Fall 2009

The past quarter has been the busiest since we moved to California - full of new adventures traveling, teaching, and keeping up with work and research.

Here is a bit of an update about what we have been up to:

Travel
Colorado
Over Labor Day weekend we traveled back to Colorado for a visit with family and to go to Amy Wilhoit's wedding. We spent our time with the usual hiking, tennis, card playing, and eating lots of tasty food. Amy & Jeremy's wedding was beautiful out in the Black Forest!

Boston & Wood's Hole
This fall I was lucky enough to attend a special conference all about muscle in beautiful Wood's Hole, Massachusetts. Two other girls from my lab were also going so we decided to head out a few days early to explore Boston and the surrounding area. Melinda finished her master's degree at MIT before coming out to Stanford and had some amazing friends in the area who let us stay at their place. We spent two days exploring the MIT/Harvard area (I never realized how close they were to one another) and historic downtown Boston. We got lots of tasty seafood and some amazing cannolli in town before it was time to head down the cape to Wood's Hole for the conference.
Wood's Hole is a cute tiny town which has mainly marine research facilities. The beautiful surroundings made it difficult to stay inside and listen but the content of the conference was great. A lot of the other conferences are really big so it is difficult to get to know other people but this one was small and included all the experts in the area which was a great opportunity.

Wisconsin
At the end of October we (finally) ventured out to Wisconsin to visit Dan's dad. The weather cooperated more than we thought it would so we got to play 3 different frisbee golf courses while we were out there. These courses were great - especially with the leaves changing colors - who knew Wisconsin would have the best frisbee golf I've seen? We spent the rest of the weekend playing with the dogs, going for hikes, eating tasty cheese and seafood (not together), and just relaxing.

Washington DC
Dan and I really wanted to go for an adventure over Thanksgiving break and after looking into Ireland, Spain, and about a million other places we finally decided upon Washington DC. The combination of cheap airline tickets and an endless supply of free museums sold us on the trip out East. We also got a great deal on a hotel right next to the capital which included an amazing buffet breakfast (and we are suckers for good food).
The red-eye flight was a bit painful but we arrived without any problems at 5:30am, took the bus & subway to our hotel, and the hotel staff was nice enough to let us check in at 7:00am when we arrived. We didn't stay at the hotel for long though and set out to explore the monuments before the museums opened at 10am (that is one of my only complaints about DC ... why do the museums open so late?). We ended up spending the whole day walking around all the monuments. My favorite part was going to the top of the Washington Monument which had amazing panoramic views. On the elevator ride back down they slow down for a bit to show the "fund raising stones" that are on the inside of the monument from fire departments, ladies leagues, etc. I think it would be so cool to be able to walk down from the top. At the Smithsonian Castle we joined in on a "members-only" tour (we get Smithsonian magazine) that let us see the upper flours which was a fun addition to the day. By the end of our grand monument walking tour we were exhausted (I don't think Dan slept at all on the flight) so we found a tasty Irish pub and called it a night.
Our second day was dedicated to government buildings. We started off with a tour of the capitol which was a lot better than I expected. They have a new visitors center which has a good movie and a very organized tour system. If we go back in the future I will definitely "talk to my congress person" a few months before we go so we can get tickets to go up into the dome and see the House of Representatives and Senate. Next we headed over to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress Buildings which included a stop in the Supreme Court cafeteria for lunch. Throughout our trip we found that the food in the government cafeterias was really tasty and about half the price of the food in the museum cafeterias. We finished off the day with a visit to the National Arboretum and American Indian Museum. The Arboretum had a great display of Washington DC buildings and monuments made out of all natural materials. After we got home my mom said they saw the same display in Iowa which seemed like an odd place for such an exhibit. I was also very impressed with the American Indian Museum - all the displays were well organized and not information overload like I experienced at some of the other museums.
The next few days were spent exploring the endless supply of Smithsonian museums. We spent a day each at the Air & Space Museum, Natural History Museum, and American History Museum ... and we probably could have spent even more time. One evening we went to see "Night at the Museum II" on the IMAX at the Natural History Museum which turned out to be a great, and very funny, movie. We also visited a special display of Spanish Armor & Art at the National Gallery of Art which had amazing specimens from the 14-1600s but that was about all we could handle for art museums.

