the internet in Bishop is bad, but we're not in Bishop anymore!

We just came to Utah for the March portion of our trip. Right now we're staying at our friend Amy's house is Salt Lake City before heading south to Joe's Valley, Moab, and Zion. Anyway, here's some pictures to catch you up from the past two months. Like last time, they're backwards. So feel free to start at the bottom and look at them from bottom to top.

I had three 4-day weekends from work, and we went somewhere each time. This most recent time we went to Joshua Tree National Park. Where Amber climbed... the bathroom?
She also did this sweet run-jump problem.
The 2nd trip we took was just Amber and I and we went on a tour of the western sierras. We stopped by Sequoia NP, Yosemite NP, and San Fransisco. Amber knows a girl who lives on a farm just outside of San Fran, so we got to see some sheep! This is Mimi. The one next to her is unnamed because he's a boy and is going to be eaten. There were goats too! One was only 2 days old.
This is not a 2-day old goat. It's a lamb!!!
We also went to the beach in San Fran. I saw my first tide pool. Here's a starfish and sea anenomes (sp?)!
and just a few more starfish...
Amber's foot with some awesome sea-shaped rocks, shells, and glass
The Yosemite part of the trip: Amber sends a V10!
and she meets John Muir and gets very forward and outright touches his beard
Yosemite Falls. We were wondering if the water turns to snow (ice?) as it falls because it seems to be landing on a snowbank...
This is not Yosemite Falls. This is in Sequoia NP - at a low elevation. I feel it's important to mention that we also saw a bobcat but didn't get any very good pictures of it, so I didn't include it. Feel free to look at Amber's facebook photos to see it.
And up at the higher elevations. We couldn't even drive all the way here. Chains were required, and we didn't have any, so we had to walk the last mile. I did finally acquire a set of chains on our last day in Bishop. Too late to use this year, but they were free.
Here's a bit warmer weather. The first weekend trip we made was to Vegas. We saw our friends Tony and Sara from the New (and Mania from Bishop!). Sara's 5 months pregnant, so that was cool to see. And we went to Red Rocks. It had just rained, so we didn't do much climbing there, but Amber and I explored the rocks and found this!
Okay, so here's January. Or, as the locals called it (though this picture doesn't show it) JUNEuary. We had a couple visitors. One was Evan. Here he is on his birthday trying to climb the Birthday Boulder! (He did it a few days later)
Also in January Amber did this. It's much more normal looking now.
Uhh... way out of order... here's a controlled burn (we think) outside of Bishop on our way to Joshua Tree.
Hmm... more JTree. Micah's doing a classic problem called Saturday Night Live (V4)
A January trip to Alabama Hills. It's an hour south of Bishop. This is a pretty famous arch that you can see through to Mt. Whitney - the highest peak in the lower 48.

but for being so famous, it's a little smaller than I expected.
A lot of movies were filmed in the Alabama Hills, apparently. Here's a random hole blasted in the rock. It looked like a sweet living quarters.
This is a picture of Rock Creek - maybe a half hour north of Bishop - but nestled right up against the Sierras to the west, so the sun goes down pretty early there. I didn't see it though. I was at work - which I wish I had some pictures of. On my last day of work, I got a pizza party! With cake, banana bread, and a present of two books!!! It was awesome!
Here's Juneuary at it's finest at the Buttermilks.
Amber and I took a day trip up to see Mono Lake. There are Tufas there. Kind of like stalagmites, they are calcium deposits.
Our other visitor in January was Amy (whose house we're at right now). This is her attempting the beautiful but scary as hell Heavenly Path.
We went to the Dreamers (another place just north of Bishop). It was a fun day.

Okay. That catches you up! I'll hopefully get a chance to post again soonish. Love you all,
Stella

Well, we've been in Bishop for over a month now. I have a sweet parttime job at the local bookstore, Spellbinder Books. The rest of the time I spend exploring, grocery shopping, and climbing. At least 12 hours a day is devoted to sleeping, of course, too. Christmas was pretty fun. We adopted our neighbor, Mike, a couple days before, so if you don't recognize him in the pictures, that's who he is. We've also had two Wooster visitors so far: Matt (who came on part of the last road trip) and Evan (Amber's boyfriend). We also had Amy visit us - Micah and I met her over the summer at the New.

Anyway: here's some Christmas pictures:
backwards through the day (sorry! It takes SO long to upload pictures and move them around on this site. Just start from the bottom if you want the real experience). Anyway, here's our nightly fire:
some entertainment at the local Senior Center free Christmas dinner!
this awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas Dinner:
some more entertainment:
another awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas dinner: Mrs. Clause
Amber crochets all the time. Being at Denny's for Christmas breakfast doesn't bother her.
Our new friend/site-mate Mike (Michael) is with us at Denny's and he's hungry.
Micah and Toby having a good Christmas
Present opening time! Toby got a book!
Amber got a book!
Micah got a book!
We woke up to a white, white Christmas. And it was packing snow, so we made a snowman. The snow just doesn't roll up clean from the gravally ground here like it does in grass.
Christmas tree!
Our fire pit, covered in snow
the Christmas lights!
Our decorated yard
good morning!

