May 30, 2007

Stuart Falls
















Happy Memorial Day! To celebrate our day of freedom, Travis & I hiked up Stuart Falls with Keith & Cherie. It was a beautiful day and the falls are so amazing. We just wanted to post some of the pictures to show how gorgeous it really was!

May 27, 2007

Costa Rica Trip 2007


After Travis graduated in May, we finally decided to take a long-overdue honeymoon to Costa Rica after being married for three years. My parents gave us the plane tickets (thank you, thank you!) and we went down for a week and had a wonderful time. We spent the first few days in Arenal, which is up in the mountains near an active volcano, right in the middle of the jungle. Afterwards, we went down to the beach, Playa Hermosa, to spend our last few days in the sun (this is us at the beach at sunset). Since we are still starving students, we decided to backpack our way through. This included using public transportation and staying in hostels: it was a complete adventure. We really got a chance to meet some of the locals and enjoy the country first hand. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time and want to plan a trip back already.

Ladies Geological Eatery

Our first night in Costa Rica, we went to this great restaurant called the Ladies Geological Society Eatery (or something like that) for dinner that is run by 4 ladies. The food was amazing and dirt cheap. Plenty of rice and beans, Travis was so happy! The restaurants out there are really unique because they are all open air. Just a roof and floors. If you look close in the picture with Michelle, you can see the jungle just behind her.

















Since all the restaurants are open air, you do get some animals running around. At one point I felt something tickle my back, so I brushed at my shirt and looked down and this 'little' guy was running away. It was HUGE, no joke. When I showed the lady there, she just said "shoo, shoo." I don't think that was really the reaction I was going for.

Arenal Hotel

This is the hotel we stayed in while in Arenal. We really got a taste of the rural life here; it was right next to this river and you could hear all the animals at night.
















Here is Trav in a hammock at our hotel. We liked it so much, we decided to buy one for us to bring home a little bit of Costa Rica.

Arenal National Park

We spent our second day at the Arenal Volcano National Park, which was amazing. While hiking, we kept hearing rumbling noises, thinking that it was about to storm, but then we realized, oh yea, that's just the LIVE volcano! Kind of freaky to think about, but it really was gorgeous. The volcano hasn't really erupted since 1961, when it completely destroyed an entire town below it, which they later just turned into a man-made lake. Now you can hike up and see all the old lava rocks and take a gander at the still rumbling volcano. The drive to the park was probably one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on. So perfect. Here are some of the photos of us at the park and hiking up the volcano.




























This is Travis and I standing between the volcano and the lake.































This is Travis on top of this massive lava rock formation. Behind him is the volcano, which if you look close, you can see some of the hot ash rocks that are rolling down the mountain. Just don't get too close.


I made the mistake of wearing flip-flops while hiking up over lava rocks.. Not the smartest thing I've ever done (and no, the red isn't blood, it's polish). My feet were a little sore afterwards, but thankfully we were headed to the hot springs.

Eyelash Viper

Everyone told us that we'd see a lot of animals while in Costa Rica and boy were they right. While hiking we saw this ant eater/cat thing, lots of brightly colored birds and the like. As you see here we even saw some of the not-so-nice animals. A couple of German tourists actually pointed this little beauty out to us: an eyelash viper. One of the deadliest snakes in the world. And yes, we got about 3 feet from it. The most reassuring thing was when they told us, "Oh, don't worry, this kind of snake doesn't jump." Very comforting.

Baldi Hot Springs

After a long day hiking, we decided to go to the Baldi natural hot springs resort that is just outside of La Fortuna. This place was so beautiful! With the volcano right there, they have these natural hot springs that have been made into resorts. There were about 20 pools that were all different temperatures with waterfalls and seats for ultimate relaxation. It was great to sit back and see all the beautifully landscaped tropical plants and then to look up and see the (smoking) volcano in the distance. A perfect end to the day.

















Monkey Travis.

May 20, 2007

Capony Tour & Horsing Around
















Travis and I about to begin our fun-filled canopy tour. Behind us is the La Fortuna Waterfall and the jungle. This was probably the most fun thing that we did while in Costa Rica. They took us to the middle of the jungle and then we proceeded to cross it on 11 different cables, some so high you couldn't see the ground below. One of the longest took over a minute to cross and we were going about 40 miles an hour! It was just amazing, you could look to one side and see Arenal Volcano, on the other La Fortuna Waterfall and then over at the city, not to mention the gorgeous canopy! Needless to say we had a blast.















Here comes Michelle on one of the tamer runs.















Travis getting a good start on his turn.



































One of our crazy guides doing a little upside down trick for us. None of us were really brave enough to try going across that way, or at least they wouldn't let us try.















High, Ho Silver away! After the canopy tour, we then took a horse ride through the jungle. As you can tell, the horses down here are a little small. I think the guide said that this one was called "gordo," maybe it's a joke?






























Halfway through the ride it started to rain, (we were in the jungle) and our horses started going really fast. All the better for me, but some people in our little group had a bit of trouble managing their mounts. We were totally soaked by the end, but it was so much fun, we didn't really care. What a blast!

Playa Hermosa
















This is the gorgeous Playa Hermosa, it's on the Pacific Ocean side of Costa Rica and it is beautiful! Since we came in the off-season, the beaches were basically deserted except for a few locals. This was the perfect place to end our wonderful vacation: plenty of time to relax and enjoy great seafood!
















Hotel Guanacaste, Liberia
















This is the 'hotel' that we stayed in the final night of our trip. We had an 8:00am flight and needed to stay someplace close to the airport. This tiny room fit the bill. Basically it was a 10'x10' hole with just enough room for a bed and a desk. This picture was taken looking out from the (you guessed it!) very small bathroom: the bed touches one wall and the desk the other. The photo actually makes the room look bigger than it really is! Yikes! The bed was surprising comfortable but needless to say we were fairly glad our backpacking adventure was coming to an end.

May 8, 2007

BYU Graduation

After five hard years of studying, Travis has (finally) graduated from BYU with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering (insert cheers here). Almost all of our family was able to make it down and we had a great time hanging out and celebrating in general. Here are a few of the pictures we took during this exciting time.
















The Marriott Center with all the graduates (in the middle rows) during the university commencement. Vice President Dick Cheney was the speaker and he actually did a great job. The only problem was that we had to wait outside for two hours to go through security and then wait another hour inside before it even started. Needless to say we were a little tired by the end of it all. But I guess Trav's worth it, right?!
















The happy couple after the ceremony.
















Golden, Deb, Travis and I afterwards. They were the lucky ones who sat through graduation with me.
















Travis in his wizard robes, casting a spell, I think.

College Convocation
















Friday was the college convocation, basically it amounted to as many geeks as you can possibly fit into one room. Here is Travis about to walk across the stage to receive his diploma. YEA!
















Brooke (my little clone), Cami and Kristi having a good time during the ceremony.
















Travis and Cami cheese it up.
















The proud graduates: Renee, Britton, Keith, Travis, Josh, Amber and Katie. I think these guys saw Travis just as much or probably even more than I did over the past three years.

BBQ Time
















On Friday after graduation, we had a multi-family BBQ in our backyard with tons of food. We set up the badminton net and just generally had a great time. It was great to meet everyone's family and see where they get their quirks from.. j/k Here is a photo with some of the Engineering gang. We are so sad that many of them are leaving!