Hike

Friday afternoon John decided he wanted to do something on Saturday.  So he called my grandpa and asked him he wanted to go for a picnic and hike on Saturday, he said sure.  My grandpa loves to go on little adventures, and he is getting ready to undergo surgery and radiation for prostate cancer in a few weeks, so now was as good of a time as ever.

We were not real sure where to go, but after some discussion and looking through some books of the local area near my grandpa's house, we decided to go to Carlon Falls and we are glad we did.  The hike for the most part was easy to moderate.  The weather and scenery were perfect, and the girls said several times, that this was the best hike we have ever been on, so everyone was happy!

At the start of the hike there was a tree log that had fallen over, so the girls went to the log and started walking on it.  Mikayla looked down and noticed some lady bugs. Soon we all looked around and there were thousands of lady bugs everywhere.  The ground was crawling with them.  It was unreal.  I have never seen anything like it.  But this was the only place, along the entire hike we saw them.

All the red things in the pictures below are lady bugs!

 The hike follows a stream/river and at the top of the hike is a waterfall.  Shortly into the hike you cross a gate and enter into Yosemite National Park, then you come across the outside perimeter of what use to be a swimming pool.  Apparently there use to be a resort there, from what we read.  Kind of weird, because I don't know how people got to the resort, without hiking in.

Some of the water fall.

John and Mikayla

John, Grandpa Billy, Ashlee and Mikayla

Once we got to the waterfall, there were lots of rocks to climb and so only John and Ashlee went on to the top of the waterfall.  The rest of us stayed a little farther down and watched them.

Mikayla

The waterfall made these holes in the granite surface.  Ashlee is posing above.

After the hike we had a picnic, and took the "scenic" drive, although it wasn't so scenic, since everything was pretty much destroyed by the 2013 Rim Fire.  It's crazy to see how much land and acreage that fire destroyed, it's going to take a really long time for the forest to replenish itself.  

Once we got back to my grandpas house, Mikayla did some target shooting.  She likes to shoot her BB gun, but now that we live in town, she doesn't have anywhere to shoot.  We ended the day with Mexican food in Jamestown and headed home.  One of the nice things about living in CA, you can take a day trip to the coast or mountains and be back home that same day!