Lake City, Colorado

June 30^th-

Well the day has arrived that we depart from our trip and head back to home to Texas. We leave early tomorrow morning because we have a 15 hour drive ahead of us.

The past 3 days we have spent here in Lake City, Colorado. I have never heard of this town before, but it is wonderful. In the words of Dustin "a diamond amongst diamonds". We wanted to end our trip relaxing. For the entire 3 weeks we have been on the move, one day here, half day there, so finally we have stayed more than 24 hours in a single place.

Lake City is a very small town. Not a lot of tourists come here either. The 4 of us are definitely the youngest people to come to this town. Everyone knows everyone here, and they all seem very happy. For the past 2 days we have spent here we have been at the lake. This lake is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Its gorgeous. Some of the mountains even have snow on top of them still. There is also a river that runs through the town. You can hear it flowing at night when we sleep.

While at the lake the guys have been fishing the entire time. They were determined to catch dinner. The first day we caught only 2 fish, but we still put them on the fire last night and ate them. They were very tasty, the 3 bites we each got. We also made a great dinner too. We made a camp fire and  steaks.

 Today we fished again, or really the guys fished again, and they caught 3 fish this time. So we will be having fresh trout again for dinner. I never realized how much better fresh fish tastes than store bought. They are very proud of the dinner they caught J.  We cook the entire fish over the fire. I was scared at first, but it ended up tasting excellent.

I went out and fished for about an hour then came back to the RV to watch some movies. I am not the greatest fisher; I kept getting my line stuck almost every time, so I got frustrated quickly. But all three of the guys caught one fish each. I caught NONE. 

Overall  Lake City is a beautiful place. If you are looking to relax and just enjoy the sounds of flowing rivers without all the tourists, this is the place to be.



Lake San Cristobal

(where we fished)

Amazing Kabobs for dinner the 1st night

Dustin getting the fish ready to put on the fire

Clay was in charge of the fire

Micahs fish!!!

(he's never been fishing before and caught 3)

Shasta on the lake

Yosemite

June 27th-

So today was a sad day. We had to say goodbye to one of our fellow teammates. Kaylee had to go back home today for a wedding. She will be very missed on this trip. I know it won't be the same without her.

Once we dropped her off we wasted no time and headed to Yosemite National Park. This is one of my top places we have been to on this trip. It is so big and beatiful.  It took about 5 hours to get there from San Francisco, most of that was because going through the mountains takes a long time. Once we got there we started to hike up Vernal Falls in Yosemite Valley. This particular waterfall was amazing. I have never been up close to a waterfall before and this was all that I had imagined plus more. The hike was not a very long hike because we only had a few hours here, but it was the best. About half way up you could see the waterfall and we started getting wet from the mist from it. We did not realize that the higher you got, the more soaked we got. We were not prepared at all to get wet. It was like pouring down on us. Once we got to the top we got to see the entire valley. We hung out there for awhile, then headed down. We pretty much ran down this time, trying not to get aws wet pluse we had to make up time.

Yosemite Falls

Top of Vernal Falls

We saw snow on the other side of Yosemite. How strange?

Beautiful Lake on the way out

When we got back to the RV we left and drove straight to Lake City, Colorado. We left San Francisco at 9:30 arrived in Yosemite at 2:30pm, left Yosemite at 7pm, and drove through the night to Lake City and arrived here at 6pm the next day. WOAH! What a crazy past 33 hours. We are now here in Lake City and will be staying here for the next 3 nights. (hopefully)  Then we will be making our way back to Texas friday morning.

Pismo Beach, Santa Cruz, San Francisco

June 24th- (my birthday!!)

