Monday

James was a little jealous of yesterday's early morning fishing trip, so he and Jarrett woke up early to take a trip of their own. James caught his first fish, too! His was a catfish that was big enough to keep. This time, Jarrett brought the camera, here are the proud fishermen.

We packed up and left for Salt Lake City. The drive was nice, lots of flat land with just a few hills. It was hot though, so we did overheat quite a bit.

We stopped about two hours outside of Salt Lake City. The drive to Salt Lake was nine hours and driving the RV is hard. We had also promised James that we would have his catfish for dinner and didn't want to get in to town too late to do that. So we stopped in West Wendover, NV at a KOA. The KOA had the first decent wireless service this entire trip, hence the flurry of posts! It's much easier to post from the computer than from the phone.

We took a quick dip in the KOA pool and then started a fire. We kept the kids up late to watch the stars.

The fish was wonderful, Jarrrett is a great cook. Since we had corn on the cob, we made corn cob dolls.

The kids love these, especially Riley. She made her doll an apron and she and James pretended they had been turned into kids that live in the time of Little House on the Prairie.

Tomorrow it's off to Salt Lake, we want to make it in time to catch a show at the Planetarium.

Sunday- Fourth of July

Sunday morning, Jarrett and Riley woke up early to fish. They snuck out of the RV armed with fishing poles and ice cream (fisherman need their nourishment) and set up by the pond. They caught one small fish, Riley's first! Unfortunately, they didn't get any pictures. They came back for breakfast and then we left for Lake Tahoe.

On the road, Riley read James the last of the American Girl Molly books. I bought the set before we left and they have loved them. Riley reads them first and then reads them aloud to James. I'm sad that they don't have any more.

Tahoe has an amazing fireworks display, the largest West of the Mississippi. They were amazingly crowded though. Thousands of people were partying on the beach when we got there and it was only 4:00 p.m. We grabbed some ice cream in town and then got back in to head towards Carson City. We stopped once for a gift for grandma, can you guess what it was, mom?

In Carson City, we found out that there was a carnival going on so we went to check it out. It was lots of fun, a total small town carnival.

Kelly loves the Merry-Go-Round. He had a blast on this.

James decided he liked riding with Kelly because he loved seeing Kelly's excited face.

Riley rode all of the real rides with Jarrett, so I didn't get any pictures of her. She's an adrenaline junkie, she loves the crazy rides.

After the rides, we played some games and then sat on the park lawn to watch the fireworks show. It was a great show, we all loved it.

After that, it was home for bed, all three kids fell asleep while I read them their chapter of Little House, they were exhausted.

Saturday

Saturday morning, we packed up and got ready to head out. James said goodbye to his first real camping friend, Dominick. James was pretty said to leave, Dominick actually cried a little. They were inseparable for the few days we were here.

We drove towards Nevada and had a lot of trouble with over-heating. We frequently drove well under the speed limit and had the heater on. We had to stop once to cool down. If you're ever over-heating on Highway 89 in Central California, this is a great place to pull off the road.

It was a more difficult hike than we planed on. We were all wearing flip-flops.

It was still a fun adventure.

We came through the woods towards the sound of rushing water.

At the end, we found an old table nestled between giant rocks and trees. It was covered with cobwebs, no one had been there for a while. I wish we could have had a picnic.

Near the table was the waterfall, it was beautiful. There was a little pool that would have been perfect for wading but the mosquitoes were eating us alive by then so we had to head back.

We kept going and made it to just outside Carson City, where our campground was. Our new campground has a stocked fishing pond, the kids are very excited to try it out. We took a walk to get a look at it and watched the sunset.

Friday

My uncle and his wife live in Eureka, CA so they came down to visit us today. We haven't seen them in a while, so it was nice to catch up. We did a little lake swimming, of course, then cooked out by the fire. James was excited because Uncle Loren is a backpacker, hiker, explorer kind-of guy, so they had to go exploring together.

