Thursday, November 13, 2014

Out on the road Again! Lassen Volcanic and Yosemite National Parks

We had a great summer with family and friends for the four months we were back home in Portland, Oregon, or technically Vancouver, WA.  I big thank you to Barbara and Otto for letting us once again reside at Camp Bombach.



I wish I could have spent more time with a lot of you...time just got the best of me. I wanted to visit many more, hopefully will, when I get back for the Christmas Season.

While we were in Portland, Andy "forced me" to do a lot of white water rafting.  She could just lay back and relax ....I on the other hand had to oar, dodge rocks and holes, and all the way down 12 miles of river.  Am I complaining. Nope...not a bit.  I love it !

Other great things we did included the Oregon coast, Deschutes River, Alaskan Cruise, taking our granddaughters to Tacoma, hunting and I'm sure other fun things I'm not recalling at the moment.

I would like to take this time to say thank you to Ryan and Briana for hosting our little going away get together the Sunday before we left. Thank you. We had a great time.

We are slowly working our way south by visiting some of the national parks like Lassen Volcanic National Park and Yosemite.  We hope to end up in the LA just before Thanksgiving to spend time with family and friends. Should be a great time for all.



We took a day drip, by car, to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park.  What a beautiful place even this time of the year!





I call this one "Self  Reflection of a Mountain"
 Sheila...I see snow too ! I can still hit you with a snowball !  Andy lets go..too cold here !!  Yes please note the shorts and sandals, lol. 

 Our next stop was Yosemite National Park.  It was Veteran's Day and the park was free for everyone.

I am back in shorts..Yes ! Boo for Andy !

Andy showing off  her favorite branch of the military, one of these days I'll convert her! At least get her a new sweater !

This time of the year the rivers strop flowing so we didn't see any waterfalls to talk about. However, this place is just plain amazing even at this time of the year.  It's hard to tell from the pictures but the leaves had changed colors and was gorgeous.



The valley
I think it is called El Capitan Rock Formation



Love this picture..didn't even know the tree did this until i saw it later.
Andy's new friend has the same gnome??
Yep !  That's us !
We drove down to the south part of the park where the Sequoia Grove is.  We did a 2 mile hike to see some of these enormous trees.
The bachelor and the 3 Graces 
A perspective on the size of these trees. For you Kloee !
Barney Bender Man, I searched the entire forest for hours in search of wildlife. I looked behind every tree... under every rock... looking for any type of wildlife.  Finally, I looked inside a tree !

Barney as you said.  I found a fox !


The roots of a dead sequoia tree, 200 years old. Look closely it's is worth $25 for the first person that messages me about it !

We are currently at a military base in San Luis Obispo,California. We will be here until Saturday morning at which time we will continue to head south. We should be in Seal Beach, basically Long Beach, sometime early afternoon on Saturday. We invited Larry and Ernie for dinner. Of course Andy already has a plan for dinner.  I don't think I like her plan though !  It really doesn't sound good to me. Here is the  her plan !!!  I'm cooking !  Wish me luck !  No, wish them luck !!!!