Genoa

I just looked through all of the blogs that I follow (there are around 10 of them) and I realized that all of them had been updated, except for one (Katie). They gave me the motivation to update our blog, since it has been a couple of weeks.

Over the Labor Day weekend we went to Genoa Nevada with Chase's family, because his parents have a timeshare at Wally World (really David Wally's resort, but they really like the movie Vacation). Even though it would have been much faster to go north on the 99 then over the mountains, we went through Yosemite and north through the little mountain desert towns.

This first picture is of the famous Jeffrey Pine tree at Olmstead Point in Yosemite. Usually there are crowds of people around it, but it was dark. This is about the tenth picture that Chase took and each of them had an exposure of about 2 minutes. I held the iPad in flashlight mode to the left of Chase for the entire exposure and it turned out really neat!

While waiting for Chase's family to catch up to us at Tuolome Meadows, we had two guys walk up and knock on our car to ask where they could camp that night. Since it was Labor Day and Yosemite, all of the campgrounds were full, especially since it was about 10 at night. Chase told them to drive out to the desert because anyone can camp anywhere, but it sounded like they were going to walk up a trail about a mile and get up before the sun rose. Hopefully they didn't get caught or eaten by a bear. Has anyone heard about two Israeli men eaten by a bear in Yosemite?

That night we camped in a Jeffrey Pine forest in the desert by Mono Lake with Chase's family. The air in Jeffrey forests always smells of butterscotch because of the trees. The next day (Saturday) we started in the general direction of Wally's, but we got sidetracked a lot. We stopped in Bridgeport to watch a team branding competition (they used paint) and then we stopped in Walker Canyon at the boulder that I fell off of exactly three years ago. I have never been in so much pain in my entire life. Needless to say, I didn't even get close to the boulder. Chase's mom, dad, and brother left us there while we waited for our friends the Ellisons. They drove down from Reno to spend the day with us, and we had a great time with them rock climbing and swimming!

Sunday Chase, Sam, and Chuck played frisbee golf on the course in Tahoe while I read a book. At about 6, we decided to climb to the D that was on the hill right across from the resort. It was on the top of a very steep hill and only Micah (Chase's brother in law) made it to the D. I went up but decided to gingerly make my way to a less steep ridge where I could walk down safely. Since I was going so slow, Chase thought that I was stuck so he came down the hill to help me down. He is soo nice.

On Monday, we went to Lake Tahoe and watched Chase swim (I have never seen him swim so much in my entire life) and ate sandwiches. We drove home over a beautiful pass called Monitor pass that went through a alpine meadow and back down to Bridgeport. We went through Yosemite again in the dark and did not get home till 10:30.
At the top of Monitor Pass looking out towards the town of Walker in the middle, left of the hills.
Picture of Bridgeport taken by Sam
The weekend after Labor Day, I stayed home and volunteered to make up for the Monday that I missed while Chase worked on his dirtbike (which is getting close to being in one piece, more on that later) and finding boulders to climb on. This one is his next project.

Sorry about the lack of pictures and wealth of words.

P.S. Who lives in Malaysia? Someone is looking at our blog from there and I don't think either of us know anyone from there.

Hidden Secret

Do you know what is the best kept secret of the Sierras? We do. It is blackberries! For the last two years, Chase and I (with a few members of his family) pick wild blackberries from canes not far from his parents house. This year we went with Chuck and Sam and we picked about five pounds of blackberries (about 50 to 60 dollars worth) from two different sets of canes. It took us around 45 minutes to pick all of them, and the mosquitoes were horrible. Probably because one set of canes were by a pond of murky water. The first set of canes had huge bear scat piles and the canes were squished. The bears must like blackberries as much as we do!
Because most of the blackberries were pretty ripe, I froze all of them except about half a cup worth that we ate with a little sugar. Chase is going to have some pretty good smoothies!