otherworld

A forgotten adventure from May - my sister and I went for a short hike and, upon seeing this fenced off reservoir/wash area we found an opening in the chain-link, sneakily crept through, and went exploring. An overgrown abundance of wildlife, sun-bleached branches/pine cones, sand and rocks, and a nice view of the valley made our unnoticed surreptitious wandering worth it.

love me

Seen while out and about with the sees a week or two ago (doesn't get much vaguer than that!).

I'd be fine wasting our time, not doing anything here

Blackberry pie from Pie Hole | the best peach of my life

Y on her new vintage ride, amongst skulking Westies.

I found an A in Utah | hiking in the Grand Tetons

...and make some, too.

Battered Vans + last moments of sunset | tired bikes on lush cushy grass

spider-feeding

Andy found a spider burrow, and exclaimed that he loves to find bugs to feed to the spider, which fascinated and terrified me. Upon upturning rocks and logs and failing to find any good prey, I missed out on witnessing the horror, which left me secretly relieved but also disappointed, in a curious way.

j-town with Mr. I

Last weekend I took the Goldline with Mr. I to the J-Town stop and walked to the fashion district to pick up freshwater pearls for his marine bio class (they learned about mollusks this week)! On the way we stopped in the Little Tokyo square where he got sugar toast for a bit of breakfast, and we stopped to read the wishes, scrawled on bits of colorful origami paper strips and strung up on stands of bamboo branches. After selecting the pearls, we went to Fugetsu-do to get fresh mochi, narrowly avoiding a swarm of excited tourists, and then walked to the Pie Hole in the arts district for lunch & dessert (pictures of that to come later). On the way I kept spotting these rising sun/heart stickers that I wanted to filch had they not been 12 feet up in the air, and I saw this bandanna scrunched into a chain-link fence right outside of Skid Row. It was fun to take the Metro and walk around a little in L.A. again.

tetons at dawn

The morning after Yellowstone I woke up at 4:30, crept out of the bed, bundled up to stave off the cold, then drove and drove through the winding roads in Grand Teton National Park, watching robins flit off the dirt paths, eyeing rushing streams that hadn't slept, searching for the Snake River Overlook to attempt to recreate Ansel Adams' iconic shot. I didn't come close, as I missed a turn and, upon racing back, lost to the dawn. But by then, it didn't matter. I was out there by myself, breathing cold clean air tinged with prairie sage, still wide-eyed at the fact I was in Wyoming, and transfixed by the Tetons bathed and glowing in the morning light. I took a few shots, cursed myself for leaving behind my film SLR, blew on my hands, then drove back to the b&b, crawling back into bed at 6:30 am and waking up 3 hours later.

a geothermal dream

Here are some shots from Yellowstone (which was about two weeks ago now?)! The first image is of Old Faithful dwindling down after an eruption around 10 am on Wednesday. After Old Faithful and some other touristy activities, we moved on to the Grand Prismatic Spring, which features wooden walkways where one can view colonies of thermophile bacteria that were dazzling in their prismatic gradients of color (different colored bacteria denoting different temperatures). The last pool was the Opal Spring, which looks so eerie and otherworldly. L and I were convinced that if you were to step into one and survive to the other side, you'd end up in a different part of the universe, or something. But also, the temperature of these pools is BOILING, so much that steam was constantly blowing off their surfaces, and warning diagrams inundated each viewing point for visitors to approach cautiously. (I lost a lot of pictures from Yellowstone in an unprecedented moment of clearing my memory card before uploading all my images...stupid and careless on my part, but it is what it is.)