Friday, July 23, 2010

Camping in El Dorado National Forest...or should I say camplaining?

About 2 weeks ago, Brian and I decided to pack up the car (again!) and go camping for a night in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  We took our chances that there were campsites available and hit the road.  It was about a two hour drive from our house...not so bad considering we just drove across the country.  Over those two hours, the scenery changed from our brown (the locals say "golden") grassy mountainy hills, to flat plains, to huge snow capped mountains.  We made it to El Dorado National Forest no problem, and found our way up to the Lake Loon campground.  Luckily, we got there and a few campsites were still available, so we picked lucky campsite #13.  One of the first things we noticed was the huge, metal containers they had on each site.  I was thinking maybe that was storage for firewood or some sort of water hook up, but nope!  It was a "bear box!"  These huge metal containers are used to store food so that the bears don't tear up your tent/coolers and so they don't mess up your car.  The bears have been known to mess up campers cars, so we didn't take any chances.


First things first, we had to set up the tent...and that's where the camplaining began.  Now the word camplaining originates from a college camping trip Brian and I took with some friends, when I apparently started complaining about something.  Someone told me to stop complaining...which turned into camplaining!  Anyway, we were putting up the tent when the wheels in my head started turning.  I looked at the tent, and then I tried to imagine the queen size air mattress that we brought fitting inside this teeny, tiny, two man tent.  I looked at Brian, somewhat puzzled, and told him that I really didn't think a queen air mattress could fit inside this tent.  He just blew it off and assured me that he's done this before and that it will fit...so I just shut my mouth and went along with it.  We finished setting up the tent (I'm still doubting that anything bigger than a twin air mattress can fit in it), and then went to blow up the air mattress.  To blow up the air mattress, we had to plug it into some sort of adapter in the car, which was about 20-30 feet from the tent - Problem #1!  So we blow up the air mattress, drag it over to the tent (by now it's all dirty-there goes my camplaining again!) and realize that we might need to let some air out to get it in the tent "door" - Problem #2.  I'm sure you can kind of guess where this is going...we let some air out of the tent and proceed to squeeze it into the tent - Problem #3.  After wrestling with the mattress, Brian finally gets the whole, entire mattress inside of the tent.  He then takes a step back, looks at me, and says "See...it fits!"  Let me tell you, it definitely did not fit.  The front of the tent was bowed off the ground and the door would not zip shut...technically I guess you can say it fit, but really, it wasn't functional unless we wanted to rip the bottom of the tent off when we laid down.  Brian then suggested that we sleep outside on the air mattress...let me remind you that there is a bear box near by if that doesn't say enough - haha!  After staring at our hilarious tent for a few minutes, Brian concluded that the other mattress must have been a double...not a queen.  Luckily, Brian was smart and prepared and packed real, camping sleeping mats.  He was a true gentleman and gave me the better one of the two, which honestly, was super comfortable.  After the tent was set up, we took a small hike to see the sunset over Loon Lake, fought off the crazy mosquitos, and then went back to the campsite to eat out dinner and make a fire.  When we started making our fire and realized that we didn't have any kindle (the dry, starter wood).  Let me just say, we used our resources and paper towels are great for starting fires:)  

Finally, it was bedtime, so Brian, Vida and I crawled into our humble abode...I'm not gonna lie...it was a little tight - Vida's a big girl.  I slept through the night just fine...poor Brian was not very comfortable and did not get a very good night's sleep.  The next day, we hiked around for a few hours, and then drove back home.  All in all, we did have a great time and it was absolutely beautiful!!  We would love to go back there sometime soon and see more of the park!


Our little tent..I wish I would have taken a picture with the mattress inside.

Loon Lake



Giant tree
















The water was so clear!

Vida chasing a duck...

Vida drying off after chasing the duck.

