vacation highlights (part four- mon dieu, quelles grandes tetons!)*

vacation highlight number eleven: priceless

it seems i'm just as suave and sophisticated on vacation as i am at home.

scenic background? check
winning smile? check- and i even managed to keep my lunch from becoming entangled in my braces- woo hoo!


inability to properly wear a shirt i've owned for nearly ten years? check

the kicker? about half an hour after this picture was taken, i realized (and quickly remedied) my fashion faux pas. when i pointed it out, i was actually told that it hadn't been brought to my attention earlier because it was thought that it was intentional.

hello???? this is not the early 90s and i'm not trying to emulate the new kids on the block wearing overalls here. i am trying to take a decent picture in front of the tetons that i can proudly display in a photo album, picture frame, and maybe even have blown up poster size to adorn the walls of my adoring fans' bedrooms!

i don't think even photoshop can remedy my natural ability to embarrass myself with minimal effort.

vacation highlight number twelve: indulging my inner ansel adams (in glorious technicolor!)

as you may have noticed by now, my digital camera has a nasty habit of inserting a line into the upper left corner of practically every picture i take. quite frankly, i think it would be much cooler if it inserted a little picture, like those "where's waldo" film cameras that were vaguely popular a few years ago, but i'm afraid i lack the dexterity to paint an accurate portrait of waldo onto my lens. so, out of lack of desire to have a pinkish blob inserted into my photos or take a class on how to print the entire declaration of independence on a grain of rice, i have to settle for a little crack to spice up my photos. (just say "no", kids!)

actually, my camera's crack habit is my own fault. purchased for SO before our first trip to the bottom of the grand canyon, the cheap little kodak digital camera has been a companion on all of our adventures since, including kayaking, climbing in a rock gym, and hikes too numerous to mention. as a result, the camera has seen more action than a pack of handi-wipes at a barbeque.

surprisingly, the crack appeared while taking pictures at the radio station last summer. i don't remember exactly what happened, but a two year old may or may not have been involved.

unfortunately, since the initial crack, the camera has been dropped at least four times (have i ever told you that i'm a wee bit klutzy?), including a rather severe wipeout during the recent hike in arizona (the same fall left me momentarily wondering where my left kneecap had wandered off to), which left it scarred and scraped, but somehow still working.

thankfully, my dad knew very little of this, and let me play with his shiny new digital camera while on vacation, which is how i managed to take pictures like these:







vacation highlight number thirteen: funny...this feels familiar

our night in the tetons was to be spent in a log cabin near colter bay. after unloading the cars and making a few quick phone calls, we headed south to jackson lake, where we ate dinner at the jackson lake lodge, as requested by daddy, who'd worked there one summer back before the wheel was round and fire had been discovered.

ok- it hadn't really been that long, but it was still pretty neat to listen to my dad telling a waitress who most definitely hadn't been born yet about his time spent scrubbing dishes downstairs. for the remainder of the meal, i swear he looked like he was thirty years younger (minus the unfortunate comb over he sported back in the day, of course).

vacation highlight number fourteen: second star to the right....

after dinner, we headed over to the colter bay amphitheatre for a ranger-led program on stars and astronomical devices (like stonehenge and medicine wheel. sadly, carhenge was not included for some reason), including a stargazing trip. while there was some light pollution, we were still able to see the differences between different types of stars, and i'm proud to report that i can now pick out not only orion (strangely absent from the sky that night, though it may have been below the treeline or something), but one of the dippers as well. (if i could pick out both dippers, i could tell you whether the one i can spot is big or little, but i think that would pretty much render the point moot.)

i was all sorts of excited during the lecture portion of the program because the ranger had presented a slide showing the locations of various ancient astronomical devices and there appeared to be one located very close to the little town in wyoming my dad hails from. i stayed after to inquire further, but had the fortune to wind up with a group of folks who had questions on everything from the ranger's educational background (yes, he was a former astrophysicist, thanks for asking) to the relative distances of stars from the earth to the meaning of life to the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, so i didn't get to ask my question until approximately half an hour after the end of the presentation, after my dad, upon discovering that i had not yet made it back to the car, retrieved me and interrupted the other group as they were inquiring about the atomic weight of lead.

the answer to my question was disappointing (the map was wildly inaccurate, as it turns out), but hey- i can find one of the dippers now. so i've got that going for me, which is nice.

*i make no guarantees regarding the accuracy of my french- my last exposure was my senior year of high school, not counting that remake of "lady marmalade" that christina aguilera, pink, lil kim, and mya put out a few years ago.