Summer update...

So, the summer updates haven't been any more frequent as the other updates as of late... I apologize.  Life has actually been semi-eventful, so enjoy the pics and associated stories below!

A few weeks after our last post, Bridget and I decided to venture further south than we had ever before for Memorial Day Weekend.  We drove the 5 hours down to Santa Barbara, CA (it's a bit north of LA).  Anyway, we had heard great things about it, so we figured it would be  great weekend getaway destination. We drove down on Saturday morning, explored around a bit, went hiking on Sunday (would you expect anything else?), and drove back on Monday.  Bad idea to drive back on the holiday, but we didn't have much of a choice...  But we stopped to see a friend on the way, so that made it worth it. :)  Enjoy the pics!

The beach never gets old... :)

Lazy seals...

The beach in Santa Barbara

So, here are the hike pictures.  However, before I get to the pictures, there is a slight bit more than the pictures show.  The hike was supposed to be a nice, easy 3-mile hike up to some pools of water along the waterfalls that come down to Santa Barabara area.  Nice, right?  So, problem #1 was that we didn't have a map.  I took pictures of the trail guide with my phone, but that wasn't enough.  Problem #2 was the lack of signage.  Anywhere.  So, we were semi-blindly following a trail that didn't really exist anyway.  Not the best of strategies...  We ended up on a different hike (that also was unmarked) that involved some rock-climbing.  We're all about rock-climbing, but not without any fair warning.  So, most of the way up the hill, we realized our error and had to backtrack.  We ended up finding where we were "supposed" to go, but had already hike a few extra miles, so decided to save it for next time... :)

At the beginning of the hike

Sun-bathing lizard

The "hike" involved some rock climbing!

The view from where we got up to

Us on the beach our last night

Bridget's silhouette against the sunset

The next weekend, I had to go to San Antonio for work, so here are a few pictures from that trip.

View #1 from San Antonio's Space Needle Restaurant

View #2 from San Antonio's Space Needle Restaurant

The Alamo

The next week was my Biodesign graduation.  My parents and grandparents came all the way from Illinois, which was pretty cool.  So, we all bummed around the Bay Area and beyond for the long weekend and afterward.  Here are some pics of the graduation.

Bridget and me

Yeah, we all had to sit on stage for the whole thing

Bridget and me with two couples from our church group.

Since graduation, we went hiking at a local state park called Mt. Diablo State Park.  We did a nice 8-mile hike last weekend.  Here is a pic of us from that hike.

Us :)

So, that's the latest update.  And as I was uploading pictures, I got a warning that I had reached my limit on the number of pictures I could upload.  So, stay tuned for what we figure out for keeping the blog alive!  (gotta love the suspense, right?)

~ Jeremy