California Travels

Coastal Drive

On Friday we began our drive up the coast towards San Francisco. We made many stops and detours on our trip to see things! Our first stop was at the Newport Beach Temple (the pink temple). We just drove around it, then continued on our way. Next was the LA Temple, where we stopped and went into the Visitor's Center. It was a very cool Visitor's Center because it was interactive. There were screens where you could choose to watch segments about the Church, the LA Temple, there were ipad's with kid activities on them, just a ton of really fun things to do! We continued our drive through Malibu - just because everyone's heard of Malibu - and stopped for lunch there. Then we headed north to Santa Barbara. We loved this cute town! We stopped and walked the beach and learned that the ocean water up north isn't as warm as it is in good ol' San Diego! We drove through down town, which seemed to be a hoppin place in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday! Oh, the reason we wanted to stop in Santa Barbara is because that is where the TV show Psych is filmed. We didn't see anything in particular from the show - although we did see a Santa Barbara Police Station, and it is NOT the one from the TV show :( but still had an enjoyable time there! We continued north along the coast, which was so beautiful. We went past a famous castle called the Hearst Castle which is now a museum. The castle is up on the hill, so we couldn't see it very well, but the area is beautiful! There were so many jaw dropping beautiful ocean views, we had to keep stopping! When you're looking at our pictures of today's drive, notice our "Utah" pictures :) We drove through Big Sur National Park, which continued to have beautiful views, or so Ammon told me. This point in the road got so curvy I just had to keep my eyes ahead of us. I'm used to mountain driving, but this was so much worse! Tighter curves, and more of them! I went and looked at the google map of the road after getting back, and there's no way that map can be right. Either that, or we somehow got onto the wrong road for a while! We finished our drive for the day in Monterey, where a friend of ours lives. So we spent the evening hanging out with Ellen! It was so much fun to see her again! We hadn't seen her for about 2 years!

San Francisco

Saturday was a fun day as we finished our drive to San Francisco and spent the day there! When we first got into the Bay part, our first mistake was we ended up on one of those stereotypical San Fran roads where you have to stop 10 feet behind the car in front of you because you're scared when they start to go, they'll roll back into you! The hill was CRAZY! (see pictures below!) The first place we went to was The Cable Car Museum. We weren't sure what to expect, but were SO glad that we went! It was awesome seeing how the cable cars work, learning about them, and actually seeing the cables moving, knowing they were being used at that exact moment! Next we went to China Town and walked around the shops and scoped out restaurants for lunch. Mmmm Mmmm, it was yummy! After China Town, we went for a drive on another steep hill, this time on purpose! There is a famous block that people go to to take pictures. They have made the road into switchbacks, I suppose to give people a longer time looking at the view since steepness of the road doesn't seem to be an issue in San Fran. We walked around that neighborhood for a while, then continued our day to the Golden Gate Bridge. It happened to be the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, so there was a big festival going on the next day so the roads were crazy busy. So we didn't drive on it, but we got some fun pictures! We even got to watch some wind surfers and kite surfers (who knows what the real name of these sports are, but that's what we called them!). Next we walked through an art garden. The art was the pillars and structures that we walked around in (see pictures). Our last destination in San Fran for the day was Fisherman's Wharf. Granted, we went to a lot of places there! We enjoyed just walking the streets, we bought some sour dough bread (it was okay, not the best we've ever had) at a factory where you could watch how it was made, went to Pier 39, watched spray paint artists, and Ammon claims I MADE him go to Ghirardelli Square (since he doesn't like chocolate - wink wink - it was torture for him to HAVE to be there ;) We BOTH enjoyed it! We even bought a bag of their chocolates and liked them a lot!

We headed over the Bay Bridge to walk around the Oakland Temple, and were lucky enough to get there right in time for the sunset! We went to a Jack In The Box to get dinner on our way to our hotel, but the lights in the lobby were kind of low, so we weren't sure if it was open. It was only 8:00ish on a Saturday night, so we were surprised! But they were open, so we went in and ordered our food. While waiting to get our food (which we were planning on eating at the restaurant), we mentioned that because the lights were so dim and the sign by the road wasn't lit up, we weren't sure if they were open or not. The worker then told us that she's guessing the lights were that way was because a week ago their store got robbed, and just a couple days ago, a man got mugged in their parking lot. We then asked for our food to go. I liked the idea of eating in our hotel rather than the restaurant at that point!

