Johns Trippin'

As Michael hooked up everything, I sat outside content... for hours. The red winged black birds were so much fun to watch! We had the best site in the whole RV park. It was next to the peaceful Feather River. In between our RV and the river was a big grassy area, shaded with trees and bordered with outdoor hanging lights. I love these outdoor hanging lights! The kids and I had a fire and roasted chicken and apple sausages. Caleb happily raced his scooter with lots of other kids in the park. Michael went and checked out the town of Oroville. When he came back, we took a walk together. The camp projected "Encanto" on the side of a cabin and topped it off with popcorn and glow bracelets. This was a delightful campsite. The next beautiful morning, we packed up everything and Michael brought us to the dam. We walked, biked or scootered the mile across the dam and back. The water is very low right now. When they released the dam during the infamous 2017 catastrophe, it flooded our ...

After a long drive through the Central Valley, we arrived at Yosemite Westlake RV park. On the way, we had gone down and up the Central Valley. At the bottom, dad stopped to let the engine cool down. During that time, we walked down to the river that was flowing below. When we got back up, dad continued to drive, and the road got very twisty and steep. When we arrived, mom and I checked in with a very talkative guy. Then we picked our own site. We started having a lot of trouble setting up, like, dad hit a log driving into the site, mom found a black widow in the electric box, and the site we were in was extremely unlevel and we had about a foot of space under a tire after leveling. Eventually, we drove the RV to a site we had overlooked and got set up. We also met a couple who had three dogs named Lilu, Pikachu, and Monkey and talked to us while we set up. Later that week, I was really excited because we were going to a friend's RV in another campground. We had met them at the las...

Wow! Yosemite National Park is simply stunning. It's popular for good reason. This park was a little different. I had visited a few days before the rest of the family to hike Half Dome . This gave me a little bit of advance knowledge on where we should spend our time. Yosemite is a glacial valley on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is the range between CA and NV. Being a valley in the midst of large mountains, it has a lot of snow melt water flowing through it, especially in the spring (things tend to dry up in the fall). This water enters the valley through scores of waterfalls. And these waterfalls are huge! The most famous is Yosemite Falls, but that's probably just because it's the easiest to see without leaving your car. Those willing to hike a bit are rewarded with many more, some of which are arguably more impressive than Yosemite Falls. But that's not all. Being a glacial valley, it has all kind of sheer cliffs on the sides (glacial-carved...

While staying at Sequoia RV Park a few weeks ago, we ran into two other families with kids roughly the same age as ours. On multiple nights, we'd hang out and chat while our kids played. One night one of the guys asked me if I wanted to hike Half Dome with them about 10 days out. I tend to forget that I'm not as young or as in shape as I once was, so I immediately said "Sure," followed by, "What's Half Dome?" He informed me that it was about a 15 mile round trip hike, leaving out some other key details that would become apparent later on. 15 miles is a long hike, but I knew I could do it. He also told me that there was a lottery involved, so I guess it had to be popular. That was enough information for me. (Incidentally, this is how I ended up hiking Kilimanjaro a few years ago. I really need to learn to ask more questions.) Let me state what most people other than me probably already knew and that I know now: Half Dome is a famous rock formation at Yose...

First, I'll start off by saying I liked this campground, because there were cats! We came here looking for a site because you have to pick your own. We found a nice site down by a gully. Then we made dinner and went to bed.   The next day we celebrated Caleb's 11th b'day! It was a very nice celebration with perfect, yummy steak and 3 hours of Minecraft! The next day, we met a cat we named Liz (From "The Ark, the Reed and the Fire Cloud" book) even though he was a boy. He loved being cuddled, petted, held, and he especially loved playing with my rope, but mostly he was tired. Also he LOVED cheese. But I think he would eat anything you gave him. We played with him every day.  On the 11th was mom and dad's anniversary. They went on a date down the street to eat pizza.  One day later, we went to Cat Haven where there were a lot of cats like jaguars, lynx, cheetahs, even a white tiger! Then we went to a library which wasn't as exciting as cat haven.     We got ...