Melissa in Egypt: Vacation July 2010

This was my trip to the U.S. in July / August of 2010.

The photos are vaguely in order starting from the beginning of the trip to the end of the trip, though there are a few pictures that have avoided exact order.

The pictures I included were posted because of some meaning they had for me. How much I liked some flowers or how majestic the hills looked, the color of something, that it made me laugh, etc. I realize vacation photo's aren't always that exciting to look at, but my hope is that you'll get at least some of the enjoyment from these that I do.

I took in total over 700 photos so this is just a small sample. If I can figure out an easy way to put up some of the shorter videos, I will add them.

Many of these photo's were taken from a moving car, so there is sometimes some reflection from the window, which I tried to avoid whenever possible but a few times very obviously couldn't avoid at all.

The end photo's that were taken from the plane - I decided to leave the wing in the photo's, even though I find it annoying to some degree, simply because in some of the photo's I would have had to take out too much of the rest of the photo to get the wing out. It also gives a nice perspective (in my opinion).

Blogger tends to try to make all the pictures the same size to fit on the page, but in reality these are of varying sizes, all larger than what you see here. If you click on any image you should be taken to a larger size of it. If there is something you would like to see even larger, let me know and I can send it to you. Most of the raw pictures are about 2 mb's each.

Seussian looking tree in my parent's neighborhood.

Geese in my parent's neighborhood.

Quaint old house by the jewelry store we went to. I didn't notice the plaque on the front of the house until I was editing the photo. No idea what it says.

There were lavender bushes growing all over the community where my folks live. From housing areas to shopping areas it was just all over. And I loved it. The color was beautiful.

My son Jake and monkey, hanging out in the car.

Old house (?) at the place where we went to see the horses.

Jake grooming the horse we were looking at.

Field of hay or some other grain.

These rocks were in a stream and where they were in the water they were various shades of brown. They were really pretty in the water.

Going up the mountain on the way to Tahoe, looking down over the valley.

Jake and I on the Lake Tahoe cruise.

Beautiful blue waters in Lake Tahoe. Reminds me of the waters that are shown for island vacations.

Taken from the cruise. There is still snow on the mountains.

Love how deep blue the water is here and how untamed everything looks.

Jake and his half brother. His dad and step mom think the baby looks a lot like Jake when he was younger, but the first thing I thought when I saw the baby was that he looked exactly like his other half brother, who is no relation to Jake. I guess we all see what we want. In any case, very cute baby. :)

In California, on the drive to Nevada. There are miles and miles of landscape like this. It gets very brown and dry in the summer and turns green in the winter with the rains.

Love the rocky mountains with all the trees. I think this was on the drive towards Bear Valley.

Tall trees!

Ducks at Jake's house.

Monkey and I at a vista point in Nevada.

I'm not sure if these trees were hit by lightning or were in a fire or just had some sort of blight. Very striking though.

Another view of the vista point, without monkey and me.

The hotel we stayed at on our first trip down to Pleasanton. They had a really large garden area with lots of water and flowers and green stuff.

I think this is Caples Lake. Wonder if the snow will melt off the mountains before it starts snowing again.

Sakes alive how I missed Noah's everything bagel. *sigh* These were SO good.

Beginning of an afternoon storm. We were out driving when it started.

Here comes the rain.

And half hour later, beautiful bright sunshine peeking through the whitest puffiest clouds.

Lunch at my aunt and uncle's. We had their infamous enchiladas, though I had mine without sauce.

Here is how they should look with the sauce. Quite yummy!

Wild turkey's at my aunt and uncle's house.

Some smallish lake on the way to my aunt and uncle's place. There were little fishies swimming around on the edges, and perhaps even some larger fish in the middle. The lily pads were really pretty, though they don't show well in this photo.