Seasons Change..

Very quickly! I'm sitting here in a sweatshirt and it's slmost June! I feel like we've had summer and winter in the same week! It was almost 100 degree on Monday and then on Friday it was 49! Our mountains even got some snow. We scrapped our plans to hike this weekend because we thought it would be to cold and even snowy! Crazy huh! Some weird May Cali weather!

So yesterday we traveled down to Santa Barbara to not only visit with my cousin and his family, but so I could do some mini sessions and build up my portfolio. I even took some of my cousin and his wife. A few of them are posted on my blog. We wandered out of the park onto the streets and got some great shots.

www.micheleschanker.wordpress.com.

I'm so excited...I just can't hide it!

So today I get home and rush to get the mail as I have done all week. Why? Because I've been waiting for some hopefully very good news.

Today it came...from the National Park Service! After we didn't get a permit to hike Mt Whitney, I started asking myself what other backpacking hike would I like to do before we think about having kids...the GRAND CANYON! So today I reach in the mailbox, see the envelope and notice its not the thin envelope I got from Mt Whitney. This one was much more bulkier! Yup, we got the permits!

This time I requested at a minimum of 1 night, said we were willing to camp at almost any campground, and hike any trail. Basically leaving our options almost limitless. Luckily we got one of our top options. We got two nights at Bright Angel so we can spend a day actually hiking in the canyon and playing around. We are hiking Bright Angel on the way down and coming back up by the South Kaibab Trail. We go down on Sep 20th and return on Monday Sept 22nd! At least I'm going to get my backpacking trip after all.
We still plan to practice the backpack thing by going to Yosemite or somewhere in the sierras for an overnight trip during the summer. Our first training hike will be this weekend as we have to train for Half Dome. We will be going up Half Dome, again, on June 14th!

Yippee....I AM SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED! I literally came bouncing into the house today.

Another Fantastic Weekend

I truly feel so fortunate that we have so many great weekends! I am truly so happy with our life!

This past weekend was Dave's 31st birthday..yes 31 can you believe that! I've known Dave since I was about 23, but honestly it doesn't feel like it's been that long. We've just been having so much fun together. Time goes by fast when your having fun. Happy Birthday again!

So on Thursday night we hopped on a red eye after a small pre birthday happy hour. We arrived to a cool and rainy MD. But being from the desert we didn't mind. After a little nap, we ran some errands and took my mom to get birthday snowballs (her bday is Tuesday). For all of you who are not from the mid atlantic your probably not familiar with snowballs. They are different from snowcones in that the ice is grounded up really fine and then there are about 50 flavors of syrup to choose from. They are way better than any snowcones! Then it was off for Japanese dinner.

Saturday was a ton of fun. Preakness Day! What a blast Preakness is. So many people just having a good time. We even walked over to the infield for a bit, but that just made us all feel old. In tradition of the 133rd running of the Preakness I decided I had to make some photos kind of antiqued. Pimlico is a really old track.

Just had to make sure my mom had a black eyed susan!

Big Brown to the finish line

After the preakness we headed home for a traditional MD crab feast! Yummy...nothing like crabs steamed in old bay!

On Sunday the rain returned. But we headed down to DC anyway for some sightseeing. We went to the Lincoln Memorial, but the rain really started coming.Now thats old skool, huh! I think i really like the action I used here.

So instead we drove to the Dulles Air and Space Museum. That place was pretty neat and was new to me. Then it was off to fly Virgin Atlantic back to LA.
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This photo is from a few weeks ago, but just wanted to post it anyway. It's Dave in La Jolla but I addded some texture for a unique feel. I got action...totally rad action! I also applied one of the BW Totally Rad actions. Haven't had much of a chance to use them yet, but so far I love them!

Happy Early Birthday Dave!

We actually spent all weekend at home, but it was a good one! Although we spent a lot of time doing some much needed cleaning, organizing, lawn care, etc..

Mothers Day/Fathers Day are pretty uneventful for us since we don't have kids or even live close to our parents. But Dave always manges to sneak out, get a little something, and say its from the cats. How cute! Today he got me a wireless optical mouse for my laptop and told me to order the actions I wanted to CS3. He's so adorable!

Anyway sunday morning started out with us assembling this....our new grill (thanks to gift cards from Lowe's from our kitchen remodel! )

We are going to MD over the weekend for Dave's birthday so we can go to Preakness with some friends and family. So while Dave took care of lawn stuff, I went shopping. So we could have Dave's birthday a bit early. We cooked a steak dinner (that was yummy) on the new grill and then it was time for presents!

Look what Dave got!


