We found a new hiking spot with waterfalls, nature and wolves just 30 minutes from Anaheim in a town near Pasadena, called Arcadia. After a steep 2 mile drive up a winding and beautiful mountain, you come to the hiking trails with a couple paths and not too many people around. It makes you feel like you are hundreds of miles away from LA when we are just around the corner! It’s a great hike and has many skilled levels, but mostly you better be ready with your boots and some sort of endurance to climb some of these steep trails.
The best thing we found were the nice waterfalls and swimming ponds. The water is absolutely freezing, clean and refreshing (which I can’t say for most of the beaches we swim in). We found a little cove after we climbed a steep cliff past the 30 foot waterfall. Up stream was a quiet, peaceful pool and a nice medium sized waterfall filling it. After the mind numbingly cold water wore off (I got too numb to feel it anymore) we enjoyed nature and the robust butterfly hideout near us.
All in all, a great hike and definitely something to check out if you’re in the LA/OC area and want to get away. Try to find the vegetarian option on the cliff where you buy the parking pass. The first time we went there was free veggie sausage sandwiches! The next time they were gone, but they were making veggie burgers – so not bad!
Click pictures for more photos..
Click pictures for more photos..
The Roboto family blog has been updated and is better than ever. We now will be posting our blog and travel blog here on the home page, there is now a separate recipe blog for my vegan creations and we created new pages for videos, art, and reviews! Check it out and sign in with our new plug in with your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and leave a comment!
The China World Expo 2010 is coming close to the grand opening. In 17 days Shanghai will be premiering the work they have spent years and millions of dollars on so that I can come and enjoy their ninja robots, hundreds of pavilions from Khasakstan to US will be showing off their entertainment, food, art and technology to 70 million people.
http://en.expo2010.cn/
It has been a while since I’ve written anything on our blog, so I thought I would post an update of what we’re up to. I’m busy with school (statistics/business research) right now, Lucas just got accepted to Cal State Fullerton’s graduate program for electrical engineering specializing in computer engineering! We are still looking for houses, we got gym passes so we are yoga buffs and we bought our tickets to China!
So, my first time in Asia will be for the World Fair 2010 in Shanghai in October. I’ve got my two words down “Ni Hao”, my ticket abroad and an empty suitcase to shop to my heart’s desire. I don’t have a good update on the China trip yet except that we are staying in Shanghai for a week with Lucas’ friend, hiking through Hangzhou (inspired Pandora in Avatar – they claim) and taking a train to Beijing to see the great wall, Lucas’ family and fly out. I would have never thought I would be traveling to China as my first Asian trip because I’ve always dreamed on Japan, but that will be for next time, Konnichiwa, O genki desu ka?
I will follow up with more information on our trip plans, our summer plans, our house buying excursions, photos and possibly a new blog layout woo hoo!
Today I made my fourth vegan dessert creation from babycakes, pumpkin muffins! They turned out really moist, tasty and healthy! The vegan chocolate chip cookies and double chocolate chip cookies went over really well at work too. I’m happy to spread the vegan, gluten-free, sugar free lovlieness to the world!
After my growing knowledge of GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) it is more apparent that we all need to eat less meat and more organic everything. The horrors that Monsanto, the maker of agent orange, does to our food is outrageous and eating this organic, vegan dessert is that more satisfying knowing that I am not supporting their hostile endeavors!
See below for some action shots of my earth friendly/animal friendly cookies and pumpkin muffin making:
Click here for more photos..
I am trying to be an elite Yelper on Yelp.com here are my reviews of restaurants around the world…check it out:
I got a new recipe book called Babycakes and it is vegan, gluten-free and mostly sugar-free. The whole thing is animal friendly, no preservatives and ALL desserts! I got the book at Borders and two days later I get go on my cupcake fiasco because it is extremly hard to find anything vegan/non-gluten or perservative-free these days.
It gave me the idea of my future entrepreneurship opportunity in the sustainable living, vegan, green industry that I would love way too much. It would include free workshops to bring in the community and teach people how to live sustainably too.
