Blake, Andy, and I headed up to Mt. Baldy after a week’s worth of storms dropped 5-7ft on the local Southern California ski area. Roads were restricted, lines were long, but we made the best of the day and got in some stellar runs, including skiing the east face of Mt. Harwood after hiking 500ft up from the top of chair 4.

Don’t miss the 4-day old baby elephant! In my wife’s words, “So little and cute.” It’s all relative I guess.

It was a busy spring, and it’s been just as busy a summer. I’ve finally posted some of the promised pictures. I’ve still got about 1300 pictures from France and Germany to go through, I’ll get those up asap. Enjoy.

There are about 3GB worth of photos I need to go through. Photos from places like Panorama Point in the Sierra Navada, Death Valley, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Mad King Ludwig’s castle Neuschwanstein, the Black Forest, Dachau Concentration Camp, and München biergärtens. We’ve had a pretty busy few months. On top of all of that, my lovely wife walked across the stage with her Master’s of Divinity, we’ve move into a new place, and planted a balcony vegetable garden. Many pictures and maybe a few stories are forthcoming in the days and weeks ahead.

We made it back to California yesterday after fighting with some sickness on the road and L.A. traffic. We had a lot of fun while we were there – thanks to everyone who hosted us. If we missed you this trip, there’s always next year. Pictures and such coming as soon as I’m really awake. Read: sometime later this week.

We’ll be leaving L.A. for Dallas tomorrow. Katie, Marco, and I are going to repeat last year’s travels and drive it straight through. We should leave around 7PM PST on Tuesday and be to my parent’s by 9PM CST Wednesday. That is, if the the weather doesn’t get in the way. My hope is to make Phoenix by 1am, El Paso by 7AM, and the long trek across TX should take most of the day Wednesday.

To everyone in TX: we’ll be back and forth between the west side of the metroplex and the east, so if we haven’t talked to you as of late (which is just about everyone), give us a call and make sure we see you while we’re there. We’ll be picking Marco up from the airport on Jan. 1 and making the straight-through drive back.

Here’s the GPS-track from last weekend’s Death Valley Trip, with altitude shown by color. I actually made it about 200 feet higher than shown in this track; I didn’t have the GPS with me whenI summited Bennett Peak Monday morning.