USMC Helicopter Reunion in Reno

9 different helicopters landed in the south parking lot of the convention hotel. All the pilots and crew posed for a picture on stage at the closing banquet. Jim is in several pictures with Tom Hewes, Lt. Col.

Ferns

I felt like we were in a time warp with these huge ferns and giant trees.


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Gen. Sherman

The largest sequoia known, also at the bottom of a half mile hike. The second smartest thing I did today was to wimp out and catch a shuttle back to the top where our car was parked. The smartest and at the same time dumbest was to wimp out on a cave trip this morning. It was a 45 minute drive to the cave, a 20 minute hike down hill and an hour tour of the cave. The walk back to the car was the equivalent of climbing 30 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS!!! Do you think we did this? Of course not, so why did we buy the tickets? Dumb Dumb Dumb


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Snow plant

This is a fungus that lives off of dead roots.


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Moth?

When flying, these are brigh yellow and have really pretty long "feathers" at the tip of each wing.


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Prescribed burn

Sections of sequoia were bring burned to help the growth of the forest. The top pix shows smoke chiming out of a sequoia. The bottom shows the forest floor





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Western azaleas?

Not sure what these are but they were in the Mariposa Grove at Yosemite.


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Next to the giants

Here are a couple of snapshots showing how small we are next to these giants!











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General Grant Tree

The third largest tree in the world, 1,700 years old, 268 feet tall, 1,254 tons.





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Dragonfly

It's hard to see, but this is a really cute little dragon fly in the Sequoia Forest.



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Yosemite!

Jim and I at half dome in Yosemite on July 12, 2010.


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Mariposa grove

This tree is called clothespin. Tomorrow we are off to Sequoia and a hotel that I hope has Internet connection!


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Tree at yosemite

This was taken by our tour guide, herb. One of the problems with taking pix with these huge trees is that they are enormous and they don't fit into the frame of the camera really well.

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