A walk on the wild side

I know I'm a little behind on posting, but I promise to catch up asap!  I did want to put some pictures up of the area around our home.  Many of you know that I like to walk/run with Vida everyday.  The first day we were here, we decided to take a walk to see what was around.  We turned out of our neighborhood, and walked down a nice, green, tree lined paved walking trail that parallels one of the main roads (it's not a very busy road though).  We continued walking for about 3/4 of a mile when the overhanging trees ended and opened up into a beautiful view of the mountains, vineyards, and horse pastures.  While on our walk we saw a fox carrying something in its mouth, horses, quails, a family of wild turkeys and tons of different birds.  Needless to say, it's beautiful!  The weather's not bad either!  So far, we have only turned our air on 2 times and for short amounts of time...mainly to cool off the upstairs part of the house.  We have been sleeping with our windows open!  During the day there is ZERO HUMIDITY!!  Did you hear that!?  ZERO HUMIDITY!?  My hair practically dries in 5 minutes without a blow dryer!  And it's only about 75 - 90 degrees with a continuous breeze!  Our back yard is very shaded so it never feel like 90 if it ever gets that hot.  At night, it is breezy as well and the temperature drops to about 55-60.  It's actually kinda cold!  It's always a good idea to have a jacket with you around here especially if you're going to be out at night.  In fact, most days when I walk Vida I have to wear a light jacket cause the breeze is so strong and cool.  I'm not complaining though...it's definitely a nice break from the south's humidity and heat.  I can actually hang out outside and not sweat to death or get eaten by mosquitos!  Anyway, here are some pictures to enjoy:)

The pretty mountains/big hills

Vineyards on our walk

Horses!

Monday, July 19, 2010

First few days in the new place...

After our long, fun adventure across the country, we finally found our destination, completely unprepared for what was about to happen.  Brian had to go to work early on the 6th, while I waited around until the movers got here...late of course.  I had no idea how much work we had ahead of us, but I was about to find out.  The movers showed up with a huge truck that had 6 giant, wooden crates on it.  They opened the first crate, told me what box number it was, and where I wanted it to go.  For the next 3 hours, I sat in the garage and waited for the moving men to yell out a box number and then I would tell them where to put it. Brian eventually showed back up around 10 and brought me some breakfast because after he dropped me off, I realized that there was literally nothing edible in the entire house.  He also came home with some great news...his commanding officer told him that he could take 8 days off to get situated and moved in!  What a relief!!  I was nervous I was going to have to do a lot by myself!

Once the movers left, we squeezed ourselves between the boxes and sat on the couch and just kinda stared at each other.  Eventually, I decided that I should probably tackle our bedroom so that we actually had somewhere to sleep that night.  I stared in the closet, only to realize that we have wayyyy to many clothes and that the bathtub makes a great storage place for excess amounts of them.  My main goal was to find the sheets for the bed, and for some reason, none of the boxes seemed to guide me in the right direction.  I cut open almost every single box before I found the sheets for the bed, and of course it was super late and we were super exhausted!

Over the next few days, the house started to become more livable, the garage turned into an empty box grave yard, and we weaned ourselves off of fast food hamburgers and soft drinks.  We also met our neighbors who are super friendly!  It's so nice to say we have some friends here that we can hang out with!  We also learned that the summer weather here is ridiculously amazing!  We're talking between 70-85 degrees during the day without a cloud in the sky and a steady cool breeze, and about 55-60 at night. We literally slept with the windows open the first week we were here and didn't even think about turning on the air conditioner!  The winters are suppose to be pretty mild too...we're keeping our fingers crossed!


Brian's first day of work in his cute outfit:)

The big crates with all our stuff.

Our bedroom leading into our bathroom

Our closet...

The temporary closet aka bathtub

Bathtub full of clothes

Our bed before we found the sheets...

Vida romping through the packing paper forest at the bottom of the stairs

Our functional living room...

The really well labeled box where I found my sheets.  I don't know if it was laundry container and stuff or laundry container stuff...either way it didn't say anything about sheets which were not in the laundry room or a laundry container?!?  At least we found them!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The homestretch!!

On Monday, July 5th, we left steaming hot Las Vegas and drove the final leg of our journey up to Fairfield, CA.  When we were planning our trip, we didn't really take into consideration the fact that there might be some holiday traffic from 4th of July festivities..."some" is an understatement.  Try about 3 hours of bumper to bumper traffic through the 111 degree Mojave Desert.  For some unknown reason, there is only one road out of Las Vegas that heads towards southern California...all of the other roads head north and then you have to go around the Sierra Nevada.  According to Betty (the GPS), going north was going to be much longer, so we went south.  Hindsight, the northern route might have been the way to go but oh well.  We left Las Vegas expecting to arrive in Fairfield around 8:30 p.m.  Our plans quickly changed as we hit terrible traffic from Las Vegas all the way to the California border (about 20 miles of bumper to bumper crazy traffic).  When we finally got to the state line in the middle of the desert, we were able to see a single exit off the interstate that had a huge amusement park and apparently everyone had to stop to see it, which is what caused the whole commotion.  By now, Betty told us we would arrive sometime around 10:15, but we also had to stop a few times and of course, we hit rush hour traffic in some town in the middle of nowhere, where there was only a two lane road.

