Sabbatical - our trip to Lanai

Towards the end of my sabbatical Annabel and I took a 5 day trip to Hawaii to Lanai (no kids!). Nana and Poppy flew to CA for the first half of our trip, and then handed the baton to Anna, who stayed with J&D for the second half (N&P had to fly to Boston for the Va Tech-BC game).

It was a nice trip, very relaxing, although we won't go running back to Lanai. The hotel was nice, but not quite as nice as Hualalai on the big island. There really wasn't all that much to do other than hang out at the beach/pool, although we did spend a day skeet shooting, which was pretty cool.

View from the room (after we asked for a second room b/c our first one was really quite lame and smelled a bit mildewy).



Beware the pregnant lady with the shotgun!



Annabel with a nice view in the background - this was a hike we did from our hotel one of the last days there...

Kings Canyon trip - Chris and Gil

One of the pieces of my sabbatical was to take a 3 day/2-night camping trip in Kings Canyon NP with Gil. We hiked up a trail day 1, then day 2 was a day hike up past a nice lake en route to trying to summit a local peak (we ran out of time), with day 3 being the trek back out. It was great to get out there, although i felt pretty out of shape!

note - since i'm writing this posting many months after the actual trip, i don't remember the specifics (where we went, names of lakes/mtns, etc.)... sorry...

nice view of the valley we climbed up on day 1.


here's the nice lake we passed by on our way up the mtn on our day hike.


gilles near where we topped out, with the lake we passed in the background.

that's the mountain summit in the background - this was about where we topped out.