The pictures above were taken from the top of Mauna Kea. Trip report is located here.

Me and Lou hiked Three Sisters Falls. I took this pic near the front of the hike. This pano looks East.

I went on a short hike up to the Throne on one of those rare winter days in MoVal. This pano, taken from the Throne itself, came out rather nice. Click on it to enlarge.

Goat Canyon Trestle. Trip report is in the San Diego Gallery here.

Second visit to the falls. Trip report is in the San Diego Gallery here.

Welcome to the Carl's Jr of the FUTURE! Step right up folks and order from the new automated customer service kiosk. Now you don't even need to speak English to order, just place your finger on a picture of the food item you want. What could be simpler? Lars pointed out to me that it would be more efficient space-wise to put these things somewhere other than in front of the registers. They're kinda in the way. I'm looking forward to the day when your burger comes out of a slot at the bottom. Haven't reached that point yet.

GOOD NEWS: Will Jonah Vanderburg was born shortly before midnight on Friday. He was born at 36 weeks, so he will be spending a couple weeks in the hospital for monitoring. Steve Vanderburg is one of my best friends and is an avid photographer. He goes by the name: "goldenstatephoto" in his online presence. The above photo is linked to his photostream on Flickr and was taken by Steve.

SAD NEWS: Coral Magazine RIP! In a somewhat unexplained move the publisher of "Coral Magazine" has decided to stop publishing the mag. I received the letter today in the mail that my subscription is over. Coral was a US version of "Koralle" (a German magazine run by Daniel Knop). It's too bad. That was hands down the best magazine about marine aquaria available, and the only one with an emphasis on the keeping of live corals. It was beautifully photographed and refreshing to have a European perspective on reef keeping. They claim they are planning to launch an equivalent magazine sometime in spring called "Reef Life". I'm not going to hold my breath. I wonder if this means those back issues are going to be worth some money?

The above panorama can be enlarged by clicking on it. Click twice to make it viewable at full resolution.

Me and Lou used Thanksgiving weekend to take some time off. We visited the Millard Sheets exhibit at the Oceanside Museum of Art. That was interesting although not what I expected, but the quilts next door were well worth the cost of admission. Next we went for a walk on the Oceanside Pier. When I was a little kid I used to think the Oceanside pier was spectacularly huge. Now I realize it isn't all that big. We also hiked Black Mountain (the lesser one near Penasquitos). I was somewhat concerned the view wouldn't be all that great due to fog, but as you can see the panorama turned out quite nicely.

I stole a little time for myself and drove down Hook Creek Road to the Splinter's cabin road. Turns out the road was washed out that used to go to Splinter's Cabin, so you can't actually drive there. It's a good thing, because it's now much more quiet at Splinter's cabin. There's a pretty cool bridge crossing Deep Creek that the PCT goes over within the first tenth of a mile. Deep creek goes through some pretty arid terrain, but the creek itself is an oasis. There's even a small waterfall you can hike down to, but the falls is difficult to photograph since there's a huge swimming hole below it.

UPDATE: I created a little review page summarizing this summer's travel season. The page is basically a few pics from the blog, with my comments about the various trips and is located here.

I was very lazy about getting the Hawaii trip report finished. Hopefully the wait was worth it. The trip report page is now finished and located here.

I have returned from this summer's big backpacking trip. I got a lot of great shots and took some panoramas. The trip report page is now finished and located here. A separate panorama page is also up here.

Me and Lou went back to the San Diego zoo. This time I had my Sigma 400 mm lens. More pics here.

Note to users: If you liked the photos above then check out the blog archives above. Please don't steal the pictures here. Contact me for full size high resolution photos and we can negotiate a fair price.