Grand Teton & Yellowstone (Summer 2019 catchup)

Continuing the catch-up - sorry! After realizing that the National Parks in the west are amazing and we should've been skipping Disney this whole time, we decided to try Grand Teton and Yellowstone, and stayed right outside Jackson Hole, WY. One of the activities was paragliding, and why not?! YOLO, so the boys and I gave it a shot, and it's quite bracing to run straight down a steep mountain, but it literally was only about 4 steps before my feet lifted off the ground (thank you, Jesus).


Don't have any shots of Drew, but he had lots of video.


I think these are moose we saw driving through Grand Teton.


We did a couple of great hikes...











And Drew made contact with somebody using his portable Ham radio, which was pretty cool. ("CQ, CQ, CQ" - reminds me of our old CB, "Breaker Breaker 1-9!")


Oh yeah, their water comes in boxes, which is disconcerting.


This was at dinner atop a mountain - beautiful weather.


And you can rent bikes instead of hiking...


Cool shot Dean took - historic homes...


And the last day we decided to venture into Yellowstone - first stop was Old Faithful and the restroom. Totally didn't believe this was a thing, but apparently it is!


Hot springs are amazing...


Old Faithful was cool but there were TONS of people.


This is the lobby of the hotel there - very cool to read about how they built it and I think one of my college roommates stayed there but you have to reserve WAY ahead of time.


This bison was walking around the parking lot at one of the springs and you'd be shocked at the tourists who were oblivious and just walking right by him till the park rangers yelled at them. I also just saw that a woman was injured by one a couple of days ago because she got too close...some people!


Some of the falls just don't even look real in photos.








I'm blanking on the name of this particular spring, but it's like being on another planet.


Saw lots of wildlife just driving around...





This was back at our hotel watching a paraglider get ready to take off from the highest peak...





And this was a really weird painting in the lobby that I just had to get a shot of - not sure why swimming foxes are a thing, but I thought it was cool.

Yay for National Parks! Oh, I didn't get any pics of white water rafting, but that happened too - such good times!

College Trips 2019 (Catch up)

Okay I'm trying to catch up here, so I had to go back to Spring Break for the New York-Los Angeles college tour! For some reason I only have 1 pic from NYC. We toured NYU and stayed at the Washington Square Hotel, which was amazing, ate some great food in the neighborhood, and saw Hamilton. There was this funny moment in the restaurant before Hamilton where we all went to the restroom, and this older lady who'd been dancing at her table earlier started talking to the boys about life. I ended up in tears and it was very surreal, but for the life of me I can't remember the specifics of what she said...though it did involve f-bombs. Something about Dean and me letting them grow up without micromanaging them, that they were going to be fine. Anyhoo, this was the week after Pride Week apparently...as we discovered on our neighborhood walks:


Then we flew to LA to tour USC. We drove around some iconic spots...





and stayed at the coolest hotel, the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood, that had the loveliest property with hidden paths and lots of villas.





Okay, this is from the epic bicycle tour we took around LA on electric bikes, and this was a famous house but I forget the name:











I believe this was Lucille Ball's house...or somebody famous....in Beverly Hills now:





And this is in Venice Beach where we stopped for lunch on the beach before making our way back.


They have the coolest trees in LA.


And this is the hotel pool. Apparently lots of musicians stayed here because there's an underground recording studio, so there are lots of photos and memorabilia of them:


This was the path to our villa with a huge ad across the street - we stayed right off the Sunset Strip.


Random shot of USC - beautiful campus!


And we got to go into the recording studio's lobby, but people were actually recording, so they just gave us a coffee mug, Tshirt, and quick speech about who all had recorded there (Lucas knew the names, I did not, but I did later learn that Duran Duran had done something there!). I thought this was a plain black mug until Drew pointed out that it changed colors when hot liquid was added - voila!


And walking around LA we encountered this in a clothing store window on Rodeo Drive - funny.


I have no recollection of a plane where they let the boys take over the cockpit, but apparently it happened.


Needs further investigation.


And Lucas ended up getting accepted to Belmont in Nashville, but this was an awesome family trip anyway!!!