Johns Trippin'

We've had mice. We've a kangaroo rat. We've had moths. We've had ants. We've had gnats (repeatedly). Now... spiders. One day last week, we started noticing tiny spiders hanging from our ceiling. They were about the size of a gnat, so I brushed the first few off as such. It was only upon closer inspection (and the realization that they were hanging, not flying) that I identified them as spiders. Our RV is far from tight, so new visitors never strike me as odd. What was odd was the sheer number of them and the fact that they all showed up at once. Either something hatched in the RV (that's how we got moths) or we have a Charlotte's Web situation here. Julie climbed up on the roof, and sure enough, she found a bunch of them up there. They were coming in through the HVAC units. Apparently we were here just at the right time of year! She put some peppermint spray around the units to discourage them, we kill them as we see them, and I assume they'll go away. E...

"Comically large." Those were the two words that kept coming to mind as we explored Sequoia National Park. Imagine the that only fruit you had ever seen was grapes and apples. You consider grapes normal, and apples are pretty big. Now imagine someone showed you a watermelon. You'd think it was comically large, right? You may even think it was fake. It's a poor analogy, but it's the best I can do. Giant sequoia trees are not just a little larger than the biggest trees I had ever seen before (which are probably oaks); they are significantly larger. We often felt like we were walking in some kind of fairy tale land where a giant was about to come out of the forest. They are that big . But let me back up a bit... Did you notice anything odd in the picture above? Look behind us. It's all dead. If you've been paying attention, you know that California has been seeing more and bigger wildfires than in the past. Last fall, a massive fire hit the Sequoia/Kings Ca...

Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks are right next to each other, literally. They share a border, with Kings Canyon to the north of Sequoia. I believe these are the only two parks that can make such a claim. Despite their proximity, we chose to visit them on separate days. "Close" is a relative term when dealing with the mountains. It's easy to be 10 miles away as the raven flies and an hour away by car. The park is centered on its namesake, the Kings Canyon through which the Kings River runs. But there is a small portion of the park dedicated to giant sequoia trees before the canyon. We ended up spending an entire morning in that portion (despite plans to go to Sequoia National Park the next day). I'll have more to say on them when discussing Sequoia National Park, but let's just say that they are big trees. Very, very big trees. Tree slide! We finally reached the canyon in early afternoon. The drive down into the canyon was amazing, offering multiple overloo...

Today was my birthday! I had planned it all out and was super duper excited about it. First, I woke up and took a shower. After that I had a breakfast of sugary  cereal. After that I opened a  few of my presents. One of them was a treasure hunt Asher made for me. After that, Jordan, Asher and I played video games for awhile while mom and dad went to the store. About two and a half hours later, mom made a lunch of egg noodles. After I was done playing video games I opened mom and dad's present for me, which was a scooter. I had totally not expected that. In the afternoon we relaxed. I played a card game with Asher and Jordan and road bikes. This evening dad cooked some ribeye steak. The steak was absolutely delicious and in every way filling. After dinner I had some very delicious cake. We finished the night with a movie.

We got to Yanks RV Resort at about five o'clock in the evening. There was a big bump when we got into our RV site, which was kind of annoying, because it shook the whole RV.  First thing Caleb and I did was to go and take a..  (especially Dad's perspective) A PERFECT SHOWER! I know it's great right? I loved the showers. Caleb and I (separately) took about ten showers in a week! One day we took three showers!                                                        There was also a dog park where I took the bunnies many times. It had two concrete tubes that the bunnies loved. They did some binkies and zoomies. There was also a lot of wind, so much you could fly a kite any day! Asher made a little man with a little parachute. Caleb did empty dog bag kites. One went over the fence and into the kale fields. Half of the t...

I love taking a shower. I love it even more if it's hot. Scalding hot. I love it even more if it's scalding hot with good water pressure. I've used a lot of showers over the past 14 months. Some have been pretty good. Some have been entirely average. Some have been decidedly less than desirable. If you haven't showered while watching spiders crawl up the walls, you haven't lived. Or maybe you live in a real house. So that I can semi-objectively communicate a shower's quality to the members of my family, I've come up with a three part rating system. It's simple; I award 1-10 points for each of three categories: Ambience: How nice is the shower? Heat: Will it scald me if I turn it all the way up? Strength: Is the water pressure such that it will leave welts? We've come across showers that have scored a 10 in one or two categories, but we've never encountered the perfect shower. Until now. We are at Yanks RV Resort in Greenfield, California right no...

We took delivery of our new Jeep about a month ago. Once we did, I immediately started getting it ready to tow. This involved installing tow connectors (we outsourced this due to the need to cut into the steel bumper), wiring it to connect to the RV, and wiring up a supplemental braking system (required by law for if the vehicles become disconnected). It took me a few weekends of work to get everything in place, and we towed for the first time today! It was one of our shortest moves ever, just about an hour down a nice highway, which was a perfect test. No mountains, no back roads, and short. The view from inside I'm guessing Julie will start to miss her quiet time in the van, but it was great having a co-pilot. Don't get me wrong, the kids are great helps when I need them, but they come and go between front and back as we travel. And despite the fact that the RV gas mileage will go down, I'm definitely looking forward to only gassing up a single vehicle on travel days, e...

Salinas/Monterey KOA was an overpriced RV parking lot. The pool was was freezing and thus useless; Jordan's purple lips made me sad. We were squeezed in between our neighbors so tightly that we did not feel comfortable sitting outside. The campground sits right in the armpit of two major highways and thus the air and noise pollution were problems. Michael's nightly asthma and allergy episodes started here. Crime was present, which was evidenced by all the sirens, the arrest outside the RV Park and the bike that was stolen from us in the middle of the night. Nope, no one was sad to leave and continue our journey. However, there are some notable items... well, just one. The game room was very nice. All the kids improved their ping pong, foosball and pool games. Fortunately, we did not come here for the KOA but for places outside of the park. On Palm Sunday, we attended Gateway Church - Hollister. Caleb and Jordan loved getting Resurrection Eggs and doing a balloon science experim...