Darlene and I went for a short backpacking trip into the southwest corner of Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe), camping a couple of nights at Twin Lakes. We had nice weather except for the heavy and unrelenting winds each night. We spent our layover day making our way cross-country over and up to a nearby peak. Darlene chose to take a nice nap at the saddle, while I finished the climb up to the top for some tremendous views.
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Darlene’s family (Alice, Kathy, Shel and Dan) came for a visit again this month and among other things, Rachel joined us for lunch at BeniHana’s, we visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk and we met up with Maryanne for some sightseeing down Monterey and Big Sur way.
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For my birthday this year, Darlene and I went to see this Star Wars-themed burlesque show that’s on tour, The Empire Strips Back: A Burlesque Parody. It was a lot of fun and their costuming and sets were amazing – very easy to recommend. We went in costume ourselves, of course:
Topping off our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I flew from Stockholm to Geneva to spend three weeks traipsing around Switzerland in June. In Geneva, we walked around and rented electric scooters over a couple of days. One day we took a train to walk around the medieval town of Annecy in France. After that we were off to the other side of Lake Geneva to visit Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux – checking out the Olympic Museum, the wonderful Chaplin World and the historic castle Château de Chillon.
Then we were off to stay a couple of nights in the tiny walled medieval town of Gruyéres – known of course for its cheese and fondue. We visited the castle museum there and the surprisingly extensive HR Eiger museum. We also enjoyed tours at the cheese factory La Maison du Gruyére and the chocolate factory Maison Cailler in Broc.
Continuing on, we spent a few hours in Bern after dropped off our rental car to continue by train to the main attraction for our trip, the Jungfrau region. We broke it up by spending four nights in Wengen, three nights in Grindelwald and two nights in Mürren. With so much to see and experience in the region and so many tremendous vistas in every direction, we could have happily spent many more days exploring the area and following the many hiking and biking trails – and perhaps we’ll come back someday to try out the many ski areas.
Besides gawking at all the incredible views every which way, some of the other highlights of the Jungfrau region were seeing the thunderous subterranean Trümmelbach Falls, ascending to Jungfraujoch and traversing across the top of the Aletsch Glacier, walking through the Grindelwald Glacier Gorge, hiking beneath the peaks of Eiger and Mönch, visiting Schilthorn peak and the Piz Gloria above Mürren and taking a side excursion into the St. Beatus-Höhlen cave system near Interloken.
After the Jungfrau region, we traveled to Zurich, stopping mid-day to see some sights in Lucerne. We had three nights in Zurich and wandered about a bit. We missed out on getting a tour through the Lindt Home of Chocolate (d’oh!) but our day excursion to go see the amazing Rheinfall (Rhine Falls) was so worth it.
There’s still lots more we haven’t seen of Switzerland and so I’d love to go back – and maybe in winter for some skiing in the Alps!
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Continuing our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I crossed over from Copenhagen into Sweden in mid-May. We had two weeks to explore a bit of Sweden, starting in Malmö. We visited several connected museums in Malmö before venturing out to the southern coast to see the standing stones at Ales Stenar. After Malmö, we made our way north along the west coast, stopping in Helsingborg, staying overnight in Falkenberg, visiting Tjolöholm Castle and an automobile/aviation museum before reaching Gothenburg where we spent three days exploring the city via foot, bicycle and canal tour.
After Gothenburg, we left the west coast to traverse across the country and north to the more remote High Coast region of Sweden, stopping along the way at a castle, Läckö Slott (apparently just missing the one daily midday tour) but then overnighting in Skultuna. Our destination was the city of Örnsköldsvik, from where we went hiking in Skuleskogen National Park, kayaking in the bay, climbing up Skulebergets and touring the coast.
Our last five days were spent in Stockholm, walking and/or electric scooting around the city, visiting several museums, including the spectacular Vasa museum which houses the world’s best preserved 17th century ship – raised and recovered from the harbor sea floor.
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Continuing our European vacation, Darlene, her sister Kathy and I spent four days in Copenhagen – first time for all of us. We did some sightseeing around the city, from the top of the Round Tower astronomical observatory to inside Frederik’s Church, we enjoyed a boat tour of Copenhagen’s waterways and very interesting Danish architecture. We visited the immersive Museum of Danish Resistance and climbed up Copenhill, a surprising combination of waste-to-energy power plant and recreational site for year round hiking, skiing and climbing. We rented bikes to tool around a bit like proper Copenhageners, enjoyed an open air street food market and strolled some of Copenhagen’s famous streets and waterfronts like Nyhavn and Strøget.
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I joined Darlene, her sister Kathy and her aunt Judy on a trip to Ireland last week – a return visit for me but their first time in the Emerald Isle. Darlene organized the itinerary which included seeing the Book of Kells at Trinity College, taking the tour at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, visiting Blarney Castle and grounds, spending a couple of days in Killarney and touring a portion of the Ring of Kerry.
Here’s a video montage of our trip:
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Here’s another gallery of pictures after many more months of board gaming – from September 2023 through April 2024.
So of those I can still remember the names of, there was: Covert, Raiders of the North Sea, Breaking Bad: The Board Game, Brass: Birmingham, Pipeline, Turing Machine, The Expanse, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Blood on the Clock Tower, Dune: Imperium, Horseless Carriage, Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, Power Grid, Fliptown, Cosmic Encounter, Suburbia, Trap Words, Flamme Rouge, Twilight Imperium, Fury of Dracula, Pax Pamir, First in Flight, CuBirds
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