On The Road To Mammoth - A Quest for the Perfect Campsite

Ok. Holy crap!! It has been so long since I have been to my blog. Ok well that isn't true…I come and look at it all the time and think to myself, “wow…I haven’t updated since August 8th, I am a loser!” I promise you I am not a loser I have just had a ton going on. With going on vacation and then coming home from vacation only to have to leave again for an unexpected trip to Oregon in order to attend my grandpa’s funeral, it really takes a lot out of a girl. Not to mention I have some other stuff going on but you will just have to wait to hear more about that.

Anyways, I am finally getting back into a schedule so I decided I would come back and take care of my good old blog. Ok, where did we last leave off…? Oh that is right, I was headed to Mammoth for a camping trip with Danny, the kids (our dogs) and our good friends Tom and Sheila. I think this might be other multiple posting trip, I haven’t decided yet, I guess we will all just have to wait and see!! Hold your breath.

I have delayed long enough so lets just get started with the story already!! Danny told Tom and Sheila to be to our house at 4am, yep you heard me right, that is 4 in the morning!! Danny even forewarned Tom that pretty much the only way to upset me on a camping trip is to be late hitting the road. The reason you ask? I will OBSESS the entire time that we aren’t going to get the perfect spot because we didn’t leave right on time!! I know me obsess…crazy!! So needless to say Tom and Sheila pulled up just a minute or two after 4am.

Don't they look so happy to be there at four in the morning??

I must admit that Danny and I were still loading up a few things in the car when they got there. BUT in all fairness we, being the experience campers, had a ton of stuff to bring and we were on the road by 4:15am! Mammoth here we come!

The drive there was actually a pretty nice drive. We stopped a couple times to use the rest room and we even stopped in the glamorous town of Lone Pine for some breakfast. It was a nice break because we had a sit down meal.



Our cute camping friends!!


The only thing that was not perfect about this little restaurant was the temperature! It was FREEZING!! I thought we were in the snow covered mountain of Mammoth not in a town that usually has temperatures over 100!!

Now for those of you that know me you know that this would normally NOT fit into my schedule for finding the most perfect camping spot ever... but the breakfast was so good that I forgot about that (and lucky for Tom we still found an AWESOME spot).

I got eggs, bacon, a big ass thing of hash browns (yummy MY FAVORITE), a diet coke and to top it all off a side of biscuits and gravy!! DELICIOUS!!


Here is the aftermath of breakfast!


Tummies full it was back on the road for us. A Mad-Lib or two later (yes we played Mad-libs, and over walkie talkies at that), a quick nap and a final bathroom stop, we were in Mammoth!! It really didn’t take us too much time at all; I think we arrived somewhere around 10:00am.

We decided after arriving it was best to divide and conquer!! I thought it was our best shot at getting a good camping spot. We radioed Tom and Sheila the sites that they should head to and we headed to our favorite campsite, fingers crossed that we would luck out and get a good spot. Well the Camping God’s must have been smiling down on us, because although we didn’t get our spot we had last time we got a NICE spot in our FAVORITE campsite, Minaret Falls. We radioed Tom and Sheila and told them to abandon their search we found the Great Mammoth 2008 spot!!

Of course to document the occasion I had to get a picture of our campsite before we settled in.



Plus stating that I am the official trip photographer is always a good excuse to get out of helping unload and set up. I am one smart camper!! I do come from Oregon you know. Hehehehehehe.

After setting up our home we were all a little hungry so we sat down to relax a little and have a quick bite to eat (Aspen already looks pooped).


Our bellies full again it was time to get to the business of fishing; I mean that is what we were there for.

Danny gave everyone lessons on how to tie their line; as usual I kind of paid attention thinking to myself that I could just have Danny tie my line. Hehehehe. Hey I may be from Oregon but I am still a girl!!


Pole lessons (no not that kind of pole lessons SICKO) down it was time to hit the stream. We didn’t have to go too far as the stream was RIGHT behind our campsite. This was nice for the atmosphere and convenience but as any good fisher girl knows, streams right behind the campsite are never that good for fishing. We still gave it a shot and had a good time trying. It was a good warm up for Tom who hadn’t been fishing since he was eight!!

