Napa Valley & Santa Cruz

NAPA VALLEY

Law firms plan various activities for their summer associates to give them a chance to get to know the area and the other attorneys and to make sure they have an enjoyable summer.  One of the activities we did with Baker Botts in Palo Alto was a wine tour through the Napa Valley.  Even though we were not part of the main event (drinking the wines), we still enjoyed seeing the beautiful Napa Valley and learning about how the wine is made etc.  We preferred the small family-owned winery to the large corporate one we toured.  The family just makes wine as a hobby so they don't do a ton of it.  Here are some pictures of our wine tour adventure...

Below you'll see Reed and I at the family-owned and operated winery.  My favorite moment at this winery was when one of the owners went to offer me a drink (held out a bottle of wine saying "Do you want...") but then stopped and said "Oh there is no way you are old enough to drink."  Haha.  People always assume I'm not drinking cause I'm not old enough.  It used to bother me but now that I have been feeling really old lately I really like it.

Touring the large corporate winery:

I kind of look like I'm scowling here...I'm not...I think I was just embarrassed with how many pictures Reed was taking of me.

The water drinkers! We were happy to be in the company of other non-alcohol drinkers on this wine tour. We even tried to swish the water around in our mouths to taste it and rate the different waters :-).  We actually did get to try some non-alcoholic sparkling cider type drinks but I don't have pictures of those.

Reed was not happy that I wouldn't let him try the wines ;-).

Here is a group shot of all the summer associates that attended the wine tour. There were two who couldn't make it.

SANTA CRUZ 

Each weekend Reed and I tried to tour at least one of the surrounding cities. Sometimes we were just too busy but I think we got to see most of the places we wanted to see. One problem with the Bay Area is that the weather can vary dramatically from city to city even though everything is close together. This is especially true as you get closer to the ocean. Since we were going to Santa Cruz, we figured it would be a little chilly and didn't actually plan on sitting on the beach but when we got there it was really warm! We were so mad at ourselves for not bringing lighter clothes and some beach towels. But it was still a really neat place to visit.

Trying to cool down with some dippin' dots on the boardwalk:

Just some sea lion hanging out on the Wharf haha. And below you will see why it's important to bring beach towels to the beach.

And here is the shark I saw. Reed insists it's not a shark. I have zoomed in so you can be an informed jury :-).

San Francisco

So just a quick update before I blog about San Francisco... Reed and I are back from our summer adventures.  We spent half the summer in Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) and half the summer in Dallas.  We were just way too busy to blog so I will be catching up for quite awhile.  Just FYI, I got offers from both the law firm in Palo Alto and the firm in Dallas.  We LOVED both the firms but we have to make a decision so we will keep you all updated on the decisionmaking process.  Anyways...while Reed and I were in Palo Alto we were able to see a lot of cool places. One fun day trip was to San Francisco with my mom, dad and sister. Our first stop was to see the Painted Ladies (row of houses in San Fran that has shown up on various different shows like Full House).

Next up we have the Crookedest Street in the world (though it's not really...) and Reed's favorite attraction: Himself! :-)

We spent some time on Fisherman's Warf but it was a little chilly! While we were there I told Reed that he needed to get better at taking candid shots so that not all the pictures I am in are of me standing & smiling at the camera. He insisted, however, that he is way better at taking candid shots than I am. To prove it he made awful faces every time he thought I might be taking a picture of him haha. In the end he did get somewhat of a candid shot of me laughing because he was making the most awful faces every time I even looked at him.

We were bummed when we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge cause it was SUPER foggy. There was only one moment (very brief) when we caught a good glance of the bridge but other than that, we could hardly see anything. It was a little eerie.

Disneyland!!

