Dan teaches me drawing

I had not done a lot this past week, art-wise, since a number of things came up that prevented me to showing up at the - what - drawing board? I guess so. I made significant progress on knitting my Sunwheel mitten - which isn't technically art but it scratches a creative itch. Given that I'm working on a complex pattern, people are super impressed when they see what I'm working on.

There is a thrift store chain in Salt Lake City called Deseret Industries, or "DI" for short. I go there quite regularly, probably twice a month, and I often check out the area that has picture frames, mirrors, and paintings. So far I have come home with a few small canvases with ugly paintings on them, the DI sells them for $1. I knew I could paint over them and start from scratch, so I had a tidy collection of them that I finally got to tonight.

Dan already has a good collection of acrylic paints and brushes, but tonight what I needed was a large volume of white to make a clean slate, so to speak. Soon into this very simple act of covering up old paintings with white, I realized that I needed a painting smock. Dan leaped out of his chair, he had just the thing! And quickly fished out a lab coat he used when he worked at a distillery. It's very big on me, but perfect for my purpose.

He's been bugging me for a while about gesture drawing. He wanted to teach me gesture drawing. I did a drawing exercise with my weekly art planner that I mentioned last week, and he basically said okay when you are finished what you are doing, we'll do some gesture drawing together. As luck would have it, all three kitties were in the living room and available to be subjects for drawing. So we started there.

With manila paper and charcoal, we drew a few things. Feiminn. Djarfur. The IKEA watering can that they use to drink water out of. And the cat tree we assembled on New Year's Eve. (There were a few other things too but they are not worth sharing). Dan gave me encouragement and praise for my technique, and instructed me for what to do next time. He's been to several art schools, and has thousands of hours of drawing logged himself, and he also happens to be a great teacher.

Feiminn

Djarfur, cleaning himself

It turns out I like gesture drawing better than I like line drawing. At least for now. I think that will help me develop confidence.

I joined a choir

When it rains, it pours.

It's almost as if announcing my intention to the Universe had this cascading effect of throwing lots of things at me.

Last week I was out for a walk with my friend Emily and she told me she was thinking about joining a choir. She described a choir that was very similar to a non-auditioned choir I was a part of before I met Dan, 11-12 years ago. I went straight home after that and signed up for Utah Voices. Emily and I carpooled to Bountiful (about 12 min north of where she lives) and joined the second rehearsal of the season, our first.

Boy, am I ever rusty. I don't know any of the Broadway songs and I certainly don't know Mozart's Requiem, but I am excited to learn them and learn to read & understand sheet music in the process. There were probably about 100 people there. The director is fantastic. The accompanist is amazing. I am really going to enjoy this. We perform in March (Broadway songs), May (Mozart) and July (?).

That drawing class I mentioned last week? That turned out to be a major disappointment. I arrived at my class on Tuesday after having spent another $75 on drawing supplies. The class was supposed to start at 6:30, and by 7:00, the teacher had not shown up and no one at the school came to tell us if she was still coming. There were two other new people too - what an impression to make! I left. She arrived, apparently, just after I left. I was so pissed off at having my time wasted like that, I decided to withdraw. I mean, I live with an artist for heaven's sake, it's not like I need to pay someone for instruction. So that was a good lesson for me. 

I emailed my complaint to the art center the very next morning and after three business days I have yet to hear back from them. So I'll leave an honest review on Google. I returned the drawing supplies I don't plan to use and at least recovered some of my money.

Meanwhile, there is the library. I got this great book on folk art with some accessible exercises. Most of them call for painting, which I'm not quite ready for, but I do have a massive collection of colored pencils, so I'm starting there.

And, since Dan is so encouraging of me pursuing music, he felt it very important to get a piano keyboard for when I practice, for tone control. He is currently learning about/building electronic instruments and would have eventually needed one anyway. But we are well on our way to having a recording studio in our home. (How did that happen?)

Today I went to the book store for a day planner and found this gem in the art section. It has ideas for things I would not have thought of doing, so I expect to show some of the things in this blog.

I don't have any major goals for this year of Art Exploration. I will have performances, so that's nice. I can't say I plan to have a show - maybe once I have accumulated some things worth showing I'll do that, but goodness, we are only in mid-January. One thing I would like to see though is having more art in our home, art we created ourselves.

