This weekend we are off to Cheryl and Vic’s wedding in Tampa Bay, FL – then over to Disney World for a week of fun in the sun (or hurricane, depending …).  In light of the get away,  there won’t be an update next week (and this one is kind of short – I have to do the laundry!).  Until then, here are some pics of the Sienna and Eric’s wedding

If  you’re still reading, I thought I’d through in a quick baby update (you can always get up to the minute nuggets by following us on Twitter).  This week we are officially 13 weeks along – fingerprints have formed and veins and organs should be clearly visible through the still-thin skin. Baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce! Read more

Everything is looking great and SJ is finally getting through the first trimester of feeling bad.  For those of you that are keeping track, that makes our due date March 3rd.  Of course everyone has tons of questions … so feel free to leave them below and we’ll get back to you with the answers (yes, we are going to have to move into a bigger apartment )

Other news for this week seems dim in comparison, but there was still lots to report.  Saturday we loaded up the trucks with surfboards, BBQ, coolers, and all the beach gear for a trip south to San Onofre.  With 6 of us it was bit slow getting going, and by the time we showed up at 11am, there was a line to get into the parking lot (20+ cars deep) and little or no chance of seeing the beach.  We opted for the lesser known ‘cliffs’ area of the park.   The ‘cliffs’ as you may have guessed use a long and steep switchback trail to access the beach (as opposed to the nice drive right up access at the main area).  Several trips up and down later – we finally manged to  get all of the gear down to the beach (including one baby plus shade gear, pack-n-play, etc….).

We were expecting some bigger waves in the water, but what we found left us a little gun shy.  8-10′ swell with 15′ standouts plowing TONS of whitewater into the beach area.  Needless to say, it took quite awhile to get paddled out, and by then quite awhile to catch a good wave or 3.   Four hours and a sunburn later we got to lug all the gear back up the hill, pack up the trucks, and jump back into traffic … gotta love SoCal in the summer!

This coming weekend we’ll be up in Montana celebrating Sienna and Eric’s wedding (www.EricAndSienna.com).  If you’re in the Bozeman area give us a shout – we’d love to catch up and share some good news!

I was talking to Craig and Sienna up in Montana this week and they are both telling me that it’s “starting to feel a little bit like fall” up there.  A “little bit like fall” … it wasn’t even summer?!?!  In fact, I was waxing some surfboards this weekend and the sun wasn’t even out enough to warm the wax to help me get it off the board.  How in the world can it be 62 degrees and cloudy in SoCal in the middle of the summer and “starting to feel a little bit like fall” in Montana?!

On the bright side, we’ve been getting out of the house more in the evenings over the past month to enjoy an evening stroll.  The cooler weather definitely is welcomed at night, especially since we don’t have AC and it can get down right toasty in our apartment when the temps get up into the 90′s on those hot summer nights.

This coming weekend we’re planning to get down to San Onofre to do some surfing and soak up sun before we head out on our extended end of summer vacation stretch to Montana and then to Disney World (more on both next time around), till then – happy summer time from sunny SoCal!

Local boy Brett Simpson won again this year (back to back champ) defeating Jordy Smith in the final. We had a pretty sweet view of the action from our TransWorld VIP seating (big shout out to Nathan Winston for hooking that up).

The rest of the day was spent eating tacos, shopping, and soaking up the rays! here is a pic of us from the VIP booth – hope summer is treating everyone else as good as it’s treating us!

If you Find Clinton on Facebook, or Follow Us on Twitter – then you’re pretty up to date on what’s been happening in the day today. If not, you can always check in here to get your updates on the more notable events (and pictures, since neither of us are fans of having our personal pics floating around Twitter and/or Facebook).

This past weekend we helped our good friend Emily pack up the last of her stuff and head out to Nashville.  Great to see your friends doing what makes them happy, but of course sad that you get left behind.  We also did some shopping on Saturday (yes, a nice little day planned at Bed Bath & Beyond) – had to get a lighter blanket for the bed, the winter down comforter finally needed to go!

