Category Archives: Travel

A *Sunny* Weekend in Seattle?

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Yes, I know I’ve gotten a little bit behind in my blogging. But I’m still here, right, so that’s a vast improvement from last year (and by the way, I’ve already surpassed the total number of blog entries that I wrote in all of 2009. Yay, me!). So in an effort to catch up, I thought I’d tell you the story of a sunny little weekend adventure that Chris and I took up in Seattle a few weeks ago.

We drove up on the afternoon of Friday, May 7 and made excellent time, narrowly missing the closing time of Starbucks (whew!) by convincing the drive-through attendant that he should definitely let us order a strawberry-banana vivanno smoothie. Additionally, I tried my first crispy bean burrito at Taco Time, which was excessively yummy and aided in padding my ass so that I am better equipped to enjoy long car rides. Chris had made reservations at the Hotel Monaco, right downtown, and we were lucky enough to receive a free upgrade to a suite…it even came with fancy animal-print robes and free honor bar treats (up to $10 value, please)!

On Saturday we summoned our car from the valet (Chris dials the valet…ring ring…”Hello, Mr. Sigman – will you be needing your vehicle this morning?”), who was named Mario and who, I’m fairly certain, was an undercover secret agent spy who only had the valet job so that he could grab a car to make a quick getaway which would likely involve jumping over an open drawbridge. Seriously, Mario was a bad. ass. with his shaved head, fancy suit, and little secret agent earpiece with the curly wire down the back of his neck. I decided that it would not be in our best interest to mess with him, so Chris tried to tip him well.

Anyway, we headed out for a delicious breakfast at Glo’s (coffee cake and huevos rancheros…yum!), did some shopping, then walked around the International District where we explored Uwajimaya, a huge Asian grocery store with all manner of sea creatures (yes, to eat), vegetables, boxed and canned goods, and household objects. They also had a food court area where I bought a couple of pork buns, but I can’t say that they were among the best I’ve had.

I also was told not to take pictures of the roasted ducks hanging behind a counter. But take that, Uwajimaya! I got me a hanging duck picture!

Later that afternoon we drove north of the city just a bit to say hello to Chris’ dad, Walt, who still lives in the house Chris lived in as a kid. It was nice to meet him, and the garden in his back yard was amazing – I especially liked all the rhododendrons (blooming in purple, orange, and white) and the several varieties of Japanese maple he had. After that, Chris and I drove down to Bothell to his mom and grandmother’s house where we met up with them and his Uncle Bruce. My hair was passionately molested by one of Cynthia’s kitties (Peep), who apparently has some sort of uncontrollable fetish. We went out for a Mother’s Day dinner at Grazi’s and enjoyed some delicious Italian fare. I don’t remember much beyond that because I think I was in some sort of food coma. So full!!!

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day – warm and sunny. The day before, I learned that Chris had never actually eaten dim sum, so I found a reputable dim sum restaurant in the International District and away we went. Jade Garden was completely packed, but Chris and I were one of the few non-Asian patrons so I considered that a good sign. In the waiting area there were all these aquarium tanks full of crabs and fish and things that were still alive but waiting to be eaten. After about a half hour (Seinfield, party of four!) we finally got a table. The dim sum carts did their little parade and before we knew it, we were stuffed with *good* pork buns, shrimp balls, and other tasty morsels (but no chicken feet or black jello; although the pork noodles were flaccid and slimy). Success!

After brunch we (so sadly) checked out of our room at the Hotel Monaco and said farewell to Mario. But since it was such a nice day we decided to explore Pike Place Market, which was super-crowded with people who were also out enjoying the day.

It was a fine, fine way to spend the weekend, and I had a good time meeting Chris’ family. We’ll definitely go back to the Hotel Monaco and I recommend it highly! If you want to see all the pictures we took that weekend, you can view them in the slideshow at right, or here.

Playing Catch-Up

Posted in Animals, Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Non-cats, Travel, Vacations by

Yikes! Time has slipped away from me folks, and I realized that with all the stuff going on right now I forgot to actually write about my spring break trip that I took with Chris. I posted a slide show of all the pictures on this blog a while back (you can see the pictures here), but I totally forgot to give you the inside scoop! So here goes…even if it is old news by now.

