Riding Along in My Automobile

We reached Yosemite just as the sun was throwing its last red rays of light on El Capitan! Chris was driving Peter's truck so that he could rest a little in preparation for the next few days. All of us were absolutely stunned looking up at the granite cliffs surrounding us! Yosemite was as incredible as everyone told us it would be!

We got a little confused riding around the valley looking for a place to camp, but once we found it we set up our tents and got busy creating a fire. It was nice to have a fire again! We warmed up the tri-tip and roasted vegetables that were leftover from the Steven's house on the fire and settled into our tents. Peter had to use Chris' sleeping bag because he had forgot his at home! I know right, what an amateur, forgetting a sleeping bag on a camping trip! Anyway, we all stayed warm that night despite the constant rain that started sometime in the early morning. In the morning it briefly stopped raining long enough for us to make breakfast, but we were severely disappointed by the fog that rolled into the valley that night. There were zero views of the cliffs! We were up in the air about whether we should wait out the weather or drive to Sequoia National Park that night. Once it started snowing...HARD...we at least decided we would not be staying in our tent! It was soaked and sagging under the weight of the snow that had fallen on it. We packed it up and left our site and went to find somewhere dry to think over our options. After walking around the Lodge, the store, the visitor center, and sitting in a warming hut we finally made up our minds to drive to Sequoia. 

That night we stopped for pizza and a beer in Fresno. Peter generously paid for the meal! Thanks buddy! That night we camped in a pullout just outside of Kings Canyon National Park. In the morning we ate breakfast and piled into Peter's Truck. The Road to Sequoia was closed so we visited Kings Canyon instead. We saw the General Grant Tree which is the third largest tree in the world and the second largest Sequoia tree in the world! After we did the small hike through the Grant Grove we drove to the end of the road, through the canyon.

The walls were extremely high and the canyon was very narrow. It was extremely beautiful, and until we planned this road trip, we had never even heard of the park, but rest assured it is worth seeing! At the end of the road we did a hike through the Zumwalt meadows. It gives great views of the canyon and the tall granite faces on either side while standing in a wide meadow. There was great rock climbing in the area but we did not have time to sample any of it...guess we'll be coming back! When we finished the hike we got back in the truck and headed towards the the pullout where the Jeep was still parked.

No purple leaves for Lauren! What a bummer!

It was time to say goodbye and part ways. We enjoyed our time with Peter immensely, he is my best friend and very important to us! We love him! It was an emotional parting since we knew that it would be much harder to see him, since two months earlier he had moved to California. We know he is in good hands, that he works with an awesome mentor and leader, and that God has him right where he is needed. Nevertheless it was tough to know that our visit was over. We had been looking forward to it for a long time! When we had finally said goodbye we drove our Jeep back up the road towards Sequoia National Park. The road had opened earlier that afternoon. Highway 198 was wet and icy and was as high as 7500' which is the highest elevation that sequoia's will grow at. As we were driving we found a road that had not been plowed yet and we decided to drive down it to see if we could camp there for the night. The road wound back into the national forest for a few miles and we followed it until we found a place to camp. Chris pulled the tarp and the tent out of the Jeep to let everything dry as Lauren made dinner. At 6:00 in late October it was already so cold that all the water droplets froze. We had as fancy a meal as you can have from the kitchen of a Jeep Cherokee. It was sauteed chicken and spinach tortellini with vodka sauce! Certainly one of the top meals we have prepared! The night was extremely cold, we don't know what the temperature dropped to but we woke up to a lot of ice on the inside of the Jeep. That day we began exploring Sequoia National Park by hiking to the General Sherman tree. It is the largest tree (by volume) in the world. The tallest tree in the world is a Coastal Redwood from California (379 feet), the largest diameter tree is a cypress from Mexico (46 feet), the oldest tree is a bristlecone pine (4700 years old), but no other tree has as much wood in its trunk as the Sherman tree! Its base diameter is 36 feet, 275 feet tall, and approximately 2,500 years old! During a storm years ago, its second largest branch broke off and crushed both the pavement and the fence encircling it. The branch alone was over 6 feet in diameter!

