Veron­ica and I just got back from a trip to visit my Mom out west. I flew to Nevada a few days before Christ­mas. My orig­i­nal flight was greatly delayed, but an adept United ticket agent rebooked me on a US Air flight that left Mil­wau­kee and arrived in Reno slightly ear­lier than my orig­i­nal itin­er­ary. Other than the air­line, the only other dif­fer­ences were that I flew through Phoenix rather than Den­ver, and the the sec­ond leg of my trip was in first class (merry Christ­mas to me!). On Christ­mas Eve day, we spent much of our time prep­ping food for a repeat of last year’s big din­ner party — between us we made three pies, a big salad, roasted veg­eta­bles, and a baked brie. The din­ner itself was quite a suc­cess; I think we had thir­teen peo­ple for the meal and a cou­ple more for dessert.

Tule Plants

We didn’t cel­e­brate on Christ­mas Day itself, as Veron­ica wasn’t fly­ing into Reno until that evening. Instead, my mom and I drove out to the Still­wa­ter Wildlife Refuge east of Fal­lon, hop­ing to see some migrat­ing Tun­dra Swans. We only saw one other per­son at the refuge, and that was only briefly. Most of the time, the only evi­dence of civ­i­liza­tion we could see was the very road on which we were dri­ving. Unfor­tu­nately, there weren’t any swans to see, either. The refuge com­prises a net­work of lakes and wet­lands, but on the day we were there they were all frozen over. So, no open water to attract migrat­ing birds. We did see a few hawks, some Prairie Fal­cons, a cou­ple of Great Blue Herons, and one Bald Eagle, but all from a dis­tance. That evening, Veron­ica arrived fol­low­ing a rel­a­tively smooth trip.

Soar­ing Hawk at Washoe Lake

We had our Christ­mas on Box­ing Day, emp­ty­ing our over­stuffed stock­ings, unwrap­ping presents, and eat­ing my mom’s deli­cious crème brûlée French toast. Then, we headed up to Reno (stop­ping at Washoe Lake along the way) for some shop­ping and a visit to the Nevada Museum of Art. The Museum isn’t huge, but it always seems to have very inter­est­ing exhibits. The fea­tured exhi­bi­tion this time was a col­lec­tion of more than 100 of Rembrandt’s prints. Although he’s known pri­mar­ily for his paint­ings, the Dutch­man was also a pro­lific print­maker. Since many of the works are small and have very fine details, the museum pro­vided mag­ni­fy­ing glasses to carry around the gallery with you. Not know­ing much about print­mak­ing, I appre­ci­ated that the cura­tors pro­vided good expla­na­tions of the processes, often show­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the same print to show how changes in tech­nique can alter the final product.

Us on the Marin Headlands

The next day, we headed over the moun­tains to the Bay Area to stay with our friends David and Francesca. We had a pretty relax­ing visit — one day hang­ing out in Berke­ley, and one in San Fran­cisco. Among other things, we made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, shopped at the City Lights Book­store (where many of the beat poets hung out, and one of the best book­stores I’ve ever been to), and vis­ited the Legion of Honor Art Museum (more on that in another post). Our one sched­uled event while we were in Cal­i­for­nia was a great one — my mom took us to see Wicked. Veron­ica had seen it before, but the other two of us hadn’t. The pseudo-clockwork set was very cool, the show was funny, and the singers were amaz­ing. The lead roles were being played by the stand­bys, but they were great; except for the pro­gram, I wouldn’t have known they weren’t the regulars.

I didn’t take all that many pho­tos on the trip, but click the thumb­nails above to see my small­ish gallery. I’ll leave you with a pic­ture of Veron­ica behind bars at Bat­tery Spencer, over­look­ing the Golden Gate Bridge:

Enter­ing the Cave

Over labor day week­end, my dad drove up to Wis­con­sin for a visit. Among other things, we hit the farm­ers’ mar­ket, went for a bike ride, and attempted to tour the Cap­i­tal Brew­ery (but, they were closed for a pri­vate event). But, one of the coolest things we did was a visit to the Cave of the Mounds in Blue Mounds, Wis­con­sin. The cave, which has no nat­ural open­ings of sig­nif­i­cant size, was dis­cov­ered in 1939 dur­ing a lime­stone quar­ry­ing oper­a­tion. Quar­ry­ing was halted, the cave was quickly devel­oped, and pub­lic tours began the fol­low­ing year. Though not a huge cave, the tour took about an hour. High­lights included a six-foot long cephalo­pod fos­sil in the cave’s ceil­ing and some inter­est­ing mul­ti­col­ored cave for­ma­tions.