On Sunday we had a great brunch with our friends Doug & Kailyn down on Main Street at La Grande Orange (one of our fairly new found gems).  Then headed home for some R&R and some Sunfish Interactivity.  Which reminds me, things are going well right now – we just picked up another new client (check him out if you have time www.andygeller.com).  That’s pretty much it for now, but check back in next week for another update (I promise it will be more exciting than this round!)

Sequoia National Monument is best known for the huge Sequoia trees, but interestingly the park is a pretty amazing overview of the Eastern Sierra climate and landscape.  It took about 4 hours from LA to get to the park. After setting up camp, we all jumped in the 4Runner (one guy designated to the way back) and headed off on some dirt roads to do some exploring.

Hiking near Sugar Loaf

We stopped at several places along the way to do some hiking. The weather was great and temp was in the mid 80′s. Not too far into our first hike we spotted a tree wedged between two other trees and figured … we should be able to ride that like a “see saw”! What ensued was comedy gold:

After a few hours of back roads and random road signs we found ourselves at the top of Tobias Peak(8,600′) with a 360 degree view of the entire park and Kern River Valley. Mary Ann has been the look out up there for over 20 years, and she was more than happy to take a couple of pics for us and give us the low down on how spotting forest fires works.

The entire crew at Tobias Peak Lookout - elevation 8300'

We rambled our way down the mountain and over Parker Pass, but were running on fumes by the time we got down so we had to do an extra 30 miles jaunt to get to the closest gas station and fill up. By the time we made it back to camp, the sun was setting and everyone was ready for some dinner After some burgers and dogs, we rallied the campfire and relaxed for a bit before cashing in for the night.

Bob piles up half the forest and get the campfire going

The next morning we tidied up camp, jumped in the truck, and headed out for the Trail of 100 Giants. One of the most notable attractions in the park, this grove of Sequoia includes some trees that are over 2500 years old!! Pretty cool to wander through the trail and check out the various giant trees (and get some fun pictures too!)

The crew at the Trail of 100 Giants

After the stop at The Trail of 100 Giants, we headed up the road to check out Dome Rock, a giant dome of volcanic granite that over looks the entire Kern River Valley.

The crew at Dome Rock

After Dome Rock, we rolled back to camp and packed up for the drive home. All in all a very fun trip. If you’re interested in heading up that way, it’s about 4 hours each way from Los Angeles. Here’s a map to help you get the visual of where we were:

View Larger Map

Links:

1. Sequoia National Forest, Southern Portion – Western Divide Ranger District:
   http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/gsnm/gsnm-southern-portion.html
2. Full Grid Map of the park:
   http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/maps/quad_maps/quad_index.html
3. Zoom map of roads we rallied in the park

Here is a pic our friend snapped on his phone as he stopped by to say howdy – don’t you wish you lived in Southern California? Can’t wait for this coming week, maybe we’ll load up a picnic basket and ride our bikes down to the beach?!

We kicked the weekend off right with a couple cocktails on Friday night, watched the Germany vs. Spain match on Saturday morning, then rallied down to Venice a surf.  Sunday they headed up to see his sister in Malibu and we went down to Manhattan Beach to hang out with Julie, Molly, Tessa and company and light off some fireworks!

Monday came all too quickly, and Kyle, Amanda, and London were back on the road headed for Nor-Cal.  Here’s hoping the move to Philly is as simple as possible, we’ll sure miss seeing them from time to time down here in sunny SoCal!

It’s a little early in the year for a camping trip in California, especially when you plan on staying at a campground that is 7,000 ft above sea level, but we tried our luck anyway and booked the LAST available spot in the Sherwin Creek campground just outside of Mammoth Lakes, CA.  We left Santa Monica at 11am on Saturday and a short 6 hour drive later, if you take your time to enjoy the scenery of the Eastern Sierra scenic route, we pulled into the campground.