Sunday, March 28:

We started our road trip by stopping by the Hip Chicks Do Wine tasting room in Newberg where we sampled several yummy wines. However, we wanted to check out a few other places that were going to close at 5 pm so we kept moving down the road to our bed and breakfast, the amazing Abbey Road Farm B&B. The guest rooms are in converted grain silos and the grounds are amazing! Definitely check out the pictures. After checking in (we were the only people there during our stay), we went to downtown Carlton and stopped in at the Barking (a.k.a. Barfing) Frog (we weren’t impressed), and the Tyrus Evan tasting rooms. Then a nice dinner at Cielo Blue – terrific bruschetta and it was free, since the waitress spilled my water in my pasta and comped us the appetizer.

Monday, March 29:

While I’m not normally a breakfast person, I was looking forward to a farm-fresh meal. John and Judi (the owners of the B&B, not my parents) cooked us up a fancy meal of grapefruit (topped with toasted coconut, maple syrup and a raspberry) and crepes (with whipped cream, strawberries and kiwi). John went through an exhaustive list of the tasting rooms and wineries we should visit, and talked about all the people running the wine scene in the Willamette Valley. He knew A LOT about wine and we felt a bit overwhelmed and baffled after all his recommendations. So instead of heading out for wine at 10 am, we decided to tour the grounds, which consisted of us harassing the chickens (ok, so we mainly fed them cinnamon raisin bread), making friends with the goats (we’ll see you tomorrow morning, ladies!), and having John show us around the Agrivino Event Center he built. After, we headed out to The Carlton Winemaker’s Studio where JP gave us a nice intro to the local Pinots (we liked Lazy River and Britton’s Basalt Block) – they have several wineries featured at that tasting room, so it was a nice tour. We then went just up the road to Cana’s Feast to sample their wines…and by the end of that visit we had blown our wine budget (but we have lots of really good wine to enjoy at home!). We drove through Dundee and stopped at the Dundee Bistro for dinner, then went back to the Abbey Road Farm for our second night.

Tuesday, March 30:

We managed to get ourselves up nice and early to meet Ricardo, the goat tender, for some good old-fashioned goat milking fun. At 7 am it didn’t feel like so much of a vacation, but hey, we did want our farm-lite experience. Sunflower the goat was very patient with Chris and my unexperienced hands, but we got the hang of it eventually. After all four goats were milked, we took our pail of milk down to the kitchen to Judi who set it up to pasteurize. We had a delicious breakfast of granola with yogurt and berries, VERY fresh eggs, chicken-apple sausage, potatoes, and zucchini bread with lemon-zest goat cheese.

After that it was time for us to head on down the road. Down that road we made a stop at the Brigittine Monastary (their website has an E-zine…an E-zine!!!) where we were greeted by a very friendly cat who led us to the chocolate truffle sales room. It was tended by a monk who had apparently not quite taken a vow of silence, but who made some sort of promise to use as few words as possible during the day. So we bought a couple boxes of truffles, nodded to the monk, and said goodbye to the cat.

We ate lunch at The Beanery in Corvallis, then visited my good friends Jeremy, Dana, and Autumn Monroe for a couple of hours. It was sooooo nice to see some old friends, whom I’m sure will be in my life for a very long time. They all looked well and I was happy to see that Autumn already has quite the biological vocabulary at such a young age! After that, we kept driving south and stayed the night at the Eugene Hilton. Nothing of note there, really, other than the fact that Sarah Palin would speak at that very same Hilton a month or so later. Boooo!!!

Wednesday, March 31:

We were kind of done with wine tasting (by that point our palettes were very confused) so we decided to head to the coast and stay in Newport for the next couple of days. After leaving Eugene we stopped to see a dreary road-side glassblower in Mapleton, activated my new (i.e., Chris’ old) iPhone in Florence (yay!!!), then drove North and checked in at Green Gables B&B in Newport (we’ve stayed there before and liked it so much we decided to stay again). My friend Julie (from grad school at CSU) lives in Newport so I gave her a call and we met her and her boyfriend Perry at Quimby’s for dinner and drinks – I hadn’t seen her since 2002! She hasn’t changed a bit and it was awesome catching up with her. After, Chris and I checked out a whale skeleton sculpture at a beach park, watched Stardust in our room, then…well, maybe I should just stop there.

