I was in Chicago again! The city that I visited so frequently holds a lot of memories. It has been 4 years since my last trip to Chicago. Everything felt both nostalgic and fresh at the same time. P and I stayed in Chicago Athletic Club over the weekend. This stylish hotel sits right across the Millennium Park and has a vintage, sporty theme.

Then we spent the entire week working from a hotel room in the West Loop neighborhood. We finally had a chance to visit Girl and the Goat.

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Visiting Saguaro National Park is like visiting another world - it is beyond my imagination. It took a decade for a Saguaro cactus to grow a few inches tall, and yet there is a forest full of giant, 3-story tall Saguaro in front of me. Think about how long does it take to grow this vast landscape of cactus.

Saguaro cactus has a wax-like texture skin with deep groove on its surface. When it takes more water in, the body will expand and the grooves become shallower. It is a very delicate mechanism to store water.

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The snow storm is coming in town soon. I had tried to cancel my hotel, but the credit card company who made my booking never did really cancel it and not even notify me. I have been trying to cancel the flight too, but the airline told me to wait for the announcement if the weather really got worse. On the Friday before long weekend, the weather was still calm and peaceful after work. “Let’s pack and go,” I said. P and I landed in Las Vegas right before midnight.

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Glacier National Park is very popular and extremely difficult to book. I was very lucky to able to go there, thanks to P’s perfect planning one year in advance. We stayed in Kalispell and entered from West Glacier.

We sat by the Bowman Lake and did nothing - just watch people and enjoy the time. It could be one of the most relaxing experience. There were people skipping pebbles. One kid was really good and all proud of himself, until he saw another guy throwing twice as many skips. I also met a bird, don’t know its species, jumping really close to my lap – then it pulled a green worm out of the sand from under my lap.

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Birthplace of California – before I visited this city, I have been hearing good thing about San Diego. The perfect weather, good food, and fun activities. One thing I did not know before my trip, is that it is also an old city. In fact, the Old Town San Diego is referred to as the “birthplace” of California.

The yard in La Casa de Estudillo, the iconic building in the old town plaza. White wall, red pottery roof tile, cactus and a resting rabbit. Apparently the rabbits live here and don’t mind people walking around their home.

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Coffee on top of Taipei 101

My friend introduced me to Simple Kaffa in Taipei. The brand was established by Wu after he won the World Barista Championship in 2016. Simple Kaffa offers gourmet coffee beans from rare source in small batches. Most interestingly, it serves coffee that is grown locally in Taiwan.

Simple Kaffa has multiple locations, and this one - Simple Kaffa Sola - is on the 88th floor of Taipei 101. To reach here, you will enter Taipei 101 from the office entrance (not the shopping mall side) and talk to the reception desk.

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Matanuska Glacier

A guided tour and the hosts take you to and from the glacier with a snowmobile-driven sled. In winter you can walk on icy surface when Matanuska Glacier is frozen. I brought trekking poles but actually it was not needed because they give ice cleats to everyone. You can hear the cracking sound from the glacier movement when the surrounding is quite. You can also see that huge ice blocks being pushed upwards by the glacier. You read about this from your geography textbook but standing on a glacieris a totally different level of experience.

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With the advance of phone camera technology, anyone can easily take good quality pictures. I have been posting photos on Instagram for years but it gets less and less frequent recently. One drawback of posting on the social media site is that the service can become obsolete one day, eventually. Posting on website may not be as easy as posting on Instagram, but I can try. Maybe there is a way to make it easier.

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My fisrt ever photo of Milky Way was captured using an iPhone 12 Pro Max. Bryce Canyon National Park is one of the International Dark Sky location. I attended a ranger hosted stargazing program and luckily the sky was very clear and dark. It was very challenging to shoot with a long exposure time and I did not have a tripod with me. I had to hold the phone against a car to stablize it. The photo turns out quite satisfactory.

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