Sedona

Slacking on bloggin

I've been slacking on blogging, just like I've been slacking on everything else lately. Less then 9 days until Christmas and I still have most of my shopping to do. This is unusual for me. I'm usually done by October and the only thing left to do these final 9 days is to get Brian drunk and convinced that wrapping all the presents is a good idea. I miss the days where Christmas shopping was easy. When the kids were little and just happy to get something. These days they are teenagers and picking the prefect gift has just become stressful. I hate the idea of gift cards but I hate the idea of them hating what they got more. Man I said Hate alot in that last sentence :-) Anyway I didn't start this post with the idea of complaining about Christmas or shopping or my lack of motivation. I started this post because I found some photos that I hadn't had a chance to share while I was uploading our Christmas cards at Costco. If I don't have your address and you'd like an x-mas card, please leave your address or email it to me. Thanks. Anyway back to the photos. Some of these are from our trip to Arizona, the others are from our Thanksgiving trip to Oregon/Washington.

Thanksgiving

I swear this is my cousin truck

Logan showing off his mad skateboardking skills in 30 degrees weather

We headed north this year for our Thanksgiving celebration and I had plans to write a witty post about how much fun and excitement we were having but I'm not really in the mood after stuffing myself with turkey and yummy mash potatoes. So I'll just post pictures and feel miserable about how fat I am.

Pastels on the Plaza

Every October businesses from around the county come together to support our local North Coast Children's Services. The event not only gives back to the community it also shows off some of our very talented local artist. In total there were over a 100 entries. These are some of my favorites.

Vista Point

Brian and I always talk about moving one day but I'm not sure I could leave this.

Hops in Humboldt

Each year Fortuna Business Associates put on an event at Rhoner Park called Hops in Humbodt. For 30 dollars its all you can drink beer and live bands from 1 to 6 pm. Two free tickets later and one sunny afternoon, we've decided it might just have to become an annual event.

You Drive What?

Seriously!?! Has anyone else seen this guy around town? Please tell me how he gets away with this? I'm tempted to send this into that website - youdrivewhat.com Gotta Love Humboldt and all the tweakers!

The PCT

Pictures of our trip are posted below.

Brian, Isaac, Caren, and I spent three days backpacking through the Russian Wilderness. For those of you who don't know where that is, its just above the town of Etna. And for those of you who don't know where Etna is, its just North of Trinity Lake on Hwy 3. Sorry it wasn't actually in Russia. ha ha.

We left my parents place at Trinity early Saturday morning and made it to the Taylor Lake Trail head around 9am. We hiked up to the Pacific Crest Trail(PCT) (Mexico to Canada) and began our journey. The plan was to hit Upper Albert Lake by mid afternoon. By mid afternoon my feet hurt, I was exhausted and we were no where near Upper Albert. We reached Payne's lake around 2:30pm and for those of you who aren't paying attention 9am to 2:30pm is a lot of freaking walking. We ate lunch and we're promised by the guy holding the map that Lower Albert was just over that hill. What he forgot to mention was that hill was straight UP and all granite. I'm not in the best of shape but I feel like I can hold my own against anybody. Having said that I was at my breaking point when we started up that granite slab. About halfway up I was stung three times by a bee/wasp/bug? I'm not really sure at this point but this is where I completely lost it. I wrapped myself in a towel, sat down and cried on a rock. Did I forget to mention at that very moment two guys crested over the hill and got to experience me in all my glory? Needless to say Brian packed my bag the rest of the way up the hill. Ha I don't know why I keep calling it a hill. It was a Fxxking mountain.

We made it to Lower Albert Lake at around 4pm. It look us close to 1.5 hours to ascend 700 feet. I was done. Burnt out, tired, cranky, in pain, and smiling like a lunatic. We never made it to Upper Albert that night :-) The night brought thunder and lighting but we were lucky enough to wake up to clear Sky's. Originally I though the plan was to retrace our steps once we saw upper Albert but I should have known better. The boys though we should cross country it to twin lakes which was just over the hill and through the woods. We hiked three hours that day on some of the steepest terrain I have ever seen. Twin lakes had an awesome campsite and a muddy lake. We got our tents up just in time to see the thunder clouds over head. Monday morning we spend another three hours hiking back to Taylor Lake Trail head. A very nice family was getting ready to spend the day at the lake and offered us a ride to our car. THANK YOU VERY NICE FAMILY!. Burgers at Dottie's and back home we went.

Its hard to capture all of Gods glory in photos and even harder for me to express it in words.

The Russian Wilderness

I fell down
Upper Albert

Brian and the View

Beautiful Lake

Brian at Upper Albert

Smith Lake

Our Campsite just below upper Albert

The view from upper Albert to lower Albert Lake

Albert Lake, View from our campsite

Mount Shasta

Albert Lake

The climb to Alberts Lake

Paynes Lake

Smith Lake

The Start of the PCT from Etna, CA
The Crew