Thursday, April 1:

Oh, Thursday. Spring break was going by too fast! We finished watching Stardust (which is a very good movie, by the way), and enjoyed a delicious breakfast in the Italian Cafe (part of the B&B) with food made by sisters Rhonda and Yolanda (or Rho and Yo, depending on how bold you are). We had fresh-baked orange-cranberry scones and sweet rolls, and a cranberry sausage quiche which was amazing…

Later, we went down to Newport’s waterfront which is apparently undergoing a major facelift judging by all the construction. We stocked up on our decade’s supply of salt-water taffy (2 lbs, a variety of flavors), checked out the sea lions on the pier, and window shopped. We had dinner at the Italian cafe – manicotti, chicken parmesean, and orange-chocolate cheesecake – YUM!!! We enjoyed a second night at Green Gables, and had a storm roll in which was reminiscent of the storm we experienced during our first stay. Very romantic!

Friday, April 2:

Breakfast was soooo good the day before that we had the very same breakfast on Friday. It was sad that our vacation was almost over, but as you can see, we took some good pictures and will remember it for a long time. Plus, on our drive home we had Combos! Pizzeria and pretzel flavor – yippee!!!

Snowmageddon? Really?

Posted in Career, Entertainment, Me Me Me!, Music and Dance, Travel by

Are we really calling the storm that struck the East Coast over the weekend Snowmageddon now? Come on – yeah, some flights were canceled (uh, mine in fact), but really…I’d hardly say that the storm resulted in an armageddon-like disaster. Maybe we should ask the people of Haiti to chime in on this one? Did their natural disaster get a fancy nickname yet?

Yeah, ok, Dulles got some snow, but it’s not like they’ve never seen snow before. Wimps.

At any rate, yes, I had a flight scheduled on Sunday to Dulles (Washington, D.C.) so that I could take a course entitled “Resource Management Implications of Climate Change” at NCTC (the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center). NCTC is in Shepherdstown, WV, which is about a 2 hour drive from Dulles and apparently currently inaccessible…so the course was generally canceled as well. About 7 brave souls managed to survive Snowmageddon and reach NCTC mostly unscathed (not sure how many emergency amputation were performed yet…news comes slowly when communications are down), so some of the sessions are being broadcast over the web, which I get to watch from work (which is what I’m doing right now…). On one hand I was really looking forward to the course (and racking up almost 16 hours of travel comp time – woo hoo!!!), but on the other hand, I was really not looking forward to spending almost 16 hours of my own time traveling. Luckily, I found out that my flight and course were canceled Saturday night, so I didn’t have to drive to the airport at 5 am on Sunday to get that bit of news. I was very tempted to just not show up at work this week to see if anyone would figure it out…but in the end, my conscience won the battle and I decided to report for duty.

On an unrelated note, I made my modeling debut a couple of weeks ago for a bellydance-wear company here in Portland. It was a lot of fun, but I think some of my pictures turned out better than others. For most of the photos I was wearing this humongous coin bra that made my boobs look incredibly huge – really, I’m more of a B cup kinda girl, and not the FFF that the coin bra makes me out to be. So, to satisfy your curiosity, here’s a photo that will also be featured on the back cover of Yallah magazine next month.

That’s me with the incredibly goofy look on my face and ginormous-looking boobs in the middle of the bottom row. But in case you’re wondering, I’m still dancing, still love it, and am getting a bit less sucky at it! :o) This is mostly due to the constant encouragement, guidance, and entertainment provided by one of my instructors, Ziggy (top left, yellow skirt).

MLK Holiday Weekend in Newport

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A holiday for me? Awww, shucks – you shouldn’t have! Why, yes, my name is Marci Leah Koski. Oh. Ok. Martin Luther King, Jr. I get it. I still get a day off from work though, right?

