Sticking with my tradition of picking the top 30 photos of the year, I've whittled them down.  Every year I select my the top family 30 photos from our adventures.  These are usually the pool from which we select 8x10 prints and also we like to use them as our screensavers on our computers.

Top 30 Photos of 2010

We got together with the family to do some pumpkin carvings.  Kiara always gets so excited about her pumpkins and we get her a little one.  She likes to carry it around with her and this year Dallin added to the mix by throwing it and dropping it.  Fortunately it survived long enough to be carved.

Last year after halloween Jessica picked up some wizard of oz costumes for the kids for cheap, so this year we were all Wizard of Oz characters.  Kiara was Dorothy, Dallin the tin man, Jessica the wicked witch, and me the scarecrow.  Kiara didn't know who Dorothy was, so Jessica showed them the movie a few weeks ago and Kiara started getting excited about being Dorothy.  I don't think the kids were very entertained by the movie except for the few parts, but at least they had some idea.  I think they both looked great.

Dallin hated wearing the costume as soon as I put it on and he tried to rip it off, but he eventually gave in.  Getting him to keep the hat on was a battle too, but he started to chill out when he saw he could put candy in his bag and run around like a crazy kid.  He even won the award for the cutest costume.  That's my boy!  Except next year we'll have to work for scariest costume or something with a better title.

This weekend was the Kokopelli triathlon.  We stayed the night in Kingman on Thursday night before heading up to St George on Friday.  We set up camp at Sand Hollow state park and it was a hot weekend again.  Fortunately the gale-force winds we've become accustomed to kept their distance.  Aside from the heat, the weather was quite good.  I was glad that Jessica decided to do the Sprint triathlon after all, as she hadn't trained much in the past month.  Alan, Jordanna, Bryant, and Jessica competed. Jessica did really well.  She placed second in her division and had another personal record! 

After the race was over, they were handing out the awards and having the prizes raffle.  So few people stayed for this portion that there was only a handful of people there to try for prizes.  Jessica insisted on leaving but I told her to stay a few more minutes.  Sure enough, within a few minutes she landed a $500 gift card for a sunglasses retailer!  Now we'll both get some very nice sunglasses.

It was also Jessica's birthday.  The big 3-0!  We had booked another night at the campground but they were all tired of the heat, so they decided to pack up and head back to Jordanna's house. We relaxed in their air conditioned home and had a fun little party for Jessica. 

Kokopelli 2010 Triathlon Pictures

The last time I ran in this triathlon, I got no sleep because of the hurricane winds, the race was delayed because of weather, and the swim was cancelled.  I decided then that I wasn't going to run in this one again, but that I would still attend as much as possible to support Jessica and because they are a bit of a Jorgensen family reunion.  Our tent poles are permanently damaged from one of these adventures.  I am grateful they decided this was the last time they would do this triathlon and would be switching to another one.  I may pick up my racing bib again.

Here's Susan getting into the fun of the weekend:

We journeyed up to the Jorgensen reunion this weekend.  Any weekend with 1700 miles of driving makes for an adventure.  We camped out in Flagstaff at the KOA before heading up to Eagle Mountain to stay the night with Jessica's uncle.  Along the way, we had dinner with Heather and my mom, who was up in Provo to drop Heather off at BYU. We stopped in Salt Lake at the "This is the Place" monument.  Jessica and I had never been there.  It was interesting to walk around and read.  It looked like rain was coming, so we didn't stay too long and right as we were about to get to the car, it started pouring.

We then moved on to Pocatello and enjoyed an evening there before heading to the reunion on Saturday.  We got there and immediately started fishing.  I couldn't believe how big the fish were in that pond.  I quickly hooked one without any bait and it was huge, but it got away right as I was reeling it in.  The fish were pretty easy to catch and they were huge.  Because of the rules at the pond, we had to release everything larger than 14", which is pretty much everything in the pond.  I finally caught the whopper I was hoping for and I had Jessica take a picture.  It's probably the biggest trout I'll ever catch.  As we set it back in the water, its future was bleak and it rolled onto its back.  I did my best to run water through its gills and move it around, but to no avail.  Such was the beginning of the big fish deaths, despite our attempts to set them back in the water and we weren't the only ones.  We still had fun and others did their best with the fish.  They were just too big and old to survive beyond a 30-second fight with a fisherman.

Jorgensen Reunion 2010

We usually like to stop by the beach when we're in California and this trip was no exception.  We usually visit the beaches in San Diego and Los Angeles, but this time I thought we'd try another beach.  We went a little further up the coast to Ventura and went to Marina beach.  The kids had fun there, but the water was too cold for them and it was a cloudy day, so they played in the sand, but that was about it.  Dallin crashed and went to sleep for most of the time at the beach.  We tried to stay at the Ventura KOA, but their whole campground was infested with cub scouts, so we opted to stay at the county park up the road.  It was nice and pretty quiet.

We had a blast on this road trip.  It ended up being pretty inexpensive and we saw a lot of awesome things.  During our travels, we also listened to the first two Percy Jackson books while the kids each watched their separate videos to maintain sanity.

Some fun facts from our trip:

Time away from home: 10 days

Total mileage: 2430 miles

Average cost of accomodations: ~$20/night (yay for camping!)

National parks visited: Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia National Park

Highest elevation: 9628 feet ABOVE sea level (Sonora Pass with 8 feet of snow)

Lowest elevation: 282 feet BELOW sea level (Badwater, Death Valley NP)

Highest temperature: 111 degrees (warm welcome home in Phoenix)

Lowest temperature: 46 degrees (Sonora Pass)

Yosemite definitely makes it on my list of favorite places in the world, right next to Tetons and Hawaii.  I planned it to be the highlight of our trip, and it certainly did not disappoint.  We drove through a few years ago en route to a family reunion in Sacramento and didn't have more than an hour or so before sundown to spend in the park, but I knew then that we would have to return soon to pick up what we missed.  With the huge amount of snowfall this year, the waterfalls were unreal this time of year.

At Bridalveil Falls, there was so much water that it spilled over and turned the trail into a small river of its own.  We headed up to Glacier Point, which like Sonora Pass, opened just a few days before our arrival.  I had delayed this trip a couple of weeks in hopes that it would be open, and the waiting paid off.  Awesome panorama views.  It was also on this day that I discovered that I was missing a crosstrainer, so I was stuck with sandals for the duration of the trip.  Not long after that realization, the strap on the back of my sandals broke and I didn't have even a single pair of decent footwear.  This made it even more difficult in the snow at Sentinel Dome trailhead.  I could only last a minute or two in the snow.  We decided to do some sledding on our boogie board and that was fun.  We also realized the next day that we had left our little umbrella stroller with Jessica's jacket tied to it in the Glacier Point parking lot.  Attempts to recover it were unsuccessful.

        
Among our other Yosemite adven ture s included hikes to Mirror Lake, Mist Trail, and Cook's Meadow.  As with our prior road trip to Canada, the picture that inspired this trip was along the trail to Yosemite Falls.  Each of these hikes included great rewards along the trail or at the end of the trail.  Can't go wrong in this park!  On our way to go hike Cook's Meadow, we stopped a bear on our way into the park.  Of course, a horde of people had gathered and the rangers were already on it.  Just as I managed to park and jump out with the camera, the rangers ran after the bear and scared it away!  I only managed a couple shots from considerable distance, much like we did at Yellowstone.

Too many good pictures to choose from!

Also, Kiara was so proud of getting her junior ranger badge.

This day was quite a drive.  We went from 100+ degree furnace at Furnace Creek to 6-8 feet of snow at Sonora Pass, to somewhere in between on the western outskirts of Yosemite.  We stopped in Lone Pine so I could check out Mount Whitney, which is a peak quite high on my to do list in the next few years.

