summer travels

The thing I've been most looking forward to this summer is being able to travel in California. With Jeffrey back in Michigan for the summer and Stella off from school, I will be using much saved up vacation time to explore California with Stella.

I learned too late that in order to booking campsites in the major parks (Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Sequoia, etc), you have to book the site in the first moments that you are allowed to, 6 months in advance. It's crazy, but they book up that fast! Fortunately, since we're traveling during the week, I was able to get us some campsites in private campgrounds very near the parks we want to see. So far, I have arranged two trips for us.

The first, in early July will bring us down to Big Sur where we will camp here for two nights. From there we drive down to Los Angeles where we will meet up with Stella's mother and niece and spend a couple days with them and explore LA. From there we drive into the desert and camp two nights at Joshua Tree National Park before returning home.

Later in July we have a campsite just outside of Yosemite for three nights. We'll probably have time for one other small trip... I would like to visit Lake Tahoe and stay somewhere nice and romantic for a couple of days before Stella resumes her teaching duties in mid August. So Sequoia will have to wait until next year, but we'll still take some wonderful day trips around the area. We still need to explore Santa Cruz, Monterey, Pinnacles National Monument and so much more!