 Those trees were incredible, we enjoyed seeing them even more than the redwoods, because even though they were a lot shorter their trunks were much more massive and they were so orange! Beautiful trees! After we saw General Sherman we did another hike through the grove of giants and saw many more gigantic trees all ringing a meadow. We stopped by the museum to learn more about the trees and the park and were amazed at how dependent the trees were on fire to survive. Their cones needed fire to open, the brush needed to be cleared by fire so the seedlings could take root, the competing plants thinned out by fire for the seedlings to survive, and nutrients added to the soil. When the park was founded it suppressed the fires for about 60 years. No new trees grew in that time and the forest became overgrown so that if a fire did come through it would burn hot enough to kill all the giants as well as the undergrowth! It was an extremely fascinating landscape since all the trees in the forest had fire scars and damage, and yet they had the ability over time to heal themselves and survive all but the very hottest fires! So awesome!

As we drove back towards Yosemite, we came upon a very surprising sight. On the side of the road we saw a sign for THE Sun-maid raisin factory. Lauren, needless to say, really really wanted to stop in at the gift shop! Chris accidentally drove past the turn off and was a little irritated at the fact that he had to turn around and drive back because of raisins! The irritation Chris felt quickly left once he saw how excited Lauren was to stand next to her favorite icon! She took pictures next to her and then we bought a package of raisins and left.

Because we had to leave Yosemite without doing any hikes earlier in the week we decided to return and try to do the Glacier Point hike. After checking with the Park Rangers to ensure that the trail was open after the snow, we headed towards the top. The views were astounding! Half Dome loomed in the foreground and at the beginning of the hike we saw El Capitan and The Sentinel.

No waterfalls were running at this time of the year but we saw the dry channel where Yosemite falls would have plummeted over 300 feet to the valley floor! When we finished the hike we made dinner in a picnic area and started our drive towards Sonora Pass and Death Valley!

You've Got a Friend in Me

We pulled into Turlock around 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon. We went straight to the house of Mark and Deb Stevens, where Peter was living. After bringing in our things, Peter took us to a Turlock specialty for dinner...taco truck #11! All of us got burritos and they were delicious! We brought them to youth group that night and ate them as the middle school and high school students arrived. It was fun to be a part of the night and see Peter in action at his new job! We played some games, and then Peter began to talk about what it means to have your identity in Christ. He told a story about a time in his life when his identity was found in his family, girlfriend, and friends. God removed all of those things in a matter of months. His girlfriend broke up with him, then his family moved to Rhode Island, and five months later his best friend started dating his ex-girlfriend! Looks of disapproval, like only teenage girls can give, and gasps were found all over the room! One girl said, "thats breaking the bro-code"! After some laughs, Peter revealed that Lauren was his ex-girlfriend and Chris was his best friend. Everyone looked at us in shock and the girl who made the comment looked so embarrassed. As he recounted the rest of the story, he explained how when those things were taken away from him he had to find his identity in Christ, and that as time went on, that identity allowed the wounds to heal between first Chris and Peter and then Lauren.

After youth group we went to Greg O's house who was  our youth group leader back in high school and is now the senior pastor of Peter's church! We talked about his recent trip to Israel and life for a couple hours and when it got late we all left to go back to the Steven's house to sleep. We slept like logs, and didn't wake up until after 11. Thursday was a low key day. Peter and Chris walked the Steven's dog Stella and then we all headed over to the church to help set up for a funeral service on Saturday for one of the elders who had passed away. After that we went back to the house and spent some time with Mark and Deb and had dinner with them. Friday we woke up at a much better time and made breakfast with Peter and then we all face timed with Michelle and Trent Butler and their new baby! We played with Stella in the backyard. She is terrified of the pool but is constantly dropping her tennis balls in it and then barks hysterically until someone comes to fish it out.

