jumping frogs!

The weather has been quite hot recently and to cool off, we decided to go into the Western Sierra's for the weekend. Primarily, we wanted to go away for the weekend. Secondarily, we chose to stay in a hotel instead of camping in order to watch the Olympics as we'd been visiting random restaurants and bars all week in order to have access to a television. Randomly, we chose to go to Arnold in Calaveras County.

On Friday, after driving through farms and vineyards, we stopped in Murphy, a weird ritzy town in the middle of nowhere where we met a wacky couple who run a baseball card store. This was in the middle of town (need I explain the irony that made this giggle-worth?):

We stayed in Arnold, just 5 miles from Big Tree National Park. A very silly placard in our hotel room:

On Saturday, we explored the park and saw a dozen or so great sequoias which were impossible to capture 'on film':



We saw hundreds of hemisphere-shaped spider webs all over the park:




On Sunday, we traveled a little further into the mountains and hung out by a lake all day just relaxing. . .

We watched several osprey with fish and another creature vainly attempting:



We saw many beautiful butterflies:
and some bees:



This time lapse video summarizes our day:



En route home, we stopped in the town of Angel's Camp, 'famous' for the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Competition. Here's a look at their metropolis and walk-of-fame. . .




All in all, a splendid weekend in a part of CA we had not yet explored. We came back to Davis well-rested and ready to work. This week, Andrew has been getting his school office organized, meeting with staff, and getting back into squash-shape. Leigh has been chosen to serve on a jury for the next week or so, and is traveling back and forth from Woodland's courthouse daily. We are off to Mono this weekend for another weekend before we get buried in work again.

Hasta pronto amigos.