Well folks, sorry about the complete dearth of blogging.  This will be a short post just to keep you updated and hopefully I'll start putting together some daily updates tomorrow (we'll see...).  As you probably saw, on Monday we flew from St. Louis to San Jose California (with a few stops).  We had a wonderful afternoon in San Jose, saw the ocean, had a delicious dinner, and got to sleep after a long day.  On Tuesday, we went to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, which was really, really interesting, got some calamari sandwiches for lunch (interesting), and then drove out to the house/cabin that we rented here in Mariposa (a few miles outside the West entrance to Yosemite.  Yesterday, Wednesday, we woke up around 4 AM and hiked up half dome, a huge rock that juts outside of the Yosemite valley.  When I say huge, I mean it.  It was 18 miles long, with almost a mile of vertical ascent, and the last several hundred yards were done by pulling yourself up on cables to the top of the rock - definitely the hardest, longest, most scary, and coolest hike ever.  Finally, today, we went down to the grove of giant sequoias, saw the enormous trees, visited a relative, and got some decent burgers for dinner.  Obviously, there is a lot more to each of those days, and hopefully I can write up some accounts of them - if only for myself in the future - but just know that it has been an absolute blast so far.  

OK, so here are a few pictures, and with that goodnight from California!