Busy bee

The past couple weekends have been busy for me, and the next few also promise to be eventful.

The weekend of the 23rd, my friend Alejandro (we refer to him as Alejo) was in town from Utah to visit the Colombian consulate. Since the consulate is in the financial district of the City, he only saw the not-so-scenic part of San Francisco on Friday. We did take him to Emerald Glen Park on Friday night for Leavitt's going-away to Arizona party, but wanted to show him around the more tourist-y parts of SF on Saturday.

We drove over to SF and went up Columbus St. to Lombard, where we stopped at the crooked portion.

Lisa and Alejo climbed the stairs while I waited at the bottom. Then, on the way back to the car, we noticed this quaint little gate and a small park, Fay Park. We wandered in there for a few minutes and decided it was a good place to play hide and go seek.

Next, we headed down to the Embarcadero, and more specifically, to Pier 39. We enjoyed the sea lions and the candy shop!

The next stop on our day of fun was Fort Point at the far west end of Crissy Field. It was super windy, but of great historical significance.

After this stop, we finally made our way over to Ocean Beach. It was overcast and cold, but we still put our feet in the water.

And, if you are Lisa's friend on Facebook, you can also see this video of a Seagull eating a crab.

Yesterday, in my apparently new tradition of going to Yosemite every month (Lisa and I are going on August 20th if anyone is interested), I drove myself, Alan West, Allison Orgill, Lisa Despain, and Ryan Heaton to the valley. We had a great time.

Allison, Alan and Ryan ended up hiking about 2/3 of the way up to Upper Yosemite Falls, while Lisa and I hiked about 1/2 mile of the same trail before she graciously agreed to hike on the Valley Loop Trail with me. We hiked from the Camp 4 all the way to Mirror Lake on that trail, saw Lower Yosemite Falls....

Lisa and I stopped at the Awahnee Hotel for about 20 minutes on the way to Mirror Lake, and once at Mirror Lake, we dipped our feet in (the water was cold, but it felt REALLY good on our hot feet). I managed to drink almost my entire CamelBak full of water, which is a good thing, because it was HOT!

We rendezvoused with Ryan, Alan, and Allison at the Camp 4 bus stop right at 3, and then headed back to Curry Village to get the car and head home. It was a long day (we left the church parking lot at 6am and got back at 9pm) but it was really fun, and I can't wait to do it again.