California sunset

so i took a long walk today and took dozens of photos of plants and leaves and lichens etc. thinking I would surely have a great photo of the day when I got home, and I did have some fairly good ones, buttttttt then i saw this, right outside my "kitchen" window:

i didn't edit the colors or anything...

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...

shoe.

also...i miss her:

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homeeee

my sparkly yard at nighttime :o)

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hair

braids are cool

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bunny

for some reason a sepia toned leaping bunny shadow puppet photo feels appropriate for today...

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beautiful day!

I just can't get over how beautiful it it here, every nice day is like a gift, wrapped in rays of sunshine and bursting with potential!  Today I was very productive, finishing up my pre-work physical with my TB test reading (hey all, good news!  I'm tuberculosis FREE!  Hurray!) followed by a visit to the post office to set up my mailing address (yes i have one now, email me if you want it) followed by some errands in town and a 2 hour break at a coffee shop where I met some of the local color.  Let me just say, people here are fabulously nice!  But then I've always been good at making friends with folks 30 to 50 years my senior, its folks my own age I can't seem to get through too...At any rate, I FINALLY found some cheddar cheese worth eating, and for a very reasonable price!  Then, last but not least, I took a beautiful walk on a walking/biking trail on my way home.  Today I couldn't pick just one photo (that seems to be happening fairly frequently actually...) so here are my favorites!

A different variety of Manzanita (I think...) flowering

Thanks for the red hat Mom!

i kind of love this...i have no idea how i did that with the light, but i'm glad i did...

can anyone tell me what this one is? another question mark plant for me!

these make me think of caterpillars!  again, no clue what they are...

SO GREEN!

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uh...yeah

Today was a real challenge, because i didn't leave the house at all.  I took a picture of my tiny African drum, because its cool lookin and it was handy.  More interesting work surely to follow, just probably not for a few days because I don't have any idea where to go for good pictures around here...

Oh, and by the way, the red stuff in yesterdays 3rd picture is called Manzanita, you can thank my fellow SNAP volunteer Nick for figuring that one out, I had no idea.  I'm learning though!  :o)

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Gold Bug State Park

I went for a little walk at a park in Placerville today, if you pay you can go into a museum and explore the old mine but i'm broke so I just walked around the trails until my mom called and yelled at me for walking alone in mountain lion country (for the record it was a heavily trafficked touristy area surrounded by developments and probably is not home to a single mountain lion).  Anywayyyy I snapped a few photos of the greenery while I was out there:

I'm pretty sure this is a Ponderosa Pine, which is a type of Yellow Pine.

Some fuzzy fungi! (no idea what these are)

And this is some red stuff (the stuff I mentioned on the phone, Mom)...also no idea what this is.  

I'm learning, slowly but surely.  Theres a whole new ecosystem at work here from what i'm used to and I hadn't thought about it much, but just learning the major environmental players (especially the invasive species)  is going to be one of the major challenges of this job.  I'm practicing, and I'm going to try to hit the library this week and look up some of the things in my pictures.  

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bachelorette pad....

i didn't take any sweet pics today so heres a photo tour of my new home sweet home, check it out:

this is the living room, kitchen, bathroom, dining room area

annnd this is the bedroom, with a lil bit of the living room visible in the foreground, and part of the dining room there on the right...

pretty sweeeeeeeet! :o) 

(despite my sarcasm i actually love it, its just a lil bit too big for me in fact!)

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New Home

This morning was my last in South Lake Tahoe with my fabulous hosts and favorite West Coast kitty cat, but before I left I took a little stroll down the road from their house to have a look at early morning Lake Tahoe.  The sun was up, and slowly working its way over the ridiculously tall mountains out here and the lake was sparkling like magic.  Even though I didn't get out there until 7:30am there was NO ONE else up and about that I saw on my whole walk.  During my last moments on the lake I looked up to see a coyote running across the ice  on the marsh, pretty cool.  I snapped a few super quick (and therefore blurry and badly exposed) photos of him before he slipped into the bushes and out of my site.  These are my photos from the morning:

The misty part is the Taylor Creek Marsh, where yesterdays photos were taken.

Coyote!  Cooooool!

