Road Trip 2012

 

 Road trip 2012!  Usually I am having babies in the even numbered years and road trips happen in the odd years but since our family is complete and we had a birthday celebration to attend in Redding, CA we made a road trip out of it.

First stop on our trip was Crater Lake National Park.  This trip was heavy on the National Parks.  We ended up with 5 new stamps in our park passports!   I was hoping Bree would travel a bit better than she did last year on our Yellowstone trip, and in the end I can say she was much better, but that first stop we almost turned around.  Bree and Darcy were monsters to put it mildly.  Not only did they bug us, they disrupted the ranger's speech for about 75 others.  Gee thanks girls.  They were asleep when we took the sign picture so we didn't wake them, hoping they would be happy when they woke up but no go.

You can see Darcy's sour face and Bree wouldn't even look at the camera.  I have no idea how you can be so unhappy at such a gorgeous place but leave it to my girls to find a way.  But since Paul and I are road trippers we told the kids to suck it up and we moved on!

 Lassen National Park was our next stop.  Unfortunately it was too late in the season to be seeing the best of the parks we went to this trip.  All the snow was melted and waterfalls were dry.  I'm sure Lassen would have been impressive a month before.  We barely made it in to see the park because they had a huge fire burning in the north end of the park.  A few days after we were there we heard they shut down the roads we had taken to get in at the south end.  Good thing we hit this park early in our trip.  We got to see lots of fire engines and 2 helicopters with water to dump on the fire.  The smell of the smoke made me want to hop in my engine and head to the fire lines!  I loved that job!

Our next stop was in Dayton, NV to visit Paul's brother Roland and his family.  It was tons of fun getting the little cousins together.  There are 7 of them between the ages of 2 months and 8 years.  I have great memories of playing with Utah cousins every summer and I hope my kids can say the same about their Nevada cousins.

 Roland and Star took us to Sand Harbor Beach on Lake Tahoe for the day.  Absolutely gorgeous!  We swam, or floated, for four hours in the clear water and beautiful sunshine.  What a beautiful place.

 This is Maple, Drew, and Bree out on the lake.  That giraffe floatee was the hit of the day.  It was like pulling teeth to get one kid off so the next in line could take their turn.  As you can see from the pictures, Bree pretty much monopolized it.  Her screech was louder than the others I guess.

 Darcy was in heaven.  I thought she would be fried on the back of her legs but some how we managed to avoid sunburns the entire trip.  Pretty good when you consider we in California in August and swam at two different lakes all day.

Uncle Roland and Aunt Star both took turns paddling around the lake with the kids.  They loved it there.  Darcy still talks about seeing Uncle Roland which is quite a breakthrough for her since she usually steers clear of men.  After swimming at the lake we stayed at a casino in South Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side.  We ate breakfast the next morning at McDonalds on the California side!  We had a "minor" mishap as we were packing to leave and head south to Yosemite.  Let me back up.  We have had a trailer for the past 5 years that we wore out on all our trips.  We decided to sell it before it was worthless and since we didn't want to camp this trip in the 100 degree weather.  The trailer sold and Paul decided we needed a cargo carrier on the back of our Acadia.  He bought the carrier and worked very hard making the platform that would carry it.  Well, in Tahoe, the main weld decided to give way as Paul was packing it thankfully, and the whole thing fell off the car.  He was able to find a guy in town who could weld it for us and we were back on the road after about a 2.5 hour delay.  I thought all was lost but it turned out to be a minor hitch in our giddyap!

We arrived at Yosemite from the east and drove through all the way to the other side where our hotel was for the night.  On the way we saw amazing granite formations and got to walk up some granite hills.  I think they used the same granite in the roads because they would sparkle as the sun hit them.

 Like I said, we exited the park to the west that night and the road was a nightmare!  Never enter or exit on the west side!  There are no amenities at either western entrance for almost 2 hours.  We know, we took both trying to find the best route.  They were both awful and we were lucky we didn't have the trailer behind us.  It seems like such a famous place would have better accessibility.  We finally left the park the next day to the south which was probably the best road, though it put us much farther south than we wanted to be.  But it was worth it.

 This is El Capitan.  Standing at the bottom of it gave me the shivers and brought tears to my eyes.  I'm not sure why.  Its very imposing and just amazing.  We have been blessed as a family to see many of the beautiful sights in our country and they are just awe inspiring.

 The kids, on the other hand, were much happier looking at the ducks floating under the bridge.

 Yosemite Valley.  Amazing, beautiful, gorgeous place!

 We are at Glacier Point here, with Half Dome in the background and the valley down below Paul.  That was a beautiful view of the whole place.

 I think the kids liked Yosemite, though they didn't appreciate it as much as Yellowstone last year.  That park is more interactive and fun for kids with all the animals and the sulfur pools and geysers.  Paul and I would both rank Yosemite as one of our top 5 parks though, along with Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and I say Bryce Canyon.

Here is Mason being dwarfed my a giant Sequoia at the Mariposa Grove in the south end of the park.  These trees were huge!  I think they left an impression on the kids.

 San Fransisco was the next stop on our list.  I had been there twice before but never explored it like we did this time.  We stayed in Oakland so we got to cross the bay bridge a couple times,along with the Golden Gate bridge which you can see in the background of this picture.  We also saw the Oakland Temple where Paul's parents were married, and I made Paul drive around the University of California campus in Berkley.  We ate lunch at Crissy Beach and were able to watch the preliminaries of the America's Cup sailing race with Alcatraz in the background.  That was fun!  Well, for everyone but Darcy.  She had a seagull swipe her first sandwich and then a friendly dog grabbed her second!  Darcy will always remember San Francisco I guess.  We also drove down Lombard Street and up some very steep hills that we tried not to stop on or you might not get going up again.  We spent a little time on Pier 39 but were in a rush to get to AT&T Ballpark to catch the Braves /Giants game.  I was soooo excited when we decided to take the trip to realize the Braves would be in town the same time we were.  It was a really nice park and I think most of us had fun, no meltdowns by little girls anyway, but the Braves managed to lose.  Oh well, I had a good time anyway.

In-N-Out Burger.  My brother in law swears by it so we went there.  Twice.  The first time only Paul ate there and just got a regular burger.  The second time I was brave enough to try and we did some research into the secret world of In-N-Out and Paul ordered a 3x3 Animal style.  Look it up, its legit!  It was an OK hamburger but not good enough for me to vacation in Redding for (that's the location of the farthest north store).

The last stop on the trip was Redding for my Mother-In-Law's 70th birthday celebration at Whiskeytown Lake, near where she grew up.  It was hot!  And smokey from the near by wildfires, but we had a good time.  We swam, ate good food and good birthday cake, and visited with lots and lots of family we don't see very often.  Even Aunt Merrie and Sharron made it out from Michigan for the party!

 Darcy can be uninhibited at times I guess.  We hitched a ride on the boat Drew is sitting on in the next picture to a small island on the lake where some of the little bodies stripped naked to swim since their moms had already changed them into dry clothes for the evening.  Silly moms!  We're at a lake!  We had our own private nude beach!

We had an awesome trip this summer.  It was different, staying in hotels every night.  It was probably tough on the kids staying somewhere new each night instead of having the old familiar trailer to play and sleep in, but I did appreciate a clean room and the ability to shower every day!  Our trip next summer will take place during Paul's work sabbatical which gives us the option of being on the road for 2 months straight!  We are in the early stages of planning and I am already getting so excited!  Tune in next year at this time to see how that trip went!