This book reminded me that I could completely live my dream, eat desserts all day and work as my own boss of the cupcake world as I have a family and travel the world on my vega-cake diet and budget. All dreams aside I will do my little experiment to turn everyone to the dark side of vegan-healthy desserts tomorrow at work!
cupcake of love
The geek squad headed over to DEFCON (hacker convention) in Las Vegas last weekend. World class hackers showed their work off by talking about privacy laws, compromises of major internet sites and how to protect yourself when traveling (dealing with red-light capture technologies, RFID’s, and the No-Fly List). Needless to say, I was amazed and paranoid after a couple of the talks, but definitely better off knowing that government sites are probably sending out my social security number along with a video of me driving and my complete history of calls, travel and even things I didn’t know about myself! Also a note the ratio of men to women there was most likely 6500 : 10 so I had all the hot, bald geeky action I could ever want! jk
I really loved the talks by the two guys who had TV shows. The guy from Myth Busters – Adam Savage and Kingpin who had a show called Prototype This talked about their experiences in the TV industry. Kingpin and Zoz talked about their genius projects on their show with a small budget and about 2 weeks to come up with electrical/mechanical/software engineering inventions that could change the world every month. My favorite talk was from the girl who spoke about The Death of Anonymous Travel though. That was the talk that opened up my eyes to the lack of privacy we live in today and the restricts and abuses of information the government and third parties could hold against you (No Fly List is over a million and has people flagged that have moved in the last year? Or people with bad credit histories? What about the terrorists instead of grandmas and children?).
Anyway, we stayed in Mandalay Bay with 6 pools, beautiful architecture, and the Jonas Brothers! We sweated to the 110 degree heat, and didn’t gamble or drink because we were so exhausted. The newsworthy event of the whole conference had to be the only thing that we were completely unaware of and managed to get a picture with (below). Basically some hackers made a fake ATM machine, put a card reader to skim people’s credit cards (steal their information) and put it right outside of the security office because that was the only place without cameras! Amazingly their gag was found by a security officer shining his light into the “camera” hole that usually films people as they make their transaction and instead it was a computer!
Us and the ATM machine at DEFcon
Big Money- click here for rest of photos..
We’ve been pretty busy this summer. I’ve (Rachel) been in school constantly and working and Lucas is hard at work too. Our plan is to create this blog as more of a travel blog with more updates on our life that will link to our lovely pictures which are at over 6,000 right now.
It’s blazing hot, as Lucas would say, and we are still in our little apartment down the street from work in Anaheim. We are looking into renting the apartments close to work. They are building some beautiful apartments right now and they would be steps away from the office, the train station and Kaizer so it should be a go if the price is low enough.
Next week we are planning a small road trip with the geek squad to Las Vegas. We are going for Defcon (the hacker convention) but will be staying at Mandalay Bay (woop woop) and shopping/partying it up geeky style all weekend. Lucas, Dustin, Johnny, Jason, Ira, Patrick and I will be going together.
Also, last week was Brooke’s (my cousin) wedding to her new Pollock hubby, Martin. We had a blast at their low key beach wedding in Laguna. We met the extended family like Martin’s dad, brother, cousin and uncle. Cupcakes and champagne galore so I was happy.
Us in Laguna (Click on picture for full gallery...)
This unique scholarship program provides thirty selected outstanding alumni with the opportunity to identify a deserving scholarship recipient of their choice.
Rachel Kilgore
Norco, California
Rachel was determined to earn a college degree. While working more than 40 hours a week, Rachel enrolled at a community college, but her work schedule made attending classes difficult. She refused to give up on her dream of graduating from college, and continued to take classes. Rachel was thrilled to be awarded with the Paying it ForwardSM Scholarship Program. She can now afford to enroll at University of Phoenix and will pursue a degree in global business. She is passionate about culture and international studies, and hopes to become a cultural advisor or an international relations expert. Rachel knows she will encourage others to pursue an education — she hopes to become a role model for anyone who thinks they can not afford school or work toward a degree if they are employed full-time.