And if all this wasn't enough, I started seeing a new chiropractor yesterday (she cleared a migraine I had had for four days!) and when I mentioned to her that I had joined a choir, she invited me to her bag-piping troop. Oh I was sorely tempted. I am very interested in bellows instruments, and apparently bagpipes only have nine notes. I love bagpipes. But I think I need to focus on what I do have right now.

free food giveaways: Food Not Bombs Salt Lake City

Sometime last month when I was volunteering with Green Urban Lunch Box, one of the volunteers told me about the food giveaway at a park near downtown SLC by Food Not Bombs.  I went that day (a Saturday) and have been going every weekend since (except for the weekend I was away).

The volunteers for the organization rescue perfectly good food that has gone past its expiry date from going into the dumpster. So much food is wasted in the United States, and this is a way of keeping it out of the landfill. They collect this food, and then three times a week they set up tables to just give away, no questions asked. Below are photos of some of the things I have brought home - all for free. 

The above photo was from this morning. Dan has the weekend off for Thanksgiving, so he came with me for the first time. There was a lot of food from the post-Thanksgiving feast and only half of the usual people showed up, so there was a lot to be given away. Above we have salad mix, bananas, muffins, cookies, milk, gyro meat, apples, grapefruit, yogurt, snacks, onion dips, stuffing mixes, tortilla, garlic bread, eggplant, sauerkraut, peppers, a sandwich and potato salad.

Dan and I both hate to see food going to waste, and if we can not spend money by helping divert perfectly good food from going to the landfill, so much the better. Most of this food is usually organic, though not always. Between the food we grew and preserved, the $50 gift card I won from Bob's Red Mill thanks to the Splendid Table, and going to these weekly giveaways, our food costs have gone way down. Now it's just a matter of dealing with all this food. Dan has been cooking up a storm all day, and I am juicing all the vegetables I can. At this rate though, we won't have to buy groceries for a while, other than for staples like salt and rice.

How it works: everyone arrives at 11:00am on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The volunteers have the tables with boxes of food all lined up at Richmond Park 450 E 600 S. A coin is flipped, to decide whether the inside or the outside of the line gets to go first - keep it egalitarian. The line is divided in two and we go in circles around the string of tables, taking only one item per box each time we pass by. People who abuse this and take more than one item (if they know the rules and ignore them) are either told to go the back of the line or come next time. Mostly it's older people (immigrants who don't speak English well) and young people that come. Most people have all they need by the time they make a full circle around the table, but there is always more bread, apples, or potatoes leftover. There is a donation bucket for gas for the volunteers. When the weather turns too cold/bad, the giveaway will happen at the Boing house on 500 east, just around the corner from the park.

It's such an excellent service. You never know what you'll get. One week it was largely gluten-free. Another week there was a lot of dairy. Another time it was mostly produce. There is always a lot of bread though, we never need to buy or bake bread again.

Today, because there was a huge abundance of food and not many people, one of the volunteers thanked me for coming and taking food. Where else does that happen? I love this city. 

my field's biggest academic conference in San Francisco

So: the reason I wasn't able to write a blog post three Fridays ago is because I was in San Francisco for a conference. I had a poster accepted and therefore needed to be there to present it. My supervisor's grant would have paid for my trip, but I applied for and won two travel awards: one was a matching grant between my department and Graduate Studies at the U, the other was a travel award that only applied to international students. As I am not yet a citizen, I qualified and won!

My flight was for 6:30am on Friday the 13th. I arrived at the airport at 5:45am which, it turns out, was too late. I had not accounted for the 300 people in the TSA lineup. They rescheduled me for another flight, four hours later that would take me to Seattle first and then SFO. So I settled in to a day of airports and airplanes and trying to catch wifi and charging stations. It wasn't so bad, really, but travelling is tiring. When I finally did get to my hotel around 6:00, I met up with my friends from the department, my roommate for our five days at the hotel, P, and my office comrade, B. We dropped our luggage and found dinner before retiring for the night.

Saturday was a day of pre-symposia tutorials. The first one was one on getting evaluation education into biomedical informatics programs. I was finally able to meet some characters I have only connected with online or whose papers I have read. Yes there is such a thing as academic fandom. It was great to put names to faces. I had also started tweeting the sessions I attended from my research twitter handle (not @yarnsalad). The afternoon session I went to wasn't very interesting but I did at the coffee break connect with a friend and former student of our department who moved away a couple of months ago, so it was good to catch up with him. I knew this conference would be one big happy reunion. Then I snuck off with some friends from SLC whom I had not seen in a while and went to a pub for a pint. That evening, I went with those same friends and one new friend to a fancy restaurant and discovered how awesome Uber is.

