California Trip - 17 - Garlic World, travel

On Sunday we slept in, went to the English ward in Porterville, ate lunch at the house, then packed up and said goodbye.

On our way back to San Francisco, we stopped in the "Garlic Capital of the World", Gilroy to visit Garlic World.

We bought some garlic olives, garlic pistachios, and of course, garlic ice cream, which is pretty good.

We got a hotel in San Jose and found some good Greek food for dinner. We spent the evening rearranging the bags to get our checked bag as light as possible since we were now also carrying several bags of dried fruit from Grandma Roper.

On Monday morning as we were leaving the hotel I got a notification that our flight was delayed, threatening our connecting flight. We dropped off the rental car, dropped off the checked bag at a kiosk outside the rental car center (just barely made the 40-pound limit!) then tried to eat up our extra food as we waited at the gate. When gate agents arrived, we asked about the connections and were relieved to find that our plane was the connecting flight, so we couldn't miss it.

We had heavy turbulence going into Denver and Damon and I puked. The flight to Houston was better, but I still felt awful for a while. Olivia picked us up from the airport. It's good to be home.

California Trip - 16 - Surgery, yard work, free time, World Cup

On Friday, Amber and Carmen went to watch Glade do a surgery, while I took Damon on a 6-mile run.

Amber and Carmen stopped for Carmen to be a farmer and see some groves, then she stayed home to do her summer class, while the rest of us went to see Jake, who was doing some work for Zero Nox making electric school buses.

It was a relaxed day after that. We took naps, played ping pong, swam in the pool, and the girls watched some more Other Bennet Sister.

On Saturday, Grandma and Grandpa put the kids to work. Miles picked fruit, Damon dug up sprinklers, and Carmen mowed grass.

We spent the rest of the day at Glade's house, where we watched World Cup games and ate smoked ribs for dinner. Carmen disappeared into a room and I assume she had a great time with Rose and Cambria.

California Trip - 15 - Tour of Porterville

Amber wanted to take the kids on a tour of Porterville and show them the important places from her childhood. We started at the Carmelita house. The owners were gracious enough to let us tour inside again, and Amber (and the kids) got to sit in her favorite orange tree again.

We then walked to Porterville High School, Bartlett Middle School, the Christensen law firm, Belleview Elementary School, while she told us stories about them all.

We went to Zalud Park for a rest, then toured the Zalud house, a museum containing much of the original contents of the family of an early founder.

We had lunch at Amber's favorite Mexican restaurant, El Nuevo Mexicali before walking back to the car. We drove to Porterville College because Amber wanted to get some merch, then we stopped at Murray Park where we watched the ducks and got ice cream from an ice cream truck.

We waited there until it was time for orchestra practice. Grandma Roper arranged for us to play with her group, which is led by Amber's former orchestra director and meets in the beautiful old First Congregational Church. The director found instruments for us to play and it was a lot of fun.

Our last stops on the Tour of Porterville were the farmer statue (which we adorned with toilet paper as is tradition) and the veteran banner for Amber's Grandpa Christensen.

We went back to the house for a few minutes to rest, then drove to Glade's house in Visalia to watch the USA vs. Turkey world cup match. The USA lost on a last-last-second goal.

California Trip - 14 - Sequoia and Kings Canyon

On Wednesday we got up early to go to Sequoia National Park. Grandma Roper wanted to come with us, so we took two cars, boys in one, girls in the other. We did the obligatory climb on Tunnel Rock at the entrance, then drove to the one place I regretted missing last time we were there, Tunnel Log.

We stayed in the area a while, taking pictures and gazing at the giant sequoias.

The next stop was the visitors center, where we saw the Sentinel again outside, and looked at the exhibits inside.

We walked from there to the cleverly named Big Trees trail, a short loop around a meadow featuring lots of sequoias.

The boys and I went slow, and still finished the loop way ahead of the women, who were still busy identifying tree species. We drove from there to the General Sherman parking lot, where we found a nice rock in the woods to sit on for lunch before we made the journey down to see the largest tree on earth (by volume).

This area is start of the Congress trail, also something we didn't do last time with the little kids. There were lots of cool trees to see along the way.

The trail is named after two groves, called The House and The Senate. The House was easily my favorite part of the park. There are no paths or boardwalks, you can just walk freely between the trees like it's an alien world.

After hiking back up the long hill to the car, we drove an hour to see General Grant in Kings Canyon, along with a short hike in that area.

I managed to get all the way home along very winding roads without Miles getting carsick. We had leftovers for dinner, then made an appearance at Dallan and Patience's house. We mainly helped with the jigsaw puzzle, which was appropriately a map of Sequoia National Park.

California Trip - 13 - Grandparents' house, tractor

We packed up in the morning, checked out of the lodge, the drove a few hours towards Porterville. We stopped at the Orange Works to pick up some orange ice cream, then got to Amber's parents' house. Of course one of the first things we did is pick some pluots off the tree.

Carmen really wanted to drive a tractor, and the Ivancoviches across the street were gracious enough to let her drive theirs around for a while. She loved it.

We went to the store for a few things, filled up the car, and did some laundry. The kids were introduced to the novel idea that clothes dry outside when it's not humid!

We played darts and ping pong, and Grandma made us several interesting salads for dinner (pasta, cabbage, lettuce, jello).

The girls all watched The Other Bennett Sister that night while I worked on photos.

California Trip - 12 - Yosemite - Half Dome, El Capitan

By the time we planned the trip to Yosemite we'd missed the original lottery for Half Dome. We tried the daily lottery every day we were there but didn't get it. We decided to hike as far as we could go anyway. The trail continues on after Nevada Fall for several miles.

The most interesting thing along this portion of the hike was this ground squirrel which I noticed was happily eating a lizard. Google confirmed this is not normal.

Eventually we started getting high enough for some great panoramic views.

And then we turned a corner and we were at Half Dome.

Unfortunately, there was indeed a park ranger checking passes, so we were not able to take the chains to the top.

We sat there for a while and ate lunch and watched the climbers and decided they were going so slow it would have been annoying to follow them anyway.

We headed back the way we'd come, through the forest, back down the thousands of steps, and by the waterfalls and mist to finish the 16-mile hike.

I think it was this day that Amber became fascinated with the abundance of various tree species and had to stop and examine every tree to identify it. Since it was our last day in Yosemite, I wanted to stop one last time to look at El Capitan on our way out.

We had dinner at the lodge restaurant, and everyone crashed. We were all worn out, but we made the most of our time in Yosemite.

California Trip - 11 - Yosemite - Mist Trail, Vernal Fall, Nevada Fall

On Monday we got up at 5 am and found parking in Curry Village, then walked to the Mist Trail trailhead.

The trail is paved at first, and very steep. It then crosses the river and gets up close to Vernal Fall, which blasts mist everywhere.

After some more steep climbing, we made it to the top of Vernal Fall.

The trail continues to climb up, eventually leading to a short side trail to Nevada Fall. There's a large open rock area that lets you get right up to the top of the waterfall.

We spent a while up there just watching the water rush over the edge. We found out later that this is where someone died after they were swept off just two days earlier when we were hiking Yosemite Fall.