Universal Studios, Hollywood

[fa:p:a=6-16-universal-studios,id=562488893,j=l,s=s,l=i]The last day of our trip. We got up in plenty of time to make it to the park when it opened, we even got front row parking. Kerry and I have both been to Universal Studios, but its been about 5 years for both of us, so it was still a lot of fun. As is customary with most people, we did the Backlot Tour first. Its changed a bit since the last time I went. The “Broken Bridge” isn’t used anymore (which is ok, since it was lame anyway). And a few new things are added. They kept the airplane crash set from War of the Worlds, and its pretty amazing to see it, since it was such a strong scene in the movie (you can see it here, as the background to the website). The other thing they added was a Fast and the Furious special Effects demo, in which they demonstrate how to blow up two cars. While the pictures I took are cool, they don’t really do the demonstration any justice, so check out this video that somebody else took on their trip:

Kerry and I rode and watched just about everything at the park, but we didn’t waste much time because we wanted to try to make it back to the Springbok bar again and get that meal we had been craving. So we left Universal and drove back up 101 to Van Nuys and this time we were able to get a nice table and some food. Kerry had a Boerewors Sandwich (pronoced Bord-a-vors, its a traditional South African all-beef sausage), and I had Freestate Braai Pack (Braai meaning BBQ) which was boerewors, two lamb chops and a 5 ounce Filet Mignon. I really enjoyed it, especially seeing the excitement on Kerry’s face to be able to have food and drink from home again (did I mention she drank 3 Savanna Dry’s and a Castle Lager, all made in SA).

[fa:p:a=6-16-universal-studios,id=562502483,j=r,s=s,l=p]We made a drive after eating to go see some of Hollywood, but we out of cash, and even change to park and the sun was setting so all we really did was drive around on Hollywood Blvd, and Sunset Blvd and then we explored the tiny roads that go up the mountain that the Hollywood sign is on (trying to get a closer look at the sign). We didn’t make it there before the sun set, and there are no lights on the Hollywood sign, so I had to expose the picture heavily for it to come out so excuse the grain (Yes, I took that picture while it was dark out… isn’t Photoshop wonderfull)

San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park

[fa:p:a=6-15-wild-animal-park,id=562009372,j=l,s=s,l=i]We had Dinner last night at an Applebees here in San Diego, and did some swimming before we went to bed. But we woke early this morning in order to make it out to the park as the gates opened. It wasn’t as cool as I was expecting for San Diego (although technically, we never were in the city limits), but it was still great weather compared to what we had been through for the rest of the trip. I was able to use my 70-300MM lens almost exclusively in the park, which was a blast. I love the lens, it allows me to get really intimate pictures without having to be close, like this, this or this.

I’m not sure there is a whole lot to say about the park though. Its a nice facility but its pretty much exclusively animals. I did quite enjoy that they have the large basin of non-predatory animals with a tour that goes around the outside stopping for people to take pictures and with a guide telling about the animals. I would have really loved to do one of their special tours, that puts you on the back of a truck and you drive out into the basin. It would have made for some really amazing pictures I’m sure, but since it cost more than the entire fee to get into the park (and Kerry and I unknowingly had 2-day passes) I just couldn’t bring myself to pay.
 
[fa:p:a=6-15-wild-animal-park,id=562421275,j=r,s=s,l=p]We toured just about everything there was to tour in the park, ate lunch (quite good hamburgers at a decent price for park food), did some perusing of the shops and eventually headed out of the park to get on the road again. We headed north, not to far, into Long Beach from the Wild Animal Park to make a quick stop at the Springbok bar, a South African bar. We didn’t stay long. Only long enough really for me to have a Coke, and Kerry to have a Savanna Dry (a SA hard cider). I convinced Kerry we would have dinner at the other Springbok bar near our hotel (a mistake in the end).

So after our short visit, we battled through LA traffic to get to Van Nuys, where our hotel and the other Springbok were located. We dropped off our stuff at the motel (a nice looking, but the sleaziest feeling Super 8 I’ve ever stayed in). I dilly-dallied for a bit, importing and processing the pictures from the park and by the time we made it to the Springbok bar, it was packed and we ended up not eating there, much to Kerry’s dismay. We stopped and got Carl’s Jr on the way back to the motel, and went to bed without our South African meal.

