Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 3...Days 7 & 8

Ooops...I wrote this a while ago, but apparently forgot to click "publish" so here it is - better late than never!

Our move continued:

Day 7 - August 1, 2011

(Driving to Yosemite National Park- this picture doesn't do the road justice, but this was a pretty scary, twisting, turning road that we drove for about 2 hours to get to Yosemite. Not my favorite portion of the trip, but if you want to access this part of California you better learn how to love roads like this (and learn how to accept the fact that whoever designed these roads did NOT put guard rails in places where a logical person would think guard rails should be!))

(Yosemite National Park - the country's 1st National Park! Definitely one of my favorite places on the trip! Yosemite, was truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, and I wish we had spent more time there. I also wish it wasn't the middle of summer because unfortunately, some of the beauty of the place is overshadowed by the thousands and thousands of tourists swarming the area.)

(Half-Dome - the famous rock formation at Yosemite)

(Us with Half-Dome behind us)

(Me at Yosemite! It was so beautiful here! If you look closely, you can see Yosemite Falls behind me.)

(Yosemite Falls)

(me by the Lower Yosemite Falls - this location was beautiful [minus the hundreds of people that we thankfully managed to not capture in this picture]. It also felt really good because you could feel the mist from the falls right here, and this was the first day of our trip where we had officially left the rainy, cold weather of the Pacific Northwest behind. So needless to say, after 3 years in Washington, Mr. V and I both were beyond hot, sweaty and uncomfortable once we crossed the mountains into the summer heat.)

(me with El Capitan behind me. Not my favorite picture of myself, but El Capitan is one of the most famous places in the park, so even though the picture sucks, I still needed one of me at this location.)

(Look closely and you'll see 2 people climbing El Capitan! This was seriously insane to watch. We were in the field across the road from here and there was a group of people who were just watching the climbers with binoculars. It may be hard to see, but it was just before sunset when we took this picture, so they were setting up tents on the rock. I honestly don't completely understand how people nail tents into the side of a sheer rock wall and then sleep there all night, but it apparently takes about 3 days to climb El Capitan so I suppose sleeping is necessary. The crazy part is that as we were driving to Yosemite, we heard a news story about a woman who fell to her death while trying to climb this exact same rock just two days before this. Clearly that news didn't stop these two crazy people though! It was making me nervous watching them!)

Day 8 - August 2, 2011

(We stayed in the town of Angels Camp, California for two nights during this part of the trip. Its a small town about 2 hours to the west of Yosemite [so yes we drove 4 hours round trip on one day just to visit the park]. Take my advice for this - if you ever want to go to Yosemite, make reservations WAY in advance [like 2 years in advance], otherwise you will be staying about 2 hours outside of the park. Thankfully we knew this before we left Washington, so we had made reservations in Angels Camp. If we had waited until we got there, we may have had to back track and stay even farther outside of the park because all of the hotels in Angels Camp were full when we arrived. All of the towns in this area are really small old California Gold Rush towns so lodging is few and far between!)

(The town of Angels Camp, California - All of the towns in this area of California are really small towns that are from the 1849 Gold Rush era. I love towns like this because they are full of history and relatively untouched by modern society. They still look old and they hold onto their history instead of caving into corporate America towns. You'd be hard pressed to find a Walmart within 4 hours of this town, and I love that! I had never been to this part of California before, and it was kind of fascinating to me.)

(Me in Angels Camp, California. There was random artwork throughout this whole area related to the Gold Rush - and the reason for the existence of these towns.)

(Driving away from Angels Camp, a little North of Yosemite, over the Sierra-Nevada Mountains through the Stanislaus National Forest and Sonora Pass. More winding, twisting, scary, steep roads, with beautiful scenery. This was also our official exit from the West Coast. Once we crossed over the mountains and into the desert of California, it really felt like we had officially left Washington behind.)

(Stanislaus National Forest, California - this is a beautiful area to drive through!)

(Stanislaus National Forest, California - near Sonora Pass)

(We visited the California ghost town of Bodie. Its another Gold Rush town, on the eastern edge of the Sierra-Nevada mountains. Its also the most well preserved ghost town in all of America. This is where the history nerd in me comes out because I LOVE stuff like this! Thomas took this picture as we were driving into Bodie. Once you leave the paved road, you drive for about 10 miles on a gravel and dirt road. Its so bumpy and dusty that by the time we left, our cars were beyond dirty and the racks on top of the cars had gotten loose from all the bumps. He likes to call this picture "Brooklet eating my dust - literally".)

