Family Vacation to California - Next Stop Yosemite

Our next destination on our California vacation was Yosemite. We found a cute little cottage to rent in Clovis through Airbnb which was about 45 minutes away from the park. The cottage was located on a small farm and had goats and chickens which made Hannah happy.

It took about 45 minutes to get to the gate at Yosemite, then at least another hour to get to a place where we could park. It was very crowded, but we were told it would be worse on the weekend. We ended up using the shuttle service inside the park to get around.

The first hike we did was to Vernal Falls. We only went to the bridge which was
about a two mile hike round trip.

The Vernal Falls trail was a pretty steep hike. After that, we chose to follow some of the easier trails. I had read an article about Yosemite's 10 Best Easy Hikes prior to our trip, so we decided to use that as a guide.

Our next hike was Lower Yosemite Falls. It was just about a mile round trip and was a pretty easy hike.

After this hike, we went to the gift shop and purchased some souvenir t-shirts, then ate a late lunch/early dinner. We decided we had time for one more location, so we decided on Glacier Point since it was number 1 on the list we were following. We also decided to drive there because the shuttle didn't go where we wanted to be. It took over an hour to drive there. We did stop along the way when we saw some snow.

The views from Glacier Point were amazing!

If you look carefully, you'll see the rainbow.

By the time we finished at Glacier Point, it was after 8pm and we were exhausted. We would have liked to have seen more, but we only allotted for one day at the park. This is definitely some place we want to come back to one day.

Family Vacation to California- Los Angeles

James graduated over a year ago, but last summer, we didn't have the extra money or much free time, so we didn't go on graduation trip. Better late than never! We let James pick our destination. He really wanted to go to Alaska or somewhere where he could see the Northern Lights. Those options were a little (a lot) out of our price range. We discussed different options in the US, and he chose California. He was particularly interested in seeing National Parks and Alcatraz.

Flights were significantly cheaper flying in and out of Los Angeles, so we added LA to the trip, too.

We stayed in a Super Eight Hotel in Long Beach for our two nights in LA. It was really challenging to find hotels on the trip. Our teenagers are adult sized and 2 double beds won't cut it! We chose this hotel partly because of the price (it was pretty cheap by LA hotel prices), but the room had 2 king sized beds. We had a corner room which was very large. The shower was a little on the short side for Chris & James, but we were only there for two nights. Plus, breakfast was included which is always nice.

While in the Los Angeles area, we discovered Echo Park.

We went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios.

We did the Hollywood Walk of Fame & Grauman's Chinese Theater.

We got to catch a glimpse of Will Ferrell on the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show.

We went to Griffith Park for some hiking and to see the observatory.

We managed to cram in a lot during our short stay in LA.