San Diego

Mike and Jeannette were invited to San Diego by our good friends Kevin and Sarah.  Jeannette had been to San Diego before, but it was Mike and Brownie's first time.

This is Mike at the Bloomington airport on our way out.  We always fly out of Bloomington instead of Champaign because it has more connection flights than Champaign.

We arrived in San Diego late on Monday night.  Jeannette got up early the next morning and took a few pictures of snails outside our condo.

On the first day of our trip we went to the San Diego Zoo.  It was huge and really amazing.  Here's a picture of a sleeping koala.  Because koalas are nocturnal, most of them were sleeping when we arrived late in the morning.

Speaking of sleeping... so were the camels. 

This is Brownie with Sarah's pet sheep, "Fleece."  She brings her on trips to share her stories with her nieces.  

 It looks like a vulture, but it's a nearly extinct California Condor.

 Here's Brownie riding a fake snake outside the reptile exhibit.

I'm not really sure why Aunt Jeannette took this picture, but the background is an elephant butt.

More elephant butt. (Aunt Jeannette says, "It's a picture of a dust bath!")

This male elephant is about 60+ years old.  The zoo keepers were trying to call him into his cage to get his nails trimmed, but they say it takes about 45min for him to make his way into the cage.  He's definitely not in any hurry.

 Just a statue!!!  But look at the size of a full grown male polar bear!

Jeannette poking her head through the ice with a seal!

Zebra butt(can you see it?).

 Brownie waited in line with us for 30min to get a glimpse of the giant pandas.  There are very few giant pandas in the United States, which is why there was such a long wait to see them.

This female panda has given birth to at least 6 panda cubs since she came to the United States.  She is called a "rock star" of pandas because it's so difficult to raise panda cubs in captivity.  She's part of a animal loan project with China, which means once her panda cubs are grown they will be shipped back to China to live in one of their zoos.

 Here's a hippo resting her left cheek against the aquarium glass.

 Uncle Mike saw this statue of a mother gorilla and thought it looked perfect for a funny martial arts picture.

This is a napping gorilla in the primates exhibit.

 We arrived at the orangutan exhibit just in time for their feeding.

This orangutan is walking across her enclosure to fetch some sweet potatoes and romaine lettuce.

The sweet potatoes are the first veggies to be snatched up during feeding time.

One of the most interesting sights at the zoo are the giant tortoises.  Some of these dudes are over 100 years old! They are very curious creatures with highly social personalities.  But don't get too close, their beaks are very strong.

Jeannette and Mike took lots of walks on the beach.  Here's a picture of Brownie while they were walking along the shore.

 Another view of the beach.

 Here's a picture of Mike and Jeannette in front of the setting sun.  Because California is on the west coast the beach faces the sun as it sets.

 Mike and Jeannette on the hanger deck of the U.S.S. Midway.  They gave us audio players and headphones so we could take a self-guided tour.

 When you're on the deck of the aircraft carrier, sometimes it's hard to remember that this whole thing is a giant boat.

Here's Brownie and Uncle Mike inside a helicopter.

 Mike doing the "King of the World" thing from the movie Titanic.

 An overview of the landing deck.

Another picture of us on the landing deck.

 After we visited the U.S.S. Midway we went to La Jolla beach.  Here's a picture of Kevin and Sarah on a stone cliff near the shore.

 And here's a picture of Uncle Mike.

Uncle Mike and Aunt Jeannette

Uncle Mike overlooking the beautiful and dangerous waves crashing into the shore at La Jolla Beach.

Aunt Jeannette taking a selfie and trying not to panic after climbing the cliffs at the beach.

One of the best parts of the trip was seeing the wild sea lions at La Jolla beach.  Here's the side of the shore where the seal pups were resting.  It's hard to express how special and interesting it was so see the seals relaxing on the beach.  You'll just have to go there and see it for yourselves.

This photo doesn't convey how beautifully colorful and violent the waves were as they hit the shore.

On our way back home.  Here's Brownie balancing on a ledge overlooking the food court at the San Diego airport.  Uncle Mike was worried that Brownie would fall but he's got great core strength.  Kids, don't forget to do your exercises.

Cleveland and Seattle (again)

Been awhile since we took a trip so we decided to take two at the same time!  Mike was going to Cleveland to give a talk at a conference and Jeannette decided to go with him.  The first flight was supposed to go through Detroit, but that got cancelled so we wound up routing through Atlanta.

Here's Jeannette getting some coffee with Brownie in the Atlanta airport.   Even though it was just the airport, this was our first time in Atlanta.

Taking off from Atlanta, Mike was able to get a good picture of the clouds from the airplane.

 The primary reason for being in Cleveland was for Mike and Kevin to give a talk at a conference.   Here's the two of them getting setup and Brownie sitting on the table for moral support.

Here's a shot of Mike delivering his part of the talk.  The whole thing is in a video on YouTube, but it's probably not exciting for most people to watch.

On the last day in Cleveland, we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  They have a lot of instruments, costumes, and other trinkets from famous musicians.

Like Metallica!!   

 Here's Jeannette by some of Stevie Nicks' costumes...

 ... and Brownie checking out ZZTop's Eliminator!

That was it for Cleveland!   It was rainy and cold there so we didn't get out much.  The next day we had to get up super early for our flights to Seattle.

We love Seattle! 

This beautiful area is actually a fake landscape just outside a big REI store.  REI is a major sporting goods store that focuses a lot on climbing, camping, hiking, etc.  The landscape includes rocky paths where you can try out new shoes or mountain bikes.

Mike and Jeannette really like eating fresh oysters and being out on the west coast was a good opportunity.

