We stopped at the flagship REI store in Seattle, a place I've always wanted to go.  Jessica was sad that I didn't buy her a new pair of Chaco's, but the kids had fun running around in the little tree house inside the store.I had thought about taking the ferry across the Puget Sound to continue, but instead decided to just drive around it.  My most anticipated area of this whole trip was Olympic National Park and it did not disappoint.  The weather was fantastic and we really enjoyed every sight and hike.  Kiara even found a cheapie CTR ring in the snow of the parking lot at Hurricane Ridge.  There was no likely owner in sight, so we let her keep it and she is very proud of it.

We stopped at Forks, WA, the town made famous by the Twilight movies.  It really seemed like Twilight is a new driving force and focal point for this little logging town.  Everywhere we went, businesses were trying to capitalize on the fame.  We went into one store on the main drag and they even had an adults only section.  Our kids were getting restless in that store while Jessica shopped and Kiara actually body slammed Dallin (a first).  I got very mad at her and within a few seconds we had two screaming children and promptly exited the store.  Must have been the dark forces in there.  Jessica was disappointed that we didn't have time to hang out in La Push with the werewolves.

We stopped at Rialto Beach, the infamous driftwood beach.  The tide was high enough that we couldn't walk very far along the beach between the water and the driftwood, but saw other people traversing a trail amongst the pile of driftwood.  That was quite an undertaking with 3 small children, but we eventually made it.  We played in the tide pools for a bit, but it was starting to get dark.  Rather than deal with the driftwood, we decided to take our shoes and carry children across the beach to outrun the tide.  At one point, I retreated  into the rocks to escape the waves and slipped on a rock and cut my big toe open...blood everywhere.  At the water's edge we saw starfish and other tide pool animals.  The kids thought those were pretty cool.

I think a lot of people would declare us insane if we told them we were headed on a 4200-mile road trip with 3 children under 4, the youngest being only 7 weeks old.  But we did it and lived to tell the tale...even had a litle bit fun.  I bought a Nintendo DSi a few weeks before the trip and loaded up games.  I wondered how a two-year-old would even be able to play Nintendo games, but Dallin picked it up pretty quick and Kiara and Dallin ended up battling over the DS throughout the trip, though it was a good sharing experience.  We had the Leapster and the headrest DVD players to keep them occupied as well.

Our first stop was in St George to visit the Baileys and they took us crawdad fishing in Vail.  We had a lot of fun and then I cooked them up for all to share.  It was pretty tasty if I do say so...like freshwater shrimp.

Our next stop took us to Brigham City, Utah to meet up with my mom and family en route to the Munro family reunion.  We took a picture at the temple that is under construction and relaxed for a bit.

We camped at the Montpelier KOA that night and met up with even more family.  The next morning we attempted to drive up Mount Sherman, which turned out to be quite an endeavor.  Most of the caravan was driving in minivans up an unimproved road that could be described as a jeep trail at best.  I was nominated to lead the way because I had looked up the route on Google maps, but I was leary the whole way.  We actually got up to the top and there was snow but I was trying to find a way closer to the top and end up going around the other side and down a road until we passed a point where we could get back up.  My brakes were burning and this bad road was taking its toll on our van, so I just pressed on and went down the mountain while the others stopped at the top to play.  It was quite an adventure, but one that I won't attempt again.

Since we had to wait for the others to get down off the mountain, we stopped at Arctic Circle and then went to check out the mighty Soda Springs geyser.  The kids were terrified at first, but then eventually warmed up to it.  We also visited Hooper Springs to make some carbonated Kool-Aid for the kids and let the play on the playground. 

Our next stop was the Munro family reunion and we had fun at Indian Springs RV Resort with family.  We played a lot of games and Kiara had fun in the little creek that had a bunch of little fish.  Dallin had fun playing Nintendo with the cousins.  The kids ended up getting good and grubby.

The next segment of our journey was very long as we traveled from American Falls to Seattle, staying the night at the Ellensburg KOA.  Along the way, we stopped at the Twin Falls, Boise, Columbia River, and Seattle Temples.  We barely survived this portion of the journey and we had a kid crisis at the Columbia River temple.  Better days to come though.

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.

We spent this Thanksgiving up north with the Baileys and were able to be there for Shasta's baby blessing.  We had several days of relaxation, colder weather than we're used to, but still had fun.  Kiara got to play with her cousins a lot, which she had been looking forward to for weeks and we used this a lure/bribe for her to be good.  We did go visit the temple lights in Salt Lake, which was a first for me.  Needless to say, I was rather disappointed, especially compared to the lights at the Mesa temple.  This was also the first Thanksgiving in many years where I didn't do a turkey trot, play soccer, or otherwise expend to much energy.

We went to Vegas this past weekend.  I had spent a day here and there in Vegas before, but this was the first excursion where we stayed multiple days in Vegas.  We had a mini-vacation package that was about to expire and now that Dallin is ready to become a Johnson road warrior, we scheduled this weekend.  We stayed at Club 36 just east of the strip.  We almost left Kiara at home with grandma for the weekend, but in the end...with Dallin in tow, we decided we may as well bring Kiara too.  I'm glad we did bring her.  There's never a dull moment when she's involved. 

We pigged out at a prime rib buffet for just under $10/head and cruised the strip for most of our available time.  A collection of DVDs and cartoon episodes kept the natives at bay while in transit or during down time in the room.  We basically hit a section of the strip on each of our days there.  Kiara loved all the lights, escalators, fountains, and other mayhem.  I enjoyed watching the fountains at Bellagio. We saw a RobotGuy and Kiara was very scared of him, but loved to talk about him after I gave her a dollar to put in his hat and took a picture with him.

We tried to see the Sirens show at Treasure Island but there was a slight breeze, so they cancelled it.  When they announced they might not be able to perform due to conditions, I had to think twice about what it could be and then guessed that it must be the 2 mph breeze.  Oh well.  We did stop by the Mirage fire show and I enjoyed that.  Kiara had fun feeding the ducks out of her hand before the show, but she was quite alarmed when the fire started going.  During the finale, I was filming her face and she was absolutely terrified.  Priceless face!  During the trip, I seemed to have a knack for struggling to locate good parking and we ended up parking in some inconvenient places.

We also hit the south end of the strip, visiting New York New York, MGM, Luxor, and Excalibur.  Kiara loved the lions and it was fun to watch the crowd cower when the lions jumped onto the plexiglass tube where the tourists were standing.  We learned that it is a bad idea to try to ride the tram with a double stroller (a.k.a. assault vehicle), especially when you don't know exactly how it operates, the stops, and which side the doors will open on.  We ended up returning to our departure point and walking.  We took in all the sights we could and I just had to gamble a dollar while we were there.  For the record, I went up 50 cents for a little while and then lost my whole dollar.  Amazing how packed every gambling space was in every single hotel on the strip.

As a reprieve from the great and spacious buildings, we visited the Vegas temple on the way home.  I try to stop by the nearby temples on our trips and I think it will help the kids to learn their importance as they're growing up.  We had a good weekend.  Our next adventure is San Diego and the beach.  Kiara is already excited to get her fill of the sand.

Kiara was so happy and giggly feeding the ducks at the Mirage.  Then the fire and water show started.  As the show went on, she became increasingly concerned such that by the finale, I think she definitely wanted to high tail it out of there. She's a good kid.