Hell yeah! Chris and I took advantage of the three-day weekend for a little trip to the coast. The weather was fairly cold, windy, overcast, and rainy, but what could be better for a snuggly visit to a B&B in Newport? We headed west from Portland, stopping in Depoe Bay to watch the storm waves come in and manifest themselves in spouting horns:

The coast was very beautiful but we were very wet by the time we got to Newport. We stayed at the Green Gables B&B – we could see the ocean from our Turret Room, and after settling in a bit we went out to the waterfront for some dinner at Rogue Public House. Chris and I debated the restroom designation system (are girls barley or hops?) enjoyed chowder, beer cheese soup, and bruschetta. Chris also enjoyed the Yellow Snow, which necessitated him testing the restroom designation system. After that we went back to the inn and watched a couple of movies – by then, the storm was really howling, complete with lightning, thunder, crazy wind, and horizontal rain.

The next morning we were supplied with delicious quiche and fruit bread, then we were off to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which was really fantastic. The displays were really beautiful, and we took loads of pictures. We managed to get yelled at for touching sea creatures by a couple of volunteer attendants (they looked like they were in touch pools, ok???), but we got out of there before we started any real trouble.


After that we drove back up the coast, stopping at Cape Foulweather to check out the fortune teller, world’s largest insect, and penny smasher. We ate a quick lunch at Mo’s (chowder and grilled cheese sandwich – yum!) then headed back east to the city. I had a fantastic weekend, but it was entirely too short! I guess I’ll just have to look forward to President’s Day…

Here is a photo album of all my pictures from the weekend; check them out!

Hood to Coast, Finally…

Posted in Day Trips, Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Travel by

I know it’s a little late, but I wanted to post these pictures of Hood to Coast. Paul, Adelaide, and I met Anne at the finish line in Seaside – she is hardcore! The best thing about the event, in my opinion, was looking at all the teams – some had costumes, others had pimped out team vans. Best team name: Bunghole Liquors. Yes, Bunghole Liquors is an actual liquor store on the east coast – go ahead and google them. A bunghole, by the way, is a hole in a barrel of alcohol – not at all what you were thinking (get your mind out of the gutter, man). Anyway, enjoy these belated pictures of the event, and of course, the cutest little badass ever!

One of the Bunghole Liquors vans…
The only bad part of the day was all the sand!


Here comes Anne and her team through the finish line…

And here come the Bunghole Liquors!

Catching Up…

Posted in Career, Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Travel, Updates, Vacations by

So…lots of stuff has happened between now and my last post. There’s too much to write about right now, but I will provide you with links to pictures. That’s the good part, anyway, right? The big news is that I recently moved up to Portland, Oregon, where I will be starting a job with the Columbia River Fisheries Program Office in Vancouver, Washington. I guess my official title is Recovery Assessment Program Leader, but basically I’ll be a fish biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was definitely sad leaving all of my friends behind in Carlsbad, but I’m very happy to be up here in Portland. I found a great apartment in a really cool part of town…the next step is getting a bike! I’ll post some pictures of my place once I get a bit more unpacked.

In the meantime, here are some photos from previous events.

First, in the beginning of July, my friend Michelle came and visited me from Pennsylvania. I hadn’t seen her (or talked with her) since graduating from West Chester University in 1998, but we found each other on facebook. We met up in Old Town San Diego, went to the Wild Animal Park (of course), and cruised around Point Loma and downtown San Diego over the weekend. You can view the photos from her visit here.

Next, at the end of July, I drove north to Blue Lakes (near Ukiah) for a Koski family reunion. I was there for a couple of days and it was really nice to see everyone, especially the next generation of Koski’s. The weather was perfect and it was great connecting with most of my cousins, although three of my blonde beautiful cousins were MIA (you know who you are, H’s!). Check out the photos from the reunion here.

After the reunion I drove up to Eureka to meet my friend Cara. We went to a Roller Derby (go, North Jetty Betty’s!), then went to Arcata to dine on crepes at one of Cara’s favorite restaurants. The crepes were FANTASTIC! Cara works and lives at Redwoods National Park, so the next day we hiked the Damnation Creek trail to the coast where we explored the tidepools. Then, it was time for me to head back south (sigh)…but the photos still linger here.

