Xmas 2013

The 3 musketeers - as silly as ever, 23 years strong!

Pizza-making tradition - also still going strong!

 

Surprise birthday reunion!

A little snow at Doc Daniels' cabin

 xmas morning xcountry ski

gorgeous sunny blue skies

super cool ice crystals

I took my Geomorphology class to the Grand Tetons, and then the National Parks all got closed by the government.

Though the weather was rather cold, we got some great streaks of luck to carry us through a most successful field trip.

Awesome luckiness #1: minutes after getting to camp a big bull moose walked through and managed to not poop on anyone's stuff.

 

Awesome luckiness #2: ran into the son of the late great David Love, who wrote the geology of the Grand Tetons. He gave the class an overview of the geology. It was fabulous!

  

students drawing sketches and taking notes

 

 Gros Ventre landslide

 Spectacular view from Lizard Creek camp at the north end of the park

 Spectacular view from Gros Ventre camp

Spectacular view from the driver's seat right before heading home

I went to Paris for a geomorphology conference and all I looked at was this giant mirrored structure...

So I got to present at the 8th annual IAG (International Association of Geomorphologists) conference in Paris, which was a pretty awesome conference in terms of learning cool geomorphology stuff - but, as a tourist, I pretty much sucked. You would barely even know that I was IN Paris. Oh well, the "Geode" was super cool looking and it was right at the Cite des Sciences, which is where the conference was.

La Geode: view from Cite des Sciences

La Geode: late afternoon

  

La Geode: sunrise, as seen from the apartment

 

La Geode: sunset, as seen from the apartment

  

La Geode: fooling around with mirrors like a funhouse

The above is only a very small fraction of the photos I took of the Geode. I think I have 200 photos from Paris and 190 of them are Geode-related. Anyway, below is the majority of the other 10 photos.

  

Hilarious diorama in the window of an apartment I walked by daily on my way to the Cite des Sciences

 

Ultra creepy window... "decoration"? of a hair salon... with dude playing piano inside (as inexplicable as the dolls...)

 

Oh look! It's the Seine!

Sweet lion sculpture and some sort of famous structure in the background

I spent almost my entire time in the Louvre within the confines of the basement Egypt exhibit. Because it was AMAZING. Look at the freaking detail in those hieroglyphics!!! Look at the face! The feathers! I was completely blown away.

And then I saw the mummies. The Egyptians mummified EVERYTHING. Scarab beetles. Ibises. Cats, dogs, crocodiles, small rodents. They even had sarcophagi. I think I looked at mummies for an hour, and then an announcement went over the PA system that they were closing in 15 minutes so I dashed off to find the Mona Lisa...

...but I got distracted by Roman mosaics, which were spectacular as well.

I did take a moment to look up at the Eiffel Tower as well. It's definitely a neat structure, it's no Geode... but it's pretty neat.

Wedding at Croctuta

From one wedding straight to another... drove up to some of my most favouritest mountains and celebrated a cabin-mountain-meadow wedding in the hot California sun.

Casual, rustic, short & sweet.

Since we were in the neighbourhood, had to make a trek to Lassen Volcanic National Park and hike up Mt. Lassen.

It was bright and sunny, but the air was cool, which made for perfect hiking weather and also perfect "sunburn the crap out of yourself" weather.

This fatty chipmunk went directly from the peanut he was shoving in his mouth to the green m&m he wished he'd noticed first but was glad he discovered before any other critters got to it.

After hiking Lassen we went to check out the (extremely disappointing) cold boiling lake. Not much of the lake was "boiling"... most of it was "filled with plants".

But... 2.5 miles later, the trail did take us up into Bumpass Hell via the little-traveled back route, which made it completely worthwhile.

The semester ended, and I went into the field

Field work this spring involved borrowing some rafts and getting a couple of special permits to collect samples in Desolation-Gray Canyons... while rafting down said canyons...

It started out pretty ominous and with a few snafus, but by day 2 everything had worked itself out, including the weather! Many samples were collected during the week on the river, it was spectacularly beautiful, hot, loads of dead animals floating down the river, too much food, and overall a grand success.

 

 stormy beginnings

 

 open skies

 

 just the right amount of white water

 

 desert blooms

 gorgeous camps

mountain lion tracks

parking boats at awkward landings to reach awkward outcrops to do field work - hooray for lots of field assistants!

can't complain about that.

Visit from Sister

Lulu came out to visit, and building on the theme of weird California, I immediately took her out to see the "Metaphor: Tree of Utah" that Utah is not famous for.

Metaphor.

Then we drove a little further along to the Bonneville Speedway.

It was a lake, thus we could set no land speed records.

Since it's winter, we went cross country skiing a couple of times. The first of these times it was too warm to ski... so instead I accumulated huge wads of snow above and below my skis and plodded along awkwardly on ski-stilts.

 

Lulu did enjoy that we got to ski into Idaho though.

Conveniently there was a derby scrimmage on this weekend as well, so some watching of derby got to happen for Lulu as well. Here Roll X and I are doing something useful AND the photo isn't blurry. Success!