(Driving into Bodie, California. I like this picture because you can see how there is nothing around this town. I'm beyond fascinated by the fact that during the gold rush people packed up everything they owned, then traveled across the country, and set themselves up in towns in the absolute middle of nowhere, just because they MIGHT find gold.)

(the ghost town of Bodie, California. I love ghost towns and historic places, and this is by far one of the best places I've seen. Its so well preserved and even though part of the town burned down years ago, there is still so much left! You can easily spend an entire day here exploring the place. We spent about an hour, but I wish we had known how cool this place would be ahead of time. I would have loved to have scheduled more time to spend here.)

(Ghost Town of Bodie, California)

(inside one of the houses in Bodie. So much was left behind here, and it is now deemed to be in a "preserved state of decay". I loved that there was so much still here because it really gives you a sense of what it was like to live there. It looks like people just packed their bags and left one day, and didn't bother taking all of their stuff with them.)

(Me inside of of the houses in Bodie.)

(walking down one of the streets in Bodie. I like this picture because you can see the old town behind me, but you can also see the vast nothingness in the distance. I couldn't even imagine what it would have been like to live here. I'm impressed that this town was as large as it was.)

(outside of Bodie, California with the Sierra-Nevada Mountains behind me)

(We stopped here to fix the racks on top of the cars since they had become loose and dislodged from the the bumps on the gravel road. I just like this picture because it really gives of sense of where we were. There is NOTHING out here! Behind my car in this picture is where the town of Bodie is...but you can't even see it from here. In the direction of Bodie, is the California desert and in front of my car, which you can't see, are the Sierra-Nevada mountains. Other than that, there is nothing around for miles and miles. We were driving to our hotel for the night, but we wouldn't even reach it for another 2 hours from this point - and there were no towns of any significant size that we passed in those two hours. I'm pretty sure that stuff like this will always fascinate me, but I guess thats what I get for growing up in the most densely populated state. The concept of vast wilderness is just so foreign to me, and even though I've seen areas like this, I still find it hard to wrap my mind around.)

Still More to Come!

Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 2...Days 4-6

The continued adventures of our move to Texas:

Day 4 - July 29, 2011

(California Redwoods! I had always wanted to see them but never knew much about the area. The Redwoods actually encompass the entire Northern California coast, and the National Park is actually a conglomeration of several smaller state and privately owned parks.)

(Trees of Mystery in Klamath, California. The Giant Paul Bunyan and Babe make the place look like a cheesy roadside attraction, but it was actually a pretty neat place. Of course, I happen to love cheesy roadside attractions anyway. Mr. V and I are in this picture, but these things were enormous and I think we're hard to see.)

(Elephant Tree inside the Trees of Mystery Trail)

(Part of the Trees of Mystery Trail)

(There's a gondola at the Trees of Mystery that takes you up to this overlook, where you're actually above all the giant Redwood trees.)

(In the gift shop at the Trees of Mystery. Another picture to add to our Pacific Northwest Bigfoot picture collection. Apparently, he lives and roams in a pretty large area, since Washington, Oregon and Northern California all claim to be his home.)

(One of three trees like this, all of which are spaced over the course of a few hundred miles [just to give you an idea of how big the Redwood area is]. This one is literally in someone's backyard, and is the first one you come across as you drive south. Cheesy? Maybe - but how often do you get to drive through a giant tree? :-) [And don't mind the mess in my car. I don't usually look like a homeless person when I'm driving, but thats what happens when we incorporate a vacation into a move. The car got progressively worse every day just from unpacking and repacking every single day. I guess we technically were living out of our cars for 3 weeks, and that wasn't fun.])

(Me, and a giant Redwood tree. These trees were really tall, but I have to admit that they weren't as wide as I had expected. I have a picture of me like this by a tree in the Olympic National Park thats twice the width of this one.)

Day 5 - July 30, 2011

(San Fransisco - by Alcatraz)

(Fisherman's Wharf - San Fransisco)

(I'm really not happy with how most of my San Fransisco pictures came out...here's a blurry one of me by the Full House house! [Otherwise known as Postcard Row and the Painted Ladies])

(Lombard Street - this picture does absolutely nothing to show the steepness of the street. It looks steep in this picture, but it looks twice as steep in real life.)

(Another attempt to show the steepness of Lombard Street - but again, this does nothing to show what it looks like in person.)

