So last night went well. I DID have to go to the bathroom. I tried and tried and tried to hold it, I tossed and turned…but it was NO good that silly baby’s just big enough that I just can’t win. I’m not scared of the dark…but in bear country or any animal country I’d rather not. So as I walked as fast as my half asleep body could carry me with the brightest flashlight I could hold I went straight to the potty. It was funny I walked by a tent full of snorers…at first I was a little startled because I could have taken that for a bear or 5 sleeping in the bushes…it’s a good thing I saw the tent when I did cause my heart started racing. The bathrooms weren’t super far…but it took a good2 minutes to walk there in the light and 100 minutes to walk there in the dark. Thankfully I can report all went well and I returned unscathed! Yeah for me…I went potty…in the night…in the middle of a Bear forest!!
How beautiful to wake up to a nice little fire and Mark up and ready to go. It was a nice 7 a.m. when this all took place. Normally I’d be a little grumpy about the earliness of the day, but as I walked out of the tent and saw the new sun streaming through the woods, it made me smile. It was rather pretty. Mark couldn’t wait for breakfast. I warned him that feeding our cattle SO early would result in a need for a morning snack or an early lunch, but he couldn’t live any longer without fixing the bacon we brought!! Eggs, bacon, bananas, and OJ (Crystal Light style) it WAS super tasty!
We got ready for our big day of hiking and walking. We had a cave to see and some super huge trees to look at and we were hoping to get to see a beautiful waterfall or two. We loaded pretty much everything back into that bear box and we were off!!
First thing was to go buy tickets for the Crystal Cave tour, good thing we went early cause it was sold out by noon! While Mark was finishing up getting the tickets I saw where we could go sit through a 20 minute movie about the bears in the forest so…we went! It was a neat movie showing how cute and sweet the Black bears really are. I was relieved to learn that the Grizzly is no longer in the state of California. We also learned what to do if we come in contact with a bear; pretty much make noise and scream at it to go away. We sadly learned the devastating future for the bear that gets a hold of human food. These bears don’t hurt people out of ferociousness they hurt people just because they are huge and heavy with big claws and teeth as they are trying to get to the human food. We also learned that once a bear got food they are pretty much in trouble cause they’ll always try again to get more and when they become too resistant to the rangers approaches to get them to return back into the wild they then have to be destroyed. The thing that stuck with me was that all a bear had to do to get into your car was push a little on your window and it’ll break!! After seeing this half of the show I must say I was actually OK with NOT seeing a single bear during this trip. I vowed to only see bears in the zoo and this was a vow I intend to keep!
As we made our way to the cave we stopped to check out the world’s largest tree(s), talk about WOW!! Not only are they super TALL but they are super large from the bottom all the way up to the top! Crazy!! It’s amazing how fast and big natural can get when left alone! We even got to walk through a tree tunnel. Inside we had a short science lesson about telling the age of the trees by counting their rings…there were just too many to count on this tree! We went up to the museum because we had a short time to wait until our cave adventure. So mark learned while I sat on a bench holding a sleeping Grissom and the kids played!
SIDE NOTE: Let me just take a moment to tell you about these roads and what a stretch it was for ME to allow my family to drive on them. We were up a nice 7000-8000ft into these mountains. As we went up we had to drive on the outside of the road. I couldn’t breath. You know the white line the crews paint on the outside of the road and how it is for our protection? Yes…this shows us where the road ends and the shoulder begins. The shoulder is the place you take your car if you are having issues and need to get off the street. Let’s just say there was NO shoulder anywhere on these roads…and in a lot more places that I’d like to admit the white line was also missing parts and pieces because the road had eroded away down the mountain. So forgive me if I sound like a baby, but I did NOT enjoy the roads. I just had to repeat,”God did not create us with a spirit of fear, but a spirit of Strength and Power!” over and over and over again. We lived.
Ok now back to our journey; onto the cave; it was zig-zaggy in fact I’d have to say we did at least 2 U-turns cause that’s how the road took us. The road also split in a place where the sequoias grew too close together. It was a fun ride and a cool one which made it nice to open the windows and relax cause we went on the edge. Once we got to the cave we had to walk a good .5 mile down the mountain to get to this cave. They let our family head down about 5 minutes before the rest of the group and it was a good thing cause that gave us a chance at making it. The kids did great it was a paved path which kind of took the fun out of it, but they said they had to pave it cause the path was too dangerous when it got wet. I’m good with the path walking, but I’m tired by this point it. My knees however had never been in so much pain! I felt like my mother, so I bit my lip and just took one for the team. It was a decent walk in some ways, especially when we got close to the cave and walked past a beautiful waterfall! The cave was a nice 50 degrees and wet. I’d been in a few caves before but Mark and the kids had not. Before we went in the guy doing our tour scared all the kids to death by telling them that if they touched ANYTHING in the cave the cave would be NO more and it would be ALL their fault. He gave them all a chance to get their ‘touchies’ out by touching the ‘Touching Rock’ but after he told the kids to go touch it no one moved…I knew better so I asked people to move so KEEGAN and the other 2 children could get their ‘touchies’ out!
It was fun to go through the cave and in some placed it got to be a tight fit even for the kids…it make for an exciting adventure. Now Mark wants to get into splunking! Yeah right! Walking up the mountain wasn’t as bad as I thought either. Besides not being able to breathe we only needed to stop once so Keegan would not die.
Five minutes after the cave adventure keegan passed out in the van and the rest of us drove passed a few other sights. We got to see Moro Rock…it was basically a mountain of rock that you could walk to the top of and I just couldn’t do that with my kids. They had only a rope fence around the top. I told Mark we’d wait in the car for him but I think he was pretty tired at this point too. So we then moved onto the Log Tunnel. It was nice…all you do is drive through the HUGE tree! How cool was that. Keegan still wouldn’t wake up so we took a picture so he could see what he did! Ha!
Now at this point we’d eaten all our snack reserves. It was a nice 6 p.m. and we have a good hour or more till we got back to our camp site for dinner. I was, to say the least, getting super nauseous and sick. I don’t think I’ve ever come as close to throwing up as I did at this moment. Mark found a tiny village with one little store and ran in and got me a muffin and snacks.
Once we’d gotten back to our site it was getting pretty dark. So team Wortley worked together and got the fire going and the food out! Those kids ate like NO OTHER! Hotdogs, corn on the cob, grapes, chips, juice, a little candy, and then of course S’mores! After this was consumed in record time Grissom comes crying to me, “Ga-Ga mom? Piw-o? Night-Night Mommy!” It didn’t take long to get what my baby was asking for. Mark said he barely got Gris’ jammies on before he was out! How sweet it that! Ella and Keegan did just as good! Mark and I finally had some time alone…too bad I couldn’t stay awake either! I felt SO bad, but I just couldn’t. So I went to the potty while the fire was still burning and Mark was still outside that way I didn’t feel so alone. And I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow. Mark came in soon after he had to wait for the fire to burn down a little more.
What a great end to a fun filled day…or is it the end?!?
No comments:
Post a Comment