He also got some new shirts and a hat for hiking.

Instead of birthday cake, he got birthday white chocolate fondue!
What a good day!

Happy Hour!

So we will be traveling for Dave's birthday again this year. Our customary thing has become birthday happy hour. So today I came up with "Dave's 45 sec commercial!" to promote his happy hour! Ha. I love it! It was a surprise for him and when he saw it he loved it too. Check it out. If your local expect this or a link to somehow show up in your inbox in the near future. Location is still TBD. More info will be in the email we send out.

Sometimes the small details make a difference!

I have fallen in love with WHCC (White House Custom Color, for all the non photographers). I ordered some "sample" prints on Linen texture paper this weekend and Gift Certificates for Photoshoots. I must have placed the order on Saturday and the order arrived on my doorstep today! Then every time I get a package from them I get a lollipop! Ha I feel like when I was a kid and would go to the bank with my mom and they'd give me a lollipop! I love that every time I get a package from WHCC I get a Tootsie Pop or a Blow Pop! How cool! Yeah, I'm a sucker for small details, huh! Oh the linen paper is awesome. I love it. I used a wedding photo to get it printed and I absolutely fell in love with it.

Show and Tell Time

Just thought I'd share a few photos from last weekend.

We spent last weekend in San Diego with 2 friends from Maryland

View from our hotel room

Shells on the rocks

Our friends enjoying the view in La Jolla

Walking in the water at La Jolla, and wishing I had put my bathing suit on


The View from the park at the top of the hill (I forgot the name, it's soledad or something like that)

Mt Whitney Update

Still no permit! Ergghh..the minute we both called we got busy signals. Which apparently means there are at least 50 people ahead of you. I was thinking I should have called at like 7:55 and just let it ring for 5 minutes until they turned the phones on or something. I'll probably try again next week for August. There are plenty of weekday day hike permits, but I don't know anyone willing to do 22 miles in one day with me! So disappointing, as this is the one thing I really want to do before we think about having kids since I know this kind of stuff will become much harder to accomplish.

But I also faxed in a permit request for the Grand Canyon for September. If we don't get that, then I guess we'll jut be backpacking in Yosemite or something. Any way we do it, we will be backpacking this year. I'm determined! And I think we are going to call the Mt Whitney people every Thursday afternoon starting in July and see if there are any cancellations. It's close enough that we can just drive up there at the drop of a hat. So that's the plan.

Wish Us Luck!

Tomorrow morning at 8am the phone lines open at the Mt Whitney Permit Office and there are about 8 overnight permits currently for July. So the question is can one of us be one of the first ones to reach the people at the office. According to Dave if we get a busy signal then there are at least 50 people ahead of us! We'll see what happens. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we snag a couple of permits.

Weekend Updates

Gee, its been a while since I've posted anything! We've been quite busy lately.

The other week we had a last minute trip to Maryland for almost an entire week. While we were there we did some fun stuff..baseball game, Baltimore aquarium, Smithsonian, etc... It was good to go back there for a little bit. And we'll be back in about 4 weeks!

Then when we got back we had a couple of days until a friend from Maryland came out to visit. She arrived on Wednesday. I had to work on Thursday, but left early on Friday to spend the afternoon with her. We ended up going out to the poppy reserve. It was a great afternoon for it. Hardly any wind and it was warm. Then we drove down to Hollywood to see some of the touristy stuff there before picking Dave up at work. Then it was off to the Stinking Rose in Beverly Hills for dinner. We had some time to kill before picking up her husband at the airport, so we went to Santa Monica and walked on the pier. However the rides were all closed to the public due to a private event. So we just wandered. Then we picked up Mark and drove to San Diego! We spent Saturday at Wild Animal Park and wine tasting nearby. Then went for dinner and drinks in the Gaslamp district. On Sunday we drove to La Jolla to see the seals. Then it was back to LAX to drop them off. I'll post some photos soon

Oh I almost forgot! Check out the new website design for my photography stuff. www.micheleschankerphotography.com

Not a big fan of spring!

For one it means ski season is pretty much over, unless you like skiing in mush. Secondly our lawn always looks so bad! This is two weekends in a row we have spent time working on the lawn. This weekend was cutting and fertilizing. We have so many weeds. It's uncontrollable. Our front area looks awful. We used to have plants but they all died in the cold weather last winter, now we just have weeds. So we've decided that its to much of for us to take care of, so we are going to look into getting a front patio put on. It won't be covered or anything, but some decorative concrete. Besides our front walkway is all torn up from ice too. So that needs to be repaired or replaced anyway. Ahh...the joys of home ownership!