Thanksgiving Day our friend An and her mom were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. It was the first Thanksgiving I've had that included egg rolls and soy chicken (someone doesn't like turkey?!) but they also had all the traditional fair and it was delicious. We "worked-off" all the tasty food with a few hours of Wii after dinner.

We had a great time in DC over Thanksgiving and I would definitely recommend it as a great turkey-day destination. The hotels are cheap, the crowds are small, and the weather is still nice. There is so much to see in DC - even after a week there I feel like there are many things that we still didn't have time to see.

Teaching
This fall I took my first ventures into teaching as I co-created and taught a new course along with my labmate Melinda - BIOE282: Performance, Development, and Adaptation of Muscle. Last year we were having a discussion about how we wished Stanford had a good, interdisciplinary course about muscle and a year later we found ourselves teaching a great group of 12 students including juniors, seniors, and graduate students. The field of muscle research is huge and a solid understanding of the fundamentals involves an interplay of biologal, medical, and engineering knowledge. Our hope was to provide students with the basic knowledge required to enter the field ... from a multitude of perspectives ... and to inspire them to work on the many problems still unsolved in the field - all of which have the potential to improve quality of life for millions of people. This was also my first "test" as to whether or not I would enjoy teaching and being a professor and at the end of quarter I can honestly say that I loved organizing and teaching the class. Of course, having a group of highly motivated, hard working, positive, and participatory students helped immensely. You can see a bit more information about our class at bioe282.stanford.edu although the Materials and Resources pages are only available to students.
Our class with their pipe-cleaner models of sarcomeres.

Turkey
After returning from Washington DC Dan decided he still wanted to try cooking a turkey and went out and bought the biggest turkey he could find in the turkey sales. We ended up with a 24-lb turkey that just barely fit into our oven and roasting pan but turned out amazing. We still have a bunch of the meat frozen in our freezer and have been using it for sandwiches and leftovers. One of my favorites was this delicious Turkey Tortilla Soup.


Tidepools
As Dan headed up to Northern California for the first weekend of turkey season I headed to Moss Beach with some friends to explore the tide pools. It was one of the 'super low-tide' days so we could wander out along the rocks for a couple-hundred feet to explore. I was surprised by how amazing this trip was - there were tons of colorful starfish, sea anemone, and other sea creatures wherever you looked. We ended the day at a nearby restaurant that had fireplaces outback overlooking the sea and sunset - truly idealic.









Tracker (100,000!)
Our 1996 Geo Tracker finally reached 100,000 miles this fall! The momentous mile came as Dan was driving home from work on a rainy day. Dan thinks this marks the perfect opportunity to buy a new car but I'm still not convinced :)






















Tasty Treats
Dan and I entered our graduate building's bake-off this fall. Dan's beautiful chocolate cake won 3rd prize!

4 v 4 Volleyball Tournament

Yesterday we spent another glorious day out in the sunshine playing in our second outdoor volleyball tournament. This time we teamed up with Fraser, a girl we met at the last tournament, and Daniel, a great undergrad who lives in our building for as 4 v 4 grass tournament. This tournament was significantly smaller than the first tournament with only 6 teams. In the morning we played games against all the other teams and came out in first place! We were feeling pretty confident about an easy trip to the finals after this strong showing, but I think we had worn ourselves out and lost early in the afternoon double-elimination tournament ... oh well, we'll have to wait for next time.

Berry Pies

The last couple of weekends Dan and I have been stumbling upon lots of ripe berries so I figured it was time I try making some berry pies. Last weekend I made a delicious peach-huckleberry pie which even had a lattice top and this past weekend I made a blackberry pie with a crumble top. Delicious ... I feel so domesticated :)

The Stanford Theater

Tonight we went with a group of graduate students to the old Stanford Theater in downtown Palo Alto to see My Fair Lady. This is an amazing old theater complete with an organ that rises out of the stage before the show and during intermission for entertainment. I had forgotten how much I loved the movie My Fair Lady and also enjoyed the experience of watching it in a full theater. Dan even found the movie funnier and less of a "chick-flick" than he remembered it.