Peter and Chris decided to see if they could get Stella in the water and spent 30 minutes coaxing her as close to the pool edge as they could until Chris got behind her and heaved her into the water. It seemed like it would be a fun thing to do, but once we saw the panic on her face it didn't seem as fun. It took her a minute to find the stairs and as soon as she was out of the water she was back at the same game with the tennis balls. In the afternoon we attended a high school production of James and the Giant Peach that several of the youth group students had participated in. The first half was very funny and entertaining, and the second half was not nearly as well put together. After the play we went to get smoothies at Jamba Juice and hang out for an hour. We all returned to the Stevens house for the dinner they had prepared for us. It was a delicious meal of tri-tip steak, roasted vegetables, fresh salad, and garlic bread! Lauren had one request for food and it was a sweet potato, so Deb kindly made her a roasted sweet potato which Lauren devoured! After dinner, Mark blasted some hip-hop from the 90's and a various assortment of 80's music! Deb shook her head in mock disapproval until some of the 60's music came on and she began dancing and singing along with Lauren. Eventually Mark, Peter, and Chris went out to use the sauna in the back yard. After a few minutes in the 165 degree air, jumping in the cold pool felt very refreshing. Peter and Chris spent another hour talking outside while Lauren and Deb were talking inside. In the morning Mark, Deb,  and Peter went to the funeral service and Lauren and I spent a relaxing morning in the backyard at the house. We read, blogged, and made breakfast. When they got home in the afternoon we said goodbye to the Stevens as they were heading to their cabin in Santa Cruz and drove with Peter around Turlock to see the town.

Later Peter was getting dinner with Greg and his wife Amanda and another couple, and we were going to watch Greg's four kids plus two others. We played a lot of hide-and-seek, ran around on the playground outside, played red light green light, and tag. We ate pizza for dinner and then we all helped clean up the play room before the parents arrived. It was a fun night! Six kids would have been a lot to handle, but between the two of us we managed to do alright. Lauren is a champ with children so that certainly helped a lot! Once the dinner was over and the parents came to pick up the kids, Peter took us to Dustbowl. It is a brewery/restaurant in downtown Turlock. We all had a beer and some fries and spent the evening talking until we went back to the Stevens house for bed. Sunday morning we got up for church and as we were making breakfast we realized that Peter was still at the house. He was supposed to be at church already but he had gotten sick during the night and was resting at home. None of us went and instead we had a slow morning and early afternoon to see if he was going to feel well enough to make a trip to Yosemite. He decided that he would be able to do that and so after we packed up we left around 2:30 for the national park.

San Francisco

As we got closer to San Francisco we found a rest area to plan our day in San Francisco. While we were looking for information about the Golden Gate Bridge, we learned that we could park at one end (we weren't sure which) and walk across the bridge for free. If we wanted to drive across it would cost us $24, according to Lauren's calculations. I thought that the number seemed outrageously high, and so Lauren tried to defend her point. She told me the toll was based on how many wheels your vehicle had and that because our jeep had four it would cost us $24. She must have realized her mistake as she was talking because she suddenly went quiet and said out loud to herself, "wait we only have 2 axles, and the toll is based on the number of axles we have"! The cost of the toll ended up being only $6, a much better deal to cross the bridge for! We drove west on Highway 1 for about 15 minutes until we got to a very curvy section of the road and camped in  a pullout in Muir Woods National Monument. We woke up the next morning and began our drive into San Francisco. I am sure that many San Franciscans expected the morning to be cloudy and foggy, but we were really hoping to get some great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and walk along the bridge. Unfortunately the morning was foggy and while Lauren was busy frantically searching the internet to find the public parking, the concrete highway suddenly turned into a bridge deck. Two huge columns of steel rose from the mist as we raced across the bridge carried along by the rush of morning traffic. About halfway across the bridge Lauren discovered that the public parking was on the north side of the bridge...the part we had just crossed! Oh well, it wasn't like the weather was cooperating anyway. Even if we had walked on the bridge we wouldn't have seen anything. We continued on our way, and I promptly got us lost in downtown San Franciso. Lauren located a Big O tire that we could take the Jeep to and have the tires rotated and our oil changed. Our plan was to have the oil changed and leave it there until we were done sight seeing in the city. It would have been a great plan if the Big O had a parking lot! They didn't and now we were stuck in the middle of a very crowded city with no where to park our oversized vehicle! The Jeep was not exactly equipped for city life. We drove around until we found a parking lot with a reasonable price. We parked it, paid the attendant, and began our trek towards pier 39! We stopped for coffee as we toured the capitol building and then continued on through chinatown and the iconically steep city streets.