Pur­ple Asters with Bugs

Cave of the Mounds also offers a cou­ple of short above-ground trails, which we walked after emerg­ing from the cav­ern. The trails offered myr­iad beau­ti­ful plant life, lots of insects and spi­ders, and not a few birds. I wasn’t able to get any decent bird pic­tures, but I did get a few good flower and bug pho­tos. Veron­ica gets the buf-spotting prize for the day; she found a katy­did blend­ing in with leaves, a cou­ple of siz­able grasshop­pers, and a bunch of daddy-long legs, all of which seemed quite con­tent to stay put long enough to be pho­tographed. Click here to see all of my above and below-ground pho­tos from Cave of the Mounds.

Also, here are some of my pre­vi­ous wild cav­ing pic­tures taken in Ten­nessee caves: Camp’s Gulf Cave, Indian Grave Point Cave, Cave of the Skulls, and Christ­mas Cave.

Golden Gate Bridge

The week before last, I headed out west to visit my mom in Nevada. We spent one day at Lake Tahoe, swim­ming, sun­ning, and Shake­speare­ing. We saw Much Ado About Noth­ing, which was far bet­ter than last year’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. The next day, we drove to Napa (by way of Fry’s Elec­tron­ics) to visit friends Mark and Dawn. We weren’t there long enough to actu­ally tour any winer­ies, but we did take a scenic drive through the vineyards.

Most of our time, though, was spent in the Bay Area. We again stayed with friends David and Francesca (and their daugh­ter Maria) in Oak­land. Our intent was to have a relax­ing visit, so we spent quite a bit of our time there just hang­ing out and doing some shop­ping in Berke­ley. I made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s on Vine, and picked up a good sup­ply of Moli­nari salame — one of my favorite foods in the world — at Gen­ova Del­i­catessen. I also made a trip to Forrest’s for a bas­soon pickup (more on that soon).

Sphinx Out­side the de Young

My mom and I only went across the bay to San Fran­cisco on one day, but we squeezed in quite a bit. We started off at the de Young Museum to see the trav­el­ing King Tut exhibit. We got there early, and man­aged to see much of it before the crowds arrived. The exhibit included many arti­facts asso­ci­ated with Tutankhamun’s prob­a­ble ances­tors (his pre­cise lin­eage is uncer­tain), as well as those from the tomb of the boy king him­self. Unfor­tu­nately the most famous Tut arti­fact, his gold funeral mask, no longer trav­els out­side Egypt. But there was cer­tainly no short­age of other breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful objects to see.

Golden Gate Park Band

We spent about an hour and a half work­ing our way through the exhibit, then spent some time else­where in Golden Gate Park. We took a stroll through the Japan­ese tea gar­den, although since we’d just stopped at the de Young’s cafe, we didn’t actu­ally have tea. Then, we walked over to the Tem­ple of Music, where the Golden Gate Park Band was set­ting up for an after­noon con­cert. That afternoon’s con­cert con­sisted of all Broad­way tunes, and we stuck around and lis­tened for a lit­tle while.

Kite­boarder Under the Bridge

We’d brought a pic­nic lunch with us, and we drove out to the beach to eat it. It was over­cast and hazy, but still nice to sit on the sand and enjoy the sea breeze dur­ing our meal. After lunch, we headed over to the Golden Gate Bridge. We parked at bridge level and walked down a steep path to the water­front near Fort Point. The clouds were low enough to obscure the tops of the bridge’s tow­ers, which made for some dra­matic photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. Many sail­ing craft of all sorts were out on the bay that day, tak­ing advan­tage of the brisk wind. We spot­ted a group of kite board­ers zoom­ing across the water. A cou­ple of the more dar­ing ones were play­ing under the bridge and even beyond it in the open ocean.

As usual, click the pho­tos above for larger ver­sions, or check out the whole gallery here. The gallery con­tains a panorama of the city across the bay I stitched together from five or six sep­a­rate pic­tures. The ver­sion in the gallery isn’t very big, though. Here’s a much larger ver­sion.