Here is Danny helping Tom get untangled, I think this was the fist of many times.


And Danny helping Sheila.


Of course I had to get a shot of the couple first fishing experience together, an important occasion to remember!! Hehehehe.


Oh and how could I almost forget that the dogs were in on the action too!!

Aspen is always trying to get rid of the pesky water.


Gracie loves the water and would live in it if we let her! Do they sell dog scuba gear? She is either always lying in the water (sleeping and water, her two favorite things) or gets her self all wet and selects a nice sun spot!!


Yes, I just decided, this is for sure a two posting trip. This one is just too long as it is. So I know you are hanging on the edge of your seat waiting to see how the rest of the trip went but you will just have to wait longer!!! Come back soon!!

Emotions

Yes I am still here. I am a bad blog updater as of late. I have so much to update you on but for now it will just have to be a preview of what is to come. So much has been going on that I just haven’t had time to update any of it! It sucks!!

To start it off we had some crazy stuff go on with a neighbor of mine that is just so disheartening to me. I am the kind of girl that has trust in everyone and thinks that nobody I know would do something bad or do something hurtful to me. I won’t go into the details but the basics of it are that a neighbor we have always been very nice too…did favors for, made Christmas treats for every year (and other holiday treats), gave gifts to children, invited to all our parties and so on, totally betrayed us. And by betrayed us I don’t mean in that high school girl kind of way, “that bitch totally stole my boyfriend”, but in the real sense of the word. It has left me hating that I live next door to this person and worried all the time about what will come of this. Every time I go outside my door I hope that I won’t run into them because I am still so angry and that isn’t the kind of neighbors I want. I love to be the friendly neighbor that does make the holiday treats year after year (even if nobody else does), welcomes new neighbors in and considers relationships with old neighbors as something special, so this truly is an upsetting thing for me. Anyways enough about that for now, on to other things.

So all that stuff with the neighbor drama happened two nights before we were set to leave for camping; fortunately although it put us behind in schedule we were able to get everything done in time and head off for four (much needed) days of camping!!

Yep that is right…that is the big posting I have coming up. We went camping in Mammoth for four days with some friends of ours and it was so AWESOME!! We had the best time and of course I took tons of pictures. That one will be coming in the next couple of days as I will have some time on my hands to update. Here is a sneak peak of the trip and all the fun times to come with that posting.


I guess I am going through all the emotions in this post, I started with anger/betrayal, moved into happiness and now I have something sad to share. On Wednesday night my grandpa passed away. He truly was an amazing man and the only grandfather I ever really knew. While I know that this is what is best for him, that now he no longer has to experience pain or discomfort, and that he is with my Granny Go, I am still selfish and wish that he had more time. I don’t want to talk too much about this yet but I would like to say that life isn’t about waiting. I have been waiting and waiting to plan a trip to my hometown to go visit both my Grandpa and my Gram but I just never found the time or the money. It is now that I am beginning to realize that when people have said to me, if you wait for things in life till you have enough money or time, you will miss out on so much. There is never enough time or money. Well now I get that trip but it is for all the wrong reasons and while I will get to say goodbye to my Grandpa it isn’t going to be the way I should have said good-bye to him. I wish more than anything that I could have just five more minutes with him to hug him and say goodbye; to tell him that I know he will be going to be with my Granny Go, that so many people will miss him and that he truly touched my life. Life isn’t about waiting.

I miss you already Grandpa.

Day 3 in Santa Barbara - Our Final Day, Solvang, a BRIEF Casino Trip and Home!!

And so our journey is coming to an end, this is my final posting of our trip to Santa Barbara. Maybe you are sad or maybe you are screaming for joy that I will now be free to blog about the many other exciting adventures in “Heatherland”. Either way I don’t care just as long as you are reading and COMMENTING on my blog. And to be honest with you guys at this point SB was so long ago the details of the day have left my head to make room for new blog details. I just need to get caught up on my blog so I can blog in real time, it sounds good but we all know the chances of it happening are slim. I have been promising forever with ZERO results. I know my faults.