Ski season is still in full swing at Mammoth, which plans to be open until July this year, so there was still a little bit of snow on the roads as we left town and headed out toward the campground.  When camping in California, you typically make your reservation(s) online, then show up to the campground you selected and find your name on piece of paper on the post in front of the campground  you reserved.  We circled the campground (all 88 spots, in 3 loops) several times before we finally gave up and stopped the camp host for a little help on finding our spot.  The host was super nice (and later we learned that he liked to stop by for a nice long friendly chat), and showed us to the spot we had reserved.  We couldn’t find it, because it had the name of another group on it, they had cancelled “last minute” which is why we were able to nab the spot (typically you have to reserver camping spot up to 6 months in advance to be guaranteed of anything).  Ironically enough, we actually in the spot right next to the host (guess that’s what you get when you book the LAST open spot in the campground).

With a couple hours of daylight left (the sun didn’t really set till after 9pm), we setup camp and decided to head into town to grab some dinner (while we were still clean and didn’t smell like campfire ).  Those that haven’t been, Mammoth is a cool little resort ski town.  It’s kind of a cross between Big Sky’s rugged “resortness”, and Bozeman’s grass-root mom/pop feel.  We opted for the “resortness” route, and stopped at a rugged/upscale BBQ joint in the village for a beer, pulled pork sandwich, and the Lakers playoff game.

After dinner, we worked our way back to camp being careful to miss the handful of deer that were wandering around the single lane gravel road that lead back to the campground.  A struggle to get our damp firewood going, a couple of cold PBR’s, and we were in the sack around 11pm.

Up early-ish the next morning, we cooked up a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee, and toast then headed up the road to do some exploring!  We had the great idea of scouting out a couple of other campground, in hopes of a return trip later this summer, but we quickly found out that most of them were snowed in.   Not to be detoured, we stuck it in 4WD and enjoyed some snowdrift, rock crawling to check out the roads.  Sadly, the extra effort didn’t payoff – we always ended up coming to a totally snowed in road before we could get where the road had advertised it’s end would be.

Just in case you are planning on a roadside sight seeing trip, here are a couple of the attractions we were able to explore even with the pile up of spring snow:

• Obsidian Dome – A 300 feet high dome of ancient obsidian.  You can climb up the mound and see the different composition of the obsidian, which is not uniformly black. This is the same material used by the native Paiute Indians to sculpt arrowheads, spearheads and knives, their main trade items in times past.  The eruptions that formed each of these lava domes  550-600 years ago began with an explosive phase, then exuded slow-moving, sticky lava which oozed to the surface and cooled too quickly to allow crystal formation.
• Parker Lake – A 45 minute hike from the trail head, Parker Lake may be the easiest-to-reach “secluded” alpine lake in the eastern Sierra.  The elevation gain, while tough in spots, is minimal; the distance is also minor for such an amazingly beautiful destination.  A hike here can feel like a great escape from civilization, even if only for a little while.
• Silver Lake – Stopped here to enjoy a picnic along the stream that empties out on the bottom side.  Even did a little flyfishing while we were there, but no luck.   The locals had been beating the water pretty hard, and I had a handful of tackle tossers run the hole while I was working with my fly rod.
• Deadman Pass Overlook (10,ooo’) – A short but stunningly beautiful trip that reaches an elevation over 10,000 feet directly across the valley from Mammoth Mountain.

After our full day of road tripping, we slipped back to camp put on the Zac Brown Band, and enjoyed some campfire time.  Smores are always better after sunset, so we waited till 9:30 to enjoy them, and then soaked up the stars (which we miss seeing in LA).

Monday morning I woke early to make the run to the bathroom and discovered that our adventures from the day before had left us with a flat tire.  Easy enough to replace, but I found out when I took my spare out from underneath the truck that the cable that was holding up the spare tire up was BADLY frayed.  We made do to get back to town, but the next week I had to get the piece ($149) and have it installed ($125) to make sure my spare tire didn’t fly off under my truck as I was zooming down the freeway (and by zooming I mean cruising along at 25MPH).

All in all, a great trip – I wish we had some pictures to share, but alas my battery didn’t last long on my camera.  Guess it’s time to ante up and get a new one of those before the big summer vacation bender officially kicks off!