Hey, that's not my car, man.

So I flew back to L.A. on Monday and went to the parking lot to pick up my car but the lot had lost my key. They lost my key. This place also rents cars so they let me pick whatever car was available. It was between the Charger (above) and a PT Cruiser. As of today, they still haven't found the keys, so it's now up to them to pay Volkswagen for a new set. They just made a $350 mistake.

Moral of the story: Always bring your spare set of keys when you valet because, chances are, some idiot's gonna lose em.

It's me (Erinn)!

Andrew is in Austin this weekend looking at houses, so I thought I would post before he returns and takes over the blog again. Last weekend some USC film students asked if they could use the front exterior of our house for a short film they were making. We blindly agreed. Before we knew it, we had lights set up INSIDE our house, fake curtains on our windows, and a Chevy in our driveway. The task of keeping Callie quiet from morning until dark was a tiring one. I'm just glad I said "no" to restroom access for the crew. P.S. I promise pregnancy pictures soon...

The Last of Yosemite, I promise

As previously mentioned, our snow lounge. It was so comfortable that we didn't get started on our Day 2 hike until noon.

Maybe you can read what's on the bucket. Maybe you can't. It reads "YI poop bucket." But it's not what you think. That would be crazy if people sat on it and pooped in there. No, we pooped in bags first and then put the bags in the bucket. Too much info? Probably. But in summer camping you just bury your poo. When there's snow, there's no ground to bury it under.

We hiked four miles to Dewey Point to get a view overlooking the valley. We didn't get back until 7:30 that night, which meant we were hiking in the dark, but it was gorgeous anyways.

My group on top of Dewey Point.

"Winter Thrival" part 2

We changed the name of the program from Winter Survival to Winter Thrival since it became obvious we were all going to survive. On Day Two it got up to 65 degrees during the day.

Jen showing us how to stay warm at night.

It took all of us to dig out our snow lounge. I'll put the final product up in the next set.

When you're out in the wild, you want to 'leave no trace.' So if you spill some marinara on your snow table, you better spoon it off and eat it.

The ground level view from inside my "tent." I was in what they call a "mid," which means there's no bottom to the tent. So I was pretty much sleeping on the snow.

Yosemite, "Winter Survival"

One of our two trail leaders, Sierra (L) shows our group where we're headed. We started from the Badger Pass ski area located right in the heart of Yosemite.

Here's most of the group gear we had to carry, either in our packs or pull on a sled behind us. The black cans on the left are bear cans, designed to keep the bears from smelling the food.

Right out of the gate, straight uphill, in snowshoes. The kids with the sleds brought up the rear. Carrying a 40 pound pack in the snow will get your heart going.

Jen, our other trail guide showing the group how to set up the tents in the snow. You can't stake the tents down since there's no solid ground. It's snow... everywhere. You have to use what's called "dead men anchors" where you freeze the tent line wrapped around a small stick down in the ground.

Yosemite, days one and two

I think I'm finally caught up on my sleep, so I can finally start my Yosemite recap.

After getting 130+ kids loaded onto the bus at 7:30am on a Saturday, we headed out for Yosemite. We stopped at "Inspiration Point" to take pictures of El Capitan (on the left) and Half Dome (on the right.)

This 10 x 12 slice of heaven was my home away from home for two nights before we camped in the snow. No complaints since it had a heater.

On Sunday we hiked through the valley, getting pictures of the park. Here's the upper half of Yosemite Falls.

more to come...

Weekend Exercise

I'm heading up to Yosemite next weekend. In preparation of that we did a little exercising this weekend:

After a run around the Rose Bowl, I took this shot of snow in the San Gabriels. Really unheard of for snow to be this close to us.

I bought some new hiking boots, so Erinn, Callie and I hiked up into the mountains nearby to break them in.

Me, exercising my Second Amendment at Angeles Ranges about 30 minutes northwest of us. Great range. I thoroughly killed all the metal animal swingers in front of me with my pistola. For a better view of the range, click on the picture