I know.. I know.. Black Friday was almost a month ago, but I barely got around to editing the pictures. As a matter of fact I still haven't finished the ones from my Joshua Tree trip in September. For this trip, Annie, Jennifer, Jie, and I decided to do a day trip to Sequoia Natl. Park with no real plans or itinerary, we kinda sorta just winged it. We left home around 7AM and made it to the small town of Visalia by 10:30ish. We had a little fiasco with the keys being locked in the trunk (my fault, don't ask..), but needless to say, after an hour all 4 of us manage to get the keys out and go on our way. We made it to the entrace of the park by 1PM and began the real adventure! I'll stop blabbing on and move on to the pictures.

Our first stop was where the road forks to Kings Canyon and General Sherman tree. We stopped off the side of the road and wandered into the woods a little. I was so in love with this place already.

Further up the road, we stopped at a turnout which offered a great view of some of the mountain peaks in the park. Across the turnout we saw our first bit of snow for the day! The snowball fighting ensued.

I mean... How can you ever get tired of this? This was at yet another turnout further up the road from the previous picture. We caught a glimpse of an open meadow beyond the woods. It was covered in snow, so we had to check it out.

Here is said snow-covered meadow. This was just a small portion of it. To the left of the picture was the rest of the meadow, but this side had a nicer view.

It was everything I imagined it to be (and some). Sequoia was just getting better and better.

Amazed by the snow, heh.

We played in the meadow for a good half an hour, but then I spotted a pathway deeper into the woods, so naturally.... We had to check it out! Lol.

We were endlessly falling into the deep snow, but at this point, we began hearing the sounds of running water. Further we go.

Sure enough, the trail cut off at a small stream. It was the icing on the cake for our little side trip.

After that snow covered meadow, we reached the General Sherman Tree trail. The trail was like a nice stroll in the park and was surrounded by these massive trees everywhere you turned. Daylight was slowly starting to fade by this time so we hastened our pace a bit so we could search for a spot to watch the sunset.

We were not disappointed at all by our view of the sunset. Seeing these pictures again makes my hairs stand on end. You really can't beat this view after a long day of hiking around. Mission success!

 Hope y'all enjoyed the pics from our trip! I'm looking at these right now and itching to go back again.. Next time, I'm determined to visit the Kings Canyon area. But until then, have a merry Christmas!

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Halloween this year landed on a Friday and I haven't really done anything on this day since maybe the 11th grade? So I decided that after work I wanted to get together with a couple of friends and go trick-or-treating. Annie came over around 7 and we started our adventure for the night driving around Monrovia in hopes to go trick or treating there, but there wasn't much going on so instead we to Target for funsies. After Target we thought we'd give Pasadena a try and to our luck there was pretty decent activity going on there. We got to trick-or-treat on one street before the weather got ugly and poured on us, just our luck eh. Either way it was nearing 10PM and we were supposed to meet our friend Daniel in Old Town Pasadena so off we went to the 35er to hang out and just talk over drinks. To end the night, we grabbed pizza a couple doors down at 800 Degrees and then went to another bar, where we sang and danced to live music, it was so much fun!

If you're wondering, I'm supposed to be a ghost. Annie and I were both ghosts, coincidentally. And then there's Daniel the lumberjack.

So that was Friday night. I didn't really do much Saturday besides stay home and bum around the house. I spent my Sunday afternoon hanging out with my buddy Alan who I haven't seen in awhile. He came over my house on Saturday but had to leave shortly thereafter, so we decided to hang out on Sunday. We cruised the streets to Urth Caffe in Pasadena for some coffee. The weather was so crisp and perfect today that it just seemed fitting for this type of stuff.

That pretty much wraps up my Halloween weekend. I hope ya'll enjoyed yours as much as I did mine. I still have some much needed photo editing to do on stuff from my camping trip last month. I should probably stop procrastinating on it, but until then!

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This blog has been fairly dedicated to my travels and rarely do I ever dig deeper into my personal life, so for once, here goes nothing.

My weekend has been very interesting thus far. I went out with my friends on Friday night for coffee at Copa Vida. What was supposed to be just a night out for some coffee turned into late night talks at my house afterwards until the sun came up. It's pretty rare that I get to vibe with anyone on an emotional level, but whenever I'm with my friends and we do, it's something truly amazing, I feel. I've never really been someone who was good at giving advice on life, mostly because I can never put my thoughts to words, but I always enjoy listening and just being that person who you can count on to always be there for that very reason. What's more, this week has been somewhat of a blur to me with school kicking into higher gear and starting my new internship, so much that I had very little time to just stop and think about what was happening around me. I'm off on so many tangents right now, but I guess what I am trying to say is that after all our talks the previous night/morning, I realized that I don't know a lot about my closest friends. It's kind of scary and at the same time there's an underlying feeling of guilt that envelops me because I'm so terrible at this whole friendship thing. Anyways... Apologies if this post just seems like a bunch of random sentences put together to look like a paragraph, but they were just a lot of random thoughts that have been going through my mind the rest of the weekend, and it's something I felt I needed to express somehow.. Good night!

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So this is another one of those long overdue posts that I have been procrastinating on, mostly because I am too lazy to edit my pictures.

A couple of weeks ago I did a 5 day trip to Utah with some of my cousins. Our plan for the week was to fly over to our relatives' place in Salt Lake City and then drive with them to Moab so that we could spend two days visiting Arches NP.

Our flight was on the morning of Sep. 11. We flew out from Long Beach into SLC Intl. airport.

