After arriving back from our respective adventures and debriefing each other on all our news (we both had wonderful times and Joep was SUPER happy with his bachelor party!) Joep & I settled back into our housewife / man of the house routine. We’re getting pretty good at it JThis was especially evident when less than 24 hours after arriving back from our trips Joep called me to let me know that a friend of his from Holland was coming to stay with her husband. The house looked like a clothes bomb had gone off as I was mid laundry load but, being the wonderful housewife that I am, it was no problem!
I spent the afternoon tidying and cooking in preparation of the arrival of Joep’s friend Chantal and her new husband Roel. They’ve been travelling around California on their honeymoon and we missed each other by hours (literally) in Napa and then we’d be away in NL and NZ while they were in Laguna so alas there was only 1 night to share. We made it a good one by eating and drinking to our hearts content. It was wonderful to have our first house guests as a couple in our new (if only temporary) home!
This visit was also a lovely prelude to our next visitors and these ones were very exciting!! Our favourite Canadians Mike & Anne-Marie had arranged to fly down to SoCal for a few days to have some QT before we relocate to Australia. EEEEEEEEE!!
Friday night after work Joep & I were spoiled by an invitation to watch an NHL (ice hockey) match in a corporate box at the Honda Centre in Anaheim. Exciting!! I know the Ducks were playing. I don’t remember who their opponents were. This is largely because I spent the evening chatting with another Jen who I am VERY fond of … the joys of making new friends!
After enjoying the match Joep & I hit the road to LAX to collect our Canadians! The pick up was uneventful and before we knew it we were on the road to our home to enjoy a drink and a brief catch up. It wasn’t long before I went to bed but Joep stayed up to chat with Mike and bbq up some 2am sausages … his most recent addiction.
The rest of the Mc el Mothe visit was so jam packed and full of hilarity and fun and adventure … I grow tired just thinking about it! To keep myself from going too crazy with this blog I am going to give my highlights of their visit rather than focusing on the details.
First highlight – Beach time!! From frolicking in the ocean (watching Mike & AM in the water was like watching 2 little kids frolic through the waves … right down to the competition to get attention from mum & dad – ‘I’m swimming in no water! Look! Look at me!! I’m swimming in now water!) to posing for photo’s. Night time picnics to lunchtime ocean front feasts. Joep & I realized how quickly we have started to take the beach for granted. We’re so spoiled! Laguna Beach is seriously beautiful and it was a lot of fun to see it through the eyes of visitors and remember how blown away we were by it a year ago!
Next highlight – San Diego!! Mike had the wonderful idea of going to an NFL game (American football … I am an expert now due to our recent addiction to Friday Night Lights. Man I love that show.). So Joep researched and arranged amazing tickets for us! We headed down to San Diego to see the Chargers take on the Miami Dolphins (not the sharks … I won’t make that mistake again). It was quite the spectacle! We had nose bleed seats (something I learned living in the USA … the term ‘nose bleed’ seats does not refer to the rough crowd in the seating area which I originally thought was the case but rather refers to the fact that you are sitting up so high that it can cause nose bleeds … lesson learned!). The seats turned out to be AWESOME which made us very happy because we had missed the tail gating opportunity which we were very disappointed about.
The game was not super exciting because San Diego romped the Dolphins however the entertainment at the game was out of this world! I’m not talking about the cheerleaders or the sporting action. Instead, we were HIGHLY entertained by the folks sitting around us. It was America at its finest. Directly in front of us were some Miami supporters who were of Hispanic descent. To the left of the Miami supporters were some true Chargers fans. Morbidly obese, whisky tango at their absolute best. The racial slurs that came from the Chargers fans were pretty awful however the Miami fans took the orders to ‘go back to North Cuba’ in their stride and just laughed it off. The Chargers fans (2 couples, both equally over weight and equally disturbing to watch) proceeded to get obscenely drunk throughout the game. Towards the end of the game the 2 ladies attempted to lead the crowd in some chants only to then abuse us all for being ‘boring’ when we refused to join in and instead pointed and laughed at them.
