Timeline 2011 part I

2011 was a big hiking, road tripping, musical theater year. There will be a LOT of links in this post and the next. 

Our spring was terrible! Roadtrips were out of the question until late April when we went up to Mt Vernon. Even on that day, we had rain our entire way up to see the Tulip Festival and visit Granite Falls. Fortunately the sun came out later. We lived in Washington several years before ever visiting the famous annual Tulip Festival. We were missing out!

We finally had a gloriously sunny day on the first Sunday in May. We'd been wanting to hike Twin Falls all season, and we ended up taking Hana with us since she'd had a sleepover at our house the night before.

We were told there'd be another sunny day, but that didn't work out so well. Fortunately our hike to Otter Falls didn't require a clear day, and the lack of rain was all we needed to enjoy it.

On the 2nd sunny day of the year, I insisted we hike to Wallace Falls even though it meant doing it in a rush so we could get back home in time for Oscar to get to work.

At the beginning of April, we took a trip down to Portland so I could do an audition. Of course, we weren't going to miss the opportunity to see Portland area waterfalls in the peak of the wet season. First we checked out Multnomah and Wahclella Falls.

The next day, we took a super wet hike to Triple Falls and other gorgeous waterfalls before I had to get ready for my audition. 

And on our final day, we did the fabulous trail of 10 falls hike in Silver Falls state park.

That year we took a large roadtrip to Yosemite National Park, but we went through Utah first to visit our families. In Idaho we saw several of the Snake River waterfalls, the best of course being Shoshone Falls.

We ended up having to take a VERY roundabout way to Yosemite since we didn't realize the east entrance was still closed.

But it was all worth it when we woke up the next day in beautiful Yosemite Valley!

Over the next few days, we had a wonderful time seeing the sights. We woke up early in the wee hours of the morning to hike the famous Mist/John Muir Trail to see Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls.

We were fortunate enough to be there on the very day the Glacier Point Road opened. We checked it out before heading down to the Mariposa Grove.

And lastly we drove up to the Hetch Hetchy reservoir before heading west to Napa, CA.

In Napa, we visited my relatives and did some sightseeing. One of our stops was California's Old Faithful geyser. We also visited some of my family in Medford, Oregon, and saw some lovely Oregon waterfalls before heading on home. Click here to read more about our homeward bound adventures.