Vacation Highlights

 Mom has this beautiful row of agapanthus lining the driveway. They are almost as tall as me. Just gorgeous!

 Dallen made some friends in the neighborhood while we were visiting. He enjoyed begging over and over and over again to go play with his new playmates.

 We took a trip down to the Hitachi Data Center. Mom toured us around the whole place and we even got to eat lunch in the cafeteria. It reminded me a lot of the Novell Campus but much bigger. The boys were pretty well behaved, but we got to hang out in a meeting room and play hangman while Dave did a phone interview with the company. Pretty cool to finally see where my Mom works.

 We took a little trip down to Uvas canyon to see some redwoods, and take a little hike to some waterfalls. It was a great hike, and it was perfect for the kids. We were lucky to see some great trees and wildlife. We found this snapper trying to climb uphill. He was nervous at our presence and snapped a couple times at Marc.

 I think we all enjoyed exploring the trail and had a fun time together.

 All good things must come to an end right? Well before we know it, it was time to pack up and head out. We made our plans accordingly and left Saturday morning at about 6:30am. the boys were groggy and were great for the beginning of the trip.

Well as much as it pains me to say this, I made a huge mistake in our navigation. We were cruising on I-80 and made it to Sacramento. we continued on through and about 50 miles out of town started hitting stop lights...on the freeway?! What?! Pull up the GPS!! We were over an hour off on some state road headed towards Lake Tahoe. How or when it happened still is a question, but we continued on this two lane 65 mile an hour road heading towards Carson City. We could see that the road led up to I-80 so we just needed to take the detour. Well detour is a light word. This was like a slow windy steep road all the way up to the sierras and then all the way back town to the Lake. Both the boys got car sick, and I was more than frustrated getting stuck behind camper after camper going 35 mph. This short detour ended up adding 4.5 hour to our over 12 hour drive!

  This was the view 25 miles out from Wendover. This is smoke from the fires in Utah. Red and black, and we were driving right into it. All that we had been reading on the news was becoming our reality. It was hard leaving Moms on such a high and coming home to this sight. But we kept on truckin' and made it home just after midnight. Making it the longest trip we have done with the kids. It was all worth it, and I miss my Mom already.