So while Dave was enjoying an intermission during his hockey game today, I dragged him outside to practice a few headshot type things for a few minutes. Not the best background...its our driveway, but it was just practice stuff. Here's one of them.

Coming soon to a computer near you...my new photography website. It's going to be in flash and its pretty sweet. I'm very exited. But its still in the works, as I'm mostly trying to figure out what images to use. But it will still be at www.micheleschankerphotograhy.com

Gotta love it when...

..Brightroom comes to a race I'm running! I never really like photos of myself (I'd much rather be behind the camera) but I especially don't like most photos of me while I'm running. Not exactly the most flattering. Most of the time I have some painful look on my face. I guess this one isn't so bad. I've seen worse.

Santa Anita 5K Race

This past weekend was the Santa Anita 5K run. We do this every year. It’s a tougher course because there are some gradual uphills plus you run the last quarter of a mile or so on the dirt horse training track. I finished with a pretty average time for myself…24:31. Funny thing was the night before Dave and I were predicting our times and I said 24:31!
This is a big race with about 2000 people. I came in 7th in my age group and 44th overall female! Not bad since there were about 1000 females entered! Yipee! Dave ran the race to and maintained about the same time as previous years. I was really proud of him though because he ran about 1.5 miles straight and no walking!

Home Improvement

Yeah, so I have no other rooms to paint in this house! I have now painted our laundry room! But boy do I love the wall color and the curtains. We got brown curtains with blue and green circles! So cool! Now we just have to get the tile put down thats been sitting in the closet for a year now! And hopefully relocate the litter box to the garage in the near future, with a cat door installed of course!


Oh and I also love my fisheye lens on the canon 5D!

The Disappointment Grows!

So after getting our permit status in the mail, I figured we would at least be able to get a permit for the middle of the week. The availability calendar was posted yesterday and absolutely nothing is available for overnight hiking from mid June to the end of Sept! We could go in early June but I'm to scared of that. June can mean cold temps at night and still lots of snow pack up top.

I am so incredibly disappointed. I was so looking forward to doing this hike this summer. It was something I really wanted to accomplish before having kids. There are plenty of weekday Day Hike permits available, even some on July 4th! But I don't know anyone that would be willing to do 21 miles and an elevation change of ~6000 feet as a day hike with me. I just feel so awfully disappointed right now. This was something I was reallllyyyyy looking forward to.

I guess we could change our focus completely and go hike the grand canyon or something this summer. That would be cool. But the highest point in the lower 48 is so awesome. All I know is I will do it. Maybe not this summer, but I will at some point. Even if we have to have our parents come out and watch a kid one summer. I'm soooo determined to get up there.

Photo of Jackson Hole Mountain

Big Disappointment

Well to start off I've been sick with some sort of stomach virus since Wednesday. I'm starting to feel much better tonight and I'm hoping to actually eat solid foods tomorrow! I've been living off Jamba Juice, jello, and yogurt.

So I went to get the mail today and found out that by the time our application was selected in the Mt Whitney lottery there was no room for any of the dates we selected. So that means no permit for us! I'm very disappointed about this. I was so looking forward to getting to the top of Whitney this summer. Our only hope is to check the availability calendar when its posted and see if anything will work for us. If so then we can try and book that. But most likely it be weekday dates.

Lost and Found Vacation (and photos)

Dave and I have decided today on the way home to nickname this trip the "Lost and Found trip".

On Monday we woke up to very overcast gray clouds! We knew the snow was on the way. The morning wasn't to bad, just gray. Which is tough when your skiing because it is very hard to see all the bumps and moguls when the light is that flat. About noon or so the snow started and didn't stop all day. So the visibility got worse, but we still had a good time. I was pretty much forced to ski the "easier"( double blues, etc..) stuff all day because I couldn't see very well. I did do a few black mogul trails, but it was very tough to see them. We only made it up on Sublett Lift once, because the wind was horrendous. By the end of the day we had some nice powder for our last few runs.

So now for the real reason of the nick name of this trip. After lunch we decided to take the gondola up the mountain. We got up there and put our skis on and Dave realizes he doesn't have his poles! He left them in the gondola! Ooopss! So the lift people said they'd call down to the bottom and have them hold the poles for us. So Dave has to ski down the hill with no poles. Which isn't to big of a deal, its just hard to get used to. We get to the gondola...and no poles! So we go back up again...still no poles. So we figure maybe someone took them or something. Dave got a rental pair for the rest of the day. About 3pm we decided to take the gondola one more time. Guess what...they were there. So we managed to lose and find a ski then lose and find ski poles all in the same trip! Pretty crazy huh.

