California, round 1

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We started out at my dad's house in California, San Jose where you’ll find the linear accelerator that splits atoms at the Stanford University. The first two days we went hiking through the Big Basin and saw enormous redwood trees. There’s a festival that uses a tree stump as a dance floor and the trees can be up to 100 ft tall; there’s one split in the middle that cars drive through! Then we drove down to Santa Cruz and watched the surfers in the cove, salsa dancers on the boardwalk and the sea lions on the pier.

San Francisco can be spotted for miles, the tall pyramid tower gives it away. We caught the bus to North Beach, walked around the hills of the Italian and red light district to fisherman’s wharf where we had clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (yummy!). Topped off the day at Ghiradelli’s Chocolate shop, where we practically made ourselves sick sharing a dark hot chocolate with ice cream and hot Ghiradelli’s fudge sauce. Jess’s Dad drove us over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands where you can see Alcatraz views and took sunset photo’s over San Francisco. Don’t forget; be sure to wear flowers in your hair when you go to San Francisco!

Next we ventured out to Yosemite National Park where we saw the first bit of snow and deer. Nicki put on her 12 layers of clothing and we went on a hike with the ranger talking about trees, deviated to an empty mirror lake, then tried to navigate by moonlight back to the lodge, dodging bear like tree branches and challenged a bridge we couldn’t see with only minor mishaps. We were really cold but sitting around a fire at the lodge, we discovered a drink that instantly warms you up: hot cider with brandy, whipped cream and sipped through a cinnamon stick straw! The next day we rugged up again and hiked up to a frozen waterfall.

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