Venice Beach

The first monday of spring break. I actually went into work, but I couldn't finish my project....so, I decided to scope out Rockreation, one of the local climbing gyms, meaning 20 min away, just like everything else is in Los Angeles. Then I headed out to Venice beach. That place is crazy but the people there are awesome. Only adding to that was the perfect weather we're having today, could actually see the sky.

Launch

Here are the launch pictures.

Rocket Launch

Today I launched my first rocket up at the Lucerne Dry Lake Bed. It flew perfectly to 2834 feet, came down under it's chute and is now sitting in my living room. Pictures to come soon.

Bandelier

Saturday I decided to go for a drive. 220 miles later I found myself back at my apartment. I ended up driving up NM 14, just on the East side of the Sandias....ended up going through Madrid, and then found myself up in Santa Fe. Well, at this point, I'd only drove for an hour and a half or so...it was only 11:30, so I headed west towards Los Alamos and the Jemez Mountains. I finally got in that direction and started to follow signs to Bandelier National Monument. It was pretty amazing down there, and there were some good sites too. I did some hiking beyond the normal trails, but I didn't go too far. It was starting to get cold, the place closed at 4:30, and I didn't have a flashlight of any kind. It was a good time though, I enjoyed being out.

Paseo del Volcan

Yesterday morning, with nothing to do but clean my apartment and do laundry, I decided to go for a hike. I've wanted to go out to the volcanoes on the west mesa here in Albuquerque since I got out here. I had heard that it was rattler country out there, so I decided to wait until it got cold. Well, my last trip almost pushed it to where it was too cold to go for a hike...at least with the clothes I've got here. However, it was one of the nicest days I've seen out here. From a bunch of the pictures, you can see that the clouds were perfect fall like whispy clouds. Great for pictures. I've messed with these images all a little bit to bring out the blue in the sky and the yellow grass that was all around the place. But, my camera really didn't capture how blue the sky really was that day, so I figure it's ok to tweak the pictures a little bit. Some other pictures from the hike are on the media page.

Most Recent Trip

I went on a trip for work a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to get to do some sight seeing. Here are a few of the pictures from the trip. I'd have to say, it was cold as hell from the top of the mountain where these pictures were taken from.

El Malpais

I was pretty bored today, so I decided to head out to El Malpais (the badlands) about 70 miles west of Albuquerque just south of Grants, NM. It's in the "shadow" of Mt. Taylor, an extinct volcano. The badlands are made up of the remenants of a lava flow from the volcano, but there are some pretty cool sand stone formations in the area. I hiked the La Luz trail again yesterday (for the 4th time) and my legs were pretty beat, so I was going for the low hanging fruit, in terms of views. And there were almost no people in the area, so I didn't want to try to get myself lost in a place with minimal contact to the outside world. I would have to say though, that it is a really neat place to go, at least once.