Sequoia

Day 1: We drove from Yosemite with Grammy Char and Uncle Dave to the campsite where they are staying with cousins Wendy, Jane, Sam, Devon, Eric, and Daria. I don't get to see them very often so I was so excited to get to play with them! I am reading a series that Devin gave me in San Francisco, I also read two other books she loaned me while we've been driving: A Wind in the Door and a book about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity. After we played with Jane and Sam a little, we drove to our hotel. It was 7200 ft! On the way up, it started to get windy and it rained, then hailed, then sleeted. We couldn't even see but we knew we were on a cliff going up, up, up. Our hotel was nice and warm though.

Day 2: We met all our family at the museum and Sentinel tree. We all went to the giant Sherman Tree. We hiked around but then the clouds rolled in and we ended up picnicking in the cold. After that we drove to Lodgepole and the whole park was celebrating Earth Day. It was really exciting because they had a raffle and we won stuff. Eric won a lot of bottled water and my family didn't think it was very Earth-friendly. Then, we drove back down to go for a hike in the woods. It was a lot of fun. We walked to Tharp's log, where a guy carved a house out of a tree. Near there we saw a bear on the trail. (I think it was Jane who saw it first.) It was far away, but we watched it for a while. We also all wrapped ourselves around a giant sequoia tree. The first one we tried was too big, even for all 12 of us (I am counting Daria, but she's 1.5). The next we did worked!

After the hike, we went back to our hotel and had dinner at the lodge and went to bed.

Day 3: On our way out of the park, we met up with everyone again. We found a hike that was really fun, it had a small path with a huge cliff down to a river and really tall grass. The adults made us go back and we had a picnic. While we were eating, we started to play and I was balancing on a log and saw a rattlesnake. It stared right at me! Then, I called my cousin Jane over. Eventually, the adults came over and yelled at us to get away.

Then, we drove to the airport and said good-bye to Grammy Char and Uncle Dave. After we flew to Phoenix, we got into our car so that we can drive to Sedona.