Sunday morning began with getting to the hotel gym at 6:15am, and I should have gone earlier to get a full workout in. I had to rush because I had a breakfast date arranged via Twitter more than a month ago with two Twitter friends - one I hadn't met yet (great sidebar story: Kim and I found each other on Twitter because of knitting, then we discovered we work in the same field and that we were both going to this conference! Also we both have personal as well as professional Twitter accounts.) and one who graduated with a PhD from my program at UVic the year I began my first Master's. Nice breakfast, too.

That morning's tutorial was about how to be a good leader within the organization and how to get into positions of leadership. I made some good connections there and met some more people who are famous in our industry. That day I found David's Deli and had an excellent kosher lunch.

It was after lunch on Sunday that the symposium officially began. Before the opening keynote speaker, the president and CEO of the organization welcomed everyone. He mentioned the Twitter stats for the day and a half of tutorials, and in the top 4 tweeters, he named me second! After that and for the rest of the conference, everyone from my department commented on my Twitter fame.

Sunday evening was busy, socially. There was the welcome reception where all the vendors and schools had booths in the exhibition room; ie, the place where all the free stuff is. I am happy to report that I now have 15 new pens, three water bottles, a couple of bags and some other fun trinkets. Later there was the reception for new members and new attendees. I'm on the membership committee for the organization so I went to interact with the new people. Rob, our organization's membership coordinator, brought some of us up to the front and gave us all a lovely introduction as "people we should talk to". It was Rob who I hold responsible for getting me back into the field at all, so I am happy to give back. I met some nice people, had too many extremely excellent desserts, and waited in anticipation to see if maybe I would win the raffle prizes of the bluetooth wireless headphones or the Apple watch! But alas, no, the headphones went to an alum from our department (so that's nice) and the Apple watch went to my friend and office mate mentioned above, B. After that reception, my hotel roommate P and I went up to the 46th floor for the Women in Informatics Networking Event. It was kind of an awkward space though so we ended up mostly just talking to each other. We haven't spent much time together outside of our one class prior to the conference, so it was really fun getting to know her, actually.

On Monday, P and I met for breakfast the group of people who had agreed to be mentors for the 10 high school scholars for this conference as well as the students themselves. I met the student I had been paired with, but for reasons, we didn't actually get to see each other much that day. I did get to meet his dad later though and got a photo of him with his poster. Nice kid, I was glad to hear he is planning to do a computer science degree (and then I recommended doing our Master's at UUtah). I live tweeted some interesting sessions. I spent some time with Barb in our booth in the exhibition room, talking to people about our program. Went back to David's Deli for lunch, this time a salad to go, which was also excellent. My committee chair gave a presentation about why our department is so awesome and other than the four people from our department who attended (and were also live tweeting), I think there were maybe three other people, so that was a bummer. We need to figure out a way to show people how great it is to live in Utah.

The last session of the day was the presentations of the high school scholars. Five of them had papers, the other five (including my buddy) had posters. It was a very well attended session, standing room only. One of the organizers introduced the program and the names of all the graduate student mentors went up on the big screen - three students from our department, Utah was well-represented!

The thing about these conferences is that you are not done when the sessions finish at 5pm. I still had two other events to attend. The first was the membership committee - we usually meet by Citrix for an hour every month, but this time we finally got to meet in person. It was really cool to put faces to names. I had to leave that meeting early though, because our department chair had arranged a dinner for our department people and alumni at a nearby restaurant. It was a fun evening and I was glad for an early night - after all this busy time I needed some down time.

Tuesday morning I got up at 5:30 to get to the gym earlier (since I had another 7:00 breakfast date). When I got to the gym at 5:45, every one of the 20 exercise machines were full and there were three people waiting. Eventually I got onto a spin bike and put in a 45-minute workout. The 7:00 breakfast was to meet with all the people who had been working on the Year in Review - 18 of us had spent the last six months reviewing 1400 articles to see what was relevant and what kinds of themes have emerged in our field since the last Symposium. That was awesome. It was great to meet those people just before the session where our leader, Patti, presented them to an overstuffed room with at least 1,000 people. Again my name on the big screen. She did an amazing job of condensing all that information into a synopsis.