Late the 23rd we drove into Pismo Beach, CA. This was a random town we stopped in half way between LA and San Francisco. This town ended up being pretty nice. We stayed at an RV park right on the water and it was very nice and relaxing there. We ended up not even going to the beach, but hanging out by the pool all day. It was a little stange because we were at an RV park, and everyone there was either in the 60's or over, or they were little kids. We definitely stuck out. But we really didnt care, we just wanted to relax. It might seem that we do a lot of relazxing but really we dont get enough of it. Driving takes a lot out of you. Plus ewverything we do, we do it the the extreme. There hasnt really been a day, that we have not walked over 3 miles. That night we decided to go out for my birthday. The place was only 2.1 miles away, so of course we walked! We heard from a local guy that Mongo's was the place to be on a Friday night. Well I think his idea of a cool place and our idea were way off. Mongo's was not happening that night. We left early and then just came back to the RV to hang out.

June 25th-

We arrived in Santa Cruz only to stop at a quick winery on our way to San Francisco. What we didnt know was that we were going to end up going to 4 wineries and then a food festival too. Needless to say we ended up staying the night there right on the side of the road by the wineries. We went to a really cute courtyard type place that had many wineries and bakeries in it. we enjoyed tasting all the waine they had. That evening they also had a food festival which was very cool. We ended up getting a bunch of random food and having a great time. We met a lot of very nice people there too. They were all very interested in our story of this trip and we even had 3 offers to stay at their homes that night. Santa Cruz is very hospitable :) But we just ended up staying in the RV on the road. We also ran into 2 other friends and they stayed with us as well. So we had 7 people in a 6 person RV. VERY CROWDED!!!

June 26th-

We got to San Francisco today and got a late start into the city. We found an RV park in Pacifica, got ready then drove to the train station. We all   (7 people still)crammed into a small jeep to go the 4 miles to the station. When we got to SF we didnt realize that it was gay pride day. We walked up from the train station to a massive, loud parade! It was very overwhelming. There were tons of people screaming and yelling. Lots of naked people as well. We were in in a little shock and got out of that area quickly. ha! We went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and then headed to Fisherman's Wharf. It took practically all day because we couldnt figure out the bus system and were aimlessly walking around all day. Once again, we walke for about 5 miles. I better lose some weight on this trip after walking so much!!!

June 27th-

Today we are heading out to Yosemite. But first we have to go drop Kaylee off aqt the airport. She has to leave and now I will be the only girl left. We are all sad that she is leaving: :(.

Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and Beverly Hills

June 22-

We got to Santa Monica on Wednesday morning. We were very discouraged at first because the sun was not out. In CA they call this time of year June Gloom. This is very true, the sun usually does not come out until noon and it stays chilly up until then. But on this day, unfortunately the sun never really came out. So we decided to go walk the beach towards Venice Beach. This was actually great weather for walking, just not swimming.

It was really cool seeing all the things and people along the beach. On the way we came across Muscle Beach. This is where guys come to work out right on the beach. All these guys are really trying to impress others, its kind of funny. Most are probably on some form of steroids.  We then made it to Venice Beach. You can automatically tell when you reach Venice, it is nothing like the rest of the beaches we have been to. Venice is known as the Funkiest beach in America and it completely lives up to its name. There were street vendors everywhere selling anything they had. There were a ton of head shops and strange little places that sold all kinds of things. The whole strip smelled like incense. It was also a fun place to people watch. There were definitely some interesting characters there.

Santa Barbara Pier

Dustin and I figuring out how to climb the rope

He's doing it

That night Kaylee and I went to go pick up our rental car for the next day. Then we al drove bck to Walmart to stay the night again.

June 23-

Kaylee and I headed out to go see Beverly Hills and Hollywood. We left the guys at the beach because we knew they would not be into it. So we got to Beverly Hills and it was so pretty. We went to Rodeo Drive and Beverly Blvd. We saw Kristin Chenowith down there too. Added bonus! Then we went and hiked up to the Hollywood sign. This hike was nothing compared to previous ones in the Grand Canyon. ha! We also went to Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd. We did a lot of the tourist type things there. Overall a fun day.

That night we drove up to Pismo Beach and stayed at an RV resort. We will be hanging out here today on the beach and in the town. I hope the sun comes out soon!

This is Kristin Chenowith