The back side of Half Dome

The famous valley view with the girls (and Pooh)

A happy Daddy to be showing such cool things to the girls.

Checking out the waterfall

We gave ourselves two days to explore around Yosemite. It was just a taste of future trips. The first day we drove into the valley and looked up a lot. The girls could name the large rock formations and main waterfalls. They even spotted a fox that Mom and Dad missed. That night we camped at Hodgdon Meadow northwest of the valley. The campsite was busy and we had to hike our stuff in a little bit to get to our site. The trees around us gave us great shade and were huge. The next day we introduced the girls to even bigger trees.

The tree by our tent.

The next day we explored Mariposa Grove before we had to head on over the mountains. There is no way to explain how big the Giant Sequoias are. Even when looking at the grove of Sequoias it is hard to value the size until you can walk by or through one. We took a tram ride through the grove to get a better look at the trees. Common sense told us that if the girls had to hike the whole trail, they would miss the wonder because of being tired. We all enjoyed the ride and a short walk. Emily really picked up a lot of facts about the trees and loved being able to walk into one of them. We look forward to a return trip to this natural wonderland to explore further.

We had to work hard to hold this tree up. The middle of the tree is not necessary to bring food to the tree. One reason this tree can be so old and so big.

Just an attempt to show scale.

The trees are unbelievable!

Mount St Helens was the most anticipated stop on the trip. Emily was very excited to see a volcano that is still active. Some friends from the Seattle area met us, so that we could visit. It was wonderful to reconnect with the adults and for the little people to enjoy getting to know each other.

The diorama showed the different stages of the eruption and the effects to the local landscape. It was very well done and gave a great perspective of how devastating the eruption was. Emily and her new friend learned an amazing amount of information about the mountain. We visited two different viewing sights with museums and overlooks. We also took one hike to another overlook. We spent about three hours visiting the sites (one of the hours was spent in driving to the second viewing area).

We learned that there is a growing glacier in the crater. Pretty cool and pretty cold. Because we were high enough in elevation we had to bundle up.

Our budding readers enjoyed reading each of the signs aloud on the hike. They wanted to read each word to attentive ears. The kids were “helpful” to correct each others mispronounced words. Both kids will be entering 2nd grade come fall.

They competed in running too.

Thanks Stefan for sharing your photos!

After visiting the mountain we camped at a state park nearby. The rangers assured us that the next eruption would give warnings first, so we would be good for a couple of nights at least.

Devils Tower is an old “volcano” that had magma push up into the sedimentary rock, but never had enough pressure to erupt. When the molten magma cooled it left these interesting tube like stands of a granite like rock called Phonolite. Over time the surrounding ground eroded away exposing the tower. Devils Tower National Monument is found in Eastern Wyoming. We spent about 3 hours at the park, but much of that was because we used the Jr. Ranger program to help the girls learn about the tower and surrounding environments.

We walked the 1-1/3 mile hike around the base of the tower seeing it from all the sides. We saw two climbers making an assent to the top. We were really proud of the girls for their good attitudes on the hike and Julia’s willingness to keep going. On the walk the girls completed the workbook requirements for becoming Jr. Rangers at the monument. They were very proud and excited to do this. When we left we spent some time watching a colony of prairie dogs and their antics.

The next stop on our trip was to visit with our Grandparents in Miami. it has fun people to play, places to visit, and a pool to swim in. The weather was unusual for our visit. There was a lot of cool weather and rain. It changed our activities during our visit, but we still had a lot of fun. It was pretty special to have cuddle time with little baby Daniel.

Uncle Robby with the newest nephew, Daniel!

Emily got a chance to hold the little guy too.

Lizzy is always fun to play with too. Here she is with her favorite toy, Baa.

Julia loved playing with the basketball and goal, Julia made up a crazy card game, lots of opportunities to swim, great play times with Lizzy, and being with Grandma and Grandpa was just icing on the top.

What a sweet little boy!

And he woke up so we could see his eyes.

West we did go. When we were planning this trip we referred to it as our trip “Out West”. Emily might not understand that west is a direction, but she does know that it is a place to go and see. If you asked her where we were going she would tell you “west”. The other thing we discussed about driving west is that going west is like chasing the sun. She commented on that a lot and every evening of driving we would see the sun going down and ending that day’s chase.

Enough about the direction, where did we go? We drove from our home to Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon for several days. To get there and back we stopped, visited, and enjoyed sights along the way.

Highlights:

• Family time (never overrated)
• Traveling with a friend for a while. Watching the girls relate with Mr. Pat was amazing.
• Having a daily view of the Grand Canyon for a week.
• Having all of our hikers return no-worse-for-wear out of the canyon.
• Seeing quite a variety of wild animals.
• Fun dinner at the Big Texan.
• Sitting in four states at the same time.
• Walking where ancient peoples once lived.
• Watching little people explore nature.
• Eating Mexican food and lovely sopapillas
• Playing among huge sand dunes
• Walking down the memory lane of childhood vacations for both Robby and Rachelle

These are some of my favorite photos from Bryce National Park. So many good memories!