We caught some rare sunshine today on a lunch walk. And the lagoon was part ice and part water, making some interesting lines and patterns.

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Sydney (besides sun, sea and Rory!) was visiting some of the new art museums in the city, and others that we’re new to us! There were so many really fun exhibitions, I hope these photos do them justice! The first was the “Sydney Modern” which funnily enough was profiled by the New York Times just after we got back, it really is world class! They had this creepy basement exhibit that was really dark, but Rory was very brave, able to walk around it (but staying away from the really dark,…

As part of our trip to Australia, myself and Colman had an opportunity to go hiking in the Snowy Mountains, camping overnight along the way. Despite being quiet warm, there was a surprising amount of snow still on the trails, making for some very slippy sections, but it did a really great job highlighting the alpine landscape very well! But overall the trails were really well maintained, which made for some really nice hiking among some breathtaking views Three key highlights for me, the dead tree forests of Ghostgum trees, reaching Mt Kosciusko (Austrailia’s highest mountain at 2.2k meters) and…

Halloween decorations are in full swing around here! A house near us has 4 skeletons and they set them up in a different vignette every few days (maybe even every day! It changes very frequently). Although there are some rumblings about the weather cooling off, it’s really been very pleasant. One work day early in October John and I went for a lunch time walk and decided to have a sandwich outside at a bakery on California – the work from home dream! The first weekend in October, Anne was here on a business trip. She took a few days…

Then second half of September also did not disappoint, and October is off to a great start! First, in mid-September, we had some friends who John used to work with over for dinner in our back yard. Great seeing everyone! Right after the autumnal equinox, which was on Sept 22 this year, I celebrated my birthday with a day off work, a swim (at the gym, there was a beach hazard warning on from winds the previous day) then went to a tour of Glessner House with Barbara from my history book club. Glessner House is a historic house in…

The blog is back in the upper midwest, with lots of outdoors time in the first part of September. Over the long weekend at the beginning of the month, I met Annette for a bike ride along the Chicago river trail and empanadas at Cafe Tola (in the former Hot Doug’s location) – great seeing Annette and excellent empanadas! Nana, Grandpa, Debbie, Jeff and Maddie came over for dinner later that day, and we grilled vegetables that then were tossed with an apricot and cider vinegar dressing, with burrata pulled apart and spread all over the top. Here’s Maddie enjoying…

Ken put together a video of every mile we hiked along the John Muir Trail, all 75 miles, check it out!

What with all the heat and smoke the day before, plus the prospect of more crowded trails as we approached Yosemite Valley, we decided to rise at 5:15am and start hiking at first light, 5:45am. It was a great call, because the smoke only got denser, and we managed to see some amazing sights, nearly all to ourselves! As you can see from these photos, the smoke was especially dense first thing in the morning! But in many ways, smoke really made the views even more dramatic! Vernal Falls was especially stunning, and this is at the end of the…

Lower Cathedral Lake was probably our best campsite of the trip, amazing setting, close to water, and on nice flat, dry, ground, so we both woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready to enter Yosemite valley itself, after which it would be all down hill. But Cathedral Lake had one last trick up its sleeve, just as we were leaving, remarking on what a perfect location it was, what did we see walking between two trees, in front of the lake and framed by the mountain, was a two-week old fawn and the mother deer and their older sibling. The…

That lovely Lyell river that was so lovely to wade through in late afternoon after a long day hike, was a very different proposition the next morning when we woke up. The temperature had dropped down to the 38f/3c overnight, so wading through a icy mountain river first thing in the morning, with icy dew covered grass was a more bracing start to the day than we had signed up for! Here we are after crossing the river, looking a little chilly! But as alway Yosemite quickly paid us off, with an amazing view of an eight pointer deer going…