ISME 2010

After a VERY short night of sleep, I left the house about 5:30 en route to one of my favorite cities: Seattle.

I'm here for the 13th meeting of the international society for microbial ecology (ISME). It promises to be a good meeting and I am excited to get a chance to catchup with many friends!

Shawn

-- Post From Shawn's iPhone

Location:Seattle, WA

Bon Voyage

I now sit in seat 19A looking out the window at partially cloudy skies. Earlier we spent a tense fifteen minutes using the Wii balance board to weigh our luggage and shift items around to keep everything under the 50 pound limit. As always we go back with more stuff than we came with. In the end we were forced to wear our jeans and hiking boots to just squeeze by the weight limit. We also sadly said our goodbyes to Emily, who has been a great travel companion, DJ, and expert guest blogger for the final leg of our trip. [NAG: She really needs to start her music blog soon] :-P

In all we drove over 3000 miles in Neo (many of those on narrow, windy roads). We saw 5 National Parks, 8 National Forests, and 2 National Monuments. We both went to Montana for the first time and I also had my first experiences in Idaho and Wyoming. Along the way we encountered bison, pronghorn, elk, deer, grizzly bears, black bears, coyotes, many birds and small mammals, a ring-tail (monkey), and some awesome microbial mats. Most importantly we got to spend some quality time with family and some really good friends!




Now back to our day to day lives for a while. We can't wait to see Bear, Sooke, and Curiosity!



- Posted by Shawn from our iPad

Location:Somewhere over Arizona

Wedding

This afternoon Sara and I attended Lisa and Andy's wedding, which was the inspiration for us to drive out from Yellowstone in the first place. The ceremony started at 6pm and was awesome. Very casual and very happy, a perfect wedding for two great people. They had it in their backyard and it was a perfect setting. All the food was also sustainably grown: catfish, BBQ pork, and [I never thought I would say this] a very delicious brussel sprout dish. It was really great to get to see them and Ellis, and we wish them many, many years of happiness.



We returned to Emily's place for a couple more hours of hanging out, then off to bed to get ready for our morning flight.

- Posted by Shawn from our iPad

Location:San Diego, CA

Pancakes and Burger Time

After a late night drive across the desert last night, we all rested for most of today. Emily being an awesome host ran to the grocery store and made us some incredible pancakes. It is making me hungry just thinking about how good they were. I also had a little time to get reacquainted with an old friend named Burger Time. I used to play this game all the time on our Intellivision when I was a kid. I was surprised to find out that Emily had the game for her Wii, so I got to spend a little bit of time depressing myself with how rusty I have become at it . . . :)




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:San Diego, CA

One last hike

Today we headed into Sequoia National Park. Having already visited the Mariposa and Grants groves at Yosemite and Kings Canyon we have already seen some big trees, but the Giant Forest at Sequoia contains the largest living thing on Earth, the General Sherman Sequoia, and a density of large trees that neither of the other parks came close to. We found a hike in the Lonely Planet guide which wound for 6 miles on various trails from the General Sherman tree to Moro Rock.



After the obligatory pictures and viewing of Sherman we quickly found our way away from the crowds and into what we found to be the much more enjoyable solitude of the backcountry. The hike took us by many other notable sequoia including the Pillars of Hercules, the Black Arch Tree, and the McKinley tree.



We eventually came to the Crescent Meadows where we were sadly forced to bypass the final mile of our trail due to a controlled burn in the area and took a shuttle bus to Moro Rock.


At Moro Rock we were faced with almost 400 often narrow steps to the top of this granite outcrop, where we were rewarded with beautiful views of the Great Western Divide and the southern Sierras. After a shuttle bus trip back to the car, we wound our way out of the Mountains one last time and headed toward San Diego.

- Posted by Shawn from our iPad

Location:Sequoia NP

Things that crawl in the night

This evening we returned to the cabin and stumbled across the guest journal. It was filled with sketches and stories (some colorful) from past visitors. Em and Sara wrote a suitable illustrated entry for our stay.



While browsing through the book, one entry we were unfortunate enough to come across talked about a California tarantula letting itself into the cabin through the hole we had already noticed in the screen above the couch Emily was sleeping on. Soon after discovering thus, we then retired for the night. The cabin was too warm to close the windows, so I think we all laid in bed for quite a while thinking about tarantulas crawling about the cabin.

-Posted by Shawn from our iPad

Location:Near Three Rivers, CA

Monkey Identified

At one of the visitor centers we visited today, we were pleased to find an exhibit that provided a rational explanation for the "monkey" we saw yesterday. They have a critter in these parts called a ringtail, that looks like a lemur crossed with a raccoon.




- Posted by Sara from my iPhone

Location:Kings Canyon NP