Between May and June we feel like we are road-tripped out for awhile. We made the drive down to California (14hr) for a family reunion and had so much fun. For the record I will say it was worth it even with Lincoln puking in the backseat from winding down the canyon outside of Oregon coming into California. It was that fun a trip. ---By the way the first town in Cali is siskiyou, and so there's a sign that reads, "Siskiyou" right after the sign saying, "Leaving Oregon" That made us laugh.
I think the reason it was so fun was because the reunion was a blast--we rented wave runners one of the days--and the camp sight, called family camp, was so fun. There were flush toilets and little cabins that all surrounded the fire pit. We were right by Shaver lake so we spent most of the day there. After the runion Kurt's mom was sweet enough to take the kids for a night so Kurt and I could go up to Yosemite and stay the night. Kurt and I wanted to try to make it to the top of half-dome. Kurt hiked it when he was younger but I wasn't so sure I could make it to the top especially after reading about it online. Anyway, i'm proud to say we did it and it really wasn't that bad. I was tired but we made pretty good time. And the cables weren't as hard as they looked. I had seen pictures of the cables before but they were way more intimidating in person. (Click on the picture of Kurt and I together and you can see them in the background) Once you were on them though they weren' that bad. I had an almost empty water bottle on the outside pocket of my backpack and at one point it somehow came lose while I was on the cables. It bounced down and down and down until we couldn't see it anymore---that was a little creepy. It was crazy how high up we were. We figured it out and we hiked over 20 miles overall. The trail was really beautiful and there's a stream we soaked our feet in on the way back down. It made me want to try other really cool hikes.
You have to click on the pictures and see them full screen to really appreciate how pretty the hike was. And how good lookin' my husband is. . .speaking of notice his t-shirt? There were a lot of hikers at the top that noticed and asked if he could fly them back down the mountain. Cute.