We left on Friday March 29th right after Cruz's lacrosse game at Corner Canyon high school. We got on the road at about 7 p.m. We drove through some snowy and foggy conditions to stop in Elko for the night. The next morning we got a pretty early start (plus we gained an hour) and drove to Reno. In Reno we had a pit stop to pick up some snow chains for our car. Our phones kept telling us to expect winter driving conditions in Yosemite and Yosemite requires chains. We drove a bit further to Carson City, Nevada and stopped to have lunch at Panera Bread Company.
Back on the road in Carson City. We drove through some beautiful country to get to Yosemite. We also had clear roads, which we were grateful for. We pulled into Rush Creek at about 4 p.m. Rebecca, David, and kids got there about an hour before us.
We had dinner all together at Rush Creek and then they do a fun thing and have s'more stuff every night out by the fire pit. Our kids then did a late night swim.
Sunday March 31st - Easter Sunday. Rush Creek had a little Easter Egg hunt set up for the kids. Our kids had fun helping Heath, Vaughn, and Pierce. Farrah is big enough she didn't need help. We left for Yosemite after the Easter Egg hunt to go to the Chapel in Yosemite for their church service.
The view after one of the tunnels entering Yosemite, truly magical!
We met at the chapel and the 9 a.m service was just finishing so a few of us snuck in for the end of the service. We decided to not stick around for the 11 a.m. service. The chapel was set in a really spectacular spot. We walked through Yosemite Valley to walk up to Lower Yosemite Falls.
It was pretty chilly standing close up to the falls from all the water coming of the falls. We drove over to Yosemite Village and got sandwiches at Degnan's. After lunch we drove to get the tunnel view (a different view then we saw from another tunnel that morning).
What's this?
El Capitan!
Driving to Tunnel View!
This view had Half Dome and Bridal View falls, it was pretty incredible!
After tunnel view we went to the high point to the "snow play area" to play in the snow. This is what Pierce had wanted to do all day. We brought sled and snow clothes for the kids.
Epic snowball fight between Aunt Rebecca and Cruz!
Back to Rush Creek to swim, have dinner, roast s'mores, and hang out!
Monday Morning April 1st - David had a work call at 8:30 that Rebecca needed to have the kids out of their hotel room for. We set up our own little Easter Egg hung for the kids and had a little Easter service. We played with the kids at the park and then at 10:00 we took off for Yosemite and the Jackson's took off for home!
We parked at Yosemite Village and left grandma there to explore the grounds and read her book. We boarded the park shuttle to take us over to the Vernal and Nevada Falls Hike. It was the Mist Trail.
It was uphill but so beautiful. We hiked 5.2 miles total. Unfortunately, because of snow on the trail we had to make it an out and back instead of a loop.
Dad was crazy enough to get on his road bike when we got done with the hike and took the shuttle back to the car and grammy. He road 25 miles to get back to our place at Rush Creek. We went over to Curry Village to have some pizza before heading home. Pretty amazing place to eat dinner!
Tuesday April 2nd - we were up and checked out of Rush Creek by 7 a.m. We got to see Tunnel View one more time and luckily enough got to see the sun just coming up over the mountain. It was beautiful. We then drove about 3.5 hours to get to the entrance of King and Sequoia National Park. We stopped in a little town of Oakhurst (outside of Yosemite) to fill up on diesel, get breakfast, and we found a yummy donut place. We were pretty close to Fresno at the point but then we turned and went through all these orange and citrus fruit orchards.
In Sequoia we stopped to walk up to General Grant and General Sherman trees. General Sherman is the largest sequoia tree. The paths were kinda snow covered but we got our traction devices out and were able to get grammy close enough to see the trees.
Oops this picture is a little out of order, we stopped at this fruit stand and the sign before entering King and Sequoia National Park.
After leaving the National Park we headed toward the town of Ridgecrest. It was a lot of driving and very whindy roads. We stopped in the town called Porterville to get pretty authentic burritos from a burrito truck before pulling into Ridgecrest at about 8 p.m. It was a long day of driving but we saw such varied landscape. This day kinda did the kids in.
Wednesday March 3rd - We were about 2 hours outside of Death Valley National Park. Shawn got up and did a mountain bike ride in Ridgecrest. Then we loaded the car up and headed into Death Valley. The kids weren't super thrilled about Death Valley.
The flowers were in bloom, which is a really short window for Death Valley.
We had no service in the park - Shawn and I had done some research the night before but we couldn't remember which hike (out of 2) got us into a slot canyon area pretty quickly. We chose the grotto and it had to be the other one. We hiked about 2 miles total and didn't reach anything very spectacular. The kids were so irritated at this point. It was about 82 degrees and I was trying to keep things light and positive.
I left grammy on a rock for a while because she knew she couldn't make it with the uneven surface.
We then drove across the street to check out the sand dunes.
Lunch at the back of the car.
We stopped at the visitors center at Furnace Creek to get some information. The problem is Death Valley is one of the largest National Parks and lots of the areas of interest are pretty spread out. I decided we had to hit the lowest part on earth -238 feet below sea level before leaving the park. The kids did like this.
On the way out of the park there was this scenic artist loop to see the different color in the rocks. The one way drive kinda reminded me of the cars ride at Disneyland.
When we excited Death Vally the kids really wanted to just go home. We were still 2 hours from Vegas and it was already 3 p.m. I tried to talk them into having a fun night in Vegas and then heading home the next day. They weren't having it. So we headed home. We stopped at In N Out in St. George and pulled home at midnight. It was another long day of driving and might have been a tad more pleasant if we had stopped in Vegas and not felt so rushed in Death Valley. I love every trip we go on as a family. The kids would have preferred to just go to Yosemite and then go home but we got to see parts of the country none of us have ever seen!
No comments:
Post a Comment