzard in Louisiana, a flurry in Chicago.

It was the week before Mardi Gras and there was a local parade.

We got to see the floats getting set up. Mike, Ron, Ann, Minh, and Katharina got some nice beads. It was very cold by local standards.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Snowy Yosemite

I was in San Francisco for work. Met old friends and a former lab member at Ebisu, the place where I was educated about sushi. In the late 80's, early 90's I got to know Steve the owner of Ebisu. He taught me much about sushi. It was great to see him again. The sushi was still wonderful.

Just about 5 hours away from SF is Yosemite Valley. A special place. In an interesting 80's reunion, Tom, Dan, Greg, and Dave had 50 hours of adventure. We spent 2 nights in Yosemite Valley after a big snow storm.

There was a LOT of snow. I had been the first time that snowfall had closed the park in 13 years. We got in just as the roads were opened. Had to use chains at times. As you can see here there was more than 2 ft of snow from the storm. Because of the snow many avoided coming to the Valley. It was nice and mellow, a big contrast with a crowded summer visit.

The Valley was a winter wonderland. The view from Wawona Tunnel was amazing as you can see. At this point the snow had not started to fall out of the trees. Snow falling from trees pelted us for most of the trip.

The Falls were flowing well. Last time I was here was in July 2008 and the falls were just a trickle. The clouds and snow made the scenery very dramatic.

Half Dome was beautiful covered with snow.

The Boys at Mirror lake below half dome. We hiked up to mirror lake in the snow. No one was really there. It was really sweet.

ANSEL ADAMS CONTEST. We knew we would be limited in our hiking opportunities with winter conditions in the Valley so we decided to has a photography context in honor of Ansel Adams, who is famous for his dramatic black and white photographs of Yosemite Valley. The black and white is quite dramatic as you can see below. The next image was my official entry (which won the contest). Some other black and white images (thanks photoshop) I really like follow.

The snow covered trees and shining granite make this one glow

Upper Yosemite Falls in the sun.

A interesting look at Lower Yosemite Falls. I like the area glowing in the sun above the falls and clouds.

Bandalier

This year the Keystone meeting was in January at Santa Fe, NM. Because of school, no family this time. I had to go to a meeting in San Diego first. Got some great views out the air plane window.

It really is GRAND. The Grand Canyon from the air. South Rim is on the left. See it from the ground in the July 2007 blog.

Monument Valley from the air.

Monument Valley from the ground in summer 2007 (you can see the rest of that trip in the blog archive). This vantage point is near the tip of the snow covered wedge shaped ridge at 9 o'clock in the image from the air. The narrow looking tower in the airplane image is the tower on the left.

Bandalier National Monument is about an hour drive from Santa Fe. It is an ancient indian site. It had already been long abandoned before this area was seen by early european explorers. They carved small rooms into the face of the cliffs of soft rock. You can see the multiple holes, which are the rooms in the cliff face.

In certain places there are ladders in place allowing visitors to climb up to the rooms. Some are interconnected making them rather large. Cindy, Minh, and Rowena visiting one of the bigger rooms.