Tuesday was my big day partly because of that, but also because it was my day for my poster presentation (there were about 400 posters, split into two days). I had bought myself a suit back in August to wear for that day, that moment. I attended my poster from 5:00-6:30pm. At the end of it, one of the organization's staff members came up to me with the photographer and asked to take my photo. I was so touched! They appreciated all the tweeting I had done and my level of commitment to the organization. So lots of arranging of hair and ears, turn this way, lean in, he took a few dozen snaps. A week later, she sent me these:

She said "you never know where this photo will turn up". Of course I sent her an email back, squeeing, which made her day. :-)

Back to the Symposium. After my poster presentation was done, I went to my room and changed into the dress I wore to another fancy restaurant for dinner. I also got in a half-hour phone conversation with Dan - in the few days I was there I hadn't had much time to chat with him other than to say things were going great (me) and the kitty misses me (him). Dinner was great and fun, I really enjoyed my dinner company. When I got back to the hotel I found my office mate B and we ended up chatting with one of the organization's leaders for half an hour about movies, of all things. So great to make that human connection.

Wednesday was the last day. We had no breakfast plans so were happy when they had muffins out for the morning coffee break. (My room mate P and I are both students and experienced free food scavengers). The closing keynote was just after lunch and once again they mentioned the conference's Twitter stats. They showed a slide with the top 10: I was number 5, a post-doc from our department was number 7, and our department (me) was number 10. Go Utah!  The closing keynote was great and I think he gave us all some good ideas for how to move forward.

I was sitting next to B for the closing, and afterward when people were leaving, we stood up and turned around to find one of our department's alumni with two people on his team from South Carolina - I had not met any of them before but we all became fast friends and decided to have lunch together. We found a great little Pakistani restaurant (one of the women we were with is Pakistani) and I swear it was the best meal I had in San Francisco. Sooooo good. (why didn't I take a picture of my chicken tikka masala?) Then we walked over the hill to Ghirardelli Square because of course, it's San Francisco. Burned off all the lunch calories doing that walk! Had a fabulous time with our three new friends and we hope to turn that into a more formal collaboration in the future.

B and I retrieved our luggage from the hotel and went to meet a Twitter friend whom I've been Twitter friends with since I first signed up back in 2009! We've been through a lot together and we finally met in person! It was so awesome to meet Heather and I hope next time I can spend more time with her in her city. B and I took BART to the airport, went to our departure gates, and he went off to another conference on the east coast while I went home, to sleep, to catch up on a week of being away.

I will be finishing my degree, my second Master's degree, in April 2016. While they are still encouraging me to do a PhD, (and made a very persuasive pitch), I think I am going to stay the course. Part of my effort at this conference was to see what kind of work is out there (I was invited to go to Seattle, Nashville, and Portland). I really love Salt Lake though, I have no plans to leave it any time soon. More on the job front as I find out what's happening...

September 2014 part 2: stranded in the desert

It's sort of fun going back through my photos from last year to see what I took photos of, which means documenting what we were doing. We had adventures!

We've been thinking about buying a plot of land in the Nevada desert. It's super cheap if you don't mind being hours of driving from somewhere, which is fine with us. Our destination was sort of the middle part of northern Nevada but we left a bit later than we planned and ended up staying the first night on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land somewhere around Elko, Nevada. We arrived at our spot on the dark so couldn't really see what we were getting into, but somehow managed to put up our tent and get a good night's sleep in. When we woke up, this was our view:

If you've never been desert camping, I highly recommend it. It's dark, quiet, and has no mosquitoes. Also the smell of desert sage is lovely. Sure you have to watch out for snakes and scorpions at higher elevations, but that hasn't been an issue for us. On this particular morning, it was so lovely to just get up, put on some shoes, make coffee and sit in my camp chair.

Some sort of ant hill?

While I was sitting in my camping chair, drinking my excellent camp coffee, a couple of antelope pranced by and one came close enough to say hello! It was quite a magical moment.

Mr. Cupcake checked out the cactus.

Oh hey don't mind the cattle moseying by.

We put the truck in 4WD and climbed some pretty steep terrain to check out this plot but we decided it did not suit our needs. It was interesting though, there was evidence of some structure built out of rocks on the top of the hill, long since unused but you wouldn't be able to see it until you are 20 feet away from it.

Don't worry, dead snake is dead.

Well then we packed up and headed west towards Battle Mountain. There were some properties just south of the town we were going to go look at. We were about 11 miles out of the town when suddenly we realized the AC stopped working (which is a problem when it's 85 degrees in the desert) and then Dan knew we were doomed. The battery wasn't charging which meant that we were minutes away from not being able to drive the truck.