Kat's first par!

Dan finally convinced me to take golf classes this summer so I've been hitting the driving range two days a week at 8am to hit 100+ balls. It has actually been a ton of fun and our teacher has been great - giving me lots of tips and drills since I'm not as advanced as the rest of the class. The Stanford golf course is beautiful and offers great rates for students ($13 vs $117 for non-students) so Dan and I have been going once a week for the last three weeks along with some other friends. Needless to say, my scores have been pretty horrible (112!!) but I figure I can only get better. Last night on the 17th hole ( a par-3) I finally got my first par ... yay! Let's see if next time I can get two pars ... and not so many double, triple, or quadruple bogeys.

TWO YEARS!

I can't believe it has already been two years since Dan and I got married. The time has definitely flown by. Unlike our first anniversary, I didn't have to go to a conference this year so we took some time to celebrate. On Thursday (the actual day of our anniversary) we went to the Melting Pot for an amazing (and huge) fondue dinner. We were there for over three hours as we enjoyed our cheese fondue, salad, wine, cooking a huge array of meats and veggies, and finally demolishing the chocolate fondue (complete with cheese cake, brownies, marshmallows, and fruit). This dinner for two is definitely big enough for three people but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Over the weekend we took a trip down to Monterey and Carmel to continue our celebration. On Saturday we started off the day with a trip to one of the frisbee golf courses at the University of California - Monterey. This frisbee golf course was awesome - set in a strange landscape of abandoned military buildings and athletic facilities with lots of challenging holes. After a quick picnic lunch we headed to the Monterey Acquarium. Although I have been here a couple of times since I was a kid this was Dan's first time. Despite the huge number of people (go on a weekday if you can...) we loved all the exhibits, especially the sea otters and the sea horses exhibit.
Sunday we continued our exploration of the Monterey peninsula with a loop around 17-mile drive through Carmel. This is a toll road that takes you by a ridiculous number of golf courses (including Pebble Beach), huge houses, and along the rocky coast. Although the coast was beautiful my favorite part was Huckleberry Hill where we found the bushes covered with tons of huckleberries. We stopped for about an hour and filled the tupperware container we had with us. We finished off the weekend with another round of frisbee golf at another course at UC-Monterey that was much smaller than the first but once again set amid a bunch of abandoned buildings (kind of strange as these buildings looked just fine and some still had remnants of furniture inside). On our way home we made a special trip through Gilroy so Dan could finish off the weekend with his favorite treat ... a Sonic slush drink ... a good end to a great weekend.

Santa Cruz Frisbee Golf

There is a serious lack of good frisbee golf courses in the bay area so yesterday we decided to head down to the coast to meet our frisbee needs. We woke our friendly neighbors Phil & Elizabeth early in the morning for the trip down. The course was in the wooded hills behind a middle school just outside of Santa Cruz. The course was on a very steep hill so we spent a lot of time wandering up and down the hills searching in the bramble for our frisbees ... surprisingly more enjoyable than it sounds. Sadly, Dan did lose one frisbee in a giant bush of bramble and poison oak, but for how intense this course was I didn't think that was too bad. This was Elizabeth's first time playing frisbee golf and although it was a tough introduction she did great and was catching on quickly by the end. She also packed an amazing picnic lunch for us which we enjoyed along the coast after we were done with frisbee golf. We finished up the afternoon with a bit of delicious ice cream before heading back to campus. I love frisbee golf!

Asian Volleyball Tournaments

One of my volleyball friends invited me to play in two weekend tournaments over the past month. I, of course, agreed but the piece of information my friend left out was that these were Asian-American volleyball tournaments ... not exactly fitting my demographic. Upon arriving at the gym for the first tournament I felt a bit tall and out of place although my friends assured me that "you don't have to be Asian to play." For the first tournament I ended up being the ONLY non-Asian in the gym. However, my team also seemed to have all of the tallest Asians in the bay area so we dominated throughout the day and ended up taking away the gold medal (which has Chinese text on it and cannot read).


