Holiday Update 2024
Happy Holidays! We’ve been settling into California well over the last year, and have kept plenty busy with work (especially for Vanessa!) but we’ve still managed to make time for plenty of adventures, both close to and far from our new home state!
We ended 2023 and rang in 2024 with Vanessa’s family in South Carolina. Though we didn’t manage to make it out to visit with Paul’s family this year, Paul’s parents came to visit in March, and Vanessa’s mom came to visit in April! It was great to show everyone around our new home!
In between those family visits, we took a quick trip to Las Vegas over a few days in March, and we had such a great time that we came back eight months later for a pre-Thanksgiving get-together with the Gehring clan!
When we weren’t travelling, we made the most of Vanessa’s weekends and other shorter bits of time off to explore our new home. From skiing around Lake Tahoe in the winter, to visiting local amusement parks and whale watching in Monterey Bay in the spring, to showing friends from Seattle around Yosemite in the summer, we got a full taste of California this year! Paul even fit in a clinic to get better at off-road driving!
Unfortunately, life isn’t all weekends, and we’ve both kept busy with work this year too! Vanessa entered her second year of her four-year residency, where she’s now officially Dr. Kusisto, after changing her last name in March! Paul has continued his work for Amazon, including a half-dozen trips to meet with his team in Seattle.
In June, we took a short trip to Colorado to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. This trip was explicitly a “no climbing” trip, where we filled our days with hiking, rafting, horseback riding, wildlife sightings, and scenic drives across the park! This trip was a great opportunity to break in our gear and get ready for our biggest trip of the year a few weeks later…
In August, we packed our bags and headed up to Alaska for a full week of adventure! We visited two national parks, (Denali and Kenai Fjords) and had a packed schedule, including flightseeing, kayaking, hiking, whale watching, and dogsledding! Vanessa also got her first taste of ice climbing, a genre of climbing that Paul started to dip his toes into last winter…
Paul’s climbing year started with a few beginner ice climbing trips in January and February, then quickly accelerated, with trips taking him from the deserts of Utah to the beautiful granite in British Columbia, with plenty of time spent in California too! Paul hit new highs in difficulty grades, ticked off some legendary routes, (including climbing the East Buttress of the highest peak in the lower 48 - Mt. Whitney) and did his first climbs which involved sleeping and eating while still on the wall.
We hope you have a safe and happy holiday season, and an excellent new year ahead. We've included a few more pictures from our year in the gallery below, and can't wait to hear about what you've been up to over this past year in your own lives. Don't be a stranger!
