Sailing Tarka: January 2013

I know it's been a long time but I'll do my best to keep this short.

We arrived in Minnesota to a warm welcome from Jon's family. Between visiting friends and family, a week at Lake Vermilion, sailing with our friend Art, and the Minnesota State Fair, six weeks was gone in the blink of an eye.

Parting was sad and exciting just as before. We headed west toward the promise of work... so we took our sweet time. We stopped as often as possible: Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, the South Dakota Bad Lands, Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and finally Salt Lake City.

Our favorite stop was Devils Tower. Our least favorite was Mt. Rushmore. Although it is cool, the only view is one that must be paid for... there is no "entrance fee" (which our National Park Pass would have covered), but the $11 mandatory parking permit (which our National Park Pass does not cover) is good for unlimited entry for the entire calendar year. Now I don't mean to sound like a cheapskate but COME ON!! They know damn well that the majority of people will not be back again in the same year. How about the $2 twenty minute snap-a-photo-and-leave pass. Yeah, we were not happy. But we got our photo and that was that.

After Salt Lake City we blasted straight through Nevada and entered California. Beautiful California. Just under three months we worked. We did have Thanksgiving off which we spent in San Francisco with Jacob and Leah at their sweet pad where their amazing chef friend Jay prepared a Turducken (a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey), a very memorable meal indeed. We drove from San Fran to Yosemite for a few days of climbing then back to work. As Winter approached the work dried up. Lucky for us we must have made a good impression, because we were invited back in the Spring.

This brings us to about December 15th of 2012. I'll end it here and resume with leaving California on the next blog entry. Thanks for reading, we've missed you...