Despite my non-Asianess I agreed to play in the second, larger tournament since the first tournament was so much fun. I was a bit relieved to find that there were a lot more non-Asians playing in this tournament so I was not completely out of place. For this tournament we had an EVEN TALLER team featuring Chuck who was well over 6'9'' and Danny who was a former Stanford varsity player. We had a blast playing during the day (I could set the ball anywhere and they would put it down) but we lost in the finals since we didn't have the greatest defense (although it is pretty entertaining watching all those huge guys dive for the ball). So I had to settle with a silver medal for this tournament which, once again, I could not read. Check out how short I look in the picture below.

First Outdoor Volleyball Tourney

Dan's volleyball skills have improved a ton since we moved to the bay area (playing two days a week at work with a former pro-beach volleyball player helps) and we both have been getting better at playing outdoor volleyball so we decided that it was time to enter our first outdoor tournament. We entered a "Reverse Hybrid Random Draw Co-ed Doubles & Quads Tournament" ... a mouthful which means that you play on a women's net so the women can hit from the front row and the men hit from behind the ten-foot line. In the morning they randomly match up the doubles teams to form teams of four and you play four different games with four different partners which seeds the teams for the afternoon single-elimination tournament.

We did OK in the morning and finished at #8 out of the 18 teams in the tournament. However, in the afternoon, we ended up surprising everyone (and ourselves) by making it all the way to the semi-finals. We probably could have made it to the finals, but I think we psyched ourselves out a bit against the last team we played who were both really big hitters so we lost 21-25. All in all, we thought that this was a very successful first outdoor tournament. Plus, I thought it was a blast that I got to finally hit on a women's net for the first time since moving to California.

ASME conference in Tahoe

Last week I headed up to Lake Tahoe for my first time since moving to California to attend the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Summer Bioengineering Conference. The conference was hosted at a beautiful resorts with a huge pool (complete with water slides and hot tubs) and tons of hiking trails which made it difficult to stay inside for the conference. However, while most conferences I've been to run from 7am-9pm everyday this one was only in the morning so we had the whole afternoon to go out and explore.

On our first afternoon off An and I joined with Tom Andriacchi's lab to go on a white-water rafting trip down the Trukee river. We were a big group and had 5 full rafts heading down the river. Since this was the first time I'd been rafting I was a bit nervous but for the first two-hours of the trip the water was so calm we spent more time in water fights than going down rapids. However, as our guide warned us, the last 20 minutes of the trip was by far the most intense - a series of class 3 rapids in rapid succession. Looking down the rapids I was sure that our boat was going to flip and I was going to be swimming in the freezing cold water. However, in the end, we all made it down safely with a few close calls but no one ended up in the water.

After a bit more stimulating conference talk, on our second afternoon we went for a beautiful hike up the end of the valley alongside a creek with a ton of waterfalls. Afterwords, we joined the conference to watch a group of 5 professors sing in their own band and enjoy some tasty food. That is one thing there is never a shortage of at conferences ... lots of tasty food. This conference also had an amazing hot chocolate setup with whip-cream and chocolate chunks that was to die for.

An and I were both excited for the end of the conference as Dan and Chuck were able to drive up and spend the weekend with us at the resort. We had Saturday morning off so we decided to ride our bikes from the resort down to Tahoe City for some breakfast. This was a great, easy ride with the reward of delicious huevos rancheros at the end. We also played a bit of tennis and swam in the pools before heading inside for the conference. That night we also had the banquet where I received an honorable mention in the abstract competition for my abstract "Crouch gait represents a simplified support strategy." I was pretty excited as this was my first conference award and I got a free copy of abacus, a finite element software.

Sunday the conference was over and Dan and I decided to drive around the west side of the lake and explore some of the parks along the shore. Needless to say, the lake was beautiful and we had a great time hiking and exploring the area ... I wish every conference could be this wonderful.

