It's official! Passport, visa & work permit are now in my hands, so I've bought a plane ticket and am now (well, soon) busy piling up everything expendable for tomorrow's garage sale (followed by Tuesday's visit from the Salvation Army truck).

Yosemite was great! I'm still unpacking but am mostly done scratching the mosquito bites. We spent the first day at Mono Lake, climbing around on the Panum Crater (dormant volcano with lots of amazing obsidian) and visiting the ghost town of Bodie. The second day we hiked from our camp site at Tuolomne Meadows to Cathedral Lake, arriving just in time for a brief rainshower to chase off all the other hikers. We had the lake, its meadows and all the tiny streams to ourselves for the afternoon -- ourselves, plus cloud of mosquitos, half a dozen curious deer, and a yellowbellied marmot that was downright nosy and a camera hog to boot. The final day we took the obligatory drive around the valley, where I was appropriately impressed by Half Dome and annoyed by clouds of loud buzzing tourists.

That's it for now...back to packing up.