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Been at the ESRI Developer Summit in Palm Springs since Sunday.  The drive out here was about 5, 5.5 hours but luckily Caleb drove the whole way.  I am NOT looking forward to this drive by myself tomorrow!  But I AM looking forward to seeing Jen and Kai… immensely.

Anyways, we’re at the Hyatt Regency.  Caleb said that it was pretty much a dump last year, but they’ve renovated since then and it’s actually pretty nice.  Couldn’t be any worse than the dump that Jen and i stayed in when she had to go down for Federal jury duty.  Ugh.

Downtown Palm Springs is interesting.  There are a lot of good restaurants within walking distance.  There are a lot of families with their kids, and a lot of girls dressed up like they’re going out clubbing but we had yet to see any clubs.  Two “pubs” and some liquor stores and that was it.  Where are these people going?  I think i’m too boring of a person to ever venture out and find out.

The Convention Center had some cool sculptures and stuff outside in this rock garden type area.  And they had a Chair Forest!  Who knew such things existed?  Surely not I!

Here are some pics from the whole thingy.

On the way out, i kept passing this truck.  the logo on the side said Super White Power.  I guess there was a brand of trucks, White.  Interesting how that sounds now though.

Jen and I took a trip out to Shell Creek Rd. a few weeks ago to see nothing really blooming yet.  I went out there today and was greeted with fields of yellow.  I was hoping for a bit more variety, but it could just be that i’m still a bit early.  At any rate, its hard to trek out here very often since it takes 45 minutes or so driving relatively fast and its not on the way to anywhere at all.

Regardless, I still had a fun time taking some pics in the area.  There were a couple of lupins that I didn’t find very impressive, as well as some other randomly dispersed flowers, but not anything that really struck my fancy.  Still, fields full of yellow flowers is nothing to be sad about.

I hope other people have more luck when they travel out to there.

Took a trip to the Leaning Pine Arboretum on Cal Poly’s campus.  Its out by the sheep.  It was really nice, even though I went mid-day some of the pics turned out not half bad.  This would be a great place to visit for anyone who enjoys flowers/plants and there were tons of birds there, if not visible at least audible.  It sounds like a jungle!

From the Leaning Pine website:

Collections are arranged primarily by nativity and feature a 

diverse array of trees, shrubs, and other landscape plants 

appropriate for California's Central Coast area. The gardens 

display hundreds of unique and intriguing plants primarily 

from the world's five mediterranean climate regions: Australia, 

California, Chile, the Mediterranean basin, and South Africa. 

The arboretum also has a New Zealand garden, a Dwarf and Unusual 

Conifer garden, a Formal garden, and displays of cycads, palms, 

and numerous succulents.

I’d definitely take a trip out there (sunset-ish would work best) and at least explore the gardens, its completely worth it.

We drove up to Prunedale today and met Mom and Dad, then caravan’ed to San Jose – dropped the truck off at Mike and Mary’s, and then met Gene and Kristine for lunch.  Had a little coffee afterwards then headed back home.  Quick little day trip, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Stopped in Santa Barbara for the CygNet dinner party.  It was good, drunken times.  Well… not for me, I ran around and took pictures of everything.  And they let me!  

Here, Chris Smith took the camera from me.  I am flanked by Mike and Chris here (from left to right).  Good times, good times… there were hula dancers, their male equivalent, and a dude tossing around a fire baton.  He set his can of kerosene on fire… THAT was interesting.  

All in all, it was a great time between The Getty and this (the food was tasty) I had an excellent day.  My only wish would have been that Jen could have come along with us.

Took a nice trip up to Tahoe for a snowboarding weekend.  Marcia was gracious enough to let us use the cabin, so we all had a nicely affordable place to stay.  

We had a bit of a conversation trying to figure out who was going to get chains, if anyone had 4WD, etc. when Mike and Mary offered to let us use the truck to get everything up there (sweet!).  The truck worked out perfectly and had plenty of room to hold all of our stuff as well as all the people we were carpooling with.  I believe that I broke the brakes though.  Well, they need to be replaced.  I think.  I don’t know.

Du, John, and Zack had never snowboarded before so Dave, Phil, and I took them out to Heavenly on Saturday and showed them the ropes.  Not bad, they all had it down by the end of the day.  Just three of us went to Sierra at Tahoe on Sunday.  We finished and made it back in time to watch the Super Bowl.

Much Rock Band and Wii gaming was done, as well as alcohol consumption.  What a great weekend!

Thanks for taking the pic, Du.

Mike and Mary treated us all to a nice relaxing weekend at the Carmel Valley Lodge, the same place that we had a nice weekend a couple years ago.  Its out in Carmel Valley (obviously) and is close to a nice tiny downtown area, a lot of restaurants, and even more wineries.  Monterey County has some great wineries (not as great as Paso though!) and this place seems like a good place to start.  Just like last time we were there, it was raining pretty good but that didn’t deter us from having a great time.  Although we didn’t make it to any tasting rooms, I definitely did not miss out on “tasting” some good wine and some good beer.

We also got to celebrate Dave’s birthday, which is on Tuesday.  The big Three-Oh.  You’re gettin’ old, Dave!  I mean.. Happy Birthday, Dave!

Dave and Samantha had their engagement party at Gianni’s Pizza on Lighthouse in Monterey – I love their pizza.  Its just soo tasty! 

The party was a ton of fun: food, drinks, and a bunch of people having a good time – what more could you ask for?  And in addition to THAT, Dave wet himself.  You’ll see… click on the picture to jump to the set on Flickr.

We took off just before noon and headed away from Bear River and over to Hwy 1 and the coast.  Windy roads are fun and all, but not for five hours!  Well… unless you’re on a motorcycle.  We stayed in Salt Point State Park at the Woodside Campground, which was super clean and really nice with flush toilet facilities and fairly spread out campsites.  With just under a mile hike to the beach, we got a bit of the ocean fog, but it was still a nice place to hang out. 

This whole stretch of Hwy 1 is very clean and would be awesome for a motorcycle trip, you can cut over to it from Hwy 101 in Petaluma.

What a great week of camping so far!  This is the “old cabin” that we all used as a common eating place and food storage.  We spent the entire trip sleeping in the tent trailer with Mike and Mary (that mattress seems to be much more comfortable than my Thermarest as of late).

The rest of the time was hiking, a teeny bit of fishing, horseshoes, swimming, and beer.  With a little bit of reading thrown in for good measure.  This has got to be one of the more relaxing vacations i’ve been on in a long time.  All I had to worry about was waking up, and showing up for meals/beer.  Well, and going to the bathroom.

In order to get to this place, most people require 4×4 trucks/vehicles because of the need to cross the river a couple times and some steep rocky hills and fire roads.  You really feel isolated out there and its so quiet. 

I should have brought my guns!