Graduation

Even though I finished my master's degree in December Stanford only holds one graduation ceremony a year so as of last Sunday I have now officially "walked" for graduation. My parents and Dan's mom came out for the weekend and we did a bit of exploring around the bay area. During one of our excursions we took a hike through the redwoods and I finally saw my first banana slug! Dan was right .... they do exist. We also headed down to Ano Nuevo State Park to see the huge elephant seals lying on the beach. There were a lot more males on the beach at this time of the year and the entire island off the coast was covered by elephant seals who were incredibly noisy. The actual graduation ceremony was a bit of a let down. They have one big graduation ceremony in the football stadium which was long, hot, and non-inspiring. Supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy did give a good speech, although it wasn't quite the thrill of Oprah who spoke last year. The department ceremony was even duller - enough said. I guess it just didn't compare to the school-wide ceremony from Mines. Oh well ... I'll give it another try in 3-4 years :)

Banana Slug!

Mines Memorial Day BBQ

An amazing number of our friends from the Colorado School of Mines have ended up living in the Bay Area. However, the Bay Area is a big place and between all our busy schedules we rarely get to see one another. Therefore, Dan and I decided to host a BBQ over Memorial Day weekend. We ended up with a pretty good tournout - Lindsey, Jim, and Phil who are all current Stanford students, Audrey & hubby Griffin from San Francisco, Sarah whose a pharmacy student at UCSF, Sarah's older brother Brian who actually lives in our building (and also went to Mines), Amanda from San Jose, and as an added bonus Jessica and Chris who just happened to be visiting from Colorado that weekend. We had tons of delicious food, a bit of bocce ball, and a lot of catching up - we will have to get together more often!

Yosemite Spoiled

This past weekend Dan and I were spoiled in Yosemite. Thanks to a kind wedding present we got to spend a "romantic weekend" away at the Awahnee Lodge in Yosemite valley. It was supposed to be for our first anniversary but since I went to a conference (sorry Dan!) the trip was postponed til the spring. The Awahnee lodge was absolutely beautiful and we got a room on the top floor with an amazing view of the valley and waterfalls. The chocolate covered strawberries and champagne were the perfect way to start off our weekend.

Our room was the window at the top

The best part of going the first weekend in May was that the waterfalls and rivers were all flowing at high water - so powerful and amazing! My favorite trail was the mist trail (very appropriately named) which goes 3.5 miles up right beside two massive waterfalls and the raging river. Near the first falls you go up a set of stairs right beside the waterfall but since there was so much water the stairs and the cliff above had turned into a waterfall ... we ran through but needless to say we were drenched.

Other trails we did this weekend included the four mile trail which climbs from the valley floor up to glacier point (although we couldn't get all the way because of snow) and the trail to mirror lake. I couldn't have asked for a better weekend to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery with my wonderful Danny Boy :)

Pinnacles National Monument

This past weekend we went on a last minute camping trip with a few people from my lab two hours south to Pinnacles National Monument. I had never even heard of Pinnacles before but it was absolutely amazing! Basically combine caves with beautiful views and great hiking and you get Pinnacles. We did a big 10 mile loop around (the park is pretty small) which took us through the 2 main caves and up into the hills for great scenics. We were all really tired by the time we got back to camp, but Jon, Melinda's boyfriend made a super tasty dinner of teriyaki burgers with pineapple - a felt so spoiled after all that hiking!

Brocolli Flowers

Ever wonder what broccoli flowers look like? I think they are kind of pretty :)

8 days, 2374 miles

For spring break Dan and I set out to Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada for a week-long road-trip. Due to Dan's phiolosiphy that our Geo Tracker is not really a car we rented a "real" car on Saturday and began our journey South.

Day 1: Highway 1's waterfalls
Among rainy, foggy conditions we started our long drive down through Santa Cruz to follow Highway 1 down along the coast. Twisting along the windy road between sandy beaches and over high cliffs the views of the ocean were spectacular. Through the Monterey penninsula there were amazing mansions set against the coast but they quickly let way to wilderness further South. The park of Big Sur was hit with large wildfires last year which still kept many of the areas around Pfeiffer State Park closed but we didn't see much evidence of the fire and it looked like new vegetation was quickly taking over the hillsides. Two quick hikes presented very different waterfalls - the first, on a secluded beach shut to the public fell slenderly down into the ocean while the second, Salmon Creek, raged over a high cliff into a valley of large boulders and towering trees.