A game highlight occurred when some people towards the front of our seating area held up a sign to the crowd that read ‘Show us your tits’ … lovely. We chuckled at the sign and the crowd cheered when to our dismay, one of the afore mentioned morbidly obese ladies stood up to take on the challenge! Seeing what was about to occur, the entire crowd started shouting ‘NOOOOOOOO!’ in unison. The sign was taken down and, appearing not NEARLY offended enough, our fat lady friend took her seat to resume drinking, crying, laughing, cheering all at the same time. To top off the day, she then proceeded to throw up on the ground beneath her seat before cleaning our her mouth with … more beer. Ugh. It was so disgusting.
The game ended on a significant high note. When the Chargers supporters stood up to leave, all of us around them were happy to see them go. Having put up with racial slurs and what not for the majority of the game, the Miami fans took this opportunity to get their own back. One of the Miami supporters threw a scrunched up piece of paper at the guy who had been telling them to go back to North Cuba. It bounced cleanly off his head causing him to turn to see who threw it. Unfortunately for me I was seated directly behind the guy who threw the paper.
The Chargers fan then proceeded to glare directly into my eyes and give me the finger shouting (in slow motion … I’m not lying) “F*#! YOU!’ Well. I was quite put out by this because I had done nothing wrong! I quietly noted this while remaining seated in my summer dress pointing down to the actual culprit. The Chargers fan was not to be put off and proceeded to tell me … and I quote … ‘Your mother should have had an abortion’. How rude! I would have been scared except at this point the guys in front of us proceeded to stand up and shout Spanish obscenities at him whilst grabbing their crotches. I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t note that Mac Daddy joined in with this. This is why we love her.
Phew! The emotional roller coaster that is American football!
After the game, feeling sufficiently entertained, we headed to down town San Diego to soak up a bit of the city atmosphere and grab a DELICIOUS Mexican dinner. We were not disappointed!!
Final highlight (even though there were many in between fun things but if I write everything this will be a huge blog …) – YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK!
Joep & I have had this on our California wish list for a while. We decided it would be a GREAT opportunity to check it out with Mike & AM! We were not wrong. The park is a 6 hour drive from our place and we wanted to road trip it there. The road trip was uneventful and Joepinator did a STELLAR job of getting us there and back safely. He also regaled us with some pretty awesome singing performances my favourite of which was the Katie Perry classic ‘There’s a spider in my bed’. We do love a good road trip!
Now, Yosemite National Park is HUGE and it is super famous for having amazing waterfalls, granite rocks and great hiking. It also supports an incredible ecosystem of wildlife and flora all of which we were lucky enough to experience! We had decided to camp in the park rather than stay in the fancy hotels and luckily for us there are some awesome campsites that don’t even require you to set up a tent! Our little camp site had a tent already set up with sleeping for 4 as well as a lovely little outdoor eating area and fire pit. Oh and lets not forget the all important anti bear food storage box!!
We only slept in the park for 1 night but boy was it action packed! Upon arrival at the park in the morning we were literally blown away by the beauty. In fact, before we even reached our camp grounds we stopped to marvel at the views of Yosemite Falls from a distance. We also used this time to take numerous photo’s … of us jumping off walls. We’ll never grow up. Never I tell you! Plus we provided great entertainment for the other tourists there J We like to give.
We were all on such a high by the time we reached the camping spot that the cold weather and rain couldn’t dampen our spirits … the weather clearly took this as a challenge. You’ll understand in a minute.
After checking into our camping spot, watching in AWE the video footage of bears climbing into cars at nighttime to steal food (seriously, these bears are wily creatures!) and enjoying a bite to eat , we headed off for our first hiking adventure (naturally, we stored all our food away safely first!).
