We just returned from a great trip to Havasupai. Early in the year I set a goal to take Jessica but she has never been backpacking.  We did a pre-hike to Reavis Falls to kind of break her in.  She's been training for her triathlon, which has been great preparation getting her in shape for Havasupai.  Instead of just the two of us, I wanted to have a few more come along.  My brother-in-law David and his sister Sharilyn ended up being the other two to round out our party of 4.  I've been watching the weather and flood situation for the past month.  They'd been having flooding problems almost every week, so I was really crossing my fingers in the days leading up to our departure.  We left after work on Thursday and headed up there, arriving late.  The girls slept in the van while David and I laid out on the ground.  The weather was good, but the flies were not.  That coupled with people arriving by car and by foot all night long made for a miserable attempt at getting any sleep.

We got up at 4 AM and hit the trail by 5.  The hike in wasn't too bad.  I was determined to finish hiking before the sun hit us.  We made it all the way to the confluence of Cataract Canyon before the sun hit us and by then, we were almost to the village.  I scoped out the new waterfalls that had been created since I had been there last in 2007.  Havasu Falls wasn't as majestic as back then.  The biggest surprise was the campgrounds.  The whole campground area had really been thrashed.  Many of the trees were heavily damaged or dead.  The water had split into multiple channels and spread across the canyon floor, taking up precious camping real estate.  Most of the foot bridges had recently been washed away recently and the lower campsites looked like a flood plain.  After a period of mourning, we set up camp.  Oddly enough, we didn't do a whole lot the rest of that first day, instead just resting and relaxing.  We did explore a nearby cave and played frisbee in the dark with David's glow-in-the-dark frisbee.  Jessica rigged up a homemade hammock, which became an instant hit with Sharilyn.

The next day we headed down to Mooney Falls for some fun.  After lunch, we decided to take on the hike to Beaver Falls.  I had never been to Beaver Falls in my previous two visits, but I soon learned that it is a very different hike, wading through the water frequently and trudging through shoulder-high grapevine.  It was quite a hike and we lost the trail a few times.  We nearly passed the falls and kept going straight for the Colorado, but fortunately ran into some hikers.  I was nearly at a turnaround point though, due to time and the coming darkness.  We managed to find the falls and snap a few pictures before heading back.  That was indeed a very exhausting day.

On our last day, we played in the upper falls.  The most enjoyable was Rock Falls and we jumped off the top of the falls inot the water.  It was a higher jump than expected when you first take the plunge, but still quite a bit of fun.  We got some good pictures and video.  As we headed back for lunch and to get ready to go, the locals came through, warning of a coming flash flood.  Here we go again, I thought.  My previous visit had ended the same way.  We hurried to clean up camp and eat.  Fortunately, the flood warning turned out to be a false alarm, but it certainly helped us to hurry up faster.  The cloud cover made hiking out a little earlier more pallatable.  Despite nagging issues like swollen knees and torn up feet, our little group did very well on the way out of the canyon.  We kept a solid pace and tackled the switchbacks in a timely manner.  Only 5 hours of driving for me after we finished.  I nearly panicked when I saw a giant elk standing on the edge of the road on our way back.  All in all, it was a lot of fun.  Initially, I was very disappointed in the flood damage, but I soon realized that this was not a worse Havasupai, but a different Havasupai.  We just have to enjoy each visit, as it may change significantly before the next visit.

I recently bought a Sea Eagle kayak off eBay.  We took it with us to the lake a few weeks back and had some fun on the lake.  I decided to try our luck on a river and we took it down the lower Salt River this weekend.  It was a lot of fun and we learned some tricks for the future.  The number one impression I had was shock that I had never taken advantage of this experience before while living 20-30 minutes away from it for almost my whole life.  Needless to say, we had a lot of fun and we decided to make it a regular adventure in the future.

While the tubers were a distractio n and the pollution they generate is disheartening, they were somewhat a source of entertainment.  It was like going to the zoo, you go to see the animals.  It was like navigating an obstacle to avoid them and many of them were so drunk after a few hundred yards that they weren't capable of much.  One thing that really surprised us is the place that marshmallows had in their river experience.  They were playing baseball with them or something, such that there were hundreds, maybe thousands littering the water.  And then Coronado would have thought he'd found El Dorado with all the beer cans shining on the river's bottom.  We were fortunately able to move much faster than the tubers, so once they started to thin out, we were able to enjoy the river a lot more.  We saw river otters, blue herons, red-winged blackbirds, and even a group of wild horses. 