(driving down Lombard Street - the curviest street in the world)

(Mr. V and me after riding the San Fransisco Cable Car)

(I love this sign - now that we aren't in the hotel anymore. We didn't notice this until the second night at our hotel, but this wasn't exactly comforting to see.)

Day 6 - July 31, 2011

(The Golden Gate Bridge - our last stop before leaving San Fransisco)

(The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. If you've never heard of it, basically Sarah Winchester was the daughter in law of the guy who invented the Winchester gun. She believed she was going to be haunted by the ghosts of everyone who had been killed with a Winchester rifle, unless she never stopped building this house. So she hired people to build and made changes to the house every single day, 24 hours a day, until the day she died. So basically, she was crazy. This house is crazy, but its a fun place to tour!)

(The "Door to Nowhere" - one of the many weird things that Sarah Winchester added to this house. It opens from the inside and clearly leads to nowhere, except the ground, 2 stories below once opened. Its about as weird as the staircase that goes up into the wall in another section of the house.)

(Sarah Winchester was also obsessed with the number 13, and spiders, so she has several places in the house where she has 13 spider designs, like these windows - there's 13 of them in this room.)

(in front of the Winchester House)

Still more to come!

Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 1...Days 1-3

On July 26th, we left Whidbey Island, Washington and began our move back to Corpus Christi. I guess its true that you never know what you have until its gone. Washington wasn't my favorite place, but it was a heck of a lot better than South Texas, and given the choice between here and there, I'd chose to move back to Washington in a heartbeat. I guess over the course of three years, I came to love a lot about the area, and I made some wonderful friends while I was living up there. Now its time to start all over, once again, in the place I consider to be my own personal hell on earth...welcome back to Corpus Christi, Texas!

DAY 1 - July 26, 2011

(all packed and ready to go!)

(Welcome to Oregon! For anyone who is freakishly observant [I would notice this], yes these are the same clothes that we're wearing by the "Welcome to California" sign a few pictures down. Thats because this picture was actually taken as we were leaving Oregon, not entering it. We stayed in Portland for our first night on the road, and the exit to our hotel came before the welcome sign on the interstate. When we left the hotel in the morning, we entered the interstate just past the welcome sign. It would have taken too much time to turn around and get the actual welcome sign, so we just took it on our way out of the state. For the sake of chronological order we're going to just pretend this was actually taken on our first day on the road :-).)

Day 2 - July 27, 2011

(Voodoo Donuts in Eugene, Oregon...the main location is in Portland, but the one in Eugene doesn't have a 2 hour line every day, making it much easier to access for people who don't have all day to wait in line for donuts. Check out the Food Network if you've never heard of Voodoo Donuts.)

(the signature Voodoo Donut)

(proudly displaying my box of Voodoo Donuts)

(Crater Lake National Park - Thomas loved that there was still snow on the ground in July, and I have to admit that seeing snow in the summer is something I'm going to miss in Texas [or for that matter, seeing any snow at all]!)

(Crater Lake)

(Thomas and me by Crater Lake)

DAY 3 - July 28, 2011

(Grants Pass, Oregon...we have no idea what the Intergalatic Headquarters of Bigfoot is, but since people in the Pacific Northwest are generally a little obsessed with Bigfoot, we had to add this picture to our growing collection of Bigfoot pictures from the area.)

(Great Cats World Park in Cave Junction, Oregon...We didn't know what to expect from this place since it was a last minute discovery, but it was very cool, and I highly recommend it to anyone passing through the area. Its not a zoo, and its not a sanctuary. Its a place where big cats [i.e. lions, tigers, jaguars, etc...] are raised and then trained for movies and photo shoots. Thomas thought it would be necessary to bring one of our cats into this picture with us.)

(African Wildcats, which look like regular cats, but apparently they can tear your entire body apart in minutes. The one on the right is a cloned cat, and the one on the left is her daughter. I have mixed opinions about cloning, but having never seen a cloned animal before, I thought this was kind of neat. She's 5 years old, and apparently very healthy.)

(A tiger performing for the handler and getting his reward.)

(The tiger eating his reward)

(A White Tiger)

(I think this guy was a jaguar if I remember correctly, and he's roaring on cue. All of the cats could roar, hiss, swipe [without extending their claws] and stand up on cue...they were obviously all very well trained! I can't even teach my normal house cats to keep their claws in when they swipe at things.)

(Welcome to California!)

(sunset near Crescent City, California)

More to come....!