The only unfortunate part of the trip was that my check engine light went on, and upon taking it to the shop for a diagnosis, I learned that one of the catalytic converters has crapped out on me and it would cost $2000 to fix in California. Fortunately, I’ve moved to Oregon where it may not be illegal to use an after-market catalytic converter so I might not have to junk my car…but like I said, it looks like I’ll be wanting to invest in a bike soon. It won’t work for getting me over to Vancouver every day, but it’s at least a little less pressure on my aging Outback when I need to go out for groceries or local errands!

Better Late Than Never, Right?

Posted in Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Travel, Vacations by

I know it has been a terribly long time since I’ve posted anything, and I know that most of my posts start off with this slightly guilt-ridden statement. Honestly, I don’t know why you people bother to keep checking my blog, since everything I post is pretty boring anyhow. But today, I have a couple of items to share: first, I’m now blogging on a very nice new computer, an HP 17″ laptop that I’m loving (so far). I had a few issues last weekend, but those problems seem to have resolved themselves…so my new computer appears to be self-healing as well, bonus.

Second, I went on a vacation that I have yet to tell you about. Actually, the pictures from my road trip to Portland (which happened about a month ago, ahem) have been posted to the right for a few weeks now, so I don’t feel too bad about not posting until now. But I’ll give you a brief rundown of my trip:

Saturday – I dropped Teddy Bear at Beth’s house, then started driving north. I had a great drive just being by myself, breaking in my new Garmin nuvi GPS, and catching up on listening to all my podcasts. I arrived at Gramma Koski’s house in Paradise at about 5 in the afternoon. We enjoyed a quiet evening chatting and eating.

Sunday – I spent the day with Gramma, who barely let me go an hour without insisting I eat something. We went to Red Lobster for a late lunch, where I finally got cell phone coverage and a report from Beth indicating that Teddy had been barking until 3 a.m. Sigh.

Monday – I start on the next leg of my trip north, which was quickly and briefly delayed by another call from Beth saying that Teddy Bear peed on her couch the previous night. I called my mom to pick him up and put him in a kennel – dang! But the rest of my drive was good – Mount Shasta was beautiful, and there was snow in the mountains just south of Ashland. I got to Corvallis to stay with my friends Jeremy and Dana and their daughter Autumn just in time to take them out to dinner at a tasty Indian place downtown. Yummy!

Tuesday – Jeremy and Dana took me to breakfast before I drove about an hour and a half north to Portland. By the time I got to my brother’s house, I was certain that I needed to take my car in because of a grinding noise that, I was hoping, would simply require a half-turn of a Phillips head screwdriver and cost me about $5.50 to repair. Anne got a referral for me to Vu’s Car Care, where they diagnosed the sound as coming from my dying transmission, which would take two days to replace and cost $925. This vacation is turning out to be a bit more expensive than I was anticipating! But the yummy pad thai Anne and Paul made for dinner, as well as Adelaide’s shenanigans, almost made up for it.

Wednesday – I woke up from a night of snuggling with a surrogate cat (Bosco) and kicked around the house with Anne and Adelaide. We went to lunch at the Laughing Planet, and surprise surprise, my car repairs were fixed by 6 pm. Yay!

Thursday – Paul, Anne, and I drove up to Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge and hiked up to the top. Adelaide contributed to the serenity of the falls by crying when Paul stopped walking. But the falls were incredible, and we had a nice snack at the restaurant below. That afternoon I stopped by the Portland FWS field office to introduce myself and prove how awkward I am at networking. But I took Anne and Paul out for a Moroccan dinner down town, which was lots of fun (although the belly dancer was rather blonde and caucasian…).

Friday – Me and my newly quiet car began our reluctant journey south towards home. I stopped in Medford to meet up with Jack Williams, who treated me to a burrito for lunch. After that, it was back on the road until I got to Gramma’s. More eating.

Saturday – The end of my vacation was in sight. I spent one last day driving, enjoying the thoughts I had to myself, and my music and podcasts. I was stuck in LA traffic for about an hour, but managed to get home in one piece. Mom picked up Teddy from the kennel for me, so when I got home he was there waiting. Yup, my vacation was definitely over.