Capitol Building

St. Mary's Cathedral

When we got to Pier 39 there were a bunch of sea lions resting on the boat docks, barking up a storm and clambering all over one another. We watched them for a while and then walked around the pier until we found a good place for lunch. As we were getting ready to leave the pier a man stopped us and gave me a ticket for not holding the hand of such a pretty woman in San Francisco! He was right how could I have been so foolish! He also gave me a second fine for attempting to grow a beard and mustache without a permit; my penalty was to give a couple dollars to the local food bank so we paid our debt and continued on our way! Lauren received a sticker for having such a beautiful smile and I got a sticker of a cable car.

Alcatraz

We walked, hand in hand to ensure we would not receive another ticket,  along the business district of San Francisco and saw the Dragon Gate that served as the entrance to Chinatown. When we got back to the parking lot we hopped in the Jeep and began driving down to Santa Cruz via California 1 to visit Lauren's second cousin Mike.

 Along the way we decided to stop at an area we thought looked really pretty. The surf was breaking on some sharp coastal rocks, and as we observed the ocean more closely we noticed that a group of seals were eyeing us suspiciously from the waves!

We got to Santa Cruz just as the sun set and met up with Mike. He offered to treat us to dinner at his favorite restaurant in the area. It was called Tyrollean Inn. It served great German beer and food. We both thoroughly enjoyed the evening and catching up with Mike. Afterwards we all went to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park where he paid for a camping site. The three of us camped there that night and in the morning we made breakfast before Mike had to leave for work. Mike noticed that morning that our bike lock had been cut and one of the tire fasteners were undone! We concluded that someone in San Francisco had tried to steal our bikes and did not realize that they actually lock onto the tire carrier, luck for us! We said goodbye and continued down California 1 towards Monterrey Bay.

When we reached the town of Monterrey it was about 10:30 am. Crystal, Lauren's parents neighbor in Castle Rock, had an annual pass to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and they were letting us use their guest passes for the day. We spent the afternoon at the Aquarium visiting all the exhibits. We love aquariums, especially Lauren, and to visit one of the best was a real treat! Thank you Kanabers! We had to stop around noon for Lauren to get a snack, because she told me she could feel the grumpiness coming on! While eating in the cafe that sat against the open ocean. There we saw a seal and sea otter swim by, and earlier others had a humpback whale! The touch pools were probably the coolest, because you could stick your hands in the water with ray fish or pet crabs and starfish. We spent the most time at the sea otters exhibit for obvious reasons! We also got to draw our own Jellyfish and send them into the ocean on the TV screens in front of us! It was a very fun day.

When we finished with the aquarium we went to a small pizza place that made custom individual pizzas and we split one for a late lunch. We left around 2:00 to go to Turlock to visit Peter Frost!