Ok so anyways enough about my lack of blogging skills and on to the final day in SB! We started off the day with another 6:30am wake-up courtesy of Aspen, I love him but come, can’t you at least wait till 7:30am to wake me up!! Please, just once! Or at least while we are on vacation. I don't ask for a lot from you as a dog, you really owe me. This day wasn’t the same as the day before, where I got to sleep while Danny took the doggies out, because as Danny put it, “I did it yesterday; it’s your turn today”! I had no argument, he was right. So with my eyes barely open I got dressed and headed out with the dogs. As sleepy as I was it really was just so pretty at our hotel in the morning that I didn't really mind being up so early. Once you exited our door the pathway was full of gorgeous flowers and immediately to the right was the ocean. It was so early (plus it was an overcast weekend) and there was a thick layer of fog. I was able to force the dogs into taking this shot, which if you have ever tried to get two dogs that just want to play, to sit still for a picture at the same time you would give me an award for getting this shot.


It was actually nice to be out there so early with the dogs, so quiet, peaceful and beautiful. We walked down the beach path to the front of the hotel, where along the way we saw the hotel staff putting a huge effort into setting up for that days Mothers Day brunch and we also met another yellow lab, he was only 9-months-old and nearly the same size as Aspen. His parents are in for a treat. It was a great way to spend the morning but I was still a little sleepy so it was back to the hotel room for us.

After snoozing a little more all four of us were up for the day and trying to decide what to do for our last day in SB. Since the hotel brunch the previous day was so good I suggested to Danny that we try the Mother’s Day brunch if there were spots available. We figured it would be a little more expensive with the holiday but when Danny called to see if there were spots available, which there were, he asked the price. Now remember brunch at our hotel the day before was $16, on this day…$68!! Needless to say we passed on that and just ordered room service which was very nice and not $150.

Originally we were going to head to the polo grounds in SB on our last day, which would have been fun since I have never been to a polo match (I would have felt like Julie Roberts in Pretty Women minus the whole hooker part) but we figured since we had the dogs with us that probably wouldn’t work out to well and we decided on Solvang instead. We packed up, said good-bye to the Fess Parker Double tree and hit the road again.

Just in case you don’t know, Solvang is a small city in the Santa Ynez Valley. Solvang was originally founded in 1911 by a group of Danish educators, and while few Danish people actually live there today it still maintains the huge Danish feel and caters to tourists. The buildings in the town are insanely cute.


Just a little trivia question…What 2004 Oscar winning film was shot mostly in the town of Solvang?...still thinking…ok, I will give you a hint, think wine…just a few more minutes…give up?…”Sideways”. If you haven’t seen it you should check it out. If you got it right I have a prize for you, you get to comment on my blog!! Yay, you are so lucky. If you didn’t get it, your cost for losing is that you have to comment on my blog. Sucks to be you.

Of course our first stop in Solvang was one of its many bakeries, we selected Mortensen’s.


There was so many things to choose from, breads, muffins, creampuffs, cinnamon rolls and basically any pastry you could imagine. Danny selected a cinnamon roll and me, I of course went with the éclair.


The éclair was rather good except I must confess, I did get a little sad when I realized there was a thin layer of fruit filling. Make that #248 of weird things about Heather (for those of you that really know me, you already know this), I don’t like fruit in syrup or for that matter baked fruit…I think fruit should only be eaten has God made it, cold, crispy and fresh!! Before you worry too much, I know you were, it was ok…I was able to take of the bottom layer and still enjoy my éclair. Oh, you want proof; I see what kind of friend you are not trusting me. Here you go…me eating my éclair.


And just because we are so cute here are me and my babies in front of the bakery.


I know it really seems like we spent a lot of time at the bakery, so let’s move on! TO THE CANDY STORE. This was no small candy store; it was one of those that are just full of barrels and barrels of candy.


I am pretty sure that Danny thought he had died and gone to heaven. I waited outside while he carefully selected each piece of candy that he wanted. Which if you want to know was $16.00 worth of candy!! What can I say he loves his candy.


At this point we are fully set up with sugar and walking around seems to be the perfect idea. The town is so cute, perfect and quaint. Danny found this really awesome art gallery that he liked and while he was inside checking it out (I was waiting outside with the dogs) he found out the artist was there. We must have good timing because he is only there two weeks a year! Danny was able to get a picture with him.


