The Beginning of Summer

We left our incredibly clean apartment on Saturday morning and headed for San Simeon State Park along Hwy 1 where we had a camping reservation for the night. The drive along the coast was beautiful! I loved seeing all the incredible houses that sit right on the cliffs overlooking the ocean! 

 Near San Simeon is a beach where hundreds of elephant seals live. These things are HUGE! I wish you could see them in real life! Most of them are at least 10-15 feet long and they must weigh a TON! They make really gross sounds and flip sand up over them with their flippers. Somehow you could probably sit and watch them for hours :)

We camped that night and went to the Hurst Castle the next day. All I can think of when I hear the name Hurst is the Newsies and I immediately start singing the song... "Pulitzer and Hurst they think they got us, do they got us NO!" hehe Well after Hurst made his millions back in NYC he came back to his home state and build a fabulous house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The house took 27 years to build and it is spectacular, but not as grand as the landscaping around the house.

My favorite part of the house! Isn't this amazing! Its better in real life. Seriously, why can't I have something like this?? I was SO tempted to jump in :)

Pretty much I wanted to stay there forever, or go back in time and be a guest of Mr. Hurst's.

We made our way over to LA going through Santa Barbara (I had to see the famous town where Shawn and Gus solve all crime :)) and then over to Santa Monica. We went to Mesquite and hung out with Morgan's parents for a week. I had a great time going to water aerobics and swimming my heart out all week!

And now for the highlight of the trip...Celine Dion concert in Vegas!!!

Some of my earliest memories are of listening to Celine while dancing in the family room or driving in the car. I have loved her my whole life and I finally made it to her concert (my first ever concert!!). 

My parents came down because its was my Dad who instilled in me the love of Celine. We had fun taking in all the amazing buildings, the fountains at the Belagio and all the shopping! 

This is at the new hotel, Aria. It was nice and cool here :)

 My amazing parents!! So glad they could come down.

After Vegas we drove 14 hours and made it to Amarillo, TX and then finally onto Dallas where Morgan will be working for the summer. More adventures to come...

A weekend of National Parks

For Memorial Day weekend we decided to make the long trek up to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Thanks to a week of jury duty, we didn't leave Palo Alto until 5pm Friday night which put us in OR around 12:30am! On Saturday we met up with our great friends Tristan and Kurtis Hall and headed to Crater Lake. Little did we know that most of the roads were still closed there due to 6 feet of standing snow :)

Morgan and Kurtis loved their little snow ball fights

And I loved having a horse to take me through the snow :)

There was a mini storm on the lake...doesn't it look awesome!

Crater lake is at an elevation of approx. 9,000 ft and is the deepest lake in the U.S.

I thought the mini island volcano was really cool too.

After freezing we went on a beautiful drive. Sadly, pictures can't do it justice, you will just have to go visit sometime. If I could live in OR I would totally do it!!

We then drove to Crescent City, CA and saw this very interesting sight. We couldn't tell if it was water or what, so I being the only brave soul in the group decided to go and test it out. It was compressed sand that had ripples in it filled with water. It was really fun to walk on!

 Next came the amazing Redwoods. These should be on everyone's "to see" list. Pictures can't describe how massive these things are.

You can drive through them...

 You can make play houses out of them...can you see us in the heart windows :)

 You can stand under their roots...

We continued driving down the coast and saw some beautiful beaches...

and very random, giant Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunion.

We also decided to do a little hike, so we found a trail that led through the Redwoods to an isolated beach. There were lots of cool rocks there and we had fun exploring caves and climbing all over the rocks.

We had a wonderful trip filled with fun friends, intense games of Blokus and beautiful OR/northern CA scenery. We are so lucky to live here!