Las Vegas & Hoover Dam

[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552219904,j=l,s=s,l=i]We are staying at Circus Circus, which probably wasn’t the best plan since its such a long walk to the South Strip from here, and so darned hot. We picked up a bus pass yesterday to help make our travels easier. Anyway we made it in plenty of time on Tuesday to get our show tickets at Treasure Island last night, and Kerry and I spent a little bit of time gambling before the show started. We ate dinner at Kahunaville, actually the only thing we ordered were a couple of beers and their monstrosity of an appetizer. I didn’t have my camera with me, so excuse the poor cell phone pictures. The show we watched was Mystère by Cirque du Soleil. It was pretty cool. However, if there was some kind of story … I didn’t follow it. Mostly it was awesome acrobatics intermixed with small segments of comedic acting.
 
[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552457547,j=r,s=s,l=p]Kerry and I spent all of Wednesday making the rounds at all the casinos on the west side of the strip, all the way down to Mandalay Bay. We did some gambling along the way, but mostly we were there to see the sights and sounds of Vegas… and to sweat off about 30 pounds in the heat. We saw a couple of cool cars, including a Bentley Continental GT and a Custom Viper. We did make one last stop before going back to our room for the night, we stopped at a bar and I ordered an entire pitcher of Margarita for myself, and Kerry had 4 beers.
 
[fa:p:a=6-13-las-vegas-hoover-dam,id=552223626,j=l,s=s,l=p]This morning we headed out of Vegas, and went for a quick visit to Hoover Dam. The lake was really low (from the pictures I’ve seen before) so I thought that the dam wasn’t quite as impressive, but it was still very cool to see it in person. There is also quite a bit of construction going on for what looks like a high bridge over the river, just down from the dam that I’m assuming will be the main route, to get traffic off the dam. As we left the dam a cop had pulled over this custom car, it looks familiar, and I’m sure I’ve seen it before on TV or something but I just can’t quite place it. As we headed to San Diego, we also beat the previous high temperature record, and based on where we will be the rest of the trip, I have a feeling this will be the peak. 107 degrees, just outside of Death Valley in Baker, CA.

Zion & the Drive to Vegas

[fa:p:a=6-12-zion-and-i15,id=550195579,j=r,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I woke up this morning somewhat early (for vacation), packed up all our stuff, grabbed some of the continental breakfast that the hotel offered and headed into the park. We wanted to go do a couple of short hikes in the park before it got hot, and before we had to leave for Vegas. Charlie Linkhart had recommended to me to do the Narrows Hike, although we didn’t have the time to do the full hike (which requires using the river as part of the trail), we did at least go as far as we could up the canyon which provided some really awesome views of massive cliff sides. We also did the very short walk to Weeping Rock, which is a rock edge that leached water drips off of from the core of the rock.
 
[fa:p:a=6-12-zion-and-i15,id=550034436,j=l,s=s,l=i]After our short visit to Zion (a visit I would like to repeat someday, with cooler weather and more time). We headed to Vegas. We needed to get into Vegas before 5PM so we could pick up our show tickets. As most people know, any road to Vegas leads through a desert, and as with any desert there wasn’t much to see except the rising temperature gauge in the car. It peaked at 102 during our drive, and Vegas wasn’t much cooler, but I’ll leave posting about Vegas until tomorrow.

Utah’s Red Rock Canyons

[fa:p:a=6-11-red-canyons,id=543068905,j=l,s=s,l=i]We left early from Tanner’s place to make our drive down through Utah’s famous red rock canyons. So far this has been my favorite part of the trip. These things are amazing to look at. Pictures hardly do it justice. there are three places we went through. Starting with the simply named “Red Canyon“, which you can simply drive through. We also went and visited Bryce Canyon, which ended up being a $25 visit. I wish we had had more time to spend there, because I would have loved to do a hike in the canyon.
 