We turned around and got not very far when the truck died. It was a Sunday, 1:30pm. The only auto parts store in Battle Mountain that was open on a Sunday was Napa and they closed at 3:00 and they don't deliver. What do we do? With no truck battery we also had to conserve our cell phone batteries. We weren't there long when a grumpy old timer came by to see what we strangers were up to, gave us a boost and advised us to drive as fast as we can into town. Meanwhile, Dan called back to the unhelpful Napa guy and ordered & paid for a battery and alternator, please leave it outside, we'll find some way to get it. So we got about three miles towards down on the charge from the old guy before the truck died again. Now we were only eight miles away. Stranded. 2pm.

This was a lonely country road with not much traffic. Still, you'd think that people driving by seeing a vehicle with their hood popped and then two people walking towards town who are obviously not from the area would maybe, maybe! stop and say "hey do you need any help?". Now to be fair we didn't stick out our thumbs or anything but already Battle Mountain seemed like quite an unfriendly place. Not even the cops who drove by twice stopped to investigate.

So we walked for 5 miles on a Sunday afternoon in 85 degree weather. We had about a litre of water between us. After walking for an hour and a half on a hot gravel road, I had severe blisters on my feet so when someone finally stopped and offered us a lift into town, of course we gratefully accepted.  The guy lived outside of town, was just running in to the grocery store, and on hearing our story, gladly gave us a lift back to our truck with the 40-pound battery and alternator. He wouldn't take any money for his kindness (so there is one nice person in Battle Mountain).

Dan had the tools to get the new battery in but not the alternator. We drove to the O'Reilly in Elko (Dan knew they would be open late on a Sunday), borrowed tools and the tester, only to discover Napa had given us a faulty alternator. At this point, we were dirty, dusty, sweaty, hungry and tired, so we decided instead of camping again we'd get a motel room and finish dealing with the truck in the morning. Meanwhile, I could barely walk for the painful blisters on my feet, so I was happy to have a bath.

The next day (Monday now) we went to the Elko Napa (much more friendly) and they not only replaced the alternator and provided tools for the installation, but they also upgraded the alternator to a better quality one at no extra charge.

Then we drove home. The end. 

time to blog

Hello readers, do I have any readers left?

When I wasn't working very much or at all, especially when I was waiting for immigration, I had all kinds of time to write. I remember the days when I had the leisure time to blog about all the different kinds of scissors I owned. Those were the days! Now I barely have time to think about blogging but it doesn't mean I have given up on it entirely. In fact, I have now set myself a weekly reminder in my work calendar to update my blog. Not that I will actually get to it every week, but this is a start.

On the whole, things are going very well for me and Dan. I am just half a year away from finishing this non-thesis Master's degree in Biomedical Informatics and then I will be let loose into the world to find some sort of job. I don't know yet what that will be, there is just so much opportunity out there that I think it will be difficult to decide. We do know we plan to stay put in the Salt Lake valley for  a while - I love it here. This is the best place I have ever lived. So my career options are: University of Utah Health Care (basically where I am now), Veteran's Affairs (I have a partial appointment there), Intermountain Health, and industry. I haven't formally started looking yet, I will do that launch next month at the AMIA Symposium and then really start hustling in 2016.

This symposium is our industry's biggest academic convention. It's in San Francisco this year. I haven't been since 2013 when I saved up my tips from bartending in North Carolina and took the Amtrak to DC, I was determined to get back into the field. I'm going this year because I had a poster accepted and then I won some travel awards to allow me to attend. The poster is about a really interesting project that we had some excellent results with, something I continue to work on with user interface design. Who know I would end up doing user interface design? I'm doing all kinds of things I never thought I would/could and I have to say it's been an excellent experience.

It is sort of funny - I received a Master's from the University of Victoria in 2009 in Health Information Science, and this is essentially the same degree - Biomedical Informatics - but in some ways this program is more robust and I am entrenched in the American health care system. I have had excellent training and mentorship, tons of opportunities and have made a great many friendships.

So 2016 will be a big year for me. On February 4, I will be eligible to apply for US Citizenship (three years!). Six weeks later I will turn 42 on the full moon lunar eclipse, so I will basically know the meaning of life by then, right? Then I will graduate and get an awesome new job and maybe we will find a way to buy a house? Next year holds a lot of promise.