The history of downtown Seattle is pretty cool in that they raised the level of the street to avoid water problems.  You can take an Underground Tour that goes below the current street level and shows you were the first floor used to be.  In this first picture, you can see a "skylight" from below...

 ... but from above it looks like a pretty stone mosaic in the sidewalk!

This is just a picture from our hotel room at night.  We skipped getting a rental car so we could stay in a little nicer room.

These two pictures are from the top, inside the Seattle Public Library.  The main stacks of books start on about the 5th floor and then rotate up in a spiral five more floors that you can walk around without using any other stairs.

On the last day in Seattle we ate breakfast at a little deli by the hotel.  Inside they've asked guests to sign the walls.  We signed it, just to the left of the heating vent, I'm not sure if this picture is big enough for you to see it.

When we got home Diesel was helping us do laundry.  By "help", he sits in your way and jumps in the baskets.  We got to see a bunch of our friend in both Cleveland and Seattle.  Overall it was a really great trip, thought, after a week and half, it was nice to get home and sleep in our own bed.

Mexico!

Last week, Mike and Jeannette took a trip with Jeannette's brother Walter and his wife Natalie to a resort in Mexico.  More specifically it was Riviera Maya, which is just a little bit south of Cancun. We've got a lot of pictures to talk about so let's get started!

Since Mexico is pretty far away, we had to take a plane to get there.  The flight was a little over three hours long.  Mike is sitting across the aisle, so he was able to get a good picture of everyone else, including Brownie!

The plane also had little TVs in the back of every seat.  You could watch a few selected channels or a movie, but it also had a station that would constantly update where the plane was on a map.  Pretty cool, huh?  This picture was as we were just about to land.

From the airport we took a short van ride to our resort where we found a really cool fish sculpture in the lobby.  Brownie is riding one of the fish up front.

One of our favorite places at the resort was a bar right up next to the beach called the Bar-acuda.  It's a play on the word "barracuda" which is a type of fish.  We sat there for a bit every day reading or even just watching the waves.

They had giant outdoor chess and checkers sets that we could use.  Anyone reading this that knows about chess might realize that our kings and queens are in the wrong positions.  The last people to play had it setup wrong and we didn't notice until a few moves in.  My white side also had a knight and bishop in the wrong spot, how did I not notice that right away?!?

We played again in the daylight as well.

This is a really cool tree that had spines along the base of its trunk.  Brownie had to be very careful as he climbed it so he wouldn't get hurt.

This is the same tree from further away, as you can see, it's not very big yet.

Here's Mike and Jeannette hanging out one evening.

 We also spent a little time in the spa one day.  It's a more private area with things like a sauna, hot tub, and little waterbeds where you can relax.  They also had a private pool area where Brownie got his picture taken near a cool looking caterpillar.  Can you see it in this picture?

 Here's a little better shot of the caterpillar.

 Here's Mike sitting on the beach on the last day.  It was a very relaxing vacation!

 Here's the reverse view of what Mike was looking at.

  

 Of course Jeannette did some sitting around as well.

 This is a shot of just the beach that Jeannette took.  At night we could see cruise ships out in the distance and occasionally a cargo ship during the day.  We even played a game where we guessed how far away the ship was and then tried to calculate it with math to see who was right.  Mike was pretty close at 4 miles when the math worked out to be around 4.5 miles.

On the way back to the airport we saw the Mexican police!!

Here's a bonus picture from Natalie's photo album.  It's the view from our hotel room, pretty cool huh?  We had a great time in Mexico.  The people were really friendly, the food was great, and sitting next to the ocean was so relaxing.  After five days we came home.  We were happy to come home and get back to normal life, but we will never forget the Bar-acuda.

Cleveland, OH

Uncle Mike took a trip to a conference, this time in Cleveland, OH.  He drove from Champaign to Bloomington, took a plane from Bloomington to Detroit, then another plane to Cleveland.  Finally, Mike took a cab to his hotel!  Long day!  Not a whole lot of pictures this time, but there were a few highlights:

Cleveland is well known for it's musical history and is home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  They have these giant, artistic guitars all over the place.  This one was in the airport as we arrived.

There seems to be a pattern with Brownie and Mike stopping to get coffee.  This Nexus coffee shop was really tasty.

On the way to the Cleveland Police Museum we saw this black and white pigeon that looked like a dairy cow.  He would not sit still for a closeup!

 Oh no!   Brownie is behind bars! 

In the Detroit airport on the way back there were all these birds IN the airport.  They would fly down and pick up crumbs from things all the waiting people would snack on.

The Bean - Special Edition

This is a special edition of the Brownie blog. Uncle Mike has wanted to visit The Bean in Chicago for a long time. Mike and Jeannette were in Chicago this weekend for a wedding so they finally had an opportunity to see it. Lucky for them it was a beautiful day as well.

On the way through Millennium Park, we stopped to get a picture with Brownie on the BP Bridge. It was a little risky because if Brownie slid down the metal sides he would have been really hard to retrieve.

On to The Bean! The Bean is a giant bean-shaped sculpture. They welded a bunch of pieces of steel together and polished it to a mirror finish.


As you start to walk closer your reflection gets all distorted and different ways. Mike and Jeannette are in the reflection below, Jeannette is wearing pink. On the left side of the picture are our friends Mitch and Kate. Mitch is wearing a light colored shirt and is holding a camera.


Underneath The Bean, the reflections start to get even crazier. It's very neat and you can't see the weld joints at all.


As you can see, it was a beautiful day with the clouds and blue sky.


Here's another beautiful reflection: