Near Sand Harbor, Lake Tahoe, Nevada; photo by L. Sanchez 2012

Sometimes we need to get back to a place to “recharge.” And, for me, Tahoe always feels like that place.

I’ve been traveling there since I was a pre-teen, with my parents and brothers. Chris came with my family once, when we were about 18. And once Chris and I got married, we went back about five times with the kids in various stages of their growing up (from “wearing” Nathan on a backpack and hiking through Eagle Falls, to taking our nephews on river-rafting trips). It’s always been a great place to take kids and family.

For me, though, Tahoe has an additional allure – that “recharging” sense.

I will always remember being a teenager and sitting on the balcony of the place we always stayed at, early in the morning, all by myself. I’d bring a book and a hot cup of tea, and it would be so quiet there on that balcony: with just a few birds chirping and the sun coming through the pine needles. No one would be awake yet, and the only rustling sounds would be chipmunks or birds, and you could sit for minutes at a time and hear absolutely nothing. There would be a cool crispness at that early hour, even in the middle of summer, punctuated only by rays of warming sun coming through the branches, and you’d breathe that crispness in through your nose with the sharp, clean air. That scent of pine trees, combined with kind of a musky scent of sage or some low-growing shrub, along with the smell of the warming pine needles on the ground, would just fill your whole soul with peace. Continue reading →

Ah, that was a fun spring break!

We kicked it off with a road trip through the desert:

Then cruised into Arizona:

Picked Ricky up from the airport in Phoenix:

We thought we'd kid around, and set Nathan out there in front of the terminal with a sign saying "Ricky" (like the limo driver standing behind him).

Went to Angels Spring Training at Tempe-Diablo Stadium:

With my parents:

And watched some really close-up ball:

We also sat by the pool, went to hotel happy hours, caught up with my parents, caught up with my boy, relaxed, read (I’m reading The Hunger Games), tried to stay off line, relaxed some more, went out to eat at some fun places, and did a road trip back with my college boy in the car.

I’d say as far as spring breaks go, that was tops. It was fun to travel with my parents, fun to have Ricky home for a week, nice for him to “thaw out” from the Montana snow, and great to enjoy some sunshine and baseball.

Nothing beats the smell of the grill, the sound of the bat, the sun beating down, and the general joy of baseball to get you ready for summer. …

This was an ideal spring break.

What are some of your favorite spring traditions?

One of the things that surprised us, when we drove out to Montana the last week of August, was how dry the hillsides were.

Our first trip at the end of June looked like this (green, green, green, punctuated with bright bursts of blue and tipped with tiny white snow patches):

But our second trip at the end of August looked like this (brown, brown, brown, just like our So. Cal desert hills at home, and positively no snow in sight):

We also saw a lot of end-of-summer hay bales.

Some were classically rectangular, while others (like in the photo above) were cylindrical.

I was strangely excited to see these. For me, hay bales are simply decorations you see in Michaels Craft Store when fall begins to arrive. But out here — on these real ranches and farms – hay bales are … well … real.

I guess my slow realization of that fact, coupled with my giddiness at seeing them, tripled with the way I whipped my camera around each time, and quadrupled with the fact that I have several of these exactly-the-same pictures on my memory card (all taken between Idaho and Montana), probably give away the fact that I’m such a city girl, huh?

Sheesh. Silly city girls. …