Catch up again

Hey all, been awhile since we wrote. After Vegas, we headed to Los Angeles, where we stayed with a friend from college. This is a shout out to her and her family that were awesome! :) We went on the tour of LA, starting with the Hollywood walk. We then went to the Griffith Observatory to get a good view of "Hollywood" on the hill, and also looked around there because it was free admission. We ate lunch at the original Pink's hot dog stand, and it was DELICIOUS. We did have to wait in line for about 40 minutes, which is a little strange for the time of day we were eating lunch (we didn't get there until 2:00). Then, we headed out to the beach!!! We went to Santa Monica and also walked down to Venice Beach. 

Sadly, the ocean was not safe to swim in, but we still had fun walking down the boardwalk. We had a great time in LA and our friend also helped us plan our future stop in San Francisco because she had lived there last summer.

After the tour of LA, we stopped to buy some California strawberries (very tasty). We then drove to Sequoia National Park for a short day there. When we got to the hike site, it started to snow on us, but we continued on the hike. We saw a lot of giant trees, but the highlight of the day was bear watching. There were at least four bears that we saw there, including a baby bear and a smaller bear (possibly a cub from last year). Another bear (probably the momma bear) was there too, as well as another adult bear. After that hike, we went to see the famous General Sherman tree, which is the largest tree in the world (by volume). We then continued on our way towards Yosemite.

A baby bear

Us in front of the largest tree

HUGE Sequoia trees

Today we made it to Yosemite and went on a hike to see two different waterfalls from the top of the falls. The  views on this hike were amazing, and the waterfalls were huge! We got pretty wet from the first waterfall spray. We were later snowed on once again, and then had to pass under dripping water just past the second waterfall. In total, we hiked about eight miles on the day. So, when we got to our hotel for the night, we soaked our feet in the hot tub for a bit. Ashley had been looking forward to this moment for the entire trip, so she was very excited ;)

Us on one of our waterfall hikes

One of the waterfalls we climbed to top of