So I know I've totally slacked on posting photos. Ski trips for us are so busy. I hardly find time to even take photos. As I won't ski with a camera, since I'm a bit daring on skis. So my photography is limited to on and off the slopes time only. I haven't gone through them all yet, so I haven't picked out my favorites. But here's a few that I quickly picked out :

Dave on the sleigh ride ( I tried to get a candid shot, but he noticed the camera and turned and looked at me, oh well. It's still cute. )

Some Elk at the Reserve

More Elk

At the elk reserve... the bird in the tree is a Bald Eagle

Moose Crossing

The Snake River

One of the moose who frequented our condo complex

Sunrise light on the mountains behind our condo complex (It was -2 degrees when I took this photo at ~7:45am)

Hope you enjoyed some of the photos. Check the smugmug site soon for more.

Review of Jackson Hole, WY

Ok, so since I get lots of hits on this blog with people searching about places we have been, I' m going to continue with our review of our latest vacation.

Jacskon Hole, WY - March 2008

The Aspens Condos: Great deal for the price. We got a 1 bedroom condo for $110 a night! But I know studios were going for about $85 a night! The complex is about 4 miles from Jackson Hole Resort (Teton Village) and 7 miles from downtown Jackson. There is a shuttle bus, but we had a rental car, so we drove to the ski resort everyday. The condo complex doesn't have a hot tub, but the sports complex right next door does. I believe some of the condos include a membership to the sports complex. If not, you'll have to pay extra. I would stay here again. But if money weren't an issue I'd go with a place in Teton Village. In my opinion I'd give this place 3.5 stars (out of 4).

Jackson Hole: This was an awesome place to ski! I just loved it! The steep terrain and powder were great. Dave didn't like that the lifts seemed slow (they weren't high speed quads). But I think this kept things from getting skied out. I don't know if it was the time of year we were here, but there were hardly any lift lines at all. If you come during the mountain festival, lift tickets are much cheaper. Some of the best snow for us was on the Sublett and northeastern ridge chair lifts. Although Thunder Lift seemed pretty good too.

Food: We at at Q - BBQ. It was good, but not great. We also went to Calico for dessert and that was yummy. Another night we at at the Wort Hotel. That was completely yummy and we would totally recommend that. For drinks were really enjoyed the Mangy Moose at Teton Village. The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar was interesting, but not all that it seemed it would be. The bar was neat because each barstool was a horse saddle. However they only took cash and all the beer was in bottles (nothing on tap). Oh I almost forgot. Check out the brewery (I forgot the name right now). They had good food and pretty good beer. We heard Blue Lion was good as well, but never got a chance to eat there.

Things to Do (besides skiing):Definitely go on the sled ride to see the elk at the preserve. You get up nice and close to them and it was a great experience for only $12 each. Grand Teton NP was also good. But not to much to do during the winter. I'd suggest renting snow shoes before you enter the park. Or else enter by Moose, WY and go cross country skiing or snowshoeing there. The interesting part was seeing people ice fishing on Jackson Lake. Go to the town square. It's kinda touristy, but neat. Lots of shops and some western bars.

Dollar Rental Car:They had the best prices when we went. The downfall is that the cars are offsite, so you haev to rely on the shuttle bus to get to and from the airport. But they gave us a 4WD Rav 4.

Found: One Red, White, and Blue Ski!

Today was a great day for skiing. It started out rather cool with the temps at 7am running about -2 degrees! But it quickly warmed up some after a couple of hours on the slopes. Today was filled with Blue Skies! Which is great for skiing because it means you can actually see all the bumps in the snow. Before going down for lunch, Dave suggests that we go down Moran Faces one for time and look for his ski. Michele figures its pretty hopeless at this point with the snow being packed down but agrees to go. The snow on this trail was horrible today, so not to much fun skiing to the halfway point. Anyway we got down to the spot where we remembered the fall happening and started poking round with our poles. After about 5 minutes of poking, Dave starts frantically digging in the snow and laughing! Yes he found his ski! How amazing is that! It was like a finding a needle in the haystack. We were so happy to find the ski! This is a trip that we will never forget!

The rest of the day was great. We skied lots of great trails. Michele got to practice some moguls and we even made it all the way to the top! We can't wait to be back on the slopes tomorrow for more great skiing. It's our last day and then its back to reality.

Yesterday we drove around the snow covered Grand Teton National Park. We even got to see people Ice Fishing on Jackson Lake. In the afternoon we went souvenir shopping and headed back for the hot tub. After a trip to the hot tub we spotted 2 Moose in our condo complex!