There we so many little shops, bakeries and cafés in Solvang, it is nice to be able to visit stuff like this. My favorite was all the little courtyards they had, you would turn a corner and there would be a little courtyard, with benches, fountains and surrounded by little shops. This picture is one of my favorite of the trip.


After having our fill of bread, pastries and sugar is was time to say good-bye to Solvang. Thanks for letting us visit. We will be back!

On our way into Solvang we had passed an Indian casino. I asked Danny if we could stop here on the way back, it has been so long since I have been to Vegas and I miss it so. I thought maybe this would satisfy me for awhile. Wrong. Unless by satisfy you mean take all my remaining cash from the trip in under 15 minutes. If that is what you meant then you would be so right. I played Danny’s new found game from his last trip to Vegas, 3-Card-Poker. Danny swore that you couldn’t lose at this game. I think he must have meant you can’t WIN at this game. I maybe won one hand the entire time I was there. Boo…I just wanted to get out of there; so after my luck left me hanging we quickly got up from the poker table.

I have something to say to you Indian Casino! I am afraid I don’t like you, you treated me just as poorly has Vegas has in the past. I am not sure why I thought our relationship would be any different, please don’t try and contact me again. I don’t have room in my life for more than one relationship that takes me money and kicks me to the curb, you must go. I cannot afford you and it will be best for us to sever all ties.

However on the way out I spotted the perfect picture opportunity. I would like to say that it was worth the money I lost in the casino but I don’t think that would be true. It was close to it, but not quite.


What do you think?

After my misfortunes at the casino I thought it was time to call an end to our weekend in Santa Barbara so it was homeward bound for us. The four of us had a great weekend but we all were a little tired and looking forward to getting home.

You call all breath a sigh of relief, my SB blog postings are over and I will now move on to more interesting posts.

Again I can’t say how much I have enjoyed the last 10 years and how much I am looking forward to the next 10. I love you Danny and thanks for being you.

P.S.

If you want to see all the pictures from Santa Barbara I loaded them on my picture page:

http://hmwilson8.smugmug.com/

Day 2 In Santa Barbara – The Zoo, Hiking, Room Service and a Movie

All right you better buckle in for this one…it is going to be a long post. I can’t say sorry for it because the reason it is so long is that I have such an AWESOME boyfriend; he takes me to do SO many fun things. So consider yourself forewarned and while you are at it grab a snack and a soda, you might need refreshments. And remember...don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ok so where we last left off…Danny and I had put the “kids” to bed and were headed out to dinner…let’s pick up the next morning. As I mentioned above my boyfriend is awesome so on Saturday morning he let me sleep in while he took Aspen and Gracie out for their morning walk at 6:30am. If you know Aspen at all you know that once he is ready to get up to eat and go potty you are just wasting your time if you try and make him wait. They were gone for about 30 minutes so I was just falling back into a good sleep when eight muddy paws woke me back up. I couldn’t complain because they are so cute, I am sure that the maid staff at the hotel couldn’t complain however…white sheets and muddy paws don’ mix…SORRY Fess!!

In true vacation fashion after Danny got back with the dogs we decided to sleep a little longer…it was nice. I LOVE to sleep in, especially with my boyfriend and doggies cuddled up with me!!
With our morning nap complete, the dogs fed and out for a second bathroom run we decided to head to the hotel restaurant for the breakfast buffet. I was starving!! Not to mention I freakin love breakfast food…eggs, toast, omelets (I know technically a repeat of eggs but so good they deserve their own category), cereal, bacon, sausage and HASHBROWS all washed down with what else…a diet coke!! Maybe all these things are sounding even better to me right now because I am currently on a “diet”. Hehehe.

On a side note my smart boyfriend, at a pretty family friendly hotel, decided to wear his shirt that on the front says, “NERD” and peek around to the back in BIG writing it says, “BOOGER 69”…classy I know. Standing in line at the omelet station we thought about what his shirt said. I think it is a cute shirt but maybe not what parents want their kids to read, hehehhe. Good thing Danny had his jacket handy so he covered up the “BOOGER 69” part for breakfast. Yep…we are always looking out for others.

