On the eigth day God created....

And on the eighth day God looked at all he had done and said:

Let there be a vehicle for man to rest his weary feet.

It will look as good with a fresh coat of wax

As it does with a fresh coat of mud.

The vehicle will have the power of 400 horses.

It can be used to pickup the love of his life

for a night on the town

Or to carry a ton of bricks for a neighbor next door.

The vehicle will have a limitless number

of modification and upgrades.

It can be jacked up or can be dropped down 

With tires, lights and grill guards galore

The vehicle will be timeless, as functional after 50 years

As it is at 5 days..

It will be an office, playground, workstation, camper 

And a man's most trusted machine.

And so it was as it always will be, and God created the Truck!

 (In no particular order)

Near Savannah, Georgia

Beartooth Mountains, Montana

Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts

Hollywood, CA

Carlsbad (Dark Canyon), New Mexico

Kansas City (Worlds of Fun), MO

Ochopee (Big Cypress), Florida

Sequoia National Park (Tree Tunnel), California

Washington, D.C.

Orlando (Disney World), Florida

Pickerel Lake, South Dakota

A service station on the New Jersey Turnpike.

White Sands National Park, New Mexico

Lillington, North Carolina

Liberty, MO

Gulf Shores National Seashore, Florida

Jacksonville, Florida

Somewhere outside Flagstaff, Arizona

Hoover Dam, Nevada

Gordonsville, Virginia

Flamingo (Everglades), Florida

Death Valley National Park, California

Yosemite National Park, CA

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Carolina Beach, North Carolina

Charlotte Speedway, North Carolina

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine

Yosemite National Park, CA

Yosemite lived up to it's reputation. The towering granite peaks, cascading waterfalls and picturesque mountain streams did not disappoint. We drove 200 miles from Bakersfield to Yosemite and it was worth every mile we drove to experience the park up close and personal.

We spent the afternoon in the valley which is the most popular destination in the park and where all of the park rangers direct new visitors. We entered the park from the south which descends into the valley through the man made tunnel and opens up the the scenic lookout over El Capitan, Bridal Veil and Half Dome. After a brief stop at the lookout we finished the decent into the valley to hike a few of the trails that lead up to the base of the waterfalls.

The scenery from every angle of Yosemite was just simply breathtaking which explains why it is one of Americas most visited national parks. Like many of the other popular national parks Yosemite also had a well run shuttle system to conveniently transport park visitors from trail to trail.

After spending most of our time around the visitor center and walking a handful of trails to the waterfalls we ended the day by jumping in the truck and driving the entire loop around the valley and capping of the day with a picnic at the giant redwoods located in the park.

The kids collecting trash as part of the Junior Ranger program.

A view of the valley. El Capitan on the left, Bridal Veil on the right and Half Dome in the background.

The kids enjoying a hike along the river.

The girls looking at the waterfall in the distance.

This is the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.

The lone tree in the middle of the field was just a beautiful display of God's creation.

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine

Welcome to Hollywood!

Hollywood was just a two hour drive from our campsite in Bakersfield. This was possibly the kids most anticipated excursion of the year. They were so excited to see the Hollywood sign and stroll down the walk of fame. We were hoping to see at least one celebrity, but it just wasn't our day.

We spent half of our day in Hollywood checking out the tourist attractions including Beverly Hills and Bel Aire. While walking down the walk of fame there are about 3 kiosks per block for tours of the celebrity homes. Being the obvious tourist that I am with a wife, four kids and a massive camera around my neck...they flock to me like flies on #$%#. Having visited many of the nations tourist traps I've gotten pretty good at politely declining their offer.

The cost for a tour of celebrity homes was about $25/person...way more than I was going to shell out. I had heard that for the most part the tour is a waste of money because the large homes have even larger privacy walls and large gates hiding the homes they protect. I passed on the opportunity to pay for a tour of walls and gates. But that wasn't the end for me. I already knew where Beverly Hills was so I hatched my own plan to look at the houses for free (minus the cost of gas of course).

So without further ado I launched my master plan. I took off to Beverly Hills and located a tour van. I pulled over so he could pass by me, and then the chase was on! I tailed the tour van from house to house. I figured wherever he stopped it must be a celebrity home...I just didn't know which one. So I had fun with it and just made up the celebrities that lived in each of the houses and confidently rattled off random celebrity names to the kids as we stopped at each of the houses. They didn't know the difference, and it didn't really matter...they were just gates and fences anyway.

The tour van was on to me. I'm guessing he sees this type of behavior all the time. After all, Hollywood is known for it's stalkers! I prodded the driver of the van a couple times to give the scoop on the celebrities he just shook his head and gave me the old "show me the money" hand gesture out his window every few stops.

After spending 30 minutes of touring the gates and fences of Beverly Hills I figured it was time to move on to something more scenic so off to Santa Monica Beach we headed.

This was the first visit to the Pacific Ocean of our adventure and... it looked a lot like the Atlantic. Who knew?

Anyway, the kids played in the surf for a little while before we headed to the Santa Monica Pier. My biggest thrill and surprise of the day was that this was the official end of historic route 66, or so the sign said. We have been weaving in and out of route 66 for almost a thousand miles so seeing the end was a fun treat for us.

We grabbed dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. We have been eating cheap frozen pizzas for so long we had almost forgot what a good pizza tasted like.

We headed back to Bakersfield exhausted, tired and ready for our next adventure!

Sorry about this, I just couldn't resist.

Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Tristan loves Rocky and was excited to find Sly's star.

We finally made it to the west coast!

And there it is, we made it to the end of Route 66 on Santa Monica Pier.

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine

Bakersfield, CA

Bakersfield in itself isn't much of a destination when visiting California, but Katherine's longtime friend Becca hooked us up with a free spot to park the camper for a few weeks...and I don't typically turn down free! Becca's dad lives in Bakersfield on almost 2 acres of land and conveniently has an RV pad with full hookups in his backyard. Thank you Russ for letting crash in your backyard for two weeks!

Staying with Russ was better than Disneyland. The kids would spend hours in the backyard where he used to raise goats, horses and cows and now has old cars and other treasures for the kids. The kids built a track around the backyard where they could ride their scooters as fast and long as they wanted, something that every RV park we have visited prohibited. In addition to all of the free space we had, Russ, a jack of all trades, helped out with some of the projects I had on the camper as well as my truck. This included spending an entire afternoon installing a train horn on my truck,a birthday gift from Katherine and the kids.

Bakersfield is a great base camp to visit some of California's more popular attractions. We didn't want to pull the camper from one end of CA to the other so we left it parked in Bakersfield as we made day trips to some of California's best destinations. From Bakersfield it was a 150 mile drive to Sequoia and Hollywood and 200 miles to Yosemite. A 400 mile round trip to Yosemite makes for a long day on top of the hiking and sightseeing but it was very much do-able.

The agriculture industry is huge in California so we thought it would be fun to head out to a local farm to pick some fruit. It was a short 10 minute drive to the Murray Family Farm where the kids had a great time picking buckets of their own fruit.

The kids loved riding in the backhoe.

We put together a little race to see who was the fastest. Helaina won with ease followed by the remote control car.

The kids had a great time jumping around on the air pillow at the farm.

Helaina taking a fall...

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine