Travelling to Hawaii

 So we left to Hawaii last Monday.  My Dad drove us to the airport at 5am (sorry Dad!).  We flew to LAX in California and after a 6 hour lay over a 5 hour flight to Maui.  We got our rental van, made a visit to Costco to stock up for the week and drove to our Airbnb where we all passed out.

We took lots of pictures and walked around the airport sooooo much during our layover.  

Welcome to Hawaii.

Last note

Just as a good job guys....

Jer hiked 46 miles this week
Ada hiked 20.5 miles this week
Sam hiked 26.5 miles this week
Evelyn, Seth and I hiked 13 miles this week

Plus all the walking that is required while doing camping.

And we also drove by the solar array near Tonopah... it looked really neat.

Saturday

Saturday we packed up, played Frisbee and fetch with Michelle and her dogs and headed out to Tonopah.  There was a mine there that we wanted to explore.  We got there, got dinner and all the hotels were booked, so instead of checking out the mine we headed to Ely instead. This is a creepy Clown Motel that we chose to drive by in Giggle Springs.... Evelyn and Seth listened to music with a headphone splitter... that they that was pretty awesome.  The rest of us finished reading Harry Potter 6 and we're half way through number 7. 

Just a note about organizing... I love doing things with people.  I love learning about things they are passionate about and being part of a good conversation.  That's one of the reasons that after we opened up our two reserved camp reservations to family we also invited my friend Michelle who has been my camping and hiking buddy for 20 years.  She and I hiked Angels Landing together after 2 other short hikes that day as a graduation campout.  She also helped me carry Ada down Stewart Falls the first time I went hiking with a baby.  By the time that Evelyn was a year old, she was in town and we went hiking with her two dogs, her dad's dog, my 3 kids and Pips who I was watching at the time.  I carried Pips on my front and Evelyn on my back.  We've been hiking in the Uintah's together and camping at Bear Lake together.  She's a fun and interesting person to talk to.  She's the only child of an only child.  Her parents were older when they were finally able to have her, but that means that her parents are older now as she's getting to be middle aged.  Her mom died of cancer 5 years ago just as she was trying to finish her PhD.  Her grandparents and uncles have all died at this point.  She has a blind Aunt that checks in with her occasionally, cousins that she never met and a Dad that has a lot of health problems.  She wasn't going to bring her dogs camping, but her semester got out with too little time for her to be able to drop off her dogs in Utah and drive out to Yosemite.  When my brother and sister ended up not being able to come like they'd been planning on I offered to take one of Amy's kids and let Michelle bring her Dad.  Amy ended up coming (I think she rather enjoyed it.) and so did Michelle's Dad.  He'd been wanted to see Yosemite for a long time.  He's actually a fairly good landscape photographer and was glad to have the chance to do this with his daughter.  Right now, they are all each other has.  I'm grateful to have had the chance to have them both there.  Organizing who, what, where, how many was a nightmare... but it was fun to be able to do it.

Friday

Friday we really wanted to go hiking with Grandpa.  We met them at Glacier Point (Yeah, it's hard to time our kids with our Aunt and Uncle from the East Coast, their internal clocks are different).  Then we did the Sentinel Dome hike.  It was gorgeous and not very long, 3 miles round trip... but it was steep and hurt my foot.  I was crying about half way up.  I could tell that it was like physical therapy and not injury hurt, so I finished up until the dome.  The steeper rock face of the dome was a little intimidating after the trail we'd just climbed.  Jer took the kids up to the top and I waited at the bottom of the dome.  After that we had time for one more hike with the kids.  They all wanted another swimming hike, so we chose to do the Mirror Lake one with Daddy again.  It was later in the day so not as sunny, but the kids loved it again.   I forgot to mention that Thursday we met everyone at Half Dome Village for pizza.  $45 for pizza for our family is a ton, but we enjoyed having cold water and taking a quick shower in the pool side bathrooms before leaving.

Grandpa helped the kids with the binoculars so that they could see the people climbing half dome.

My hikers

This face!

Evelyn is a hiker, but she's also a little dramatic.  She wasn't scared, but she found a place on the rock to curl up so that she wouldn't fall.

This is on the dome, not on a ledge.  The camera angle makes it look more dangerous than it is.

Evelyn fell on the way down the path and Sam went over to help her.  He made sure that she wasn't bleeding anywhere and then stuck her arm around his shoulders to help her down the path.  She liked that so much that she held his hand the rest of the way to the car.  My Boy Scout.

Mountain goats in their habitat.

Yosemite Thursday

Thursday we did Yosemite Falls.  We started with the lower Falls hike/walk which is about .5 round trip.... plus all the winding trails you can explore.  Aunt Amy went and rented a bike and had a fun ride around the valley with Walter.  Jer and Sam took the 6 or so mile hike to the top of the waterfall... Yosemite and Multnomah Falls are the two tallest waterfalls in the US and Jer's going to do both this year.  The two hikers met up with Grandpa, Jay and Emily.  Ada wanted to paint with me so we set up a painting station at the bottom of the falls.  Ada and Evelyn made quite a few paintings while Seth made one or two and spent the rest of the time climbing rocks and rolling in the dirt.  We stopped to make a couple of rock stacks too.  That was really fun.

This picture is so cute of Sam.  It makes my post surgery hurt just looking at it.  As of Thursday last week my doctor said that my inflammation wasn't gone but I was cleared to do some hiking.  The only two things that bother me right now are steep up hill (hurts my plantar and Achilles tendons) and very rocky paths.  I'm glad I decided to paint with Ada instead of climb the first couple of miles of this with these guys.

Sam and Seth went to the bathroom together.  Seth wouldn't let Sam put his clothes back on so he walked back to camp like this instead. 

Evelyn took my camera and was taking pictures of me waiting for Ada and Seth outside the bathroom.  She also walked over and photo bombed an Asian lady taking pictures by a giant redwood.  They both thought it was pretty funny.