See y'all later!
-Stella

Tripping Out West

Dear family and friends –
It’s been a long time since I last posted and we’ve started out roadtrip! We left the New at the end of October. It’s always hard to leave the New, but of course we’ll be back next summer. We spent two good weeks in Pennsylvania (except for the night that two kids went around slashing tires and keying everyone’s cars in town including ours), and then we had a relaxing two weeks in Ohio. Micah left for the roadtrip 3 days early with Toby, and I went up to Wooster and picked up Amber and Addy. Our plan was to stop in Santa Fe to surprise Kate and then Phoenix to surprise Colin. We then had to stop in San Diego to pick up a car that Addy just inherited, then Bishop, CA would be our final destination. But things never work out as planned.
We spent our first night at a rest area in Missouri. Addy slept in the front passenger seat, and Amber and I shared a very skinny bed in the back (there are two cushions, but they’re stacked together until we can take out the only back seat we have with us).You have to sleep head to toe in order to have enough space for both people to lay on their back or stomachs. Then we stopped the next night in Dumas, Texas – about an hour north of Amarillo (where I got the last potato of the day from the Potato Factory – my favorte resturant). Addy’s cousin and her husband and 6 month old son live there. The next day we should have been on our way to visit Kate, but Micah and Toby were in Hueco Tanks Historic State Park near El Paso and I missed Micah. I convinced Amber and Addy that we should go there instead and just see Kate over Thanksgiving. So we headed to Hueco. We ot an empty tank about half way back toward Amarillo and somehow managed to ride another 20 miles before we found a gas station. Amber said “Guys, let’s never do that again”. But what happened after stopping through Roswell, NM
90 miles out of El Paso? In the middle of nowhere? It happens again. We saw a sign for a turn off that said
Dell City 20 Miles
we had to take that turn. To save gas, Amber put the car on cruise control at 55 mph, because what else can you do? It was late and dark and we were in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, that road seemed to be infested with not-so-smart bunnies of all sizes. We had a bunny dart out in front of the car at least once a minute. Sometimes they’d cross the road and then swerve back toward us. My poor vegetarian friends had tears streaming down their faces at the torture that was the bunny road. But Amber only hit one. On the upside, we found a gas station and made it to Hueco with no more incidents. We spent two fun days in Hueco before continuing with our main plan to surprise Colin in Phoneix. We had his address from our friend Catherine who told him she wanted to send him a letter, so we found his apartment complex – which was gated. We sat there for a minute, unsure of what to do, until a resident pulled up behind us and unlocked the gate. At any rate, Colin wasn’t home. Nor was he answering phone calls. Finally, Amber called her friend Emma and we surprised her instead. We spent the night at her house (Colin finally called me back at 11pm and said he’d see us at 6:30 the next evening –after work). But Emma had to work in the morning and couldn’t figure out keys, so we spent the morning in a coffee shop and movie theater (Twilight just came out, so we saw it), and our afternoon in a park in the middle of Phoenix. It was in the 80s and sunny. We finally saw Colin and spent the weekend there. We went bouldering/running around the next afternoon (Emma came too), then we were going to climb Sunday, but Micah called us from Joshua Tree National Park and said Toby was going to visit a friend near San Francisco so we needed to come pick him up. Since we only had 3 seats in my van, we’d have to run to San Diego to get Addy’s car first. We said goodbye to Colin and headed to San Diego, where we met Addy’s family friends who were watching the car (it was her grandma’s who passed away in September) until Addy got there. The family rented us a guest house for the night that had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and living room. It was huge!! The next morning we stopped by the beach for an hour (it was my first time seeing the pacific!! – I think in Alaska it’s the Bearing Sea…) then we took the scenic route over to Joshua Tree. It involved mountains, pine forests, recreational vehicle land, an inland sea, and canyons. It was one of the most scenic drives I’ve ever been on. When we got to JTree, Toby was still there. He’d felt too bad leaving Micah alone, I guess, but he left the next morning. Amber and Addy loved JTree. So did Micah. It was a fun 2 days. Then we ran up to Red Rocks (Las Vegas) for out Thanksgiving trip with Colin and Kate. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny’s. I felt like I was in the movie “The Santa Clause”. But it was amazing. I ordered a milk shake, pancakes, eggs, toast, seasoned fries, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Everyone else ordered a similar amount of food.
That brings me up to now. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I’ll write more soon!
Love,
Stella

These pictures are all out of order and for some reason the computer thinks I'm writing links...
The beach!


Phoenix! (Emma's in the second)
Hueco!


Joshua Tree!
Roswell!

Just something...

I haven't written in forever, so here's a post just so that I can have a new post. We're still at the New for almost a month yet. The summer/fall has been fantastic. I've done 3 5.12s and I'm working on two more (though I don't know if I will get either of them before time's up). We've been living at Roger's and it's been great. It only took a week after the summer crowd moved out for the fall crowd to move in. The leaves are starting to change and the colder temperatures are moving in (except today is supposed to be 85).

We're looking forward to heading out west again, but we will both have money issues soon. I'm really hoping we can even make it out to Bishop.

Anyway - that' all I have for now. It's hard to take pictures of rope climbing, so we don't have any, sorry. I love you all and I'll post again when we head out west.
-Stella

NEW post

we're here at the New and looking forward to people visiting us!

here's the bad:
1/ we can't afford to stay at Roger's
2/ mosquitoes and no-see-ums

here's the good:
1/ our pimp van
2/ we found a seemingly untouched boulderfield at the Summersville dam on the Gauley. We've been putting up some FAs
3/ we made a giant rope swing at the Hole and did the Pinnacle already.
4/ there are tons of sweet people living here and we've had tons of sweet visitors!

Here's some pictures of the Gauley River boulders (when they're not under water):




that's Scurvy in the previous picture. He's 16 and strong as shit!!






I love you all, Stella

It sucks when you forget your camera...

well, we forgot our camera, but our trip was so cool that I had to write SOMETHING about it.

We went down to Annapolis, MD to visit James Varn. Annapolisis pretty freaking sweet, as far as cities go. There are no high rise buildings, only the European-style streets lined with one constant building painted a different color every 70 feet or so. Shops on the first floor, housing above. And round-a-bouts. And brick streets. Also, it's on the Chesapeake Bay, and James' apartment has a Bay view. James says that the downside is that after dark (during the day everyone is sailing) the only thing to do is drink. There are a rediculous amount of bars in downtown Annapolis, all of which are within walking distance. The Bay itself is awesome. The little beach we went to only had little tiny waves, but there were a good amount of shells and polished stones on the beach. It also had that unmistakable salt water smell.

The second day of our trip, we went climbing at Earth Treks. There are 3 of them (the gyms are all huge AND they have their own hold company), but we went to the one just outside of DC. Turns out, some elder WOODSians, Matt, Sam, and Ellen only live 1.5 miles from that gym, so we had a great time visiting them too.

When we got back to PA we climbed with my friend Rachael (we were roomates) and her boyfriend.

It was a great last 3 days of seeing beautiful, new places and wonderful old friends.

I hope you are all doing well and I love you!
-Stella

I had an irrational fear of ticks...

...then it became a little more rational after a bulls-eye rash became visible surrounding Micah's armpit. This is the 2nd time he's gotten Lyme Disease. Luckily, when you catch it early, it's not that hard to treat. You just have to take pills for 3 weeks (or liquid medicine, I found out, if you can't swallow pills) that make you nauseous/puke. So for $100 (doctor visit and pills with no insurance), it's no big deal... except that hopefully-not-too-often puking for the next 3 weeks.

I've gotten bitten by 2 ticks, and I'm hoping not to find a bulls-eye too.

I'm not going outside around here again... until late fall, because the bouldering here is amazing. There are lots of problems that I want to work on more. Unfortunately we have about 6 pictures from the last 2 months of living in Harrisburg, but here they are anyway (sorry Madison, I didn't get any pictures of the camp we've been working at or even anything cool. I'll keep trying)

this tree was actually in Chattanooga, but it's a sweet picture, so I'm adding it to this post

as weird as I look, that is, in fact, me. This problem was cool, but it was sharp!

this is Micah's neice Savannah and I at a playground. We look hilarious. She's screwing up her face hard-core due to the sun being directly in our eyes. Besides posing as Smoky the Bear's face, we also play Chinese Checkers at least once a day.

To get away from the ticks (this was even before we realized that Micah had a bulls-eye), we took a short trip to Cooper's Rock, WV. We met Matticus and his friends Adam and Jack. Poor Adam rolled his ankle during their initial explorations before they even climbed. But here's a couple pictures of Matt and I trying Moby Dick (V2, but I try it every time I go there. I think I will send it next time though), and Micah doing Roundhouse (I think?? V5).



On the up side of things, Micah was playing on the internet, looking at different shoe companies when he came across Acopa shoes. They are owned by the famous climber John Bacher. He also noticed that all of Acopa's sponsered athletes are from the west coast. He e-mailed the company, asking if they wanted some representation on the east coast, and John Bacher himself called Micah back. Well, 2 free pairs of Acopa shoes are in the mail headed for Micah. If he likes the shoes, you may just see a picture of Micah up on the Acopa website someday. When the shoes come, I'll let you know what he thinks of them, and then you can check them out for yourself!

Here's some climbing movies to end the post:
A different Cooper's visit
From all over the east

-Stella