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Another Snowshoe!

Taylor Creek, where it reaches Lake Tahoe:

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pumpkin

my room mate over the last few days....what a cutie!

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morning snowshoe

Today I spent the morning snowshoeing in the beautiful desolation wilderness in south lake tahoe.  We went out to see someones camp (amazing) and then continued to the soda springs (very cool...and pictured below)

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uh-ohhh!

Sorry all, with all the driving and the moving to the other side of the country and the apartment hunting and the job stuff, I haven't really had a chance to update this ol thing in a bit.  In fact, I've completely lost track...I know I have taken at least one photo per day except one day...thats right...Shelby went one whole day without taking a single photo!  Kind of impressive in its own little way, except for that one photo per day challenge I have undertaken...but I'll make up for it!  Here are some more trip photos and some more recent Cali/Sacramento photos, bringing us up to date: Valentines day, every single girls favorite holiday!

Fluffy Clouds of Utah

Blue Sky, Red Mountains, White Snow...Utah

Sunset in Utah....

Sunrise in Nevada!

Pops in the fogshine....Nevada

My lil girl, in her new home, after her bath, isn't she precious?

Sacramento Morning Sunshine!

Of course I found a brewery, as my dad said, I'm more of a saloon girl than a salon girl any day.  

So that my friends, brings us to today, heart day.  Sadly, I have not left the hotel yet except for a brief foray to the airport at 4am, which was not prime photo-taking-time so I'm forced to find you something valentines photo worthy from here.  (here being in bed in my jammies)  This is what I found, Mr. Smiley!  See, even my sink drain is happy to be here!

I think he's winking at you....Happy <3 Day!!!

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The Shoe Tree!

Dad and I were cruising along, somewhere in Nevada today, on the very last leg of our journey before we hit the Sierra Nevada and we came upon this:

I quickly pulled over to investigate and it turns out its a shoe tree.  It was draped in hundreds of pairs of shoes!  Hanging from laces or tied end to end, shoes dangle all over this tree and cover the ground all around it.  I tried to add mine, but they didn't have laces.

When we got to the hotel I googled shoe trees, just out of curiosity.  It was interesting enough that I figured someone must have mentioned it in passing...and I was right.  I found this shoe tree website, and the very tree that we went to was mentioned.  Dad and I discussed and decided that if we tried to start one of these in VT someone would probably arrest us, or at least fine us for littering.  Anyway, we thought this was a really neat discovery!

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time is limited

Because I'm really tired, I'm going to keep this quick, but i'll fill you all in on the details and post the rest of the photos later.  For now I'll post one for yesterday:

thats the most interesting part of Nebraska I saw.  After that we popped down in to Kansas, then over to Colorado for dinner in Boulder and then a night in Idaho Springs.  We got there in the snow and the dark, and woke to crisp clear blue skies.  Only then did we realize we were in one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Some highlights:

So thats yesterday and today.  I'll post more soon, there are dozens more pics of Colorado and then on into Utah that I will share sometime, but for now its bed time.  Good night everyone!  I'm finally in Pacific time, my new timezone.  Its 9:30 here, but in my head its 12:30.  Sleep calls.  

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on the road

i didn't have internet access over these last couple of days so i have a few photos to post today to make up for it, the first day we drove to Middlebury, hit up Otter Creek Brewing and then had dinner at my Aunt and Uncles house, this photo is for that day, February 5th, taken in Underhill, VT of a slightly different view of Mt Mansfield.

The next morning, the 6th, we passed from VT to NY (which I've seen just about all of and didn't find anything worth photographing on 90W) then into PA, and finally ended up in OH. This brings us to today, up at 5, on the road by 5:30, we passed from OH to IN, popped up into MI just to say we'd been there, had breakfast in Michigan City, IN.  From there we hit Iowa and headed straight on through to Nebraska, where we are now, on the outskirts of Omaha, watching the superbowl at the Red Carpet Inn.  Here are some photo highlights (which count for yesterday and today's photo of the day):

click on the thumbnail for the bigger picture.  We've been cruising through pretty quickly up until this point, tomorrow we will probably start slowing down, but who knows.  Only time will tell!  Wish us luck!

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