pinnacles national monument

my annual wildflower trip to the pinnacles national monument occurred a couple of months later than it usually does, but the wildflowers were still a sight to behold! the fields of bright orange california poppies and pink shooting stars that are common in early april when i usually visit were replaced by elegant clarkia and butterfly mariposa lilies. 

 venus thistle (the native thistle!)

 larkspur

 lance-leaved dudlea

 elegant clarkia

 butterfly mariposa lily

puffball

i was also treated to a number of non-botanical sights - one coyote, a california condor, a swimming snake, lizards, a skink, and many checkerspot and swallowtail butterflies. 

 western fence lizard (i LOVE the blue belly)

checkerspot butterfly

and of course, all this beauty amid the fabulous geological formations that gave pinnacles its name. 

 western pinnacles

high peaks trail

our first official long distance ride

pete and i (and five of his co-workers from the marine facilities division of the USGS - hence the MARFAC on their jerseys) rode the strawberry fields forever on sunday. pete and i settled for the 65 mile route while some of his co-workers took on the 100 mile route. the weather, company, and rest areas were lovely, which somewhat made up for my really, really sore butt.


to train for the ride, we've been riding all over the county and back for the last three or so months. somewhere in that time we decided that an exciting ending location (other than our house - think winery!) would make the riding more exciting...destination biking here we come!

Gerry, Peter, Pete, Rob, Jenny, Jackson, and me before the ride

(whenever i see this photo the sesame street song "one of these
things is not like the other" starts running through my head)

the amazingly lovely ucsc arboretum

love, love, love this place! happy spring!

last in the catching up series - catching up part 4: laos

near the end of our trip, we flew from siem reap to luang prabang, laos. once we landed, we were greeted by a number of delightful surprises - cool weather! luang prabang is in the mountains so the air was drier and much cooler...i had to wear pants and long sleeves in the evenings, which was a welcome change from our hot, sweaty days in cambodia and vietnam. and the quiet. oh, the sweet, sweet absence of scooter-mania was amazing. we could cross the streets without feeling like our lives were at risk. no "lady, tuk-tuk?". brilliant. 
we didn't have much on the agenda for our time in laos, but we quickly found the night market, more temples, and one of my favorite foods of the whole trip - coconut pancakes. i ate them every day. and have since tracked down what they are called (khanom krok) and how to make them (which involved the acquisition of an ebelskiver pan). delicious! 
our hotel was just across the street from a temple, so at sunrise and sunset every day we could listen to the monks chanting. it is so beautiful and mesmerizing and the throngs of monks in saffron robes was a sight to behold. we visited a number of temples around the city. they were slightly different than the temples we had visited before - these were all buddhist temples and the style of decoration was a bit changed. the tree of life and statues of the buddha tended to be the centerpieces in these temples. 

 buddha statues

 tree of life mosaic

temple in the center of town

we also ventured a bit out of the city to a place called the cave of a thousand buddhas. the name is pretty descriptive...

 river crossing to get to the cave

one section of the cave - the buddhas come from all over the area
when they are no longer needed/wanted at a temple

the highlight of luang prabang was a day long outing that included elephant riding, boating, limestone waterfalls, hiking, and river rafting. we set out early and arrived at the "elephant farm" for our first adventure. all the elephants at the eco-camp where rescued from logging camps. hopefully people riding on them is a better life than hauling logs?! we boarded our elephant along with our mahout and started our journey through the forest. at one point our elephant decided it didn't really like us very much and started growling. yep, turns out that elephants growl. and it is kind of scary! it feels like you are sitting on top of a giant rumbling generator that at any moment could flick you off like a fly. gulp. but our lady ultimately decided that we were not so bad and finally started moving again. soon after, our mahout (elephant driver) jumped off - pete and i were on our own. pete eventually assumed the role of driver and i soon followed suit - what a crazy experience! 

 happy elephant with some sugar cane (and a driver)

mahout pete (post-grumpy elephant)

steering an elephant - crazy!

next we traveled down river in a very narrow, very tippy, long-tail boat. our destination was the limestone waterfalls, which were pretty neat. it actually looked like a completely fabricated landscape at first because it was so interesting. we spent a bit of time here - enough time for a hike upriver and for pete to go on a zipline adventure.

 limestone waterfalls

pete on the zipline

the last portion of our day trip was quite possibly the most uncomfortable part (from a safety perspective) of our entire trip. pete, erin, two guides, and i all boarded a bamboo raft (literally lengths of bamboo tied together with twine) that would float us down the relatively slow moving, meandering river. sounds lovely, right? except that the five of us were WAY over the weight rating of the little raft. whenever one of the guides would move to use his oar, the whole thing was precariously close to flipping us all into the river. it was a warm day and the raft fortunately had some innertubes on board so pete almost immediately slowly maneuvered himself off the raft and into the river. that definitely helped, but it was still scary times on the raft. i soon followed suit and hopped in an innertube to float solo down the river. between the two of us, we got enough weight off the raft so it could float properly. disaster averted! the river water probably took a few years off my life, but i won't go there...

 scary, scary bamboo raft

happy on our innertubes...

luang prabang was a beautiful city and i highly recommend it if anyone is heading in that direction. the quiet, mountain air was just what we needed at the end of the trip.

that completes the indochine update...finally! more photos can be found at the picasa site - link to the right of this post. enjoy!

