Saturday, July 19, 2008

Dansk Kalifornik



We drove to Santa Barbara last weekend for Nathalie and Olav's wedding. We stayed in the town of Solvang, puzzling... I actually saw tourists from Europe, Japan, Kansas and more flocking the (danish) one-dollar stores and (danish) pizzerias and pie shops, the whole thing remains a mystery. Absurd.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

4th of July


We spent the 4th of July in the town of Columbia, an original mining town turned state park on the way to Yosemite. If you have been on thunder mountain at Disneyland, imagine this the size of a small town and you'll get a feel for what this place looks like.
The town has a nice airport (used by tankers for fire fighting operations) and a beautiful fly-in campground with spacious campsites in the shadow of giant oak trees. it's first-come first-serve, but even on this holiday weekend there was still plenty of room left (~9 aircraft for 25 sites).
We landed at noon on Friday. There are a few hills around the airport, and I botched my approach after changing my mind about which way I would land (the preferred runway seems to be 17 when there is little wind), I ended up slipping the plane all the way through final.
The state park is a 10min walk from the airport, and after setting up our tent we walked to the mining town. Everyone was out and about, celebrating in red, white and blue. Plenty of good ol' fun, with a pie eating contest, a greased pole contest, needle in a haystack, nail pounding, cake walks, bucket brigade and a fire engine exhibition. Very exotic!
Following Arnold's request their was no firework display at night, so we snuggled into our sleeping bags early for a delicious 12hour night. Here are a few pictures of the trip