Cherry Blossoms in DC - Sunrise at the Jefferson Memorial

A trip to Quebec at the end of January for Winter Festival 

The Ice Hotel was very cool!!

During the blizzard of 2016 walked along the National Mall to capture some of the monuments in snow.  

Back in DC 

But made a trip to Colorado to ski.  Saw these skiers and snow boarders jumping and could not resist stopping to shoot for a while

Today we went to the Sonoma County Balloon Festival  

Was really fun!! 

This was the Dawn Patrol sent up at 5:00 AM

This one went up first for the main launch 

Spectators were permitted to be right next to the balloons as first cold air was added with a fan.

And then heat to get the balloon to rise 

Lots of colors and

Even Angry Birds 

We are in California now.  Staying in Sonoma County for two months.  We went down to San Francisco for the day to visit Ft. Point and ride bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge.  

The Bridge disapeard into the fog - making it about 10 degrees cooler on the ride across 

Fort Point is directly under the Golden Gate and was used to protect the bay and is now a national park

By now we were pretty much done with rocks and so headed for trees!! In California we visited Joshua Tree, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks.  

Joshua Trees are really more like Cactus than trees.

In Sequoia National Park we saw lots of bears.  

This cub climbed up this tree and then seemed confused as to where he was and why.  There was quite a crowd watching and photographing him.  Most of the bears had been tagged by the park service and, we were told, were not likely to approach humans.  Although their coat is brown they are black bears.  On our last hike here we saw a very LARGE bear that was not tagged, we took just a few shots and then headed for the car.  All of the parking lots, and camp grounds had bear boxes that the rangers suggested you put any food in.  We watched a video that showed bears destroying a car to get to food left in it.  

The ages of the General Sherman, General Grant and other large sequoias are unknown, but it is estimated that these giants are between 1,800 and 2,700 years old. They have seen civilization come and go, survived countless fires and long periods of drought, and continue to flourish -- inspiring yet another generation of admirers.

It was good to see Green for a change.  When we arrived in Sequoia it was 70 degrees out side the park and dropped to the 40's at the top.  We stayed in the lodge here and were glad we did.  The road was only 25 miles long but the speed limit was 10/15 MPH and with good reason.  The whole thing was was one switchback after another the elevation change was over 6k feet. 

The first bear I saw was walking on this trail.

We hiked up to see a waterfall and found the view looking back much more interesting.  It was a nice hike though.

This is King's Canyon where the fog was so thick you could hardly see 10 yards out.

But the fog made for interesting shots.