Last Post of 2008! For Real This Time!!!

Posted in Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Travel, Vacations by
Lest you think that 2008 was totally in the toilet (see previous post), I thought I’d share a few more photos with you. I got a really great surprise today when I received a CD in the mail from Cecily (thanks, Cecily!!!), who compiled all the photos she took on our trip to the Chiricahuas over Thanksgiving. I’ll probably try to upload them to a Picasa web album sometime, but here are just a few of the photos that I thought were particularly funny or had incredible scenery. So happy new year, for real this time!

Thanksgiving dinner at a truck stop – bad pizza and rootbeer floats!

So this is what I look like first thing in the morning? I’d just crawled out of the tent after our first night backpacking in the wilderness area; yes, that’s ice in my hair.

One of the many spectacular views of the Chiricahua wilderness; this was just before we somehow managed to get ourselves off-trail. I wish I knew how to use the self-timer on *my* camera!

You can’t see it in the photo (how clever…), but Cecily’s ankle is totally jacked up! At this point, we were enjoying the views at the Chiricahua National Monument, which were accessible a short distance from the car.

Thanksgiving in the Chiricahuas

Posted in Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Travel, Vacations by

Since I don’t consider Thanksgiving to be one of my favorite holidays, I decided it would be a good time to get out of town for an outdoor mini-adventure. My friend Cecily, from grad school, flew into Phoenix where I drove to pick her up. We had the best Thanksgiving dinner ever – bad pizza and rootbeer floats at a truckstop outside of Tucson. Afterwards, we drove around FOREVER trying to find the Forest Service lands that we were told about so that we could camp for the night – finally, we found the turnoff for French Joe Canyon and set up for the night.

It turns out that our campsite was just next to Karchner Caverns State Park, which we explored the next day. It’s a pretty cool state park – it’s got a good museum and gift shop, although their coffee wasn’t the best. We took a tour of the Rotunda and Throne Rooms, where we saw Kubla Kahn, the biggest column known in the state of Arizona. It was pretty spectacular, although I can’t show you any pictures because there were no cameras allowed. Bummer for you!

After that, we drove east through Willcox, then took a forest service road through the Chiricahuas to the South Fork of the Cave Creek trail, just west of Portal. We hit the trailhead around 2:30, so it was a bit late; just before we got on the trail, a man approached us to tell us to be careful of all the illegal immigrants and drug smugglers coming through the area. Thanks, dude! After about a mile and a half, we turned off the Cave Creek trail and onto the Burro trail, which took us up and to the east. We didn’t get terribly far that first day because we got a late start; also, we needed to take advantage of the first flat spot we found in order to set up a tent. By the way, I need to thank my friend Glen for loaning me a bunch of ultralight equipment which reduced 20 lbs off my pack load. So if you’re in the market for a new pack or tent, go to his website, Gossamer Gear, to check out the goods!

Anyway, it was clear that others had used the same spot we found, since there were water bottles and toilet paper scattered around the perimeter of our site. I cooked up some yummy pad thai and Cecily started a fire to let all the smugglers know that we were there and not to bother us. It was a rather cold night – I didn’t get a lot of sleep because 1) I was listening for drug smugglers emerging from their hiding spots to steal our food (which they didn’t), 2) Cecily snores, and 3) it was freaking cold. We woke up to a sheet of ice on the inside of our tent, frost on our sleeping bags, and I even had frost in my hair! But a hot meal of oatmeal and peanuts and cranberries and tea warmed us up pretty good, at least while we waited for the sun to come out.

We continued on our way, up up and up the trail – and the views just kept getting more and more spectacular. We watched flocks of band-tailed pidgeons fly around below us. There were incredible rock outcrops all over the place. And the sun was out, which was in contrast from the days before. We hit Horseshoe Saddle at around noon, and there was lots of evidence that illegals had been coming through – water bottles, clothes, discarded packs, food containers, and even syringes. And unfortunately, because there was so much activity, a lot of social trails had been created, which were in fact more evident than the official trail we were trying to follow. So, at around 8000 feet, we ended up losing our trail and hiking down several fake-out trails that led us into a steep drainage.

