For Victory

Taken at the edge of the glacier on top of the volcano, Cotopaxi, about an hour SE of Quito, Ecuador.

Justine was much better at this than me

More like this to come...

We are back in America now, and sometime this weekend, probably between World Series games 3 and 4, we'll have a more complete update with stories and pictures. Until then, let this whet your appetite. :)

An old photo from Quito

This is from our first night in Ecuador, when we met up with our friend who now lives in Berlin. We had dinner at El Arabe, a medeteranean place in the new part of Quito. Actually, this was one of the best meals we had here in Ecuador.

cafe austria en cuenca, ecuador

Hanging with coffee and wireless at a very touristy place on a sunday morning...

graffitti (?) en cuenca, ecuador

More Ecuador

Still unable to post photos, but will do so quickly after returning to the States. Yesterday, we went to a high altitude national park in the Andes, Parque Nacional Cajas. It looked a lot like some of the alpine regions of New Zealand, but different in many ways, too. Today, we are going to a cloud forest in the north of the country.

Adios!

Quito, Ecuador

Blogging from Justine's Droid... so I appologize for the brevity. Also watching game 5.

Yesterday we went to the CENTER OF THE EARTH, also known as the location some guy first identified the equatorial position. Today, we climbed most of the way up the glaciated volcano, Cotopaxi (we peaked at 5000 meters... about 17000 feet), then rode mountain bikes down. Freakin awesome. We also milked a cow today. Squirt.

Food is lacking, but sights, scenery are great.

Yosemite National Park

We went to Yosemite National Park over the weekend... nothing big, just some car camping at Hodgdon Meadow near the Big Oak Flat entrance. We hiked part of the way up Yosemite Falls, but got a late start so we didn't finish. We also hiked down into Merced Grove, a small cluster of Sequoias that doesn't receive nearly the attention it probably deserves (though with bigger, more tourist-friendly areas like Mariposa Grove, I guess it's understandable). Anyway, here's some photos of our trip, including two amazing sunsets (I guess every sunset in Yosemite is amazing), and plenty of cute critters. Enjoy!

Yosemite

Two Sierra summits in one day... We love California!

Yesterday, Justine and I went on a relatively short day hike from Donner Pass to the tops of Mt. Donner (where we ate lunch) and Mt. Judah. The Judah trail is supposed to be a loop, but the South side of the trail was snowed in, so we walked out the same way we walked in. One of the coolest things was actually this back tracking, since the afternoon heat significantly increased the flow of the snow melt, causing trails to turn into gushing slides and tiny trickles into full on water features! Click HERE for the pics.

Enjoy, and hope you all had a great 4th!

-mike