So I've been neglecting my pre-trippie because we went on a 4-day vacation to
some place other than Disney 
over Fourth of July.
I've seen other people do this, so I'm gonna press my luck and post a link to pictures from our trip. We went to the California's Eastern Sierras (as opposed to the Western Sierras, where I grew up) to explore and get our fix of natural beauty.
We started with a trip to a funky old hot spring/swimming hole outside of Bishop and then went horseback riding in Mammoth. That night we watched fireworks over the upscale mall near our hotel (which only served to remind us how great Disney's fireworks are!)
The next day we went to Devil's Postpile National Monument, an amazing volcanic rock formation, and hiked 3 miles to Rainbow Falls. After lunch we hiked around the top of Mammoth Mountain, and after that we hiked around Hot Creek Hot Springs! I've never done so much hiking in my life, but it was fun. That night we made s'mores at the gas firepit in the swanky mall. It was set to "blast furnace" so they didn't turn out that great.
On Sunday we drove up to Mono Lake and went on a canoe tour. In the afternoon we drove to the amazingly intact ghost town of Bodie and took a living history tour there (kinda cheesy, but Patrick really got into it! His "mine job" was going to be smashing ore with a sledgehammer, and I didn't have to get a job because I was a lady!). He also really loved snapping pictures of the neat old buildings with his new camera. The cool thing about Bodie is that it isn't being fixed up - they are leaving it in a state of "arrested decay," meaning that junk left in the buildings by people when they abandoned the place between the 1880s and the early 1940s is still where they left it!
On Monday, on the way back, we stopped at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest to see 4,000- and 5,000-year-old trees, and then our last stop was at the Manzanar Internment Camp, which has a new interpretive center with really moving exhibits about the Japanese internment during WWII. It was soooo sad, and kind of a downer ending to our trip, but we were really glad to see it.
As you know, I am terrible at editing down large numbers of photos, so if you want to see them, I suggest you put the set on Slideshow and turn the speed up to "Warp 9"!
Here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/85907592@N00/sets/72157621181274770/
Also, to continue the theme, here are some pix (one overexposed, one underexposed) of the Chocolate Pile o' Chocolate, or whatever it was called, that we had at the hotel restaurant the last night. It was chocolate mousse sandwiched between layers of chocolate cake, with a slab of homemade rockyroad ice cream and chocolate sauce on top. I thought it would be the usual bland "fudge overload" cake, but the addition of ice cream really made it!
Let's see that again, shall we?
And Stitch is so cute. Between this and Stitch's Great Escape, you'd figure they would be able to come up with something that does the movie and character justice.
That's got to be a first for any Lurkyloo PTR/TR/PJ/ETC. 
It's Disney's fault. We've seen too many white chocolate cake toppers...
It's not technically the bestest camera for serious photographers, but it makes photography really easy for casual photogs like DH.
)
