Road Trip!

My niece, Darby, graduated from high school this summer.  That was all the reason we needed to plan a little trip for all the girls.  We headed to CA for a little road trip!

This is what happens when the plane lands and you get to turn your phones back on.

This is our cool vehicular for the week.  We look amazing, right?

Our first sea food dinner.

When the bread is better than the fish...you ordered the wrong thing.

We headed to the beach and discovered that it was pretty cold.  Not what we were hoping for.  Troy then called and told us that we weren't in the safest place and maybe we shouldn't be wandering around on the beach in the middle of the night.  He forgets how buff we are.

The next morning we headed from Long Beach up toward Carmel.  On our way we stopped at Hearst Castle.  This was the first sign that we were getting close to the castle.  Ever see a bunch of zebras running around with the cows?  I hadn't.  I guess William Hurst was filthy rich and brought in lots of different animals so that he could watch them.

The drive along the coast was really pretty.

The castle from the road.

Amazing place.

This is one of two huge pools.  They wouldn't let us hop in.

This is what we do when we need to rest from our worries.
We decided to leave our clothes on to avoid sunburn.

The gardens around the castle were incredible.  I'll just tell you now...weeds don't grow at Hearst Castle.  I think I need to hire me a gardener.

These are the Northern Elephant Seals.  They are basically enormous piles of blubber.  They were cool to see but weren't exactly entertaining.  Maybe I should be a seal in my next life.  Looks pretty relaxing.

One of the reasons we flew into Long Beach and then decided to drive up to Oakland was because we were told that the drive was unbelievable.  We started on our trip and had to stop every few miles for another picture of something we didn't want to forget.

Then the fog rolled in and all of our amazing views started disappearing.  We spent several hours in the fog.  I can only imagine the views that we drove by without even knowing what we were missing.  Apparently the fog doesn't lift until September.  Too bad no one thought to tell us about this minor detail.

We made it to Carmel.  Lots of these little cars running around.  A nice little place.

After dinner we headed out for some treats.  Hard to find anything open after 9:00 pm in this little town.  Not exactly a McDonalds on every corner...a little too fancy for that.  But the stars aligned and we found the "Cottage of Sweets".  I think we paid triple for these imported candies.  My mouth was very thankful.

The grounds around our Homestead.  Again, no weeds grow in CA.

Headed to breakfast.

This beach in Carmel is supposed to be one of the prettiest.  We were still surrounded by fog so it was hard to see much.  We also spent this little beach visit wrapped in our sweatshirts.  So much for laying out on the beach.  Maybe on the next trip...

I have an amazing family.  Who wouldn't want to hang out with us?

Our 17 mile drive from Carmel to Monterey.  Gorgeous!!!

Aren't these trees cool?!

Looking back along the coastline.

This is one of the famous aquariums.  I had never been to a real aquarium.  This lady comes and feeds the fish every day.  She had a microphone on and we could talk to her and ask her questions.  Really cool to see.  Even the smaller sharks would come over for some breakfast.  I think I would take her job any day.

This fish was HUGE.  And appeared to be in a bad mood.

The corral.

The octopus.  They always make them look cute in the drawings.  Definitely not cute.

The jellyfish pool.  Loved it.  Could put me to sleep watching them float up and down.

We found Dori from Nemo.

These green plant looking things are actually seahorses.  Can you see their heads?  I think these were my favorite of all the fish we saw.  The seahorses and jellyfish have to fight it out to see which was my favorite.  I'll let you know when I decide.

Then we took a nice 3 1/2 hour drive to Yosemite.  I have always seen pictures of Yosemite and new I had to make it there one day.  I can now say I have made it.  Even my mom made it...in her ironed clothes.  My other goal for this trip was to get her to wear a wrinkled shirt.  I don't think I ever succeeded.

We decided to rent a raft and float down the river.

The views from the water.  LOVE, Yosemite!  The water was pretty low and we ended up pushing our raft over rocks in some areas.  Funny to see people pushing boats down river beds.

We then decided to drive 90 minutes to Tuolumne Meadows.  It is up on top of the world.  These are the pictures we took on our way up there.

The Meadows!  We made it!

Several of these mule trains passed us.  This is my favorite picture of the whole trip.  I love the horses coming over the bridge.  I may have to sell the rights to this pictures for millions of dollars.  I'm still thinking about it.  I am sure the offers will start rolling in soon.

This is Soda Springs.  The water coming out of these springs is carbonated!  Yes, I drank it.  How often do you get to drink carbonated water coming out of the dirt???  Very cool.

The carbonated water would leave white deposits on the rocks.  I wonder if I have a white coating in my stomach now.

The drive back from the meadows.

This pictures doesn't do it justice but the rock on the sides of the road were granite.  The granite would get ground into the asphalt and make it glitter.

Bright green lichen on the trees.  I'm actually not sure if this would be called lichen but it sounds like a smart word that I should use.

Sunset.  Wow.

The next day we decided to go on a "horse" ride.  When we got there they made us wear these adorable helmets.  Mine appears to be a smidge too big.

Cammie with her horse, Henry.

Darby on Bowinkle.

My mom got a mule named, Mikey.  Check out how she spent the majority of her "ride."

Our final day in Yosemite, we hiked an entire 1.6 miles to see Vernal Falls.  That was only to the look out point but we had a long drive ahead of us to get to San Francisco.  A nice ending to our visit to Yosemite.

They build the buildings AROUND the trees.  How's that for a concept?

Bridalveil Falls on our way out of the park.

We made a fairly large detour in order to see Mariposa Grove.  This is where the HUGE sequoia trees live.  There is no way to help people understand how huge these trees are.

I wish I had a person standing beside this fallen tree to add perspective.  Enormous!

I took a picture of this picture so that you could see how big they are.  The picture shows one of the fallen sequoia trees.  You can see the people standing in front of it.  It also has hundreds of people and horses standing on top of the fallen tree.  These things are like houses!

You can walk under this tree.

Looking up into the side of one of the tree trunks.

After an exhausting drive, we headed onto the San Francisco Bay bridge.  This is what we found there.  A TON of traffic.  Took us 90 minutes to cross this bridge.  We didn't make it to our hotel until way after midnight.  We were delirous and quite filthy to say the least.

The next morning we headed to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf.

The Sea Lions were out playing.

Alcatraz in the background.

I found a cereal box size of Nerds!  My kids dream come true.  $18 for this box of sugar.  I was strong and didn't buy it.  My kids have yet to forgive me.

Off to Ghirardelli Square.  I now know how chocolate is made.  If only I had the equipment!!!

True happiness.

This is, Max.  He became my instant friend when I realized that he was the man that put all of the yummy goo in the ice cream treats.  I think he likes me too.

This is a fun hobby of mine.  I like to take random pictures of things.  This fits in that category.

This was our trolley driver.  I made friends with him too.  He was great.  He let everyone ride for free (I think because his change machine was broken).  Either way, he made for a very nice trip through San Francisco.

We made it to the coliseum to see Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney.

Few men can pull of a V-neck white T-shirt.  Tim does it well.  I was quite happy listening to this handsome specimen.

 I hope you get the chance to live like you were dyin!

I couldn't find Tim's bus so I had to settle for Kenny's.  

Before heading to the airport on our last day, we had to drive down Lombard Street.  The curviest street in the world.

Few people are as cool as us (just ask the guy that ended up going down behind us.  He was not a fan of our frequent stops where I would hop out of the car and take random pictures).  I figure that he probably got over it at some point.  What is the point of doing something if you aren't going to do it well?  He needed a lesson in patience.  I was happy to teach him.

So, an awesome trip and one I will remember until I am old and my dementia sets in.  Thanks girls for taking me along.  Congrats, Darb...hope you will always know how proud we are of you!