[fa:p:a=6-11-red-canyons,id=542967258,j=r,s=s,l=p]Lastly, we went to Zion. The drive into the base of Zion was really cool. They have a 1 mile tunnel carved right in the side of the mountain that leads to a switchbacked decent down the side of a mountain. We had planned on spending the night at one of the campgrounds in Zion, but it was close to 100 degrees, and neither of us wanted to spend half the day out in that sweltering heat. So we chickened out and went for a hotel. A quite nice place that looked brand new and had some great views. I spend some time down in the pool and trying to get an internet connection so that I could post up pictures and these blogs. With no success, so I’m keeping these in a word file for now.

Utah & the Timpanogos Caves

[fa:p:a=6-10-utah-the-timpanogos-caves,id=542951506,j=l,s=s,l=i]We spent the whole day today in and around Provo, UT. With Tanner and his new family. I’ve known Tanner since High School sometime through Mike White. But it was the first time I’ve meet his new wife Brittney and his 11 month year old daughter Miranda. The night before Miranda was with Britney’s parents so Kerry, Brittney, Tanner & I went out to dinner at McGrath’s Fish House. A place that Tanner used to work. Kerry had a Halibut, and I had a Steak Dungenes (steak & crab).
 
[fa:p:a=6-10-utah-the-timpanogos-caves,id=542953268,j=r,s=s,l=p]After getting up sorta late Sunday morning, we all headed up to the Timpanogos Caves. The Timpanogos caves are WAY up in the mountains and to get to them requires a grueling hike a little over a mile long, but rising nearly half a mile in that time. The caves were pretty cool though, it was hard to take pictures so I don’t have many. But the ones I do have I think came out pretty well.
 
The last thing that we did was to head up to the Salt Lake Temple. It was a quick visit, as it was getting late. So I don’t have many pictures of that either, but it was still really cool to see. The entire location is gorgeous, and the temple itself is amazing.

Folsom to Provo

[fa:p:a=6-09-folsom-to-utah,id=542940778,j=l,s=s,l=i]Kerry and I are going on a road trip! From Folsom, to Provo, UT, to Zion National Park, to Vegas and finally visits to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and Hollywood. Today was our longest driving day. We had almost 700 miles to travel so we got up at 5am. And even though that doesn’t sound extremely early, after the previous night it was… Kerry was cranky due to lack of sleep and stress over having to pay $700 to get her car ready for the trip, so packing took a while. We ended up going to the store at 9pm for last minute things for our trip and didn’t get to bed until around 11:30 pm.
 
[fa:p:a=6-09-folsom-to-utah,id=542940986,j=r,s=s,l=p]Kerry Drove most of the way and although there isn’t much to see on the long drive along Interstate 80, we captured a few interesting pictures (click on the image at the beginning of the post). Most interestingly to me, was the Salt Flats. At the rest stop of the rest stop is where Kerry found the oddest toilet in existance. If anybody can explain to me why this toilet is shaped the way it is… I’m very intersted to hear.

We brought with us a few things to keep us entertained. Most notably we brought with us a bunch of audio books, although I doubt we will get past the first one; Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. We brought an FM transmitter so that we could play the book off the computer, and listen to it through the cars radio. Its worked like a charm so far. We are also using Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS as our map on this road trip. To power all these toys, I picked up a really cool car power strip, that allows us to plug in three things at once to the cigarette lighter.

We meet up with Tanner and his new Wife, Brittney and Baby Girl Miranda. But I’ll write more on that tomorrow, when we are to spend the entire day with them.

EDC Weekend ‘06

In my true posting fashion… this post is a whole week late, and will probably be way to long

The weekend of the 8th – 10th of this month was the third weekend in a row that I’ve been gone on vacation, but this was probably the best one yet. I’m actually writing this from class (yes… I’m paying attention too).

Anyway, this weekend was my company vacation in Tahoe. Just about every year Electrical Design Consultants takes all the employees and a guest somewhere for a weekend. Usually it’s Tahoe, matter of fact only once has it been anywhere else and that was the year I started when we went to Vegas.

