Dreams do come true!

Sorry for no updates for the past two days—apparently, at nearly 7,000 ft in the middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, there is no cell service- go figure!

Well, we made it! We reached our primary destination for the trip—Sequoia National Park! As I’ve mentioned before, it was PawPaw’s lifelong dream to see the giant trees and in the past 2 days, he’s seen a bunch of them! They certainly are a sight to behold and it’s difficult to grasp their size, even standing right in front of them! Some of the biggest are over 275 feet tall (taller than the Statue of Liberty) and the diameter of their trunks are over 35 feet (and over 100 feet around!)

The Sequoia National Park is beautiful—full of big trees (even the regular pines seem giant!), rushing streams & waterfalls and lots of wildlife. We were excited to spot a mama bear and her cub just across the road from our campsite—that was about as close as we wanted to get to her, though!

Our campsite was right next to a swiftly rushing creek—very peaceful and scenic. We even spotted some fish in it and the guys were wishing they’d brought their fishing poles! We had small campfires each night (a box of 5 pieces of wood was $9!!) and roasted marshmallows. We shared this treat with one of our ‘neighbors’—a couple and their small son who were from Germany. This was their first roasted marshmallow—the little boy wasn’t impressed!! They were super nice and we had some interesting conversations with them (no, I didn’t try out any of my very rusty German!). We’ve actually seemed to see a lot of Europeans during our trip and they told us that it was probably because travel to the US is cheap now because of our weak dollar. They also told us that gas in Germany is roughly $8 per gallon so they weren’t really complaining much about the $4.35 we’ve been paying in California!

The girls also participated in something called the “Junior Ranger” program that they have at the National Parks. Basically, they had a booklet of age-appropriate activities to complete (Emma is a ‘Jay’ and Abbie is a ‘Raven’) and turn it into the park ranger who talked with them a bit about what they’d seen/learned and then gave them a kid-sized park ranger badge! They were so proud of their badges and are looking forward to doing this again in Yosemite.

Michael has handled the mountain driving really well—I took my turn in the flatland so I could skip the mountain driving!! And the RV seems to be running much smoother since it’s repairs in Pomona. Our only really big inconveniences with it now are that the fridge freezes just about everything and we cannot get the pilot light to stay lit in the oven--so basically all oven cooking is out. We do have the microwave, stove top and grill so we’ve improvised a bit.

Health-wise, everyone is doing well. Some of the adults have had a little bit of adjusting with the altitude and Abbie burned her finger on the marshmallow roasting stick but overall we are doing fine. We also survived the C-O-L-D nights at Sequoia (it was in the 30’s—and even being in an RV, it’s still cold because there were no electric hookups and restrictions for running the generator so we had no heat past 8 pm!)

We are headed up to Yosemite this morning (should be about a 4 ½ hour drive—it’s only 172 miles but much of it is mountainous so the going is slower than normal). We may or may not have cell service there either, so if you don’t hear from us until Monday morning, that is why. It’s hard to believe that today is Day 10—we are now halfway through our trip!

p.s. Just in case anyone was wondering, Michael is keeping up with his 'duties' in addition to driving! I have photo evidence!