Reed and I love Disneyland. Well I LOVE Disneyland...in capitals. Reed just lowercase loves Disneyland. But I think he also enjoys how excited I get about it. I sang Zippity Doo-Dah to Reed on the phone every day for about 2 weeks before we went :-). There is just something so magical about Disneyland. It was really a bummer that I was sick the whole time we were there but it was still great. Well the pictures will tell our story better than me (except the part of our story spent on Tower of Terror, one of our favorite rides, because we never took any pictures on it!) so here you go:

ToonTown

By the way, you can probably tell from these pictures that Toontown is just about my favorite place in Disneyland to take pictures.

Big Kid Rides

        I should apologize before I continue that most of our pictures are taken by Reed holding the camera out himself and taking the picture. But truthfully the pictures would have been just as close if someone else had taken them since they are mostly taken while in line or on a ride. BTW, I love the picture below that is evidence that Reed wore a poncho with me on the water ride.

Other Activities
We definitely couldn't miss out on getting a turkey leg and eating it like savages...it's officially a tradition now.

World of COLOR

The World of Color at California Adventure was absolutely breathtaking. It was this tremendous water show with tons of fountains in different colors and then some of the best Disney clips and songs projected onto a mist of water amongst the fountains. It's impossible to describe how incredible the experience is but I highly highly recommend it. Here is a video we took during the Aladdin section of the show. The video obviously does not at all do justice to the real show but it gives you a little bit of a taste.

Viva Mexico!

BYU doesn't have a spring break but I got to go to Mexico for ten days! For my senior project I went with a group of 15 other students and did some water analysis for the city of Guanajuato. I'll explain the project I worked on later.

So I left on Friday March 9th. Yeah, it was Natali's birthday. I hated leaving her on her birthday but left her some notes and presents to wish her a happy birthday and then she went out with some friends that night. We arrived in Mexico that evening and went to Guanajuato and stayed in the Hotel San Diego. Guanajuato is a really cool city up in the mountains and our hotel was right in the center.

Here is the view of the city from the nearby mountain. The big yellow building is a big cathedral and right behind it is the University of Guanajuato established in 1732. Yeah, older than the US!

At the top of the mountain was this statue of Pípila that was pretty sweet.
On Saturday we went to San Miguel de Allende to check out the shops. A few of the guys bought some Mexican fighting masks and were showing them off.

Monday we got started on our projects. I was on a team with two other students from BYU, 3 students from Guanajuato, and a student ftom Zacatecas.
From left to right: Eduardo (Zacatecas), Karsten, Darren, Edith (Guanajuato), Anna (Guanajuato), Daniel (Guanajuato), and me.

The project I was able to work on was a flood analysis. Guanajuato is a mining town that is up in the mountains. There were hundreds of mining tunnels below the city and a lot of these tunnels have been turned into roads. Flooding is a major problem in these tunnels because Guanajuato sits in a valley with lots of mountains surrounding the city.

At the entrance of each tunnel there are flood warning signs with colors on the bottom. Our project was to check these risk level colors at the bottom of the signs to see if the signs were in the right place on the road and to check the heights of the risk levels.

In order to do the analysis we built a model to represent the tunnels from GPS survey points. Below are two videos. The first is the real tunnel, and the second is the model. If you could somehow hit play on both of them at the same time that will give you the best effect so that you can see how the model compares to the real tunnel.

We finished the project on Friday and then headed to Teotihuacan which is just outside of Mexico City. The best way to describe it is a bunch of rock pyramids that were built hundreds of years ago. It was really cool. We then went to Mexico City for the night. Two of my buddies and I went to go get something to eat. We were sitting outside eating our food when we heard a loud crash. A car had driven by and its tire fell off. Sparks were flying everywhere and I saw the tire bouncing down the road. Luckily it didn't hit anything (or us).

We also went to a cool museum and saw some really old stuff from the Mayans and Aztecs and other indigenous people in the Americas. The coolest thing we saw was the Sun Stone. I guess it was used as a place where they would have people fight on top of it. Pretty crazy.
Then we came home and now I am back to school. I am graduating in a couple of weeks so I am ready for summer to come. I'm not really celebrating graduation because I will be back at school in September to begin my Master's Degree at BYU.