We started bushwhacking our way down the drainage, which we knew would take us back to Cave Creek and the original trail that we were on. In my estimation, given the amount of shit in the drainage, there were approximately 359 bears in the vicinity, in addition to the drug smugglers which were surely hunkered down waiting for nightfall. Cecily and I scaled several bouldered drop-offs with few problems, but our luck didn’t last forever; Cecily fell down a 15-foot rock face and sprained her ankle really badly. But she was hard-core and didn’t cry or anything; we taped her ankle up, loaded her up with ibuprofin, and I gave her my hiking pole to hobble along on. We were only about halfway down the drainage at that point and it was starting to get dark and cold, and there was definitely no place to camp, so we decided to just try and get out that evening. I had to go ahead of Cecily and try to find the best way down the canyon drainage, which still had several rocky drops before we hit Cave Creek around dusk. But we were so happy to hear that running water!
We didn’t find the trail right away and hiked up the opposite side of the creek until I decided we needed to go back down to the creek where we would definitely find the trail at some point. Which we did – Cecily ended up hiking about 3 miles on her bum ankle, but with head-lamps and hiking poles, we made it to the car and set up camp at the Sunny Flat forest service campground. Whew! It was a good thing that Cecily brought some Vicodin with her…
The next morning, we drove back over the mountains to the Chiricahua National Monument, where the medic/ranger wrapped Cecily’s humongously swollen ankle up and provided her with ice packs and an airsplint. We drove through the monument and took in the amazing views at Massai Point. Finally, we drove back through Willcox and into Benson, where we ate a huge dinner at Apple Farm restaurant, one of the best meals I’ve ever had. The mashed potatoes were AWESOME!!! I felt like I was going to have a food baby.

We then drove back to French Joe Canyon and camped at the same spot as our first night – but this time we started a fire (with a little help from a bit of denatured alcohol, thanks) and had smores. Yummy! The following morning, we went back to our Thanksgiving day truckstop and paid $5 each for a shower. This was the first time I’ve ever had a truckstop shower, and it’s not nearly as dirty as it sounds. It was actually quite refreshing – I even managed to comb the emergent dread-locks out of my hair that had started to form during the past few days. Then, it was back to Phoenix to drop Cecily off at the airport, and then back to San Diego.
It was really a fun trip, all minor injuries aside. It was great being outside and getting my mind completely off of work for a few days, although I wish the trip could have been a little longer. I have more pictures that you can view through the slideshow link on the right side of my blog, and Cecily will be sending me her pictures as well, so there will probably be even more photos soon. It was a good Thanksgiving – even if there wasn’t any cranberry sauce involved!

Guess How Many Green Sea Turtles I Saw?

Posted in Animals, Day Trips, Friends and Family, Me Me Me!, Non-cats, Travel by

Today was a good day, one of those warm sunny autumn days that people actually come to visit southern California for. My friend Nicole and I headed down to the marina at Chula Vista to join up with a group of sea turtle enthusiasts (which also included my friends Tamara and Kari) and kayak out into the bay in hopes of getting a glimpse at one of the elusive marine reptiles. The San Diego Natural History Museum sponsored the program, so we got to hear a local sea turtle biologist talk about the different local species of turtles and ask a few questions. And lucky for you, I took the risk of bringing my camera along with me in the kayak so that I could snap a few pictures of the turtles we would surely see.

We paddled out of the marina and headed south towards the power plant where the green turtles hang out because they like the warmer effluent water. It was just a little breezy – enough for us to keep cool but not strong enough to make paddling difficult. It was soooo relaxing bobbing around in the waves; I saw an osprey and several flocks of Brandt’s geese, along with lots of other diving sea birds and jumping fish, which I think were mullet.

So while I didn’t see any sea turtles, I still had a good time, except for getting two blisters on my hands where I was holding the paddle. But I didn’t lose my camera, or tip my kayak, or accidentally cause anyone to bail out of their boat. So all in all, I can probably call the morning a success! Here are a few pictures to enjoy – you can see more through the slideshow link to the right.