Once the tubers exited the river, we had a very peaceful ride and it was like we had the whole river to ourselves.  I had never been down the river before, so I didn't really know the landmarks well except for what I'd read online and briefly seen on Google maps.  As we made our way down the latter stretch of the river, Jessica became concerned that we were going to miss our exit.  She even made me get out and check because she was convinced that we had reached our exit, but we were only at Phon D Sutton.  Beyond that point, the river started to widen and slow down and we had to paddle the rest of the way.  We ended up doing the whole 13.5 mile stretch in 4 hours and now we know what to expect next time.  We left a car at the Granite Reef recreation area and then one at the top, with Tonto passes on both.  I really enjoyed our little kayak and am looking for more places to take it.  One of the best things about it is that we exited the river and were driving away within a couple minutes, as it collapsed quickly and I tossed everything into the back of the truck.

This was Kiara's first year of dance.  She was in a class that was a combo of ballet and tap.  She's been so excited to show me what she learned every week.  She had her classes in the late afternoon and my office was on the way to/from class, so they would usually stop by and see me on the way home.  She has a lot of fun in dance and it gives her a good outlet.

This week she had her dress rehearsal and dance recital.  She and her dance friends are so funny to watch.  They're so concerned about watching their teacher behind the curtain that they're all doing different stuff.  Their giant tutus make it that much more comical to watch.  Kiara had fun and she was so proud of her trophy.

Here is the video from her dress rehearsal, which turned out a little better than the actual performance because of the location of our seats.

They also did a fun finale at the end with a performance by the dads. I might have gone to the rehearsals except they were on my soccer nights. Maybe next time.

We usually like to stop by the beach when we're in California and this trip was no exception.  We usually visit the beaches in San Diego and Los Angeles, but this time I thought we'd try another beach.  We went a little further up the coast to Ventura and went to Marina beach.  The kids had fun there, but the water was too cold for them and it was a cloudy day, so they played in the sand, but that was about it.  Dallin crashed and went to sleep for most of the time at the beach.  We tried to stay at the Ventura KOA, but their whole campground was infested with cub scouts, so we opted to stay at the county park up the road.  It was nice and pretty quiet.

We had a blast on this road trip.  It ended up being pretty inexpensive and we saw a lot of awesome things.  During our travels, we also listened to the first two Percy Jackson books while the kids each watched their separate videos to maintain sanity.

Some fun facts from our trip:

Time away from home: 10 days

Total mileage: 2430 miles

Average cost of accomodations: ~$20/night (yay for camping!)

National parks visited: Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia National Park

Highest elevation: 9628 feet ABOVE sea level (Sonora Pass with 8 feet of snow)

Lowest elevation: 282 feet BELOW sea level (Badwater, Death Valley NP)

Highest temperature: 111 degrees (warm welcome home in Phoenix)

Lowest temperature: 46 degrees (Sonora Pass)

I had planned to camp at Lodgepole campground while we visited Sequoia National Park, but I saw that it was going to be pretty cold, so I opted to stay down in the valley in Visalia at the KOA.  Jessica was unknowingly thankful.  We did get to go swimming at the KOA.  I was hoping to grab some good pictures with the giant sequoias similar to our last visit.  However, I didn't realize last time when we visited that snow was covering all the signs saying that you weren't supposed to go up close to the prize sequoias because it might be harmful to their roots.  So, we weren't able to get an updated version of this picture:

We did hike up Moro rock and Kiara managed to do the whole climb by herself.  I also managed to get the classic "driving through the tree picture".  The last time we were there, the road was closed due to snow and it was a two mile hike to the the tree.  I'm glad we didn't do the hike last time and we just waited until we could visit the tree when the snow was open.

We did manage to get a few of the pictures with the prized sequoias, though their immense size wasn't as noticeable in our pictures due to the restrictions on getting next to them.  We did see more bears in Sequoia than in Yosemite.  The rangers weren't on top of their presence nearly as much as they were in Yosemite either.

Yosemite definitely makes it on my list of favorite places in the world, right next to Tetons and Hawaii.  I planned it to be the highlight of our trip, and it certainly did not disappoint.  We drove through a few years ago en route to a family reunion in Sacramento and didn't have more than an hour or so before sundown to spend in the park, but I knew then that we would have to return soon to pick up what we missed.  With the huge amount of snowfall this year, the waterfalls were unreal this time of year.

At Bridalveil Falls, there was so much water that it spilled over and turned the trail into a small river of its own.  We headed up to Glacier Point, which like Sonora Pass, opened just a few days before our arrival.  I had delayed this trip a couple of weeks in hopes that it would be open, and the waiting paid off.  Awesome panorama views.  It was also on this day that I discovered that I was missing a crosstrainer, so I was stuck with sandals for the duration of the trip.  Not long after that realization, the strap on the back of my sandals broke and I didn't have even a single pair of decent footwear.  This made it even more difficult in the snow at Sentinel Dome trailhead.  I could only last a minute or two in the snow.  We decided to do some sledding on our boogie board and that was fun.  We also realized the next day that we had left our little umbrella stroller with Jessica's jacket tied to it in the Glacier Point parking lot.  Attempts to recover it were unsuccessful.

