Sequoia

Last weekend we went camping up in Sequoia National Park. I don't know why we've never been there before. It's not as far as I thought (maybe three hours?) and home to General Sherman, the most massive (but not the tallest) tree on earth. We did have to brave some very windy (as in twisty, not breezy) roads. Here are the boys with the tree further back in the distance.

One of our objectives on this excursion was to see how well the boys (specifically Charlie) would sleep in a tent in 30 to 40 degrees. Charlie did about as well as we expected, which wasn't great. I tried to keep him in my sleeping bag but that was too crowded and Charlie couldn't get settled. Ryan had to start a fire in the middle of the night and sit with Charlie to get him to sleep, and then when he finally was asleep we kept waking up to make sure he wasn't freezing. He didn't like wearing his hat.

We had smores of course.

The box behind my head in this picture was where we had to put any food/scented items so the bears wouldn't get them. I have to admit, I was a little paranoid about the bears since there were signs and warnings about them everywhere we turned. "If you leave something as small as chapstick in your car the bears will break the windows to get it." or "Don't even use toothpaste to brush your teeth or the bears will smell that and come after you!" Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

The other objective was to catch a fish. Ryan has taken the boys fishing a few times and hadn't had any luck. We drove up to Hume lake but didn't have any nibbles, so we headed over to another lake that we thought we could hike to. We found out that we would have to hike three or four miles and we didn't have enough time or energetic enough kids (or moms) to do that. Luckily we found a teeny little stream that had a few teeny little fish in it.

Success!

Here is a video I took, barely missing the action. My favorite part is when I yell, "Uuuuuh!".

Alex and Benjamin both managed to catch a fish so our work was done.

I almost forgot! We also had a celebrity sighting. We saw these two brothers at our campsite's bathroom.

And they were wearing these same outfits! Just kidding. Drew Lachey was washing a dish in the sink and Nick Lachey poked his head out of their rented RV. Exciting stuff.