Look! it's our first new blog entry!

So it's come to my attention that we're kind of hard to keep track of. Sorry about that. It's just this whole "being unemployed" and "at loose ends" thing. I have trouble keeping track of us. So here's our new blog that will hopefully help to rectify this situation.

Some of you may be familiar with us through our Postholer blog, where we kept track of our hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. This took place between 5-14-2008 and 9-29-2008 (link here). Since then we've been hopping from city to city, squatting at various generous family member's homes.

Our schedule is still going to be pretty crazy. Brent's orchestra commitments bring us back to Ft. Collins pretty regularly, but we have more and more people that we don't see as often asking what we're up to. For some reason, y'all are interested in what we're doing. Who'd have thunk?

So in a nutshell, here's what we've been up to recently (since the end of the hike...)
1. We spent several months in San Francisco at my sister's place (link to her blog here). She and Brian and Charli (my niece, see how unreasonably cute she is here) were very tolerant of us and we enjoyed our time out there immensely. The several months included Christmas, when the entire Yang family crowded into Korin and Brian's place for a week or so. It was a little close, but tons of fun. Presents were wrapped and opened, puzzles were put together, vast and copious amounts of food were prepared and consumed, and a good time was had by all!
2. Brent and I left SF shortly after Christmas to spend New Years with his family in Albuquerque. Once again, lots of good food was eaten, presents were opened, and a day was even spent watching Sandhill cranes and snow geese at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Another good time was had by all!
3. After a brief stop in Fort Collins, Brent and I embarked on a short roadtrip, which we have only recently (read yesterday) returned from. We began our trip by driving down to Montgomery, AL, where Brent's dad, cousin, aunt, uncle and grandma were. We stayed a couple of days down there, touring Martin Luther King Jr's church, and stuff like that. Ted and Barbara kept us well fed, and even provisioned us for the rest of the roadtrip! Ted has even offered to take us caving! The real kind with ropes, and harnesses and all that other cool gear. We really need to take him up on that sometime.
4. The next major stop was New Orleans, LA, where we had the most perfect New Orleans breakfast (beignets and coffee, aw yeah!) immediately before having the most perfect New Orleans lunch (a cooking demonstration at the New Orleans School of Cooking - yum!). We toodled around the city some, surveying hurricane damage, driving across the very impressive causeway across Lake Ponchartrain, wandering the French Quarter and Garden Discrict. We also managed to spend a short day hiking and seeing more nature-y and swampy stuff; there were more fish than we could possibly count, 1 unidentified water snake, 1 garter snake, and lots of coots and duckies.
5. We drove along the Louisiana coast into Texas, then inland to Austin. I'd always heard that Austin was a pretty cool town, and now I believe it. Dinner was had at Rudy's (a BBQ place that had been highly recommended by friends), and it was great. Since you're supposed to see live music in Austin, we did, taking in the Seth Walker Band at Momo's. They were really good. Bluesy and gritty, Seth walker is a great guitarist and vocalist. I may just have to buy an album.
6. Next was Big Bend National Park, which is the very southernmost tip of Texas. I had no idea we had canyons like this on the border - they are VAST. No wonder illegal immigration isn't so much of a problem at this particular section of river. Brent saw a ringtail and a bobcat, which means that he is stomping me soundly at our ongoing, informal wildlife viewing competition (though no one saw a javelina).
7. We spent a day at McDonald's Observatory in Fort Davis, TX. We had a solar viewing and discussion, then went on a tour that included watching our guide (Mark) move the ginormous telescopes and open, close and turn the roof domes - very impressive. We came back later in the evening for a Star Party, where we learned lots of constellations, and the stories behind them. Later we got to look through some of the smaller telescopes at things like star clusters, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy and Venus. Brent went all astronomy geek. It was really cool.
8. Close to there is Balmorhea State park, a sort of natural, spring-fed swimming pool. It's pretty neat because the bottom is natural stone, and there are fishies and sometimes turtles and snakes swimming around in it. It was still a little cold for swimming, but the water is 76 degrees, so we swam around for an hour or so, watching the fishies and ducks. Getting out of the pool into the 50 degree world was the hard part.
9. The last stop was Carlsbad National Park. I think that we wandered around in the caves for about 2 and a half hours. There were all kinds of neat formations, and everything was big Big BIG. We should go back there to see the bat migration in the summer. Apparently millions of Mexican free-tailed bats hang out there, and they all come out of the caves in one big swarm. Sounds pretty cool to me!

After that we high-tailed it back to Fort Collins so that Brent could get some practicing in. We'll be out here for a couple of weeks before leaving for the next adventure. We've got some plans so far, but I think that's another entry...

kim