        
Among our other Yosemite adven ture s included hikes to Mirror Lake, Mist Trail, and Cook's Meadow.  As with our prior road trip to Canada, the picture that inspired this trip was along the trail to Yosemite Falls.  Each of these hikes included great rewards along the trail or at the end of the trail.  Can't go wrong in this park!  On our way to go hike Cook's Meadow, we stopped a bear on our way into the park.  Of course, a horde of people had gathered and the rangers were already on it.  Just as I managed to park and jump out with the camera, the rangers ran after the bear and scared it away!  I only managed a couple shots from considerable distance, much like we did at Yellowstone.

Too many good pictures to choose from!

Also, Kiara was so proud of getting her junior ranger badge.

This day was quite a drive.  We went from 100+ degree furnace at Furnace Creek to 6-8 feet of snow at Sonora Pass, to somewhere in between on the western outskirts of Yosemite.  We stopped in Lone Pine so I could check out Mount Whitney, which is a peak quite high on my to do list in the next few years.

We stopped at Mono Lake, which hit my radar since I saw it featured in the BBC series "Life" just recently.  It's another place that is almost like a moonscape.  We went down to the lake, but with all the gulls, salt, mud, and smell...it was easy to see why very few people went near it. 

At this point, I had hoped we could jump over Tioga Pass, but the road was still closed due to snow even as we enter the month of June.  I had been watching the NPS road crew updates every day, but the crazy winter storms that were still rolling through as recently as last week ruined those plans.  Fortunately though, Sonora Pass opened a few days prior to our arrival, so we added an extra hour or two to our travels but still were able to check out some great Sierra Nevada scenery.  Jessica was more into reading her book or sleeping, but I enjoyed it.  We arrived in El Portal at our campground and soon learned that the campground had no water availability due to a broken pump.  That bummed me out because we had no showers available in Death Valley and now we'd go another day of dirt and grunge with no shower.  Forest camping w/o a shower is no problem, but after almost two days of inescapable arid heat, I was more than ready.  I debated jumping in the pool in the hotel lodge next door, but alas, I arrived 5 minutes after it closed.

We continued our journey to Death Valley.  There are a lot of cool vistas in Death Valley that you won't see anywhere else, but we decided that it's a 10-year park...one that we'd visit maybe once every 10 years.  We stopped by Dante's View, Zabriskie's Point, Badwater, Devil's Golf Course, and Artist's Drive before pulling into Furnace Creek campground.  Each had a very unique look to it, almost unlike anywhere else on this planet.  I've always enjoyed visiting the extremes and Badwater as the lowest point in the United States was a highlight.  We definitely should have consumed more fluids, as we were all looking to guzzle water at the end of the evening.
     
Whereas most parks ramp up for their busy season in May, Death Valley enters its slow season.  Most of the stops and campgrounds are unmanned by NPS staff.  We just pulled into the relatively primative campground, found a friendly piece of dirt with a number (literally) and posted our self-service receipt.  The kids immediately went to work rolling in the dirt while we made fajitas.  I had purposely kept us busy until the sun was setting, as the air temperature was 100+ and I don't particular enjoy a camp atmosphere with that heat.  Jessica had to hose the kids off, literally, before bed because they were so grubby.

Bam, the sun nails you when you wake up and it starts cooking you and you start getting sunburned early in this park.  We packed up quickly, but not before taking a picture of the $4.24/gallon gas.  Crowley Point on the way out was an unexpected bonus.  Death Valley is one of those places I've always wanted to visit, but now that I've been there, it feels like one of those places I've crossed off my bucket list.

So our first road trip of the year has finally arrived.  I had originally planned to go right around Jessica's triathlon, but the weather in the Sierras has been so crazy this year and there was still so much snow that some of the places I wanted to go were still closed.  I've been watching the road reports and fishing Google for inside knowledge of the progress of the snow plows.  I delayed the road trip to the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  I needed to wrap up our bigger early summer travels in early June so that I could focus on some work projects that are coming at the end of the month.

Just outside of Wickenburg, we saw this sign and I had to pull over and take a picture.  I had first seen this billboard on Reddit back in January.  It was supposedly from somewhere in Minnesota and the whole thing went viral.  These guys in Wickenburg were no doubt copycats, but it was fun to see it firsthand in the wild.