The first hike we did was to Vernall Falls – Hilariously, and as happens on so many vacations I go on, when we were first researching which hikes we would do in the park we were seriously considering doing the Half Dome. You need to see this hike to understand why this is so hilarious. It is a full on rock climbing hike that you need serious equipment to do hahaha clearly not for us! I’m glad we figured that out early!
So the Vernall Falls high is considered by hiking guides to be moderately strenuous. The guides were correct. It was hard yakka getting up to the falls but I am not lying when I say that it was worth every puff to get up there. Every corner we turned we would all exclaim in awe about the views. It was breathtakingly beautiful and even gave the Inca Trail a run for its money (which is a HUGE call if you remember how amazed we were on the Inca Trail!). The falls were a sight to behold and we all agreed that perhaps it was a good thing that it was raining because it meant that they were really flowing. Yes, we were still challenging the weather. How silly we are!
Upon arrival at the top of the falls I was feeling less than excited about the descent. Here’s the thing, and we discussed this at length, I am pretty good at hiking up hill. For some reason, despite the fact that I never work out, I have an uncanny ability to become uber fit when hiking and make it to the summit of trails without a problem. On the flip side, I SUCK at going down. I am not sure footed. I fall over a lot and it takes me probably double the time to go down than it does to go up. AM is my polar opposite. She hates the uphill but is as nimble and sure footed as a mountain goat on the way down. We’ve decided that together we would be the ultimate hiking team and will climb Mount Everest as soon as they invent a Baby Bjorn for adults so that I can carry AM up the mountain (she will sit in the baby Bjorn on my chest using the time to conserve energy and nap) and she will then carry me down (I will nap in the adult Baby Bjorn because I will be exhausted from the climb up). I cannot wait to write that blog. I could even write the blog whilst lulling in the Baby Bjorn on the way down!
I’ve become side tracked … back to Vernall Falls. The summit was awesome. Even more exciting was that Mike figured out a looping track that meant we didn’t have to go down the way we had come. Splendid!
You want to know what was less splendid? It was starting to hail! Joep & I were having flash backs to hiking the Plain of Six Glaciers LAST summer and were just starting to regale Mike & AM with ‘hilarious’ stories of how the hail had turned to snow and we ended up doing our summer hike in a snow storm when … yup, you guessed it … the hale turned to snow!! So there we were. Four stupid tourists in summer apparel (I was at least wearing long pants!) hiking in the mountains in a snow storm.
And yet we were STILL loving it! This says a great deal about how awesome Yosemite is.
The hike back was longer than anticipated but worth it because we also got up high enough to get a great view of Nevada falls along the way. Incredible. Seriously.
We were happy to finish the hike though. We were all frozen and very excited to get into a car with heating to head back to our camp site. The evening that followed may well be one of the funniest of my life. It was freezing. It snowed throughout the night in the park (but not at our campsite … a small blessing) and it rained pretty much non stop at our camping ground.
A wonderful fire was lit and we managed to make hotdogs and enjoy a quinoa salad (which is, according to Mike, the most pretentious of all salads today … fair point) before digging into smores!! YES!! My first ever smore! For the non North Americans, a smore is a typical camping dessert. You take granola crackers, a chunk of chocolate, then you roast marshmallows on the camp fire and squish them between the crackers and chocolate. It. Is. Delicious. Seriously.
Feeling sufficiently refueled we set up camp in our tent to play some card games before deciding on an early night of sleep because we were both freezing and exhausted.
The night of sleep was not the best we’ve ever had. This is not really doing it justice. For starters, I was convinced that a bear was going to climb into our tent and eat us. Its amazing how quickly your imagination can get the better of you when it is really dark. In addition to the fear of being eaten alive, it was freezing. Now, I was lucky enough to be pretty warm because Joep is the hottest man on earth (both in looks and in temperature … hands off ladies, he’s taken) so I was able to leach all of his body heat for myself leaving him freezing but me cozy. In the middle of the night I heard a rustling at the door of our tent and was petrified thinking it was a bear climbing in. It wasn’t. It was Mike going to the bathroom. When he got back into bed and everyone settled down again Joep asked ‘Everyone having a good night?!’ The responses were ‘Yeah this is awesome’ (**sarcastic voice**), ‘I’m freezing!’ and ‘I’m scared’ from Mike, AM and me respectively.