The familiar bark of the stumbling sea lions greeted us as we approached San Simeon, our final destination for the night. Unlike the beaches at Ano Nuevo State Park where guides lead you on an 1+ trek to carefully approach the barking sea lions, at this beach a boardwalk lines a cliff directly over a beach covered with sea lions. The males were still imobile as ever while the newborns slowly made their way to the sea for swimming lessons. As the sun set on our first day of vacation I decided to try fried artichoke after passing all of the fields filled with the thistle-like plant all day. The rain still raged outside and we opted for a cheap hotel room for the night.

Day 2: Castle to mansions
All I really remembered of Hearst Castle from my visit as a child was the amazing swimming pools that I wanted to dive into. As we set out on the first tour of the morning my childish delight once more took over as we approached the Mediterranean villa set up in the hills over looking the coast. With the cathedral main house in the center and the "smaller" guest houses spread around the outside with gardens and pools I enjoyed imagining what life was like in this small paradise. The inside of the houses are just as ridiculous as the outside - 16th century fireplaces beside 14th century tapestries. The one feature I did find a bit odd was how dark the house was, feeling more like a damp medieval castle than a Mediterranean retreat.

After dreaming of how different life is for the rich and famous we continued our drive down the coast with agricultural fields stretching between beautiful beach. The giant rock at Morro Bay was impressive along with the gigantic power-plant that sat beside it. Our final stop for the day was for a walk around Santa Barbara with a quick look at the mission and beautiful, homogeneous downtown area. We found a beautiful campground on the beach just a bit further south in Carpenteria where we ended the day with a walk along the beach, surrounded by city lights in the distance.

Day 3: Across the desert
As part of our strategy to avoid the traffic of LA at all costs we bee-lined eastward just south of LA. A long day of driving we quickly passed from the lush coastline to the desertland. Although we counted 7 different kinds of cactus, examined a solar-thermal power-plant through binoculars, and speculated about what types of projects were going on at all the military sites we passed it was a lazy day to just sit back and enjoy the sun (yes, Dan did drive the whole way). We did stop in Kingman, AZ for a quick game of frisbee golf at a small local course next to a middle school. Around 5pm we finally rolled into the Grand Canyon and found our campsite for the night as snow lightly fell. We headed over for look into the deep, broad canyon and started discussing what we wanted to do tomorrow ... "Do you think we could hike to the bottom?" ... "Sure, to the bottom, but we'd never make it back up" and then it was time to build a fire and have some hot chocolate before retreating into our warm sleeping bag.

Day 4: To the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Driven out of our sleeping back around 6am from the freezing cold temperatures we decided we might as well head over and get started on a hike. We decided upon the South Kaibob trail which was supposed to have sweeping views as it followed ridgelines to the bottom. Our plan was to just go down a bit, see how we feel, and continue from there. As we descended beneath the rim of the canyon the views were spectacular as the sun rose. A mule train passed us by with a maintenance crew and we marveled at how stable these animals seemed on these steep trails ... although I'm not sure I'd ever want to ride one down. We kept going down and down .... somehow it seemed like the bottom was not getting any closer while the cliffs extended further above us as a reminder of what we had to climb back up. At about 1.5 hours we passed the half-way point on a set of particularly steep switch-backs and decided that we'd come this far, we might as well go for it - after all, we had another 10 hours to make it back out.

3 hours and 100+ photos later we finally approached the tunnel leading to the bridge across the Colorado River ... we had made it! Besides the sore toes, that was easy ... but it was bitter-sweet as now we knew we had to start our climb back out. After a brief break at the river and a peek at some of the old indian ruins we resigned ourselves to starting the climb back up.

My feet were actually relieved to be going in the opposite direction and I was actually amazed at how quickly we ascended out of the canyon, leaving behind ridge after ridge that had seemed to take so long to reach on the way down. We stopped for a lunch break to enjoy the views and postpone the fact that we still had a long way up. As we passed the half-way point for the second time of the day I was starting to feel it and was wondering if Dan could give me a piggy-back ride the rest of the way. After watching a stuborn mule who did not want to go down any further, I decided it was time to continue upward. It took us about 3.5 hours but with sore feet we finally topped the final ridge and climbed the final switch-backs we had run down earlier that morning. Its amazing how once reaching the top, everything seemed to hurt a lot more than it had a moment earlier and we slowly wobbled our way to the visitors center for another look at the canyon we had just climbed .... "I can't believe we just did that!"