We stopped at Mono Lake, which hit my radar since I saw it featured in the BBC series "Life" just recently.  It's another place that is almost like a moonscape.  We went down to the lake, but with all the gulls, salt, mud, and smell...it was easy to see why very few people went near it. 

At this point, I had hoped we could jump over Tioga Pass, but the road was still closed due to snow even as we enter the month of June.  I had been watching the NPS road crew updates every day, but the crazy winter storms that were still rolling through as recently as last week ruined those plans.  Fortunately though, Sonora Pass opened a few days prior to our arrival, so we added an extra hour or two to our travels but still were able to check out some great Sierra Nevada scenery.  Jessica was more into reading her book or sleeping, but I enjoyed it.  We arrived in El Portal at our campground and soon learned that the campground had no water availability due to a broken pump.  That bummed me out because we had no showers available in Death Valley and now we'd go another day of dirt and grunge with no shower.  Forest camping w/o a shower is no problem, but after almost two days of inescapable arid heat, I was more than ready.  I debated jumping in the pool in the hotel lodge next door, but alas, I arrived 5 minutes after it closed.

We continued our journey to Death Valley.  There are a lot of cool vistas in Death Valley that you won't see anywhere else, but we decided that it's a 10-year park...one that we'd visit maybe once every 10 years.  We stopped by Dante's View, Zabriskie's Point, Badwater, Devil's Golf Course, and Artist's Drive before pulling into Furnace Creek campground.  Each had a very unique look to it, almost unlike anywhere else on this planet.  I've always enjoyed visiting the extremes and Badwater as the lowest point in the United States was a highlight.  We definitely should have consumed more fluids, as we were all looking to guzzle water at the end of the evening.
     
Whereas most parks ramp up for their busy season in May, Death Valley enters its slow season.  Most of the stops and campgrounds are unmanned by NPS staff.  We just pulled into the relatively primative campground, found a friendly piece of dirt with a number (literally) and posted our self-service receipt.  The kids immediately went to work rolling in the dirt while we made fajitas.  I had purposely kept us busy until the sun was setting, as the air temperature was 100+ and I don't particular enjoy a camp atmosphere with that heat.  Jessica had to hose the kids off, literally, before bed because they were so grubby.

Bam, the sun nails you when you wake up and it starts cooking you and you start getting sunburned early in this park.  We packed up quickly, but not before taking a picture of the $4.24/gallon gas.  Crowley Point on the way out was an unexpected bonus.  Death Valley is one of those places I've always wanted to visit, but now that I've been there, it feels like one of those places I've crossed off my bucket list.

So our first road trip of the year has finally arrived.  I had originally planned to go right around Jessica's triathlon, but the weather in the Sierras has been so crazy this year and there was still so much snow that some of the places I wanted to go were still closed.  I've been watching the road reports and fishing Google for inside knowledge of the progress of the snow plows.  I delayed the road trip to the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  I needed to wrap up our bigger early summer travels in early June so that I could focus on some work projects that are coming at the end of the month.

Just outside of Wickenburg, we saw this sign and I had to pull over and take a picture.  I had first seen this billboard on Reddit back in January.  It was supposedly from somewhere in Minnesota and the whole thing went viral.  These guys in Wickenburg were no doubt copycats, but it was fun to see it firsthand in the wild.

We headed up to Saint George to visit the Baileys and give Kiara some play time with her cousins.  We had a fun time.  We visited a cool little water park in the middle of town.  It was crowded, but free.  It was a great place for little kids to play in the water because it's so shallow.  We had a picnic lunch.  Then we ventured out to the fairgrounds for a Camelot Days festival.  The girls were excited about dressing in princess costumes and going to the "princess place".  I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of the festival, but we still had fun...ate a big smoked turkey leg, watched some exhibitions, ate some cotton candy and snow cones, and played around.  All in all, it was definitely better than watching the Suns get steamrolled by the Lakers!  I did watch the game on my phone on the way back home using Slingplayer.  Very disappointing game.