We headed up to Saint George to visit the Baileys and give Kiara some play time with her cousins.  We had a fun time.  We visited a cool little water park in the middle of town.  It was crowded, but free.  It was a great place for little kids to play in the water because it's so shallow.  We had a picnic lunch.  Then we ventured out to the fairgrounds for a Camelot Days festival.  The girls were excited about dressing in princess costumes and going to the "princess place".  I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of the festival, but we still had fun...ate a big smoked turkey leg, watched some exhibitions, ate some cotton candy and snow cones, and played around.  All in all, it was definitely better than watching the Suns get steamrolled by the Lakers!  I did watch the game on my phone on the way back home using Slingplayer.  Very disappointing game.

Now that the weather has started to warm up, it's time for us to have some fun in the outdoors.  Jessica got a fishing license and we decided to go camping for the weekend.  Even up until a day before we left, I wasn't sure where I wanted to go...but when I read the fishing report and saw that they had stocked 7000 trout at Woods Canyon lake on Monday, I knew it was meant to be.  Surely we could catch at least one fish out of those 7000.  The drive up there was uneventful, but right as we were pulling into the campground, they were putting out the "No Campfires" sign due to wind.  Bummer, there goes the plan to roast hot dogs.  We found a nice camping spot in Aspen campground, set up camp, and headed to the lake.  I just bought a 2-man inflatable kayak, so I pulled it out and got it ready to go.  The lake wasn't too crowded.  Jessica convinced me to take the kids, put on their life jackets, pack all our fishing gear, and head out onto the lake.  It was a tight fit, but fortunately we're relatively small and our kids are a lot smaller.  The wind was blowing like crazy, and didn't give us much opportunity to float and fish, it was more of a trolling attempt.  We were still having fun and getting used to the kayaking.

Eventually we were blown all the way across the lake and decided to stop fighting the wind and fish from shore.  We were in a relatively secluded cove of the lake.  I lifted Kiara up onto the shore, but she lost her balance and fell back partially into the water!  I got her righted, but not without her getting wet.  Of course, the wind quickly made her cold, so we stripped her down and put Jessica's extra shirt on her.  So we fished from shore for a bit.  Jessica was getting nibbles, but no bites.  She somehow got Dallin to go to sleep, which gave us some peace and quiet.  I scooped out some minnows from shore in our net and had Kiara toss them one by one back into the lake.  Kiara had her fishing pole going too, but she wasn't too patient and I got tired of casting for her every couple minutes.  Then I had a fishing pole malfunction and my reel went flying into the lake!  Jessica was the only one with a swimsuit on and she fortunately volunteered to retrieve it.  It was only in 5-6 feet deep water, but it was pretty chilly water for us desert dwellers.  Eventually we had our fill of fishing and headed back to the dock area to fish from shore.  Kiara had soaked one set of clothes and we were only staying for 1 night, so we didn't have much in the way of backup clothing.  In the course of our fishing for the rest of the afternoon, Kiara was getting dangerously close to the edge of the big rock were fishing from and she wasn't listening, so I threatened to throw her in if she didn't back away from the edge.  Out of the blue, she jumps in the lake.  The water was fortunately only about a foot deep, but I went after her and she started hurrying away and into deeper water.  I got her, but not before she soaked another set of clothes.  Not long after that, Dallin kept trying to make a beeline for the water and Jessica was keeping him back.  She turned her head for a couple seconds while baiting her hook and next thing we know, Dallin is tumbling into the lake.  We fished him out without much trouble, but hopefully he learned that's not the best thing for him to be doing.

It got dark, campfires were still banned, turned out Jessica forgot the hot dogs so we couldn't even cook them on our propane stove, so sandwiches it was and then straight to bed.  It was still cold and windy, and the kids were exhausted.  It's funny how when it gets dark, might as well just go to bed.  I NEVER go to bed that early.  It was an on-and-off sleeping night as we had upgraded Dallin to his own sleeping bag because he is now using a bigger carseat and he wouldn't be able to sleep in his carseat in the tent very easily.  So he thrashed around a bit and woke up on and off.  Adventures!

We packed up camp in the morning after breakfast and headed back down to the lake to see if we would hopefully not leave the lake empty-handed.  Kiara and I took a short hike to the north side of the lake where there was still some snow left.  I let Kiara throw a snowball at me.  Jessica brought the Pack-N-Play down to the shore of the lake and somehow got Dallin to fall asleep and then put him in the Pack N Play while we fished.  Almost when all seemed lost, our luck changed.  I realized that all of my nibble action was happening about 10 yards off shore and before we knew it, we were reeling them in.  We left the lake with 5 edible rainbow trout and headed back home to be there in time for grandma's birthday party.  It was a lot of fun, and definitely an adventure, but we wouldn't have it any other way.