The vacation started Friday, which we all had off so that we could easily drive up there in the morning. I had asked Melinda if she wanted to join me, but she was going to be in North Carolina for auditions (hmm, need to call her and find out how those went). So instead of going up by myself or trying to keep up with Joe in bachelor mode all weekend I asked Kerry if she wanted to join me because she had been before and knew what to expect. Anyway, back to Friday. I meet up with Kerry at her house Friday morning and we both headed up the hill. I made a stop at my parents to drop off a few things first and chatted with my dad for a few before continuing on.

We had brunch at Mel’s Diner in Placerville which was nice, but that place is really starting to fall apart . I think we finally ended up getting to Tahoe and the hotel around 3 pm, and were luckily able to check in early. EDC put us up in the Embassy Suites hotel, which is always nice. The rooms are suites, so there is a bedroom (with two beds this trip), and a separate living room complete with dinning table and mini kitchen (no stove).

We got our things settled in the room and headed out to walk the shops. I think just about every time I’ve gone up to Tahoe, there are new shops. It’s probably going to slow down now since the major construction around the gondola area is done, but its a really great place to just walk and poke about in small shops if you like that sort of thing. I ended up buying a shell necklace from Del Sol. If you’ve ever been to a Del Sol store, you know what they are all about. Everything they sell in the store changes color, or gets color when exposed to UV light (daylight).
Embassy Suites has complimentary drinks in the evenings, so that’s where we headed around 4:30 and meet up with the rest of the group. I had a drink called a Cactus Bite, which was a lot of liquor but quite tasty. After that drink though, I stuck to beer.

In the evening, we had dinner at the Chart House overlooking the lake. They originally put us in this great little room that was kind of in the basement, but still had a decent view of the lake, and was completely empty except for us and the wait staff. It was AWESOME! BUUUT… it wasn’t what John and Debbie (my Boss’) had asked for, so they moved us upstairs to the bar area which was loud, cramped and not nearly as awesome. Oh well… they were paying, so they get to do whatever they want.
I seem to have rubbed off on Kerry with the whole Surf and Turf dinners, because we both ordered Filet Minion, mine came with shrimp, and hers with a lobster tail, and we shared the surf portion. It was delicious.

After that, I was pretty beat, and had eaten so much food that Kerry and I both just went back to the room and crashed. I purchased “Cars” the movie in the room, but Kerry fell asleep before the opening credits, and I didn’t last much longer than that.

We got up at 7:30 Saturday morning to try to hit up the gym before we got the day started, but the diehard’s had already filled the few machines that the hotel had. So instead we just relaxed in the hot tub for a little while. Which I must admit, is quite a nice way to start a day.

Embassy Suites also has a really nice breakfast every morning for free to its guests (including cooked to order foods). So after breakfast we headed out to the docks, where EDC had rented 3 ski boats. This was really the only potion of the trip I had my camera with me, so its the only pictures I’ve got. Kerry and I were looking for a fun time, so we got in the boat with Joe who is a fun loving boat bum (he owns an alcohol burning race boat) and hauled ass over to Emerald Bay where we stopped for a nice lunch. During some no-wake time in the bay, Joe and I figured out where to best trim the I/O on the boat so we could REALY get some speed, and we defnalty made a difference. We sped across the lake at about 55MPH, with Joe jumping wakes and making hard turns. The girls (Kerry and Angelo’s wife Kelly) were sitting up front and got tossed around quite a bit. It was pretty funny to watch, Kerry was holding her boobs in one arm to keep them from flying everywhere, and holding on to the railing with white knuckles on the other hand.

After the boating, Kerry and I went up the Gondola, but didn’t spend much time because on the way up Kerry remembered that she wanted to see a movie that was starting soon. We made it back down and in the theatre only a few seconds after the movie had started back up.

We watched “The Covenant” which wasn’t bad. I don’t think I would waste the money on seeing it in the theatre (but I have a hard time with that no matter what) but I think its worth watching. Kerry loved it, and I have no doubt that it had something to do with the fact that there were 4-5 very good looking guys who spent a good portion of the movie without shirts.

