California- Part 3

The Pinnacles

What a great little treasure in the middle of nowhere California. My parents have been hiking in this area for years now. The pictures my Dad has taken have been amazing, but unfortunately they just don't capture all the beauty because there is too much to capture. He is able to get 10 times more of it than I'm able to. Here are a couple of his wonderful shots of the Pinnacles.

(Can you see the face?)

You can check out more of his great photos through the link on the right titled "My Dad's Pics"

Here are my photos.

I did learn how to use the macro on my camera, getting a few sweet flower shots.One day I hope to have the talent (and gear) he has for photography.

It's fun getting two points of view, isn't it?


The Hike

was beautiful


and tricky at times.

We had a nice stop for lunch.

Here's a video of the view from the top.

Since it's not very often the five of us can get together, we took a few family photos. Mikey added some comedy to the shoot.

The trip down was much easier than the trek up. What was nice is that there is a loop, so you don't have to trace your steps until the end of the trail. A tunnel has been cut out of one section. We acted like kids trying to hold our breath through it's entirety. What a challenge... the picture below doesn't give you a good sense of it's length.


We had to get one more group shot in before we ended our hike.
Yummy Mexican Food

Of course we were hungry after the hike so we stopped at Guadalajara in King City for some tasty authentic south of the boarder grub. Once again, in my state of hunger I forgot to take pictures of the actual food. But here's one of Jess and Dave eying the many options on the menu.

San Fransisco
After dropping off Mikey and having a nice night of rest at my parents we started our way home. My parents were kind enough to join us on a section of the trip between KC and my Aunt's outside Sacramento. It was the beginning of my dad's spring break which they were going to spend in San Fransisco. We made a quick stop into SF so my dad could check into their condo. This is it:
Berkeley
After our short stop in SF we sped (if that's what you call driving on a packed freeway) to Berkeley. Dave has been thinking about graduate school and Berkeley is one of the possibilities. So we took a nice stroll on the campus up to the tower.
In this picture I think Jess is contemplating what it would be like to live in CA.
Davis
From Berkeley to Sacramento the traffic was horrible and the pangs in our stomach weren't going to stop before we arrived at Aunt Judy's so we stopped in Davis. What a cute little town! They even have bikes for anyone to ride ;)


Easter
We arrived in Auburn after a couple more hours on the road. I love my Aunts house, it's up in the mountains between Sacramento and Tahoe. Here's one of my favorite views from her house that my dad took a few years ago.

It was Easter morning when we had to bid adue to everyone. (Motoko, Jess, Judy and me)

As always, it was great seeing Judy and Scott. I'm excited to see them again in December.

It was time to make our final leg of the journey home. But before heading out there was something that had to be finalized.

We had told my dad that we thought omeone had broken into his car. He immediately became cross and had to check out the situation.

Instead of stealing something out of the car, there was something left behind.He seemed to settle down a little, but was still not sure what to think of things.
My mom on the other hand was ecstatic that Jess had invited the Easter Bunny into their car to leave a little treat.

The drive home was somewhat uneventful, as the drive through Nevada tends to be, other than Dave learning to drive a manual transmission car and Jess winning $200 on the $1 slots! What a absolutely enjoyable spring break!! Sorry to drag the trip on for a month of blogs, but hey, what's vacation good for if you can't enjoy it for a long time? :) Can't wait until the next trip!