Here are the explorers after their adventure. Poor Loren ended up with all of the kids and his dogs, I'm guessing it was a fairly busy adventure.

After dinner, we tried to get a picture for mom, since she doesn't see her brother very often either. Have you ever tried to get three kids and two dogs to sit still for a picture?

Eventually, I managed to snap one without too much chaos.

It was a great visit. Jarrett and I are talking about doing another trip to the Pacific NorthWest soon and hopefully we'll be able to see them again in Eureka, It's supposed to be beautiful.

Thursday

In the morning, we woke up and waved goodbye to the Pacific. The kids were pretty sad that we weren't going to be on the ocean for the rest of the trip.

We drove inland towards Clear Lake, we were staying in the little town of Kelseyville on the lake. Unfortunatly, Kelseyville confused our GPS pretty badly, so we ended up stuck, on a one lane road, at a dead end about ten miles away from our campsite. With the Jeep in tow, we shouldn't back up at all, the Jeep's steering doesn't adjust and the wheels end up dragging instead of rolling. So we had to disconnect the Jeep in order to get the RV out of there. The road was narrow enough that the RV ended up getting its first damage, it scraped against the railing and actually pulled the fiberglass away from the front end a bit. Jarrett was able to get everything back in place, it's just scratched. Jarrett says it gives him a good excuse to paint the RV, so if you see a K-State Purple RV driving down the road next year, that'll probably be us!

This is Clear Lake, it's in between San Francisco and Sacremento. It's supposed to be the best bass fishing in the US and it's also popular for archery fishing for carp.

We arrived in the evening and took the kids down to the swim beach to 'wade'. James wasn't entirely sure what 'wading' was, I turned my back and this is what happened.

Eventually he convinced Riley to try it. She loved it! She said it was the thickest water she'd ever swam in, it was pretty muddy.

Kelly was a lot more practical.

The kids were excited about this campsite, there were other kids running around-other than cousins, we haven't seen many kids on this trip.

Wednesday

In the morning, we had a lot of laundry to do so we stayed at the park. The kids and I took a walk to see if we could find a way down to the ocean. Instead, we found lots of these signs...

After the laundry was done,we headed into town. We had lunch on Fisherman's Wharf.

We took a walk and saw the trolleys.

In the evening, we went to the Aquarium of the Bay. The tour person said that we should look very closely because some of their coolest animals like to hide. James said that they probably didn't have any cool animals and she was just saying that, he's a skeptical boy, he's a lot like Jarrett.

They did have cool animals though. Lots of Seven Gill Sharks and Leopard Sharks, tons of huge Starfish and Rays. At the end, there's a touch pool where you can pet baby Leopard Sharks, Bat Rays and Skates.

Riley loved the skates. One of them swam up to where she was and just sat there, she was able to pet it the whole time she was there. She really wanted to bring it home.

The baby sharks were very cool. They swallow water in order to intimidate enemies, they can swell to twice their size. After they swell, they pop up and spit out the water, swimmming vertically. James petted the sharks but was a little freaked out about them.

Also in the aquarium they had a video and section set up to educate about 'finning', when people cut off the sharks fins and then throw them back in the ocean to die. If you go, I would avoid it with little kids, or at least be prepared. It was pretty gory. James was fairly bothered by it.

Tuesday

This is the view from the front windows of the RV in San Fransisco...I really love it here.

In the morning, it was off to the Golden Gate Bridge. I had a book about it that I read to the kids, so they were very excited to see it. Jarrett and I marveled at the engineering.

Riley loved the view, here she is trying to see ships in the bay.

We could just barely see the bay bridge through the fog.

We had to stop to see the statue of Joseph Strauss, the lead engineer. James had seen it in the book and wanted to see it more than the bridge.

After we left, we drove down Lombard St. Riding with Jarrett is always an adventure so this was enough for me to be clutching the Jeep safety bars. The kids loved it, they put their arms up like they were on a roller coaster!

We made it back in time to catch the sunset, I'm going to miss the view.