After the movie, it was free drink time again at Embassy, where we once again meet up with some of the EDC crew. Joe, Chris, Alice, Greg, Kammy, Kerry and I all decided to head over to “Fire and Ice” for dinner, and although we had to wait an hour and a half the food was WELL worth it. The place is Mongolian style cooking, but the food and atmosphere is very American. Big chunks of Angus steak, mahi-mahi, seasoned chicken, muscles and an assortment of vegetable and sauces made up the menu. For $19 a plate for an all you can eat place like that wasn’t bad either. The guys doing the cooking put on a show too, flipping their utensils around, throwing empty bowls off the wok into bins etc. If you’re up in Tahoe and looking for a place to eat, I highly recommend “Fire and Ice”. The only downside was that their jalapeños were extremely hot and I spent like 10 min just trying to recover my mouth.
Kerry and I headed back to the room again after dinner to call it an early night (~11PM). We did finish watching “Cars” though, which was a pretty good movie. We wanted to try to get some sleep in before our adventure the next day.

Sunday we got up at 6:30 so that we could check out and head up to the Rubicon trailhead for an ATV excursion. I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t feel comfortable with all the dust, but it was the same basic than to what we did last time, except that Kerry and I were all alone with the guide, and we did a much longer trip this time. We went down through Dollar Hole, which was really fun because it was much more technical than only going to Miller Lake was.

After our ATV’ing we basically just headed home. Kerry wasn’t feeling well, so she slept in the car, and I took highway 88 home to keep myself entertained. It was a nice drive with almost no traffic, and some pretty views. I think I finally got home around 3 PM, and was dead tired. I played around with the new Pool Heater that came in the mail over the weekend and finally went to bed. But I’ll leave the pool heater for another discussion.

Digital Pictures meet Old Fashioned Printing

I’ve expanded my gallery features! I know that A LOT of people enjoy looking at the pictures here, and I appreciate the enthusiasm. A few weeks ago, I added a “cart” to the gallery, and the ability to download a zip file of everything in your cart. This is really handy if you want to get a copy of a whole album’s worth of pictures.

How does it work? Just jump over to either an individual picture, or an entire gallery. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, in the green box you’ll see the option to “Add Photo to Cart” or “Add Album to Cart” depending on which you are looking at. Once you do that, you’ll be taken to the cart, where you can select from the pull down box in the upper right corner to “Download Cart as Zip”.

But now it’s even better. What if you just want regular old fashioned photos that you can put in a photo album? If you want just a single image printed and mailed to you, look in that green box again while viewing the photo, you’ll see there are two “Print on …” links as well. Fotokasten.de is for our friends across the pond, Shutterfly is what you should use if you live in the US.

If you want an entire album of pictures, go to the album, scroll to the bottom and “Add Album to Cart”. Once you are taken to the cart, select “Print with …” from the pull down box.

The prices are quite reasonable too, for example to have an entire set of 4×3 prints made from my most recent gallery (Company Trip 2006 – Tahoe; which I have yet to write about) which contains 43 photos is only $11.16 (€11.00 on Fotokasten).

I don’t make any money off these prints, so I can’t make you any kind of deals. The prices are set by the respective printers and not by me.

Hope you enjoy the new feature

Graylyn

So I arrived. My flight from Chicago to Greensboro was very diffrent then the first class trip I had just taken. We were on a little itty bitty Canadair Regional Jet. One of these planes thats so small they dont put a causeway up to it, you walk out on the tarmac and out to your plane.

This place is awesome though. It was originally a mansion built in the 1930’s so it definatly has that old feel, but its also a really fancy hotel. The kind of place where you dont have to open doors because there is somebody standing next to them to open them for you. I’ve taken a couple pictures of my room. My only gripe is that I ended up with a small bed, but I actually slept quite well on it last night.

My shower has 17 heads though, so if that isn’t pure gluttonous indulgence I dont know what is. The bathroom is marble floors and walls. The rest of the building is exactly how you see it in the pictures from my previous post (click the large image for a slideshow). As far as the images I’ve taken I’ll be posting them up in my gallery: North Carolina Trip. And I’m going to do my best to put descriptions on the images. So look there for more info.

Until next time, I’m headed off to a cable manufacturing plant to watch them turn a 1 ton block of copper into cat 6.