Mammoth Mountain Inn

This is the Inn we stayed in. The photo is taken from the beginning of the first lift. It was so close to the room, that we ended up taking a little break mid-day to warm up, before we hit the slopes again for the afternoon.

The inn from the side...

What would Mammoth be without the Mammoth...uhhhh

This is the inside of the Inn. Ontop is the pub (there's another photo of it just below) and opposite to the pub on the same floor is a restaurant.

This is the view from the entrance into the Inn. Our room was just to the left of the Christmas tree.

Needles to say - whoever knows us, will know where we spend the late evenings with our Amarulla....

This is the pub up-top. The whole setup is really cozy.

Mammoth December 2006 - on the way there

So - Christmas weekend we decided to take a ski trip to Mammoth Mountain. It's about 6 hours from home and turned out to be a very exciting drive.
When we entered Johannesburg, we were kind of dumb-struck?? Johannesburg? What the - ?

It's a "miniature" version of our Johannesburg back home. It seems they mined for silver here, many moons ago. However there are actually some people still living here. If you look carefully at the roadsign, the streets name is "The Rand", so now I'm pretty sure some South African had something to do with this....

Just out of Johannesburg...what do you know? Randsburg? Now it was kind of getting kreepy....

The views of the mountains were stunning in this area...

And to top it off, we ended up going through Bishop too!

And the mountains kept tempting us with a wee bit of snow up there...

Las Vegas November 2006

Our last part of the vacation was Las Vegas. This time we stayed in the Luxor, which was a great experience. We stayed in the pyramid itself, so the widows "ran" with the shape of the pyramid. Really cool. The lifts also run sideways and are called "inclinators". Really weird at first, especially after a drink or two...
Luxor's sphinx. which is on the way to the tram.

This was the inside of the Bellagio, decorated for Autumn. It was a garden out of pumkins and all kinds of plants.

We went for a ride in the gondula in the Venice, while our "gonduleer" sang to us in italian.

We spend one evening at the "Tournament of Kings" at the Excalibur. It's a great show with knights and wizards. The dinner is eaten with your fingers! No knifes or forks! The tables are lined all around the arena. The show was really great. We sat at the "Russian" table (yep-obviously I picked that one!) and our Russian knight did well to represent us. They get the audience all involved in the medieval traditions. Really cool.

And eventually the sad day came and we had to bid our friends farewell.

Until we meet again....

Sequoia National Park

This is the John Muir Lodge where we spend a few nights in Sequioa National Park.

We had some fun and games in the lobby area by the fireplace in the evenings..

The colours of the autum leaves were unbelievable.

This is a view from between two Sequoia trees.

We were fascinated with the moss that coloured the trees green . See our car in the distance?

The General Sherman Tree!





This is a cross section of a Sequoia tree! It's very old.

I just can't quite get my arms around it!








We also met some friendly bears...

Some views while driving around the scenic drives in the park.

This bush looked like it was glowing!

What a postcard shot!

Ontop of the world!

See that house up there! There's actually a guy with his dog up there, watching for fires!

So we decided to visit him...

There were a few stairs involved....

and more stairs....

And here we were. Amazing place. He had a stove, bed, radio, kettle....It's just his bathroom that was DOWNstairs...down many many stairs....

Big Bear on Halloween

So off we were to Big Bear on Halloween Day. We remembered from last year how stunning Big Bear looks in autum. The trees were all the colours between gold to red. Just stunning.

We took a quiet moment at Big Bear Lake to look at all the stunning houses along it.

Just look at those colors!



















We Stayed at our favourite place in Big Bear!
It's not called "Cozy" for nothing! We got a fire going in the fireplace that would make any pyromaniac drool! Actually it was such a active fire, even though it was freezing outside, we had to sleep with the windows open! Needles to say, compact Jacques was in charge. Groenie die draak!


Then it was off to the streets of Big Bear. All the shops had a candy station and everybody dressed up!

Like twins hej!

Don't you just love this one! A lucky draw to win a Chain Saw on Halloween!

This doggie was too cute :"Little Devil"

The next morning we were off to Sequoia National park via Lake Arrowhead.

We were very excited to have passed "Twin Peaks", which we only later found out wasn't the one on TV back home.