Finally, we made it to a chilly 50 degree Fairfield, CA around 11:30 p.m. We decided that we needed to go over to our new home and unload the car, and then head over to our hotel on base, since we didn't have a bed in our new place.  Unfortunately, Brian had to be at work at 7a.m the next day...we only had one car, and I had to be at the house for the movers.  Soooo, we woke up at the crack of dawn, drove the 11 miles to our new place where I got out to wait for the movers, and then Brian drove back to the base to go to work.  I was exhausted so I grabbed my pillow and made a makeshift bed on the floor with some jackets and the dog! She's unbelievably cuddly!  Finally, the movers showed up, about 30 minutes late...that's ok though because I got to sleep and extra 30 minutes.  When the movers showed up is when the chaos began...the amount of boxes was just overwhelming, and we had no idea where to start!!

Mojave Desert...not a lot to look at and it was huge!

Mojave Desert

Driving through Southern California

Agricultural inspection = biggest waste of government time and money - all they did was wave us through - they didn't even look inside the car at all.

Check out the temperature...and the mpg isn't bad either.

All the crazy windmills

Monday, July 12, 2010

July 4th in Vegas

We stayed in Vegas the night of the 3rd and 4th and had a great time! The city seriously never sleeps and is always eye-opening! On the 3rd, we went down to the strip to eat dinner...Brian paid $6.99 and got a big beer, a 10oz rib-eye, baked potato, and veggies! It was a ridiculous deal and it was really good! After we ate dinner, we went out and walked along the strip until about 1 am and then went back to our room. Brian was in shock at how intricate the hotels were and how huge they are...if you've never been there, you should go - it's unreal!

On the 4th of July, we slept in and then Brian had to go to Nellis Air Force Base to get his uniforms taken care of so that when we arrived in California he would be ready. I just laid around most of the day since it was 110 degrees outside...absolutely miserable! That night, we decided to go and see a show, so we looked up what was playing and decided on Blue Man Group. It was AWESOME! I highly recommend it to everyone! The entire show is entertaining and tons of fun. The audience is asked to participate frequently and the Blue Men actually come out in the crowd and crawl around a little bit.

After we got out of the show, we went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Last time I was in Las Vegas, I went here and loved it so I wanted Brian to experience it. He enjoyed it and couldn't believe how short some of these famous actors/actresses are. When we finished up with the was museum, we met up with my dad who was on a lay over for the night. He got in around 9:30 and we went to a late dinner, and then we hit up the casinos. Unfortunately, Brian and I both lost $50, but my dad got lucky and made it all back! Although the city was still crawling with people, we finally decided to call it a night around 2 am...we had a long drive ahead of us the next day!
Madame Tussauds Wax Museum has life size mannequins of all kinds of famous people. This is me and Shaq...he's gargantuan!!! Notice I'm on my tippy toes and can barely reach his arm pit!
Brian taking a swing at Muhammad Ali
Me and Brad Pitt
Brian with Johnny Depp and Halle Berry
Us after the show with one of the guys from Blue Man Group...he's a real person not a wax mannequin!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

We're driving to Las Vegas and taking some Dam pictures!

