This page has pictures from:
Portland, OR
Smokey Mountains
San Diego, CA
Boston, MA
Lake Granby, CO
San Francisco, CA
Alaska

After finding a last-minute ticket ala Priceline on Tuesday, 11/7, I flew out to Portland, OR on 11/10 to see my little sister for a long weekend. The weather was chilly but sunny and the leaves were in prime autumn colours. Between McMenamins' bars we went spelunking in the ape caves and got an amazing tour of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, via Cessna, courtesy of our friend Duncan. Three days is not enough time to visit Portland. More pics available here.

Above is Multnomah Falls, near the Gorge. Billed as the 2nd highest year-round waterfall in the US, this double tiered waterfall is beautiful surrounded by fall colours.

Approximately six hours after leaving my job at WPS a friend and I drove down to the Kentucky/North Carolina area to camp for a week in the Smokies. We bought a map, hired some local guy to take us by boat to a remote part of the forest and went from there... for more pictures of the Smokies, click here.

San Diego is amazing... the people are friendly, there's more sailboats than you can count, it's clean, there are thousands of things to do, it's at the forefront of technology, sandy beaches abound, there's waves to surf on and sunshine to soak up, the nightlife is crazy and it's 72° year round. If the cheese was better I would have stayed.
For more pictures of the zoo, La Jolla, Balboa Park and the Hotel del Coronado, click here.

In 1999 a friend and I finally made it to Boston and we were shocked by everything there was to do...  we walked the entire Freedom Trail, ate at fantastic restaurants, hung out in Boston Common, met up with a couple old friends–one of whom took us up to Lexington and Concord for a civil war lesson, had a beer at the Cheers bar, went to a game at Fenway, toured the USS Constitution, saw Hillary Clinton walking out of Fennel Hall, and then drove out to the cape for a day to spend a great day in Chatham where we wandered aimlessly on the beach and then had dinner at a fantastic restaurant while the locals sang around the piano. Unfortunately our trip was too short - I'd still like to go back to catch the MFA, aquarium, whale watching and the philharmonic to name a few things! The pic at left is of the Old State House surrounded by the modern skyscrapers of downtown Boston.

For more pictures of Boston and the cape, click here.

For the annual family trip of 2003, we decided to congregate in Boulder, CO and then head into the mountains to the Lake Granby area. Turns out there's not much to do there other than wakeboard, hike and eat. In other words, it was the perfect trip.

For pictures of our trip to Colorado, click here.

Memorial Day weekend is customarily crappy in Madison, so when JeffO invited the fam to join him in San Francisco for 2004 we all signed up. As did a few of our friends. Wakeboarding, wandering and wine tasting followed. Mom particularly enjoyed the wine tasting.

For pictures of our trip to San Francisco, click here.

Another holiday, another trip. 4th of July, 2004 presented more than enough reasons to Escape from Wisconsin™, but the primary one was to go see Stacy, who was working in Anchorage for the summer. With the help of our little rental Ford Focus, we (barely) made it to Homer, Girdwood and Seward. The scenery was truly amazing.

For pictures of our trip to Alaska, click here.