Year 4 – Week 26 – Day 4

Sequoia National Park!

The most challenging part of this trip for Brendan was definitely the road in to the park. It is a super twisty, hairpin-turny, crazy road that climbs 5000 feet in elevation. He got a little car sick and we had to stop for lots of breaks.

There are beautiful places to pull out and look around.
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The gray dome in the background is Moro Rock. There is actually a path of 400 stairs carved in to the rock that you can take to the top. We will have to do that on a different visit!
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This giant fallen Sequoia tree is called “Auto Log” because it used to have a driveway where you could park a car.
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Trevor says, “Gosh, golly, wow, would you look at the size of that tree??”
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Brendan is hiking in the giant forest!
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Trevor for scale, running to Bill and Brendan. Can you see them!?
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This place is so quiet and surreal. It changes your perspective for a while.
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I told Trevor that we would find pine cones bigger than his head, but these are not from the Sequoia trees!
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This is the pine cone dropped by the giant!
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This is the bottom of Auto Log
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Driving through tunnel log
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Impressive stats
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Trevor and a tree – one of the small ones
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While trying to drive up to the lodge, we hit a huge traffic jam. We finally saw why – 4 little bears making their way right along the road.
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We watched them from the safety of the truck, but we simply could not believe the people running right out and close with their phones to take pictures. I know these bears are probably used to humans, but these people were being really dumb!
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Restaurant!
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Brendan has his “Em-nems”
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Local brew
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Sorting his “spaghetti”
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A little walk after lunch
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Big rolls of thunder preceded these clouds. There had been a weather forecast for storms, but we just got a few sprinkles.
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Still, time to go. Boys are worn out!
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Legos and ice cream before bed!
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We didn’t even scratch the surface of things to see at the park. We’ll be headed back up in the morning to explore some other areas. We hope the weather will be nice to us again!

Year 4 – Week 26 – Day 3

It was all about the driving today. We peeled the boys out of their beds and put them straight in to their car seats, hitting the road at 5:30am. It was a stay-in-pajamas-all-day day.

They were exceptionally good in the car, we just make stops in wide open places to stretch and snack and look around. The lunch stop today was “World’s Biggest Dinosaurs”. It get cheesier and cheesier every time I visit.
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Brendan was not interested AT ALL. He wanted to get away from the dinosaurs.
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You can pay to go up in the head of the T-Rex. (we did not)
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There is plenty of cuteness on the ground
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This big dinosaur is actually the gift shop.
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Lunch and dinos
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Several stops in wide open places…
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We’ve made it to camp!
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This will do!
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We hope the rest of the week goes as smoothly as today! We can’t wait until tomorrow!

Year 4 – Week 26 – Day 1

Here is a little randomness from the week:

Lego store visits
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Eye doctor: Brendan had a checkup to make sure his glasses were working. All is well.
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The neighbor got a new roof and Trevor had a front row seat
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A little shopping
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Lunch at IKEA
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Feeding the baby ducks
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My best guess is that Brendan’s skin did not like the thick mineral sunscreen that I started using. He broke out in some seriously bad pimples. They have been very painful and he is quite upset with me for touching them to keep them clean and apply medicine.
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We have a special little adventure planned this week. I drew a little rainbow on our calendar to represent the vacation days Bill took, so the boys have been calling it “Rainbow Day”. I will post more about “Rainbow Day” in a few days!