Last Friday (July 2), we drove from Flagstaff, AZ to Las Vegas, NV. It was only supposed to take us about 4 hours but of course that did not happen. Our trip started off in beautiful Flagstaff where it was about 75 degrees and gorgeous, and quickly turned into a desert scene where temperatures reached about 105. It was ridiculous! To make matters worse, we were stuck in Dam traffic...haha Hoover Dam traffic that is! The traffic getting to Hoover Dam, which is basically the only way to get to Vegas from Flagstaff, was awful. The government has set up a security checkpoint for anyone who wants to drive over/near the Dam which requires every car to come to a stop. Needless to say, it took us about 2 hours to go 5 miles, turning our 4 hour trip into about 6 and a 1/2. While we were sitting in traffic, the air conditioner in the car must have froze up because it started blowing out hot air. We decided to rough it for a little bit and give the AC a rest, so we completely turned it off and rolled down the windows so we could enjoy the lovely 105 degree heat. Now I know everyone says "It's a different kind of heat out there," and I agree...to a point. The humidity in the south is a force to be reckoned with, but 105 degrees is hot no matter what the humidity level is. We were sweating within 2 seconds of the window being rolled down and poor Vida must have felt like a polar bear in a sauna. Luckily, we were able to pull over in a rest area over looking the Dam before too long and we got out to give the car a break. At this particular rest stop, there were at least 5 other cars that had over heated because of a combination of the traffic and heat. While we were there, we also let Vida out and she drank a ton of water!! Poor thing! It was funny because when she got out of the car, the pavement was so hot that she would pick up her feet and alternate which one she was standing on because her paws were probably on fire! Finally, we made it over the Dam and took some Dam pictures. We didn't get to take the Dam tour (I know enough with the Dam jokes!!) because of the dog but it truly is a sight to be seen. Pictures just don't do it justice! Once we crossed the Dam, we made it to Las Vegas without any other traffic. It's so crazy that it's so backed up and then all of a sudden goes away! I really don't know where all those cars went. Brian had never been to Las Vegas before so he did not really know what to expect as we were driving over the mountains to get there. We literally were in the middle of a desert-like landscape when all of a sudden, we drove over the mountain and this huge city appears...we could seriously see all edges of the city from where we were and it really is huge and in the middle of nowhere! That night, we were staying in a hotel room on Nellis Air Force Base since they allowed dogs. We checked in and kinda just laid around for a little bit so that we didn't have to walk the Las Vegas strip in 105+ degree heat. Finally around 8, it cooled off to a whooping 96 degrees so we decided to go out and conquer the town!
View of Lake Mead after we drove over the Dam.
Crazy new bridge that is being built over the Colorado River just south of the Hoover Dam...I just don't know if I could drive over it.
View from the Nevada side

Lake Mead - the lake that Hoover Dam created
The north side of the dam from our rest area
A baby mountain goat jumping the barrier
a mountain goat crossing sign
ughh...the awful traffic!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Some Big Hole in the Ground

On Friday, we kind of had a little bit of a rough start. We got up early to go and eat breakfast downstairs and to take Vida for a little walk only to realize that Brian's sinus pain and congestion was only getting worse. After breakfast, we made the decision to go to an acute care clinic in Flagstaff to see if they could give him anything for his ailment. While he was at the doctor's office, Vida and I went to a park and I let her play for quite a while until Brian called and said he was ready. The doctor told him he had a sinus infection and gave him some antibiotics to make him feel better. After lunch time, Brian said he still wanted to go see some famous big hole in the ground, aka the Grand Canyon.

We packed up the car and drove the hour and a half to Grand Canyon National Park. The drive to the park was absolutely beautiful! We went up through the mountains and had some awesome views! Once we got to the park, we decided to purchase the $80 National Park entrance pass so that we can use it for any park in the country...we won't live very far from a few out in California. Grand Canyon National Park was huge! We were visiting the south rim of the canyon, which is the most visited part. As we were driving through the park, we were wondering where this huge canyon was, when all of a sudden we looked to our left and it looked like the ground just got swallowed and it disappeared. We were driving along side this huge, gaping hole - the vastness of this canyon is just indescribable, I guess that's what it's called The Grand Canyon. We quickly pulled over in a small parking lot and just stared in awe! I have been here before but it's just so amazing! In some areas, you can walk right up to the ledge and just look down into the abyss. My knees get a little shaky just thinking about it (I'm not a huge fan of heights). After we took millions of pictures, we drove to the visitors center and walked along the rim on a trail. The rim trail was about two miles long total and it took us about 3 hours to do because we kept stopping and looking at all the views. There were tons of tourists...in fact, I would say the majority of the people there were foreign. We couldn't believe how many people from around the world were there! Brian said he saw just enough of the Grand Canyon to make him want to come back and hike it so if anyone else is interested, we might have to plan a trip!!

After The Grand Canyon, we stopped to get some ice cream and then made our way back towards Flagstaff. On our way back, we noticed the beautiful sunset behind us, so we pulled over and took some pictures. We were literally in the middle of nowhere! I've never heard absolute silence like I did right there! The only sounds that we could hear were some cows mooing in the distance, but other than that, there was nothing. It was so beautiful! On the drive home, an elk ran in front of us - thank goodness Brian saw it or it could have seriously messed up the car and hurt us! After a long day, we made it back to Flagstaff and we were pooped! We were both excited though about our trip to Las Vegas the next day though!



I think the "R" means ranch, but I'm not really sure.

Sunset on our way home

Flagstaff is on the other side of those mountains


Don't throw coins...the birds eat them and they can die.


Brian out on a jetting out rock