More vacation photos

Continuing to slowly move through the photos, I have a few more from our western odyssey. These were all taken in Sequoia National Park.

CJ among the redwooods:



Taking photos on/next to a fallen giant:



The rest of the redwood landed in a meadow:



The girls share a giggle in front of the General Sherman tree, the largest tree on earth by volume. FWIW, I don't think you really need to clarify that kind of claim...



The moon over the trees in our campground, first thing in the morning:



Yes, I'm missing it!

Vacation - Family Style!

It took forever to finally arrive, but Meg, CJ and I spent almost two and a half glorious weeks on vacation in California. We did quite a bit of sightseeing: the really steep hills of San Francisco, the really big sequoia redwoods, the really big cliffs of Kings Canyon, the really interesting history of gold country, the really beautiful valley of Yosemite, and we even managed to go to a wedding at the end. (really, no fooling!)

It will take forever to sift through all the pics, sorry, but instead of posting them all at once I thought to post a few at a time. The whole lot, once finished, will get posted to our flickr account. And at some point soon, Meg will post a longer recap of Vacation: 2010.

Enjoy!

The view from Morro Rock in Sequioa National Park (when focusing on the moss on a dead branch):



The "Tunnel View" of Yosemite Valley, just before sunrise:



Yosemite's Half Dome, from Glacier Point, just after sunrise:



Little tree in the middle of a big cliff, viewed from Glacier Point, just after sunrise:

Morocco, solo again

At the end of June, my job sent me to yet another corner of the globe, this time to Agadir, Morocco, for the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting. To start things off, while I was waiting to switch planes in the Casablanca airport, my wallet got picked -- on Father's Day no less. The meeting was as stressful and difficult as they all are. The World Cup provided a welcome relief, and the locals even tried to recreate a few games on the beach, but without the vuvuzelas.

Afterwards I tried to spend a few days in a very picturesque but crushingly poor town called Essaouira. The town was overrun by a music festival that was at times quite entertaining (and free, fortunately).

I've spent the past few weeks trying to recover, and reconnect with my family after too much travel over the past nine months. I'm going to try to post more regularly here, as it seems to be a better way of communicating than through facebook or twitter. But we'll see what the summer brings -- aside from an actual family vacation, of course.

Photos from Morocco can be found here.

Photos from Cairo

As I mentioned in the last post, after spending two weeks in Doha last month I decompressed for three days in Cairo. Decompress is probably the wrong word to use; Cairo is the most frenetic town imaginable. Great fun if you like to take photos, mine can be found here.

Name this bird? (and I'm back)

After two weeks of CITES, the Convention of International Trade of Endangered Species (in Doha, Qatar), followed by a three-day stopover in Cairo and five days of yard work and household chores, I'm getting back into the swing of things.

Work should be interesting -- everything has revolved around CITES for the past six months. We failed miserably, getting absolutely no protections for eight endangered sharks and Atlantic bluefin tuna. It's time to put the experience in the rear view mirror and move on now.

I have plenty of photos from Cairo that will take a while to sort out, of course, but in the interim I thought we could play a round of "Name this bird."







I also have a photo of CJ amidst the cherry blossoms for those interested...

Crazy trip

At the end of January, I traveled on a crazy, four-city business trip that was probably the least stressful business trip I will ever take. The point of the trip was to meet with journalists, and everyone I work with claimed every single part of the trip. So I got to spin through Madrid, London, Doha and Dubai with nothing to do really but hold my spokesperson's coat.

One interesting side trip we took was to Doha's wholesale fish market. I found it interesting; for all my years in NY I never poked around the fulton fish market, only sniffing at it from a few blocks away (it's just north of the South Street Seaport).

That being said, here's the no-frills Doha fish market:





The "high" light of the trip was the Burj Khalifa, the newest tallest building in the world. To get to the observation deck on the 120th floor will run you US$130 if you just show up, but only US$30 if you book it week's in advance.

Instead, we ate dinner across from the reflecting pool and watched the show:



Not bad for a desert city, eh?

My photos from the trip can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/80262249@N00/sets/72157623294959739/

hot cocoa greetings

For those who haven't seen this yet, our apologies for getting it out so late!



And here's the appropriate follow-up shot, of course.