Now that the weather has started to warm up, it's time for us to have some fun in the outdoors.  Jessica got a fishing license and we decided to go camping for the weekend.  Even up until a day before we left, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go...but when I read the fishing report and saw that they had stocked 7000 trout at Woods Canyon lake on Monday, I knew it was meant to be.  Surely we could catch at least one fish out of those 7000.  The drive up there was uneventful, but right as we were pulling into the campground, they were putting out the "No Campfires" sign due to wind.  Bummer, there goes the plan to roast hot dogs.  We found a nice camping spot in Aspen campground, set up camp, and headed to the lake.  I just bought a 2-man inflatable kayak, so I pulled it out and got it ready to go.  The lake wasn't too crowded.  Jessica convinced me to take the kids, put on their life jackets, pack all our fishing gear, and head out onto the lake.  It was a tight fit, but fortunately we're relatively small and our kids are a lot smaller.  The wind was blowing like crazy, and didn't give us much opportunity to float and fish, it was more of a trolling attempt.  We were still having fun and getting used to the kayaking.

Eventually we were blown all the way across the lake and decided to stop fighting the wind and fish from shore.  We were in a relatively secluded cove of the lake.  I lifted Kiara up onto the shore, but she lost her balance and fell back partially into the water!  I got her righted, but not without her getting wet.  Of course, the wind quickly made her cold, so we stripped her down and put Jessica's extra shirt on her.  So we fished from shore for a bit.  Jessica was getting nibbles, but no bites.  She somehow got Dallin to go to sleep, which gave us some peace and quiet.  I scooped out some minnows from shore in our net and had Kiara toss them one by one back into the lake.  Kiara had her fishing pole going too, but she wasn't too patient and I got tired of casting for her every couple minutes.  Then I had a fishing pole malfunction and my reel went flying into the lake!  Jessica was the only one with a swimsuit on and she fortunately volunteered to retrieve it.  It was only in 5-6 feet deep water, but it was pretty chilly water for us desert dwellers.  Eventually we had our fill of fishing and headed back to the dock area to fish from shore.  Kiara had soaked one set of clothes and we were only staying for 1 night, so we didn't have much in the way of backup clothing.  In the course of our fishing for the rest of the afternoon, Kiara was getting dangerously close to the edge of the big rock were fishing from and she wasn't listening, so I threatened to throw her in if she didn't back away from the edge.  Out of the blue, she jumps in the lake.  The water was fortunately only about a foot deep, but I went after her and she started hurrying away and into deeper water.  I got her, but not before she soaked another set of clothes.  Not long after that, Dallin kept trying to make a beeline for the water and Jessica was keeping him back.  She turned her head for a couple seconds while baiting her hook and next thing we know, Dallin is tumbling into the lake.  We fished him out without much trouble, but hopefully he learned that's not the best thing for him to be doing.

It got dark, campfires were still banned, turned out Jessica forgot the hot dogs so we couldn't even cook them on our propane stove, so sandwiches it was and then straight to bed.  It was still cold and windy, and the kids were exhausted.  It's funny how when it gets dark, might as well just go to bed.  I NEVER go to bed that early.  It was an on-and-off sleeping night as we had upgraded Dallin to his own sleeping bag because he is now using a bigger carseat and he wouldn't be able to sleep in his carseat in the tent very easily.  So he thrashed around a bit and woke up on and off.  Adventures!

We packed up camp in the morning after breakfast and headed back down to the lake to see if we would hopefully not leave the lake empty-handed.  Kiara and I took a short hike to the north side of the lake where there was still some snow left.  I let Kiara throw a snowball at me.  Jessica brought the Pack-N-Play down to the shore of the lake and somehow got Dallin to fall asleep and then put him in the Pack N Play while we fished.  Almost when all seemed lost, our luck changed.  I realized that all of my nibble action was happening about 10 yards off shore and before we knew it, we were reeling them in.  We left the lake with 5 edible rainbow trout and headed back home to be there in time for grandma's birthday party.  It was a lot of fun, and definitely an adventure, but we wouldn't have it any other way.