I know it is about three weeks ago I’m back from our vacation and I guess I should have shown the pictures earlier- but as some of you already know I have a bit of a rough time right now. My two grandaunts and my mother were in hospital as soon as I came home from the States . My mother and my one aunt are doing fine now- but while it looked a couple days as if my aunt Margot is going to be released from the hospital today, she got high fever again and get’s infusion and feels really bad.

So to get myself in a happy mood now I share some of my vacation photos with you:

We flew to NJ where we visited our family and had a big family dinner and then the next day we continued on to San Francisco to stay with our friends Marina and Karsten and their babygirl which we hadn’t seen so far.  We had such a wonderful time with them and I can’t wait to see them after Christmas then they are going to visit us!

hahaha- I love this photo of Marina- it is so her!

The visit war really short and the next evening we drove up north into the Wine country to visit our friends Joe and Jen who live on a vineyard.

One of the highlights was that we went to Occidental to see our friend playing- she is amazing!

It was sad to go -we haven’t seen them in three years and I so hope we will see them quicker again this time

From there we drove to Sequoia Nationalpark where we spent two nights. It was amazing.

General Sherman – huge huge huge- look how small my husband looks like and still the tree is not in total in the pic.

And the saw bear number one- who was as frightened as we were

We also saw a lot of those cuties

and another bear – he was sooo cute – from far away and in a car – LOL

He was eating the seed out of one of those little cones

We hiked through the woods without seeing one person for hours!

Then we we drove to Las Vegas – with a little drive through the Mojave Desert

Las Vegas was a bit of shock- LOL- after being away from civilisation and craziness- but we had fun and finally connected with our friends Karen and Bill for the rest of the trip.We stayed at the MGM Grand – holy moly that is the biggest hotel I have ever been to!

Karen and me – having a good time

Meeting more friends for lunch…so crazy to see all the NJ people in Las Vegas- LOL

we went to the Secret Gardens at the Mirage

Just hanging out- LOL

We went to a show by Cirque Du Soleil: Beatles Love- Oh my gosh it was amazing. I started crying at “Here comes the sun”. here is a video – not really showing how it is life- but it was amazing!

[youtube width=”325″ height=”271″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzXnYPMab2c[/youtube]

To tell you the truth though – I was happy to leave Las Vegas- it was fun..but I don’t need it again or longer than two days. So the four of us made our way over the Hoover Dam into Arizona. Here are some road impressions

And then we arrived at the Grand Canyon- ohhh my – that was so mind blowing. We had a picnic at sunset and were stunned!

Look- that’s me- LOL

And the first of our many album cover photos…LOL

Our cabin right at the edge!

We went 1/3 down the Canyon the next day- it was an amazing hike.

I love this picture that Bill took of me and Jim

Lunchbreak and before hiking up again – ppuhhhh

Lot’s of screaming that day- LOL

In the evening we went out for dinner at the Grand Canyon Village and as we were heading out for a Ranger Programme about Mountain Lions we saw Elks- and we heard them. Fighting- loud bams and squeeking too. One of the watchers was knocked over and I tell you – I was more scared of the Elks than of the Bears ;)

I liked the little ones better ;)

And then the next day we had to say good bye to Grand Canyon to continue to Utah.

I will post more tomorrow- hope I didn’t bore you – but I feel at least better just remembering the trip and looking at the pictures. Have a great day!

Nat