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

Sequoia National Park, CA

Visiting the Giant Sequoia Redwoods in California was on of my top priorities on this trip. After 10 months on the road traveling across the country we finally made it to California, home of the Giant Sequoias. There are multiple national parks in California that have these massive trees. Sequoia National Park is home of the largest tree by shear volume, the General Sherman.

The drive from the park entrance to the giant redwoods is a narrow, winding switchback up 7,000 vertical feet to the top, where the giants grow. My kids are great car riders and have been tremendous this entire trip, but the drive to the top of the mountain may have pushed their limits. The winding road made everyone in the car a little queasy and they were more than excited to make it to the top.

The trees are 2-3 thousand years old and are the most amazing trees that I have ever seen. There are plenty of well maintained and scenic trials around the park. The hike to the General Sherman was by far the most popular in the park. It was so busy as a matter of fact that we needed to wait in line to have our picture taken in front of this giant.

Of all the hikes we did through the park my most favorite was the trail of giants. It was a very easy hike for the kids and allowed us to get up close to dozens of the large trees.

At the end of the day I was very impressed and the Giant Sequoias did not disappoint!

...a little disappointing that we can only get a fraction of the tree. It just doesn't do it justice, but we tried!

...still couldn't get the whole tree...

I tried everything, but I just couldn't get the whole tree!

Sunny doesn't get much face time on the blog. Here she is with her head out the window.

At the Trial of 100 Giants

All of the kids hanging out in the rotted out center of a fallen tree.

I don't know why, but this builder nestled up against the redwood just seemed interesting.

This was a lookout point about 3/4 up the mountain.

This tree is known as Auto Log. It was carved out on the top and they used to allow vehicles to drive across the topside of the tree. This is a picture of the root system of the tree.

This tree was damaged by a fire years ago. Most fires do not burn hot enough to kill the giant redwoods, but they certainly do leave a mark.

Just a beautiful tree...

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine

Death Valley

Death Valley National Park was a fun experience, but visiting the park is mostly just the novelty of descending to an area that is 282 feet below see level and has the hottest recorded temperature on the planet of 134 degrees. While we were there it was about 105 degrees, which was hot! The heat and dry climate was so oppressive that we were thirsty all day long and needed to drink quite a bit of water throughout the day. In that type of climate the human body loses about 1 gallon of water a day. This was especially true while hiking a couple of the many trails that the park has to offer.

There is no vegetation in most of the park so shade was a rare and a welcome relief from the sun when we found it. Most shade was provided by the walls in the canyons we hiked.

The landscape in Death Valley looked like much of what we saw while driving across Arizona and New Mexico so there wasn't anything to distinct about this particular park relative to scenery.

After a long day in the heat we jumped in the truck, cranked up the A/C, and headed back to camp for the day in search of our next adventure!

At sea level, heading to Badwater Basin which is the lowest spot in America.

We didn't drink all of the water, some of it Tristan poured over his head.

The girls at the natural bridge rock formation.

Water/Shade break!

At Badwater Basin with the salt flats behind us. And yes, that is standing water in the background. The water has a high salt content and not fit for consumption which is where the area's namesake is derived.

Officially at 282 feet below sea level.

On the salt flats.

Hiking to the natural bridge

A shade break.

The kids "striking a pose" during our hike through a canyon.

Water!

and more water...

Tristan taking flight...

Who knew that Death Valley had flying monkeys...

Even Izabelle got into the action.

I don't fly. As a matter of fact, balancing can be a bit of a challenge for me!

Enjoy the Ride!

Seth and Katherine