Things I've seen recently

Saturday night (6/27) Kirk and I got back from a 2 week Tour de California. We headed out towards the eastern Sierras, met his parents in Yosemite, continued with them to the Redwoods and Trinity Alps and then went south to San Jose/San Franscisco to play with friends before going home. We went all over the place! Here are some of the cool things I saw in the last couple of weeks (in chronological order).

• Two rattle snakes by two different rivers rattling their tails at me
• A fish that I caught in a river when Kirk didn't catch anything--this may be the first time I've caught more than him :)
• Yosemite Falls and Bridal Veil falls--they are so high and beautiful!

• People camping on the vertical face of El Capitan in Yosemie national park
• Fields of sunflowers, corn, wheat and lots more. I had no idea there was so much farming in central California
• Some of the tallest trees in the world at Humboldt State park in the redwoods


• A huge 7-point bull Rosevelt Elk sitting on the beach at Redwoods national park
• An Osprey diving for fish in a mountain lake
• A golden eagle chasing the osprey once he caught an fish and then the osprey dropping the fish into the lake from really high up
• A frog that was bigger than Kirk's hand
• A few more fish that we caught--We ended up catching trout in at least 5 different rivers/creeks
• Really steep roads in San Franscisco (think of Princess Diaries) including Lombard Street where cars have to zig zag because it is so steep
• Ghiradeli chocolate factory--Yum!
• Half of the Golden Gate bridge--the other half was covered in fog, but it is still really cool and huge (it was only foggy right by the bridge, we saw the bay bridge just fine!)


• Monterrey bay aquarium with lots of fish, sharks, and otters. They also had a big display about jelly fish which I thought was really cool
• And, after 8 nights in a tent and 5 nights in other beds and about 2000 miles of California highway and freeway. . .
• My own home!

We had a really fun time on our trip, but it is nice to be home and be able to shower whenever we want and not have bugs everywhere. I learned that there are many beautiful places in California and it isn't all city! We were up in the Trinity Alps near Redding for 4 days and they are so pretty! Big peaks, clear rivers, alpine lakes and lots of deer!