Trying to cram as much relaxation as I can into the end of my vacation.

Had a really good trip. Hiked up and down a mountain, got some good time with family (including my two nieces), had trouble free air travel, all of my recent technology purchases worked out well, saw some bears and was fairly unplugged for over a week.

The annual hike up Mount LeConte went very well. My elder niece (4 years old) managed to hike up and down the mountain under her own power (5.5 miles, 2,560 foot elevation gain) and my younger niece (1 year old) had a good attitude while being carried up the mountain (despite not sleeping as much as her sister did three years ago). We had very nice clear weather on the way up. Sunrise the next day and the hike down were a bit soggy.

On a hike out to Laurel Falls the next day before picking up monstersocks at the airport we got to see a mother bear and two cubs scampering through the forest.

My new digital camera worked well for the trip as a replacement for both my small camera (although the new one is a little bit bigger) and my larger camera (higher resolution and similar zoom capabilities). About all I lose is the intervalometer feature and a slightly larger maximum aperture while saving quite a bit of space. The high def movie mode is also quite handy.

I had some trouble in initial testing, but during the trip my new GPS Data Logger worked well. I was able to track my hike up the mountain and the hike we took to Laurel Falls very easily. (I didn't track the hike down the mountain due to the weather and my expectation that I wouldn't take many pictures in the rain.) The waypoint feature is a little interesting, but a little limited since you don't specifically know which waypoint was which later on.

My old portable GPS has always been a little flaky so I picked up a new portable gps a while back. This trip was my first actual use of it. It worked well and has an impressive number of text-to-speech voices in various languages.

I almost brought my netbook (the first computer I've ever purchased with Windows on it) but figured it would be overkill to bring that and my laptop. It turns out I should have brought the netbook so that monstersocks could have had a computer to use while we were in Tennessee.

Now to sort through the gigabytes of pictures I took on vacation...