After breakfast we were headed for the Santa Barbara Zoo!! We plugged the address in our navigation and hit the road…for a mile and a half. The funny part is if we had stayed at the original crappy hotel the zoo was directly behind us!! We didn’t realize this so we would have put the address in the navigation and driven the block from said crappy hotel to the zoo. Hehehe.


I really wasn’t expecting much from the zoo…I mean I didn’t even know there was a zoo in SB until I drove by the sign on the freeway. But then when I read the information Danny printed out in preparation for our trip it said that it was consistently rated one of the best small zoos in the nation. I was a little pumped; after all I love to see animals!! As we headed through the zoo gates I was ready to rock!

Ok, so the first thing we came upon wasn’t really an animal but it provided a great photo-op courtesy of Danny:


If I had to guess I would say that we spent at least 20 minutes in this spot, adjusting angles and waiting for people to move out of the way so that Danny could get the perfect shot. He is a perfectionist!!

After spending some quality time with the blue parrots we set off to find some “real” animals!! One might not think this would be too difficult a task since we were at a zoo and all!! WRONG! This was very hard. First of all the zoo path didn’t go in any particular order, so you could make a turn and be back where you had already walked five times (seeing no animals) and totally miss a path you hadn’t even been on once!! We finally came across two lions but I couldn’t get a good shot of them since they sleep about 20 hours a day (they should hang out with my dogs)!!

We passed this little kid play area that had a train station you could board and the train went all around the zoo. Do you see where this is headed? NO! Well then you must be slow and in that case…let me break it down for you. Four dollars later Danny and I were onboard the train, with all the little kids, ready to take a trip around the zoo. Now mind you Danny did not want to ride the train but I thought it would be the best way to see all the animals, this way we could see where they were all located and get a game plan for the zoo. Holy crap…how many times can I be wrong in one zoo trip. We saw pretty much ZERO animals on our train ride around the zoo. We did however see the freeway and our first CRAPPY hotel.

Ok, so the train ride wasn’t really all that helpful in locating animals but if you were looking to see the outer edge of the zoo, crappy hotels and freeway then it was totally worth the money. For us it looked like we were on our own. Things did pick up a little after this. We found some elephants. Which I think are rather unique, I mean they are HUGE, gray and leathery but still manage to be cute at the same time!! Danny snapped this shot, and I am sure I don’t need to tell you that it involved another 20 minutes to get just the right shot (my little perfectionist).


After the elephants it was my favorite part of the zoo trip…the giraffe!! I know you might be thinking…how can a giraffe be all that exciting. Well these giraffe’s were great because I got to feed them (for a small fee of course)!! Here is me and my giraffe friend:


You also might ask why I wasn’t looking at the camera, Danny did. I have a great answer for that…the giraffe was very impatient!! If you didn’t give him his giraffe rice cake (I named the giraffe snacks this because they literally eat them one after another since every zoo visitor wants to feed them so they have to be low in calories or the zoo would have some FAT giraffes on their hands) he would LUNGE and HISS at you!! I didn’t know a giraffe could hiss either but take my work for it, they do!! I had to keep my eye on this one!

Once I was able to get away from the hissing giraffe we found these Meerkats, I snapped this picture and I love it because he is just chillin, cause that is what Meerkats do...chill!


I really do love any sort of apes, gorillas or monkeys so when I found this guy I was so excited, except he looked so sad.


I thought maybe he was sad because he was all alone but I found his buddy in the corner. Their enclosure was pretty small…I think they should get moved to a bigger zoo, but that is just me. Before we left he decided to lie down and looked a little sadder, poor gorilla.


On a funny note we found this cool wall that I look at as the perfect photo-op!
A little monkey “product placement” (shout out to Melissa)”:


Danny and his friends, just hangin out:


What in the heck? Is that chimp on my head? Why YES, it is!!


Me and my family tree!!


We did see some other things on the trip like snakes, roaches, lizards, penguins and such but overall nothing too exciting. Maybe I am just spoiled living so close to places like the San Diego Wild Animal Park and I should learn to see the value in small zoos. I think the problem is small zoos means small animal enclosures which equals sad animals and sad Heather.

I do have one last picture to share from the zoo, it is so sweet, they look like they are in love…maybe it was their ten year anniversary too!!


