Gentle Giants

The drive through the San Joaquin valley left me both excited by all of the fresh produce and horrified at how "Grapes of Wrath" California is. It was dry -- dry enough that there were constant grass fires reported on the local news. I expected to see giraffes roam by at any moment. Very Serengeti.
We didn't leave ourselves a lot of time in Sequoia, but we did the main touristy thing -- see giant sequioas. We were mightily impressed and, don't tell customs, but we imported many a sequoia cone into Mexico. Sequoias only grow at 5000 - 8000 ft elevation, so growing one in Virginia wasn't an option. But with Mexico City being at 7300 ft, I figure in 800 years or so, we'll have a pretty impressive stand here.



The chipmonks, squirrels and deer were all holy terrors -- completely unafraid of humans and frequently coming right up to you to get food.
General Sherman - not as impressive as you think. By this time, we had hiked the Giant Tree Trail, climbed a few fallen behemoths, and walked up on a bear, so seeing another big tree, this time covered in tourists with no bears in sight was a bit anti-climatic.
Bear #2 -- I couldn't get a single good shot with the sun behind him and my auto-focus focusing in on the branches in the way. I felt terribly defeated. We were about to leave California, and I didn't have one good shot of a bear. Until Lena spotted this beautiful baby about 100 feet from us as we walked around the giant sequoias. Lena named him Breck.

That night we drove back to San Francisco for one more night at the Hotel Palomar. This time we were given the Magritte suite. This meant that nothing was really any different except that there were Magritte posters including one featuring the "Son of Man" painting and many Magritte-looking clouds (which, funnily, look like normal, everyday clouds). I have stayed in art-themed rooms before, some done quite well, but I don't think that surrealists are the best artists to feature in a hotel room.

On the flight home, we were treated to a much better display of cloud art, compliments of Mother Nature.

Rhymes with Vegemite

When I was a teenager, my family went hiking in Newfoundland (see, I inherited the foot-to-trail gene). The Newfoundland tourist board's slogan for that year was "Newfoundland: Rhymes with Understand." This perplexed us until we asked a local lady one morning, sitting in her kitchen eating breakfast (those Newfies are very hospitable), and she answered in her deeply Canadian accent, "Newfoundland does rhyme with understand." And by golly, when she said it, it certainly did.

We got into the terrible habit of pronouncing Yosemite "Yosa-might" until we had to think pretty hard to remember what it's really called.

Cascade Falls

Bridalveil Falls

The first night we were there, we drove up to Glacier Point to watch the stars come out. Though the stars were a bit of a disappointment, we did point out to the girls where the following day's hike would be -- way down there to visit both of those waterfalls -- Vernal and Nevada Falls.

Vernal Falls

Ariel wanted to come to California because he served his mission here and hiked to the top of Vernal Falls with a group of missionaries during his two years. This day, we came full circle and met the newest batch of LDS missionaries taking a break from the work to climb to the top of Vernal Falls.

At the top, we took a break and enjoyed the beauty of the Stella Jay.
Many people turn around at this point and head back, but we continued up to Nevada Falls.

The trail took us up one grueling side, over the top, then down the other side of the Merced river.

At one point we peeked through the trees at upper and lower Yosemite Falls far across the valley.

After 7.5 miles, we weren't the only critters eager to get off the trail.

The next morning, we were all hobbling around from a long and strenuous hike before, so the rest of Yosemite was spent visiting things less than 2 miles from the trailhead. Like Lower Yosemite Falls...

...and Dog Lake in the north of the park. We left Yosemite for Sequoia with our first bear sighting.

Fisherman's Wart

Palace of Fine Arts

The sea lions at Pier 39

Coit Tower with my handsome husband waiting in the car while I snap the shot.

Finally, we crossed the Bay Bridge to points East, and Livia gave a good attempt at our family tradition of holding your breath over bridges. But the Bay Bridge is so long, it has to rest on an island and through a tunnel. She didn't even make it to Yerba Buena Island in the middle.

California Dreaming

With all of our worldly possessions packed and waiting to ship to Mexico, we were homeless. So, if you're going to live in a hotel, you might as well live in a hotel somewhere cool.
It helps if you stay in a suite at a swanky place like the Hotel Palomar in San Francisco.

At the advice of the concierge, we made reservations at the House of Nanking. We spent the time before dinner exploring the area around Chinatown, climbing the intense hills. The girls walked the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, then we went to the cable car museum, which Ariel and I agreed might have been one of the coolest things in all of California. Maybe this might be obvious to the rest of you, but we didn't really realize the extent of what "cable car" means. There are miles and miles of cables running continuously under the street and the cable car grabs hold of to move it along. And somebody came up with this crazy idea in the 19th century.
Finally, our time to eat came, and we went to this House of Nanking. I don't know why the concierge called in a reservation. There is no such thing as reservations. When we opened the door, a surly Chinese woman yelled across the room, "How many?!" and then we were directed to a long communal table. An old fellow came and slid a pile of bowls down to us, and our drinks came still in the can. Food came willy-nilly as it was prepared, but boy was it good. We ate until we were stuffed with dumplings and noodles and rice, beef and chicken, and a double portion of happiness.

Pre-move packing

Yes. We moved weeks ago. Pretend with me that I wrote this in June when I took the pictures.

So the weekend before the movers arrived, instead of getting all 16,000 lbs of our stuff organized for the big move, we instead had a weekend of animal rescues and un-birthday parties. The mowers flushed a family of bunnies, and one little kitten dashed towards our house instead of the woods. Livia captured the little guy who squealed his unending protests until we took him towards the woods to free him.
The mother bunny actually came out of the woods towards Livia to come get her baby back. Then the two hopped away to safety.
Later that day Livia celebrated her un-birthday with a few friends. They played many fun games (here they are trying to untangle a human knot) and ate A LOT of ice cream.

And then the movers came and took all of our worldly possessions away.