Emily and Mitchell in the USA

This weekend we did something I've been looking forward to doing for years! We went camping in Yosemite! It's so hard to get the camping spots - they sell out in a matter of seconds - but I'd found some listed as "hike-in" sites which actually turned out to be a hike of just 85 feet when you read the description, so I nabbed one of them for a random weekend 5 months in advance. When I added it to my calendar, I realised that Wednesday was a holiday! So I quickly booked another night making it up to 3 nights in Yosemite National Park! We woke up early and left Riverside at 7:30am, and with a few stops for gas and snacks, we made it to our campsite at 4:30pm. We set up and settled into camp, hammock and everything. We had an early dinner and then considered doing a nearby hike, but we were pretty done with driving for the day so we just did a few loops of the campsite and turned in early.  Very early the next morning, we quickly set off for the first big hike in the...

This spring has been a busy one! It started with my parents arriving for a visit. They've been before to see all the big things, so this time around we just saw all the Riverside offerings and used the balcony a lot! We had a picnic at Whitewater Preserve, which is out in the desert, but has a very nice shady picnic area and a little trail which follows a river. There was lots of water in there and plenty of wildflowers left.  Another day, we grabbed some bahn mi sandwiches and went to Lake Perris for the day. There was a very nice trail through yellow wildflowers, with great views of the lake. We reached the beach area and sat down for a picnic and sunbathing. We also had a little paddle. It's not quite the ocean, but for a 15 minute drive, it's a great place for a quick beach day! We took a day to explore Riverside and went to the Mission Inn for lunch, which while the food was only medium, being able to explore the old mission afterwards was very worth it. It's a lov...