Winter Wonderland

My most recent article for the Los Angeles Times travel section -- "Yosemite roars into winter action" -- is now on the Web at travel.latimes.com. The story is about all the fun things you can do in Yosemite National Park during the winter. As you can tell from previous posts, we're big fans of snowshoeing and just snow in general.

Friday the 13th (and Saturday the 14th)

Shortly after waking up yesterday morning the heavy rain turned to heavy snow. Before I knew it we were out in the female llama pasture playing and sledding.





Later that night, after the roads cleared, we made our way to a party in El Portal, a small community at one of the entrances to Yosemite National Park. All the elements for a good party were there: bonfire, music, dancing, interesting people, good food. Ediza and Maggie entertained the crowd until we feel asleep in the early morning.

On our way back home we paid a visit to Amber's dad, Valen, who was celebrating his birthday. He was born on Valentine's Day 50 years ago! This evening Amber made a fancy dinner and Ediza charmed us afterwards by dancing to romantic French music with her pink cowgirl boots. Ooh la la.

'Ultimate Guide to the World'

I wanted to say thanks to everybody for their support regarding my story in the Los Angeles Times travel section. The story -- about our around-the-world journey -- can be found online (travel.latimes.com) and in the paper's "Ultimate Guide to the World 2009" (published 2/8/09).

The goal of my story was to inspire people to turn off their televisions, quit obsessing over the "recession" and go out and have an adventure -- whether it's walking down the street or traveling around the globe. And having kids shouldn't stop you.


This weekend we went down to L.A. for a change of pace. On Saturday, we visited the zoo, which was celebrating the Chinese New Year. I've never been a big fan of zoos (they're actually quite depressing), but it was neat for Ediza to see some of the animals from all of her books come to life. Wearing her favorite color, Ediza blends in with a flock of pink flamingos below.


The next morning I took a walk down Sunset Boulevard and went to a Starbucks inside of a huge laundromat. I bought an L.A. Times and sat down to read it. When I came across my story, the opening line struck me: "My boss handed me a fortune cookie on my last day of work." Ironically, that last day of work was exactly (to the day) a year ago.

When I quit my job and was about to embark on our epic adventure I knew good things were in store. Did I think a year later I would be sipping a chai latte while watching people shove dirty laundry into washing machines and reading about our trip in one of the country's largest newspapers? Probably not.