One “small” zoo trip down we headed back to the hotel to pick up the dogs. I missed them. We picked them up and headed off to a trail that Danny had researched (I know…what an awesome guy) to go for a hike. This trail was INSANELY pretty!! I don’t think I have ever been on such a pretty hike. It really was awesome. You drive right up to the back of the trail, park and walk right in. The view, in case you didn’t get this already, was AMAZING. There were all this beautiful trees and then just a huge cliff that dropped waaaayyyyy down into ocean (you really can't tell how far it is from the pictures).


While this part was pretty it did make me a little nervous because the dogs were off leash. I was afraid the dogs we go to get a quick peak and then slip right off the side. When ever we got around other dogs, and there were tons, I was the nervous mom constantly yelling at Aspen and Gracie to come back and stay right next to me. These other dogs seemed familiar with the trail and obviously knew that one step too far would end in certain death…Aspen and Gracie didn’t seem to be aware of this.

We found some nice fellow hikers that took this picture of two of us:


Of course Danny was upset because it didn’t have the angle that he want but for me it was one of my favorites of the trip because we were both in it, I think it is the only one we got on the entire trip. I always say I wish we had someone that we could bring along on all our outings just to snap pictures of us…our own little paparazzi!!

Here is one of me and the kids:


Of course Danny was happy with the angle on this one because he got to take it. This is also why it appears that Aspen and Gracie are attempting to run out of the shot, they got tired after posing after the first 500 shots. Hehehe.

I like this one because it isn’t a perfect picture, it was really windy and my hair was going crazy…and look how cute Gracie is with her tongue hanging out.


Here is one of me that Danny took at the edge of the cliff:

This one is cool because the sailboat in the background. There were a ton of sailboats in Santa Barbara…they are cute. Newport is full of powerboats, which are also nice and more convenient but I think sailboats are beautiful.

I am not sure if I have mentioned or not before how much I love my dogs…but it is a LOT!! That might be why this is another of my favorite pictures from the trip.


Such pretty babies!!

And finally to close out our segment on hiking if you ever find yourself in SB, looking for a place to hike, here is the name of the trail we were on:


I highly recommend it!!

I think it is totally obvious in the last picture that the dogs were pretty tired and looking for a break, well Danny and I were also looking for a break, but in the form of food!! A good hike works up a good appetite. We were so hungry that we decided to head back to the same place we went the day before, on the pier, since we knew that they would take the dogs and we thought the meal was pretty good. I snapped this picture of Danny checking out the menu:


AND right after that we were asked to leave!! Yep!! I said it!! Our waitress came up saying something about our dogs being cute but that she couldn’t have them stay. Now keep in mind that we were sitting two tables over from where we had just eaten, with the dogs, less than 24 hours ago. This of course made Danny mad…but made no difference to the waitress as she said, “it’s like California law or something…” and that is a direct quote. I guess the day before it was ok for them to break the law but not that day…maybe it is only a law on Saturday’s…hehehhe. We left.

Still hungry and having been kicked out of the restaurant we wanted to eat at we headed to State Street to see what we could find. We found a cute little California bistro. Another picture of Danny checking out the menu:


I realize this post is super long so I will spare you the details of this meal (we didn’t get kicked out) but let’s just say that it was our waiters first week and he wasn’t very skilled at his job. The food was good, at least, even if we had to wait FOREVER!!

So in the condensed version we went back to the hotel, checked out a couple more things around the hotel, took the dogs for a walk and then debated over what to do for dinner. We had a fairly long day with the zoo and hike so we thought it would be fun and romantic to order room service and watch a movie. So we did!!

It was a yummy dinner; our hotel did a great job. I forgot to get a picture of the food but Danny had salmon and I had chicken. I did get a picture of the soup that we started off with:


And here is one of Danny enjoying his soup and movie (we got Rambo 4 on PPV, nothing says romance and 10 years like Rambo, hehehehe):


And here is his approval on the soup (notice the diet coke because what meal would be complete with out diet coke in Heather’s world…NONE):


And so day two in Santa Barbara concludes with dinner and a movie, in bed. Make sure you stayed tuned for our final day in Santa Barbara, which includes such highlights as a trip to Solvang and a very (very) brief casino trip!!