America Trip 2013 Part Three - More Yosemite

A view from the valley floor. Half Dome is in the distance (and, oops! there's someone's arm... "no photo-shopping today")

The Merced River in Yosemite Valley-some of us cooled our feet, and other more adventurous people went swimming!

Yosemite Falls in the distance.

We visited the, uh, visitor center. If you're a visitor, it's good to visit the visitor center.
Seriously, the entire park has amazing views-I don't know many other places where you can simply look up from any spot (even the parking lots) and be surrounded by stunning vistas of mountains and trees in every direction.

America Trip 2013 Part Two - Sentinel Dome

As I said last time, these posts about the America trip aren't going to be in any special order. Today's pictures are from the short hike we took to Sentinel Dome near Glacier point in Yosemite. A group of about a dozen family members drove up the road out of Yosemite Valley. Sentinel Dome is known as an easy hike to a point with an amazing view. I agree with both parts of that description; the youngest family member in our group made it to the top, and the vista from the summit was fantastic!

Here's our group climbing, resting, and stepping off the path to let some horse riders pass by.

The group at the top, and the wonderful view we could see.

America Trip 2013 Part One

For about a month, I have been thinking about how to organize blog posts about our America trip in July. Too much thinking and not enough posting, so I'm just going to start posting pictures and some comments, and they might or might not be very organized...

First, here are some pictures that I took of the family reunion in Yosemite. If anyone wants larger/better resolution files (if you want to print any, for example) let me know, and I can email individual files to you (Most email companies put a cap on the total size of attachments you can receive at once, so it's often best to receive the picture files one by one.) I'm including multiple takes of the group shots so you can choose and avoid, "Hey! I'm not smiling in that one!"--refer to the pictures by the numbers in the captions. You can send me a message through this blog's comments, or send me an email directly:  waterfront_r@hotmail.com

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More soon...

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Picnic in the Park

Early last month, we took advantage of a warm spring day to explore a nearby park that we had never visited. We took a picnic lunch and enjoyed the green trees, blue sky, and (mostly) peaceful quiet. There were beautiful flowers, huge bumblebees, and a tree that had pink (!) leaves. If you recognize what kind of tree that is from the photo, please tell me.

Mystery Tree

Rose Garden 2013

Last month, we took our annual trip to the nearby rose garden in Igashira Park in Moka. When we arrived, there were about ten other people in the garden, but slowly, one by one, in pairs, in groups, they left the park until we were alone. A wonderful, beautiful, peaceful time.

Just as we were thinking about leaving, Nozomi whisper-shouted, "look! over there!" On the edge of the garden, near the forest that surrounds it, a rabbit was hopping through the roses. We slowly followed him and he slowly hopped into the hedge that separates the garden from the forest. I tried to take a picture; look carefully and you can see him in the photo with the hedge. A few minutes later, we saw a second rabbit near the entrance, and watched him hop away into the roses.

Back to blogging

I took a long break from blogging, mostly because the last site that hosted my blog, Posterous, closed. When they did, I had to transfer ALL the pictures and videos that I had posted there for three (four?) years back to this blog host, Blogger/Blogspot. After spending hours and hours and hours (and hours) working on that, it took a while until I was ready to start again. I think I'm ready now...

Christmas Butterflies

"Christmas Butterflies" Those aren't words that I hear together very often. For a better view of the butterfly Christmas tree, take a look at the photos in my last post, but this video will give you an idea of the atmosphere in the room. A little odd, but beautiful (unless you don't like butterflies, of course).

Moka Trip With Mondo & Aiko

On Sunday, the four of us visited Moka City. I've posted photos before of the beautiful rose garden that Nozomi & I usually visit in June. That garden is just one small part of a very large park that also has walking and biking paths, nature viewing areas, a large conservatory with tropical plants (and animals), and many other attractions. We went for a walk there, saw and heard herons (or maybe cranes) and woodpeckers, and spent time in the conservatory. An annual event there is the butterfly Christmas tree: a tree decorated with "Christmas chrysalises" and the butterflies flying around the room after they emerge. A little strange and rather beautiful at the same time.
After our walk, we went to the Brazilian buffet restaurant that I've mentioned a few times before and had a fantastic lunch. I discovered VERY sweet Brazilian style coffee as we were finishing our meal and enjoyed that with the coconut cake, flan, Christmas jello and squash dessert they were serving.
Next was a visit to the station where I took the video of the Christmas train that I posted last time. I'm including pics of the steam engine, our group, and a couple of different versions of Santa, a reindeer, and a Christmas helper who was too tall to be an elf. We didn't have time to ride the steam train, but we'll save that for another time.