Socially, we have become known as people who know our way around food and the garden. We have built up really a lot of reserves (I grew enough cucumbers so that I won't need to make mustard pickle again until at least 2017) and seeds. People know I'm a gardener and just give me seeds all the time. I can't turn them down. I have also been saving seeds so at this rate I have enough for a field of sunflowers, marigolds and calendula, among other things. I have nurtured kombucha mothers and sourdough starters and have been able to give them away and teach others how to make stuff. These things are coming second nature to me now and this kind of sharing has gone a long way to help build social capital.

I have been able to make and grow a lot of really amazing friendships in the nearly two years since we have been in SLC. A number of those friendships began early on in our time here, and they have been incredibly important for my mental health. We are all busy people but it just seems so easy to get together and do stuff, even if it's just running into the neighbor by chance and having a great conversation. We have gotten to know a lot of our neighbors and it's nice feeling that level of security - we all have each other's back.

I haven't been knitting much since I have been here - between school, work, and gardening/preserving, there really hasn't been time. I accept that it's a part of my life/identity that will always be with me but other things have to take precedence right now.

Sam is doing great. Dan has added ramps to her scratching posts so it's easier for her to get up and down. We have also added steps to the sofas and bed so she doesn't have to claw her way up. She's 13 and has sore hips, so she doesn't jump up like she used to. I took her to the vet for a check up in August and she received a clean bill of health. Not only that, but everyone at the clinic gushed at how beautiful she is. Of course they did!

I have a list of things I plan to write about (and of course I'm willing to take requests) so I won't go into too much detail right now on all our adventures. Just know I am trying, I do plan to keep writing. Someday this may come in handy... 

Camping trip to Idaho

Oh look I remember how to blog!

On Saturday morning despite me feeling completely crappy, we were determined to go camping. It was the 4th of July, Independence Day, and Dan never gets Saturdays off from work so we had to take advantage of it.

My sister was texting me all day from her adventure with our mum and her kids at the beach where it was 34 Celsius. I converted our temperature and it was about the same.

Stopped at the Greek restaurant in Logan for lunch. It was nice to have falafel!

Dan had the beef shawarma with Green lemon rice.

Oh hey it's Mr. Cupcake in Idaho!

We went to a campsite called Gravel Creek. Small campground, not many campers, stinky bathroom, and all of the mosquitoes in Idaho were there. Despite our 25% DEET Deep Woods Off, we both now suffer with at least three dozen bites a piece. The nice thing though was that there were No Fireworks Allowed and, given that it was the 4th of July, that was precisely what we wanted.

We love our truck tent.

Everywhere we went, we left just before the rain hit. Also: on our route we popped into Wyoming for a minute. I bought lottery tickets! Maybe we will win $70 million! (FYI there is no gambling in Utah).

Here we are at the Craters of the Moon! This was a pretty awesome place. No mosquitoes! Sort of windy! It's nice to see lots of people still tenting.

We started on a walk around the big crater. Pretty spectacular scenery. This area saw lots of volcanic activity between 14mya and 2,100 years ago. Nothing much grows now, lots of different types of igneous volcanic rock. Obligatory goofy Dan and Stacey photo:

This trail was 3.5 miles. We didn't know that when we started. Word to the wise: if you plan to hike on volcanic rock, DO NOT wear sandals. Unless you like blisters and having flesh-piercing rocks lodge themselves into your sweaty feet and crying. 

Lots of tiny desert plants growing in just a few spaces. 

Once was molten lava.

Lava lava

Dan says this is a lava tube. His dad Paul was a radio astronomer before he retired and spent some time working on Hawaii. They have volcanoes there, so when Dan visited all those years ago, he learned really a lot about volcanoes and was thus an excellent tour guide for this.

Because why wouldn't you wear a saucy sun dress while hiking on volcanic rock in sandals?

We got to the end of this trail and it was nowhere near the beginning. We didn't have the map with us. My phone only had 23% and GPS could not locate us. So we just started walking to where we thought the campground was. We discovered later that we took a wrong turn and instead of 2 miles back, it was four. So we had just done 3.5 miles and my feet were already sliced up from the rocks getting in my sandals, Why not walk for another 80 minutes? Lucky there were no bugs, the weather was fine, and we made it back to camp before the sun set. Dan made us an excellent dinner and we joyfully went to bed expecting a good sleep.

We had the highest spot in the campground. Awesome view, but now we know that it is also subject to the most wind. The fly to our tent was flapping much of the night, right in our ears, so we didn't get much sleep after all.

The best coffee is the coffee you make when camping.

Who needs blocks when you can just use nearby random materials to level your truck? Dan is a pro at this.

I almost forgot to take photos of Mr. Cupcake.

Farewell Craters of the Moon!