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It has been over a year since our last trip to California and the boys were very excited to see the beach and spend some time with their uncle Kendall.   Our trip started out with an extremely long drive across the Nevada desert complimented with a full on blizzard, a bit of thunder,  and hotel room in Elko. We arrived in Sacramento in the early afternoon and spent the rest of the day hanging out with my Dad.  Sunday morning the boys had an early Easter egg hunt at grandpas house before we set out to drive down to the bay area.

The first stop in Marin county was Muir Woods,  just as we got out of the car the rain started to come down. We hiked up and down the board walk and paved trail for about 2 miles before the rain really started to come down.  The boys could not have cared less about the rain and had a great time seeing the huge redwoods again.

By the time we made it back to the car we were all pretty soaked so we drove over to Stinson beach and ate lunch hoping the rain would stop.  After lunch the rain was still coming down so we just drove the 1 to Sausalito and around the Golden Gate Bridge before we gave up and checked into our hotel and met up with Kendall and Candace.  A few hours later the rain let up so we set headed out to Bonita Point for sunset. We hiked down the trail to the light house only to reach a locked door.

the end…

The next morning the weather was beautiful so we headed over the Golden Gate to San Francisco to check out the Sutro baths and Golden Gate Park.  Then we drove back over the Golden Gate  and met up with Kendall and Candace to hike out to Agate Beach near Bolinas.

Bowen (3yo) throwing a major fit at the Sutro Baths… we just all sat back and watched this one.

Agate beach has become one of our favorite places to visit, the tide pools are very accessible and just perfect for the kids.

Soon we were back on the road headed north up to Point Reyes.  We made a quick stop in Inverness to pick up a few things at the local market and to shoot a few photos of the infamous boat in Tomales Bay. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me, I really love this old boat.

We then drove over to the Point Reyes visitors center and picked up the backpacking permits that I reserved a few weeks earlier. We parked at the coast camp trail head and packed our bags and set out on the two mile trail to our campsite.

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We quickly set up our camp and headed down to the beach to let the kids run wild before the sunset.

Kendall and Candace.

Fist thing in the morning Kendall and Candace went trail running while April, the boys, and went for a short hike south along the beach.

After our short hike we packed up camp and started on the hike out. The kids were great hikers especially Bowen (3yo) who hiked the 4 miles in and out of coast camp on his own with a backpack on.

We made it back to the car around 2:30 and made the short drive down the road to Limatour Beach. We then made the decision to drive back to Sacramento rather than wait 4 hours for the bay area traffic to die down (we got stuck in it once… never again). We spent 3 more days in Sacramento hanging out with my Dad and little brother before making the long drive back to Utah.

It had been at least six years since April and I had been down to Escalante so for one of our last desert trips of the year we packed up the boys and headed way down south. The drive did not take nearly as long as I remembered and before we knew it we were searching for a campsite along highway 12. We found an excellent spot with a great view then drove to the Escalante River gorge to take a short hike along the river before dinner.

The first night was fairly cool so we had a large fire and tried our best to stay warm. Our campsite would have been a perfect spot to shoot star trails had the moon not been full, so I had to settle on taking only a few long exposures of the Canyon below.

Saturday morning I woke up early and went on a short hike around our camp taking photos of Micro Death Hollow – Check out Dan Ransom’s TR for this canyon here.

By the time I made it back to camp April was making breakfast and the kids were up and ready to hike. We packed up the car and headed down the Hole in the Rock road towards the Dry Gulch trail head. When we arrived we were only the 4th car in the parking area, we put on our packs and headed down the trail. Soon we arrived at the the mouth of Peek-a-boo gulch and got stuck behind a large and slow group of hikers. They had just made it up the 15′ dry fall and were starting to negotiate the first of the 3 potholes in the canyons entrance. We were waiting on the group for a half hour when it became obvious they were not going to complete the obstacles anytime soon, so we bypassed peek-a-boo and headed down the wash to spooky gulch.

The kids LOVED Spooky Gulch so much and it was impossible to keep up with them in the narrow sandy slot.

I could not make it beyond this point. The canyon was just too narrow for my 6′2″ 245lb frame so I had to stay behind while April chased the kids further up the canyon.

We hiked back towards the trail head and took a short hike up the Dry Gulch Slot. I also scrambled up into peek-a-boo to get a shot of the Arch.

By the time we hiked out and made it back to the trail head the parking lot was completely packed. We made some lunch and drove back up the Hole in the Rock road to Devils Garden. The light, sky, and clouds were prefect in the garden. We spent over an hour wandering around with the kids taking photos and enjoying the cooler weather.

April at Metate Arch.

A few hours later we were back at camp making dinner just before sunset. We hung out around the fire and took a few more long exposures of the cloudy sky and full moon.

We packed up camp first thing in the morning and again ate breakfast on the road. I made a quick stop at the Phipps wash overlook along highway 12 to take a shot of the coolest and most scenic stretch of highway I have ever seen.

Our last hike of the trip was Lower Calf Creek Falls. Again we were one of the first cars at the trail head and only ran into a few people on the 3 mile hike up to the falls. The boys hiked really well but Bowen being only two was carried a fair amount of the way up by April. The mist from the falls was quite chilly and hard to keep off the camera lens but I ended up with some some decent shots.

For the hike down I placed Bowen on my shoulders and hiked ahead of April and Lanik. We saw dozens of European tourists hiking up to the falls on our way down and were glad to have the falls pretty much to ourselves while we were there. Once back at the car we made some lunch and made the long 4.5 hour drive home.