Yosemite

On Sunday we woke up and started our drive to Yosemite. We had planned a stop at a Super Walmart that was along the way to pick up some produce for while we were camping. I took for granted having a local Super Walmart's in Utah; San Diego doesn't like "super" stores for some reason (It was a HUGE deal that we got a Super Target down the road from where we live), but around here, they're the best quality food for the money. Anyways, when we got to our campground, we set up our tent and cleaned out the car a little, then headed to Yosemite! Our campground was very nice, but ended up being farther away from Yosemite than we had thought. It was okay, just meant we had to plan extra time for driving. We drove most of the way to Glacier Point, then found out there was an hour and a half wait to get into the parking lot, so we decided we'd go back on Tuesday, when the crowds had died down some. But it was still a beautiful drive! We stopped at a lookout point on our way down, it was called Inspiration Lookout. We walked up a path for a little ways, but dusk was quickly approaching and we wanted to get down before it got too dark. We decided to end the day with a sight seeing drive through Yosemite Valley. That was a mistake! It felt like EVERYONE was trying to get out of Yosemite to drive home, and so we got stuck in traffic! The first line of cars we saw were all trying to turn left (towards the exit), so we thought we'd be smarter than them and go straight. Unfortunately, just around the next corner, traffic was at a complete stop in both lanes of traffic. We talked about how maybe the traffic was because a bear was walking near the road. But when we finally got out of the mess, we decided it was just traffic causing the delays. We got back to our camp site late, so we ate dinner (luckily it didn't require a fire!) and then went to bed.




We slept in on Monday, it was a vacation, what can you expect?! Ate a yummy omelet and pancake breakfast, then drove to Yosemite. We spent the day in the Tuolumne Valley area. We had planned to do a couple of hikes that day, but the roads to get to the trail heads were all still closed. Which meant that to do a particular hike, you first had to hike the road to the trail head...haha. So by the time we did one hike, it was just late enough, that we decided not to do a second hike. We hiked to May Lake. It was a beautiful hike, full of plants, trees, and large rocks (like in Moab). The lake itself was gorgeous too! We hiked around the lake a bit, ate some snacks, talked with a few other hikers (including some Russian's that Ammon talked too), and simply enjoyed nature! After our hike we finished our lunches at Tenaya Lake then continued to drive up the road a ways. When we got back to our camp site, Ammon got a fire going, and I prepared the food to be cooked! We also had smore's to roast. We played some card games, then headed off to bed!




Tuesday began (after sleeping in again, of course) with us driving (again) to Glacer Point. There are so many huge trees in Yosemite, that we decided to stop and take a picture with one. We got to drive right up, no delays, it was wonderful! When we got there, the Glacier Point outlook was actually closed off, the police said they were investigating, that a man either jumped or fell off of Glacier Point the night before. Apparently the Glacier Point outlook had been closed all morning, but then they opened it up about 5 minutes later. It was beautiful seeing everything from so high! Next we went down to Yosemite Valley again, thank goodness there wasn't any traffic this time! And we hiked Vernal Falls. It reminded us of Timpanogos Caves hike, where it is hard because it's so steep. But again, we had a wonderful time! The last .2-.3 miles was all stairs, and I finally understood who would use the stair climbers at the gym! After hiking to the top of Vernal Falls, we went to Yosemite Falls, which we found out is the tallest waterfall in the United States. We had planned to hike to the lower fall, but then found out that our choices were a 30 minute round-trip leisurely walk to the bottom of the falls, or a 6-8 hour hike to the top of the upper falls. Unfortunately, we had to choose the bottom of the falls because we still had so much we wanted to see on our last day in Yosemite. Last, we went to Bridalveil Falls and again just went to the base of the falls. Then we said goodbye to Yosemite and went back to our campground.



Wednesday was a long day in the car as we drove home. As we were approaching our exit on the freeway, Ammon said, "It's nice to be home. This feels like home, doesn't it?" and I replied, "Ya, it really does feel like home." We sure do love San Diego! We're grateful for the opportunity we have to live in California and see all of the beauty here!