The final reason that the night sucked was for the same reason every night on the Inca Trail sucked. I ALWAYS need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Always. Without fail. I tried to combat this in Yosemite by going to the bathroom immediately before bedtime. Let me take a second to point out here that there are great toilet facilities at Yosemite however they were a long way from our tent and I didn’t want to risk being eaten by a bear on my way to the bathroom. Having voiced these fears consistently throughout dinner and card playing, AM was kind enough to give me permission to use our home as a bathroom. I’m only semi joking. You can judge all you want but here is the thing – Men can go to the bathroom wherever they like and noone judges them. So why should I have to walk all the way to the restrooms risking death by bear attack on the way? I shouldn’t. So a corner of our outdoor eating area became the designated urinal. I held on for as long as I could during the night before waking Joep to come outside with me and look out for bears while I used the ‘restroom’. I then spent the rest of the evening convinced that a bear would be attracted to our home as a result of the urinal in such close quarters. Aww jeez. I need to think less.
After a less than wonderful night ‘sleep’ we were up very early to laugh about the previous evenings events. While the others made a fire I took the opportunity to head up to the laundry room (thank GOD there was a laundry room!) to put all of our clothes and shoes into a dryer.
As a result of having dry clothes and shoes we all felt up to doing 1 more hike. We first enjoyed a breakfast of hotdogs, quinoa salad and smores (talk about leftovers!), packed up our belongings and headed off. There was 1 quick pitstop at the gift store so that postcards and trinkets could be purchased.
Oh and I had to return some pants. That I may or may not have slept in for an entire evening. Listen, they were the worlds ugliest trakkie daks and I was freezing so I HAD to wear them but I tried really hard to keep them clean (and not go to the bathroom on them … ) so that I could return them in the morning. I was partially successful with the first part but 100% successful with returning them … yippee!! Don’t buy the tracksuit pants at Yosemite. You might get the ones I returned. You probably don’t want them.
The final hike of our visit to Yosemite was planned to be to Columbia Rock on the Upper Yosemtie Falls trail. It was a pretty strenuous hike because it is all uphill and there was an abundance of switch backs. Again however, we were really impressed by the views however we all agreed that they weren’t as impressive as the day before.
When we got to Columbia Rock we bumped into some other hikers who told us that if we climbed just a little further we’d get a great view of the falls! We debated within the group the merits of this opportunity and in the end decided we’d go a little further and see how we felt. We kept doing this until we reached the view of the falls and we were all happy to have done it! Yosemite Falls (both upper and lower) were visible from the lookout and it was incredible. The water is so clear that even from an extreme distance you can see the rocks at the bottom of the pools of water. Just amazing. And POWERFUL! Yikes. The noise of the water falling was pretty impressive.
The hike down was not as difficult as the day before and we were back in the car and on the road for home before tooooo long. On the way out of the park we had a couple of stops for photo opportunities. We then drove through a relatively decent snow storm (naturally) before tackling the looooong drive home.
Joep, once again, did a stellar job of getting us home to Laguna beating all google maps estimates meaning that we had time for a bit of relaxation in the hot tub which our aching muscles were very grateful for!
The Mac El Mothes visit was jammed full of amazing memories and Joep & I often break out into a fit of giggles thinking of some of the highlights. We were more than a little sad to see them go. Siiiigh. Its always so hard to say goodbye to favourite people!!
Still we are looking forward to the next time we are reunited!! And at least we always have an excuse to travel! Like we really need one …
Oh my goodness the excitement continues! Seriously, every time I think we’ve got the best life possible something even better comes along and this time it was in the form of … 