California Dreamin'

We arrived at Diamond Lake on Wednesday around 11:00 in the morning. Lauren found several hikes in the Diamond Lake area from a book we looked at from the library in Bend. We decided that we had enough time to climb one of the more challenging routes up to Mt. Thielsen. It was a 10 mile out and back that summited the extinct 9,183 foot volcano. The first 3.8 miles was a very gradual ascent of 1900 feet. The last 1900 feet ascended very steep scree to the base of the summit. The last 80 feet were accomplished by climbing the sheer rock face to a summit no bigger than 10'x10'. The views were astounding! On two sides of the summit we were able to look down on a staggering drop of approximately 2000 feet! Neither of us have ever climbed a mountain like it! Even though it is much shorter than any mountain we had done in CO, the elevation gain was the same, but we had never had to utilize rock climbing moves to reach the summit! It was very exhilarating!

We climbed down the scree and Lauren put her hand on a soft squishy rock. Just kidding, it was a dead mouse curled up on a rock on the side of the mountain! There were no cliffs around and there was no way she could fall, but her scream was so blood curdling that Chris assumed she was falling to her death! He turned around to find her frantically wiping her hands on her pants, she was hopping around, whimpering and whining like a little puppy who needed to be let out! Lets face it, the only one who really suffered any damage was the poor mouse! Lauren was fine, Chris was fine (after the ringing in his ears went away), but that little mouse would never breathe again and had probably suffered terribly as it starved or froze to death high up on that barren spire of rock. Chris scooted the mouse's body under a rock so Lauren would not have to look at it anymore. After that episode we climbed down and found a picnic table to make our dinner. Chris built a fire, our first one since Buffalo Wood National Park in Northwest Territories! He spent an ample amount of time cutting logs with the hatchet and stacking a neat pile of firewood beside the fire pit. Lauren prepared dinner and then began cutting up some of the pears we got from the orchard to make pear sauce, yummy! She decided to not tell Chris that we couldn't camp there for the night, and assumed that he had read the sign saying only horse camping was allowed on the premises. After Chris successfully lit a small fire he added his wet wood to the pit and covered the whole picnic area in a smoke choked cloud! He spent a lot of time trying to keep the fire alive and placing the wet wood around the fire to help dry it out, when Lauren decided that it was time to remind him that we were not camping there for the night...awesome. Chris put out the fire (it didn't take much time since it was too wet to have any good coals) and we drove to an empty parking lot to spend the night. The Government finally ended the shut down and the next morning Crater Lake would be open!!!! Hooray!!!!

We got up early and drove to Crater Lake, which was maybe an hour and a half from where we camped. Most of the rim road was closed, unfortunately, except for the visitor center and lodge parking lot at the south end of the lake. We hiked to the top of Garfield Peak to get the best views possible for that day, and then also did a small hike to Discovery Point where John Wesley Hillman was the first white man to see Crater Lake and called it the Deep Blue Lake.

We had our picture taken by an old couple we met visiting from Colorado. He was old fashioned as he liked to say, so even though his camera had a digital screen he still preferred to use the viewfinder. Our camera does not have a view finder but even so he screwed up his eyes real tight and pressed the camera against his cheek and asked if we were smiling (because as we found out he couldn't see us at all and had no idea what he was taking a picture of). He took a picture of us at Crater Lake, or rather a picture of the concrete we were standing on and us, but it made us laugh nonetheless! Crater Lake was phenomenal, it was small park but there was a beauty about it that was mesmerizing. It was so blue, so deep, and so majestically ringed by cliffs on every side that it was unlike any lake we had ever seen! After we left Crater Lake we headed to Redwoods National and State Park and to California...finally! Oregon was beautiful but it was good to feel like we were making progress again! We reached to state border and took many pictures. Unfortunately the camera we were using began to take blurry photos, so the california sign pictures did not come out very well.

We camped on the very edge of Jedediah Smith State Park (pretty cool name huh!) In the morning we visited the visitor center in Crescent City and made an itinerary for the day. We started by taking a drive through an old growth redwood forest on an old carriage road. We hiked a 5 mile loop on Boy Scout Trail. The trees were ENORMOUS! The tallest of the redwoods reach 370 feet high and can be about 26 feet in diameter. They can be over 2,000 years old and at one point before the loggers began clearing the land occupied 2,100,000 acres! Now old growth forests of redwoods only occupy around 100,000 acres! The forests are so beautiful, the trees stand so far above the undergrowth it starts to hurt your neck as you crane to look at the treetops. The understory is dark, cool, and moist. Rays of sunlight pierce the canopy and give the fern covered ground a prehistoric feel.

