Pinnacles National Park

And yes, I finally managed by buy some new sunglasses!




The stuff we bought at a number of outlet stores on the way back. Brand names for much better prices than back in Europe or even in San Francisco!

Our very friendly neighbors at the campground - we were able to warm ourselves at their fire at night, cause it was not particularly warm at night. During the day it was like 70, but at night a whole lot colder - no wonder, it is still April!

Our neighbor with his wild cat/mountain lion-like animal - looks like a regular pet cat, but it wasn't!

Back at the campsite eating real American hotdogs!! And this time not at the ball park.


Bird resembling a Blue Jay.

This is what it looked like without the flash on the camera, with just a flash light/torch.


This is where we climbed into to get to the caves.

Whose shoes are those?





This is where we descended - into the caves.







This is where we are.






Pretty tight as you can see..














By chance hard to see on the picture, but here are some eagles.




All sorts of stone types/colors.



There were rocks formations all around that looked really funny. Many of them were piled up like these - amazing they hold only a couple of miles away from the San Andreas volt!!


The last few miles into the park.


On our way to Pinnacles National Park the next day. It turned out to be a very beautiful day and the route there was absolutely awesome! Lots of wildflowers all around.

Our campground, near San Juan Bautista, right off highway 101, approx. 2 hours away from San Francisco. It turned out an interesting place, with nearly only fishers! Some of them were crazy to say the least, shouting every hour or so and taking off real fast to drive around the campground. Later it turned out that there was a fishing derby going on. On the picture above you can see the lake.

On the same day Minke and I headed due south, to test our new tent and go hiking in the Pinnacles! Although we only went camping for two days, our Volvo wagon was filled to the roof ;-) This summer we have plans to go camping for three weeks and probably in a much smaller rental by then - we had better pack our stuff more efficiently then! But for now, we had plenty of room and did not need to bother to pack our stuff tightly!

On Friday, April 4 2008 I (Frank) got my graduation gown and hat. I am due to graduate on May 17, 2008 (i.e., the ceremony) although our cohort still got a class in the summer and some other requirements to meet before we hope to officially graduate towards the end of July 2008. Anyway, for now here's a picture of what it should look like...

Chinese New Year

Celebrating Chinese New Year with Jen and friends, like with other famous dinner potluck parties at Jen&Henry's everybody usually brings some nice stuff in addition to all the good food already provided by Jen and Henry. I brought in the ever since famous dutch applepie, not a typical Chinese New Year dish but it definitely contributed to the international fusion kitchen feeling.

Jen, Laila and Gerard, another colleague of Minke, Laila is his wife (also a neuroscientist)

This is Jen, besides being friends and colleagues, we share our favorite baking recipes, iPod libraries and good books.

This sticky stuff is a special chinese new year dish, called nian gao, traditionally fed to the kitchen god. Kind of an interesting texture for first tasters like us and impossible to cut or divide into smaller portions.


Jen (colleague of Minke) invited us over for celebration of the lunar Chinese New Year. Here we are all preparing dim sum for dinner, yummie!

Visit Maartje and Gerold

Minke, Maartje and Gerold at the windy Muir Beach Lookout


This one is obvious, do not feed the bears!


Picknick after the hike, it was great to warm up after our rainy hike. We discovered we could actually buy a small redwood tree in the tourist store, but decided not to. Can you imagine how your garden looks after a few centuries?


This is my friend Maartje, small girl, large tree!


Pretty rainy, here in Muir Woods. We did some hiking in the redwoods, the little stream was pretty fierce and some of the trails were inaccessable due to small landslides.


Part of the deal; everyone is very welcome, and cooking dinner for us is even more welcome! Luckily, Maartje and Gerold, did not only adjust easily to these house rules, but also appeared to be good cooks, thank you for your great cooking, guys!

In January, we had the pleasure to welcome our friends Maartje en Gerold. They decided to visit San Francisco during the rainiest two weeks ever. They totally amazed us by how much fun they had despite the rain, probably it is a good thing that the Dutch do climatize very well in rainy surroundings. Anyway, it was really great to see eachother again and it was good to catch up again after such a long while. We really enjoyed their company, they had a great time in SF staying with us and visiting a lot of bike shops in bike-friendly SF for interesting bike parts we never ever even heard of, as at home, they ride a tandem bike together.

Tent

En dit is 'm dan - de mega Coleman tent unit. We hadden eerst een kleinere tent gekocht waar helaas onze mega opblaasmatras niet inpaste - 't is maar goed dat die tenten toch maar tussen de 30 en 50 dollar kosten! Plan is om binnenkort de tent uit te testen in de buurt van Carmel, CA voor een weekend. Later zijn we plan om met onze roadtrip van 3 weken ook zoveel mogelijk deze tent te gebruiken en dan is wat ruimte ook wel erg relaxed. Er zitten ook allemaal vage luikjes in de nieuwe tent. Waar ze voor zijn - Joost mag het weten... Beren voeren misschien?

OK, here some explanation for people who are a little less familiar with the dutch language (keep practicing, guys!): This is our new tent, second attempt. Our air matress fits nicely, this time...
Our plan is to practice camping with our new tent coming weekend near Carmel, CA. Nice excuse for a weekend trip. If all works out well, we'll bring this tent along for our 3-week trip at the end of our stay here. Interesting aspect of this tent; the many little pop-open windows, is it to feed the bears?


De kleinere tent, deze keer in het Golden Gate Park in plaats van ons appartement..

Our first tent-attempt; when our queen-size air matrass was included the tent got a kind of a funny shape. That's what you get if you have to convert feet into inches into cm into yards into... Anyway, our second attempt was a little more successful...