We decided that we wouldn't be able to move the next morning if we spent the night in our tent so we headed down to Flagstaff to spend the night. On the way we were suprised to find another national monument that had old indian ruins built into rocky outcrops and a "blowhole" where air seemed to stream out of the middle of the earth from a small hole in the ground. We ran like a couple of soar cripples to see all the ruins before the sun set and the parked close.

Day 5: Dam Frisbee Golf
We started our day with a quick look around Northern Arizona University in the quaint town of Flagstaff before retracing our steps to the town of Kingman and then North to Las Vegas. In Kingman we stopped at another frisbee golf course in the desert. Although we had to carefully extract our frisbees from cactuses a few times it was an amazing course with huge jack rabbits to keep us company.

About an hour out of Las Vegas we approached the Hoover Dam and found our first traffic jam of our journey. I was amazed at the number of people on the bridge and the huge bridge that they're building to bypass it. We took a walk across the dam, gazing down the huge concrete face and then headed into Las Vegas. Through AAA we had found a great room for the night at the Sunset Station Casino including food gift certificate and a bit of free play (the only kind of gambling we liked) and arrived for a relaxing evening. As we walked into the casino we looked like the octarians we were following as we wobbled back and forth on our sore legs.

Day 6: Las Vegas
Dan had never been to Las Vegas before so after stopping by the EthelM chocolate factory (free samples!) and cactus garden we headed into the strip. We spent the day walking all the way from the MGM down to the Venitian. Coca-Cola world was my favorite stop for the day where we tried 16 different kinds of soda from around the world (sugar overload). The belagio fountains were also spectacular .... I'd love to see them at night some day.

At around 4, our friend Val got off of work so we headed to the west side of Las Vegas to stay with her for the night. We went for a drive around Red Rocks Park which was amazing ... I highly recommend hiking around there whenever you are in Vegas. We watched the NCAA men's basketball tourney for the night in the beautiful house she lives in with her roommates and 2 cute dogs ... we're only "slightly" jealous of the fact that their beautiful kitchen was as big as our whole apartment.

Day 7: Lowest land in the Western Hemisphere
Waking Val at 7am the next morning we headed out of Vegas on our way to Death Valley. I wasn't quite sure what would be so special about the driest, deadest, lowest place on earth but I figured we should check it out. We headed to the north side where some millionaire of the 1920s had built his own Stanford-inspired mansion known as Scotty's castle. I was amazed at how beautiful and well-equipped this mansion in the middle of the uninhabited desert was ... maybe this desert won't be so bad. Nearby we found a huge crater that descended 500 feet down into the earth and then we headed down into the valley. There were tons of wildflowers and even some little fish in a small stream near the bottom. I couldn't believe that they actually had a golf course in the middle of the park ... where does the water come from? My favorite part of the park was a quick circle drive through the "Artist's Pallete" where rock cliffs of all colors lit up in the afternoon sun.
Of course we also had to visit the "lowest place" at -232 feet below sea level and also explored the old borax factories (what is borax?).

Day 8: Snow in the giant sequoias
Our final day of the road trip we headed north and stopped at two more national parks on our way home. The valley approaching Sequoia National Monument was so peaceful with green hills and wildflowers lined the river flowing down from the mountains. We started our drive up into the park and soon found ourselves surrounded by snow. At the top of the road there were still 4+ feet beneath the huge sequoia trees. We hiked around as much as we could but we definitely want to go back and see more of the park during the summer some time. We were still able to see General Sherman, the largest living tree in the world (largest not in height, or width, but in total volume ... go figure).

The road through Sequoia National Monument leads into Kings Canyon National Park. The main road into the canyon was still closed for the winter but we were able to take a road over to a small lake looking over the valley ... another place to return for another visit.

As we made our final stretch north towards home we made our final stop of the roadtrip at .... Sonic! The whole trip Dan had been searching for his favorite slushie drinks and we finally found one in the town of Gilroy making our trip complete.