Spring break 2013 (Part 4) Sequoia National Park

Tuesday morning we had a great continental breakfast at the Comfort Inn & Suites. It was about an hour drive from the hotel to the Foothills Visitor Center of Sequoia National Park, we drove an additional hour through the Giant Forest to see the world's largest living tree: General Sherman Tree. After hiking for about 3/4 mile, we saw the big tree, 311ft in height, 3,200 years old and weight 2.7 million lbs, the base of Sherman tree is 40 feet diameter! We picked up some cones with seeds fell off the Sherman tree and took them back to our cabin.

We left the park at around 4pm and had Chinese buffet dinner in Bakersfield before driving another hour to our cabin in PMC to spend a night.

Spring break 2013 (Part 3) Yosemite National Park

It's Monday morning, it took us a little over an hour drive from Sonora to the west gate of Yosemite National Park. It's been about 18 years since Helen and I were here last time! It felt so good to bring our 8 & 9 year old girls along this time to revisit this beautiful National Park! The girls were so excited to see the beauty of nature. After a quick picnic lunch in the park, we drove to the Village Center and visited the Valley Visitor Center & the Yosemite Museum, Here we have all these pictures to share with you! We stayed past 4pm and drove south to Fresno. We didn't find interest in Fresno when we pass by the town on route 99 so we continue our drive to Rosalia, a town 45 miles south of Fresno, we had dinner at another local Chinese restaurant, Canton Restaurant, the owner of the restaurant recommended us to visit the Sequoia National Park which is located about an hour east of the town. We decided to add this bonus visit to our trip on the next day!!

Spring break 2013 (Part 2) Old Sacramento & Sutter's Mill

On Sunday morning, after we had breakfast at Denny's next to the motel, we drove half an hour and stopped by Lodi to visit my 1st house and the old neighbors. My old house has already changed hands twice and my best neighbor Donna & Keith are still living in the same house. I was sorry to learn that their son Dale passed away couple years ago due to a scuba diving accident.

We drove directly to Old Town Sacramento and visited the California State Railroad Museum. After that, we drove a little over an hour east to the city of Coloma and visited the Sutter's Mill, the 1st gold discovery site! We then drove all the way to Sonora on route 49 and stayed at a motel next to the historic Sonora Inn, a haunted hotel. Dinner at Hong Kong Garden restaurant was a fun experience, food portion was very small, the girls love it but we were still hungry after dinner.

Spring break 2013 (Part 1) Visiting Perry's family

We didn't go to Canada this Spring break, instead we made a four day trip to visit Sacramento, Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park.

The trip started on Saturday the 23rd. We left home at around 8:30am and stopped by Starbucks for breakfast in Oxnard. Helen drove all the way to Atascadero, a small city in San Luis Obispo County. We had buffet lunch in a Chinese restaurant, food was cheap and tasted so so but we were not expecting too much being in the middle of nowhere. We made another stop at Gilroy and did some shopping at the outlet mall before our scheduled arrival at my high school buddy Perry's house in Fremont before 6pm. Our girls instantly made connection with Perry's kids Nat and Jon, they had lots of fun shooting each other with Nerf guns! Perry the chef made delicious dinner for us, we had scallop, tofu, fried rice, salmon sashimi and steaks! Too bad that Anita wasn't home due to her business trip to China. We stayed till 10pm and drove to Tracy and stayed a night there.

Shooting and hiking

I have been thinking of teaching the girls to shoot for a while...  This morning we drove about 10 minutes to the west on Mil Potrero Hwy from our cabin to a shooting place just off the road. Vivian  complained that the sound of gun shot being too loud and was afraid to shoot. Erica had lots of fun shooting a .22 semi-automatic and a .38 Special revolver. We also brought a 12 gauge but the recoil scared Erica.

After a quick lunch, we drove to the the end of Woodland Ave at PMC and hike up to the waterfall, this was the first hiking trail we explored at PMC.