Once we finished that hike we drove to some overlooks but unfortunately the ocean was being fussy and decided to block out all the coastal views with thick fog! Boo to you fog! At least the sun was shining bright and warm in the hills! We saw a lot of elk on the coast which surprised us, but after the 4th herd the didn't phase us anymore. The next place we hiked was Fern Canyon. Scenes for Jurassic Park were shot in the canyon. When I said that the ferns and the gigantic trees combined with the misty air to give a prehistoric feel I was referring to the canyon! The walls were probably 30-40 feet deep and set at a 90 degree angle. No rock showed because vertical growing sheets of fern covered the wall from the top to the bottom. In the canyon ran a stream through a rocky bed that wound its way though the skeletons of fallen trees. Many had toppled over from the cliff rim and snapped in two, while others were lying like ladders connecting the stream bed to the forest above. It was absolutely gorgeous and all the light around us was tinted green because of the lush growth in and around the canyon. It was precisely the environment you might imagine a T-rex or a Stegosaurus in during the Cretaceous period!

 From Redwood State and National Park we went East towards Redding to visit our high-school friend Jessie Foley! We arrived to her house on Friday evening around 9:00. We ate a little and spent a few hours catching up with her. We slept in a bed again which is always an awesome thing! On Saturday morning she made us breakfast. Toast, eggs, freshly squeezed juice (orange, pineapple, grapefruit, and apple!), bacon, and coffee! Superb start to the day! She told us she planned to take us to a nice dinner at a beautiful vineyard with her boyfriend, Andrew and her friend, Steven. This vineyard had a dress code, and Jessie asked if we had anything nice to wear. We both looked down at our clothes and asked if they were nice enough, being that they were the nicest clothes we had brought on the trip. It was obvious that they were not, and Jessie said that she would help us find something to wear. After that we helped move some of her friends into their new house. It was great to meet the people that she spent so much time with and valued so highly. Everyone was very friendly and fun to talk with. We were helping to move Steven and his roommates. Steven was very nice and let Chris borrow some of his clothes to wear since the vineyard had a dress code and his travel attire was not going to quite cut it! Chris borrowed a nice button down shirt from Steven, which apparently didn't fit him anymore so he gifted it to Chris! It was a very nice gesture! From there we picked up Andrew and grabbed a pair of khakis, shoes, and dress socks for Chris and went to Macy's to find Lauren an outfit. Jessie bought her a beautiful dress and shoes. The five of us drove to Anselmo Vineyard for dinner. We arrived just as the sun started to set. The vineyard and views were outstanding and the food and wine were even better!

It was a very fun evening and we talked a little more with Jessie once we got back to her house before heading to bed. Sunday morning we got up early to attend the 8:00 am service at Bethel. Once the service was over we grabbed some coffee and went for a stroll along the Sundial Bridge and across the Civic Center lawn. Jessie generously offered to buy us some groceries for our trip, so after the bridge we went to Trader Joe's and Safeway to buy groceries for us as well as the family dinner Jessie and her roommate were planning that evening for their friends. After shopping we got lunch at In 'n' Out and went back to her place. We hung out for the afternoon, and then began preparing dinner with her and her roommate, Holly. Holly roasted some vegetables, and a chicken in the oven while we made Pear/Apple sauce, and butternut squash with prosciutto! We had a dessert of strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce prepared by Jessie, and they were delicious! After dinner we chatted some more and then went to bed. Jessie went to work in the morning and we stayed at the house doing our laundry, and packing up the car. Once we were ready, we began our drive to San Francisco.