Summer Roadtrip '13

Part One: Reno/Tahoe/Virginia City

The purpose of this family road trip was to see Grandma and Grandpa Davenport on their mission in Oakland area.  But, we decided to make a few stops before and after to see some sights near by.  We stopped in Reno first.  My geography that I work covers all of Nevada.  I worked (and played) there a few days while we toured around ( I hoard my vacation days).  I worked in Carson City the first day, then we headed up to Lake Tahoe to enjoy 90 degree weather.  The lake is amazing.  It is crystal clear.  A person can see 30 feet down to the bottom, just like in Carribean or Hawaii, or just unlike Utah Lake where a person can't see more than 3 inches below the surface.  We rented a paddleboard there and the girls loved it.  Ashley was a pro.  She now wants a $1,000 board for her birthday (unlikely request).

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On the way home, we stopped by Virginia City.  Also a very interesting spot.  Virginia City looks very similar to how it looked in the 1800s.  Seriously, not much has changed, except for pavement.  It really was like going back in time.  We took a tour of Chollar mine which the girls enjoyed.  We saw lots of wild horse signs driving back and then we noticed a herd of wild horses.  No fences, just roaming, wild horses grazing on the mountain flats.  The girls thought that was awesome.

Britney working the phone lines deep in the mine.

   

 Standing on the boardwalk in Virginia City underneath the Delta Saloon sign.

 

Notice the wild horses in the background.  Cool!!!



Lake Tahoe with the girls.

Sitting in the bowling pin car at the National Bowling Stadium in Reno.



Part Two: San Francisco/Oakland/Alcatraz/USS Hornet

We made our way to Hayward, CA, just south of Oakland.  We made a brief stop in Sacramento and Ashley and I went to the temple there.  Ashley wants to attend the temple in all the areas that we visit.  It's not as always possible, but we try.  The Reno temple didn't accommodate us, but Sacramento did.  Danielle, Rosabelle, and Sunny were already at Grandma and Grandpa's apartment when we arrived.  They beat us by an hour to be their first visitors.  We went and visited the Oakland temple while we were there, but it was under renovation so we toured the visitor center.  It's a nice piece of property where the temple is located.  The next day we went into San Francisco to see Alcatraz prison.  Most of us hadn't seen it before.  The kids thought it was interesting, minus Rosabelle and Sunny.  Not enough action for them.  Shocking how cool San Francisco is in the summer.  Like Mark Twain said,  "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  That day we also went to Ghirardelli Square and we rode the trolley.  They let Ashley and I hold onto the rail on the outside and stand as the trolley moved.  I can't believe they let people do that still.  We waited an hour to get on the trolley, but found a better way to get on once we started moving (contact me if you want the secret).  We had seafood at the wharf and we called it a day.

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 The next day was the Fourth of July.  We went to visit the USS Hornet.  That was the aircraft carrier that took Doolittle and his crew to bomb Tokyo after they raided Pearl Harbor.  The ship was also used to retrieve the astronauts on some of the Apollo missions to the moon.  We spent a lot of time touring the ship.  We went back in the early afternoon to swim and for Megan to nap.  Megan had a really bad ear infection while we were there, though we didn't know how bad at the time.  We saw Monsters University movie after dinner.  Then we headed back to the USS Hornet to watch the fireworks across the San Francisco bay (kind of a let down because we were so far away).



Alcatraz



Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, waiting for the cable car trolley.

Rosabelle was worried that Ash and I would be hit by oncoming cars while hanging out of the moving trolley.  Seriously, I can't believe they still let people hang out of the cars.

The USS Hornet aircraft carrier.  

Riding the torpedo. 

Part Three: Yosemite National Park

None of us had ever visited Yosemite National Park.  It wasn't exactly close to Oakland, but it was close enough.  We drove a little over three hours to get there.  It was worth the trip.  We saw El Capitan, Half Dome, took a few little hikes, caught the mist from a few waterfalls, and we even had a rare black bear sighting near Glacier Point.  Yosemite is a great park!!! It was unfortunate that we only had a few days to see.  Not enough indeed.  Megan also had a raging earache while we were there.  We got her on some antibiotics and drops, but she was miserable.  Dropping and rising between 4500 to 9000 feet didn't help either.  The next day was Britney's birthday.  We spent that day visiting the Sequoia forest in the south park area near Wawona.  Those trees are massive and not to be confused with the redwoods.  Redwood trees are tall, sequoias are big and thick.  This is where the famous tree is where you could once drive a car through a tunnel in the truck, though that tree fell years ago (shocker, they cut a tunnel in it).  There was a smaller version of a tree that was similar to that one and we walked through it.  We had Britney's birthday party on the grass in front of the famous Wawona lodge.  After that we said our goodbyes to Grandma and Grandpa Davenport.  We headed north through the park to get back home and they headed west.  It was a nice drive through the northern part of the park.  We saw Half Dome from the back as well as Tuolumne Meadows and some cool lakes.  The East exit of the park is almost at 10,000 feet.  That was interesting.  Definitely worth a trip here.  We had a great time and glad to be out of the car.  We put a lot of miles on the Suburban.   

Family pic in front of Half Dome (Megan is hiding her pain, she felt awful).

El Capitan above Grandma and Grandpa.

A few of the big sequoias.  Britney loved the huge pinecones (actually from a sugar pine, sequoia cones are small, just larger than a walnut).

 Britney turned 5 years old.  Sitting in front of Wawona lodge.