the pajaro dunes

every president's day weekend, pete's extended family gets together for some family fun time. for the last few years, they have gathered at the pajaro dunes, just 20 miles south of our house. i often miss these gatherings due to ill-timed scientific conferences and pete is often in the field, but we both managed to spend some time at the dunes this year. the weather was lovely and the shore birds did not disappoint!

 black-necked stilts

 snowy plover

 curlew

egret

godwit

bathroom remodel - take 2

yep, that's right...take 2 on the bathroom remodel. i will try to not let my blood pressure get too high as i recount the events that led us to this point...


when we got back from southeast asia, i noticed some water on the floor of the garage directly below the bathtub (i.e., bathtub we just had installed six weeks prior by contractors). pete had removed a section of drywall from the garage ceiling when we bought the house because the old bathtub was leaking. we had yet to reinstall that section and i am so glad we were slackers on that one! when we verified that the water was coming from the bathtub, i called our contractor to let them know that they needed to come back. a week later, they finally came over and decided that the leak was coming from a loose fixture. they tightened it, saw no more water leaking, and went home. fast forward two days and we are getting our first sizable rain storm of the winter (~3 inches). pete happened to be home and noticed water on the floor of the garage under the bathtub but about 16 inches away from the previous leak. so he climbed up on the ladder and soon discovered that when the contractors installed the new subfloor, they pinched the sewer vent pipe between the subfloor and a stud and cracked the pipe. we had never noticed this problem before because we hadn't had any rain. leak #2 for those keeping track at home. so now pete has totally boarded the frustration train with me and we are rolling full steam ahead. pete decided to pull the insulation out from under the tub plumbing because he wasn't convinced after leak #2 showed up that they had solved the original problem. sure enough, the insulation was soaking wet and leak #3 was revealed. honestly, i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried. i called the contractor at 8:30 monday morning to start his week off on the right foot. it took them nearly two weeks to come up this time and ultimately resulted in a smaller, but equally disruptive bathroom remodel...with the bedroom and office thrown in for good measure. AGH!

 the culprit for leak #3 was an incorrectly installed tile flange. our
contractor blames the manufacturers, but i blame the clowns who
work for him. they installed it on top of painters tape... so they had to
remove a row of tile to reseal the flange and hardy board. oh, and they failed to warn us that we were going to be without a shower for FIVE days. 

 to find the problem, they cut a lovely hole in our bedroom wall and 

didn't bother to cover it with plastic when they left that day...even 

though our bedroom was now open to the garage below and it was 30 

degrees at night. can you tell how much i LOVE these guys?!

 the "repaired" bedroom wall

 the "repaired" office wall - which the contractor cut through and then
decided he didn't need to do that. thanks a lot, buddy.

the only competent person throughout this whole ordeal was the drywaller who came in to actually fix the mess. he is a lovely person and did a great job. 

but why is the wall still white, you might ask? because the contractor decided that he didn't want to have someone come out to paint because he was leaving on a three week trip to key west and it would just be "too much trouble" for him to schedule someone to come up. and besides, he had the drywall guy texture more than just the patch, so that should be compensation enough and i should do the painting myself. GGRRRR! really, at this point, i am glad to have those people out of our house, but how unprofessional can you be?! needless to say, those people will NOT be helping with any future remodel projects nor will they get an inkling of a good review or any recommendations from us. 

oh, and they never fixed the broken vent pipe....

catching up part 3: cambodia

the second portion of our trip was spent in cambodia. we took a bus from HCMC, vietnam, to phnom penh and then continued via boat up the tonle sap river to siem reap. we had one goal for all of cambodia - the angkor wat temples. disappointed we were not for we had our fill of temples and transport via tuk tuk. there are more photos from this part of our trip - over 2,000 in all - which is why it has taken me three months to get to this post. this post will contain only a sampling of the things we saw...if you are interested in seeing more, click on the link to the right to visit my picasa album. here goes the whirlwind tour...

traveling up the tonle sap river

traveling across tonle sap lake

 ta keo - one of the many unfinished temples

 preah khan - many of the temples have a lot of damage - partly due to vandalism, but also from the changing of royalty and the accompanying change in religious belief of either hindu or buddhism

 east mebon

 ta prohm - an experiment in letting the jungle take over

ta prohm #2

 banteay srei - some of the most spectacular carving

 the baphuon - staircase to heaven??

 stone carving on pillars of most temples - they signified that you 

were in the "hall of dancers"

 some of the faces of the bayon - one of our favorite temples

 one of the gates into angkor thom, the main city of the temple complex

 vishnu statue in angkor wat

spectacular bas relief at angkor wat

 angkor wat at sunrise

banteay kdei - ta prohm and the bayon all in one

in addition to all the temples, we took a tour of a silk farm while we were in siem reap, which turned out to be one of our favorite activities. angkor artisans is a group that trains youth from rural villages in different trades and pays them a living wage. they have a silk farm where they complete the whole process from mulberry leaves to garment. it was amazing to get to see the whole process of how silk is made...our heads were spinning by the time we left. he skill and time spent making silk products here was truly incredible. 

 scarf on a loom - the silk threats are dyed so that they have each of the individual colors of the scarf in a single strand; the weaver then places each strand to make the diamond pattern you see. crazy.

 students threading the loom one silk strand at a time

cambodia continued to be a adventure in wonderful food, incredible sites, and our first elephant ride. more about that in laos...which is up next!