The first thing I saw when we arrived at my cousin's place was this little fur ball.

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I didn't get very many pictures of what we did the next day. We basically spent the first half of the day sleeping in and eating lots of yummy food. Later in the afternoon, all of us decided to go to the county fair they had going on and then dinner came after. Needless to say the only picture I got was of this awesome milkshake I had at the very end of our night hehe.

The next day (Sept. 13) was the start of our Moab adventure. It took us a good 3 hours to drive from Salt Lake to Moab. Halfway there, our relative Tai made us make an emergency stop out in the boonies just so he could use the restroom. As punishment we locked him in and took off. Okay I lied, we let him out after a few minutes.

When we got there, we went straight into Arches NP to hike the trails. Here's a family picture about halfway to the Delicate Arch!

This would be the second time that I've seen the Delicate Arch. The first time around, I was a bit too scared to climb the wall and walk up to the arch given that to the right was just a steady slope and then a cliff. This time around I told myself that I would mosey up the courage to do it, and I did! Yey.

You can't really appreciate how big the arch is until you've walked up to it. Amazing the things nature can do.

To the left of the arch was a neat little spot that offered a breathtaking view of the entire valley behind. I have to admit my palms were a bit sweaty sitting at the edge of that cliff. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a big chicken when it comes to heights heh.

The next morning, one of my cousins and I decided to wake up before the break of dawn to catch the sun rise over the park while everyone else slept in. I had originally wanted to go back into the park around 12am to catch the night sky, but with no one willing to accompany me I scrapped that idea. This wasn't too bad of a deal though.

It is almost indescribable how it felt to just perch myself on the foot of Balanced Rock watching the sun slowly rise over the mountains. There wasn't a soul around us in sight, just the piercingly cold air and the sounds of nature all around us coming to life. The rays of sunlight were warm and welcoming after sitting in the cold and windy darkness for over an hour.

After watching the sun rise, we drove further into the park and landed ourselves on the Devil's Garden trail.

We hiked another mile in and decided to stop at Landscape Arch. Again, the pictures can't justify how massive these things are. Unfortunately, human travel to the base of the arch is now prohibited due to the dangers of erosion which will eventually cause the arch to give in.

After finishing our hike at Devil's Garden, my cousin and I drove back to our cabin to rejoin the rest of our group so that we could pack up and head home. I forgot to photograph the remaining two days of our Utah trip, but it's okay you didn't miss much. At the very end of our trip before heading to the airport, we surprised my cousin John with a birthday cake!

And to wrap it all up, here is a video clip of some of us trolling our relative, Tai, again. Poor guy can never catch a break from us. We're like the older siblings you never want to have.

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On Monday 08/25, Annie spontaneously decided to take us out to this cool spot she found in Palos Verdes. Her, Jennifer, Brenda, and I hiked a short 20-or-so minute trail down to a secluded cove. The view from atop and down below was breath-taking!

The start of the trail offered nice views of the beach.

The trail then led us down into this awesome little ravine thing where we'd eventually have to walk out onto the shore.

The beach wasn't quite what I had expected. The shore was littered with these giant rocks which made crossing the beach a bit of a chore.

Eventually the shore gave way to this magnificent view of the cliffs and the ocean. The picture does not do these cliffs justice, they were massively tall.

Along the cliffs were these small tidepools where we stood and watched the waves crash into them.

Unfortunately the trail we had chosen didn't allow us to cross to the other side of the cliff, so we had to backtrack our way up to find another trail that would cross. This was the view that greeted us at the top of the cliff.

On the other side of the cliff, the rocks had these cool color patterns that really struck out to me.

More walking along the rocks.

Look at this cute little seal!!

Along the big cliff was a small tunnel that had been carved out by the waves. It was cool watching waves from the other side roaring through it.

Finally, it was time to leave. We took a shorter, but much more steep trail coming back up to the top, but again, nothing but great views all around. This is why I love California!

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08-23-2014: This past Saturday, my friends Annie, Jennifer, Jie, and I got up bright and early to spend the entire day in the San Diego area. We hiked the Mt. Woodson trail at Lake Poway to see firsthand what the buzz is about the Potato Chip rock. After the hike we drove into the city for lunch at Sushi Deli 2 in the Gas Lamp district and did a bit of walking around as well. After lunch, we headed to Sunset Cliffs to watch the sunset and then grabbed coffee at a place in Normal Heights. When it was all said and done, we left SD around 10:30pm. What an exhausting, but fun day.

The summit offered a great panoramic view of the county below.

I have to say, Lake Poway is extremely gorgeous even in these dry conditions.

The girls hanging out along the edge at Sunset Cliffs.

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(08-04-2014)

So this is a very, very late post, but only because I just barely finished editing the pictures last night... I'm only a couple weeks late..

My family and I decided to take a spontaneous trip to Utah this summer. Everything was pretty last minute, I did not truly find out I was going until a week prior to leaving. We left our house at around 9:45am (it was supposed to be 7am), driving straight all the way through to our relatives' house in the suburbs outside Salt Lake City. I think we stopped maybe 3 or 4 times along the way for food and gas. The entire trip was about a week long, starting from Saturday the 2nd, through Sunday the 10th. In that time, I traveled to Wyoming, worked on cars with my cousin all night long (literally, until we saw the sun rise the next day), went crawfish-ing at a lake all night long (literally, until we saw the sun rise the next day), and many other things. Above all, I got to spend time with family who I only get to see so often. Anyways, enough boring talk, let me move on to the pictures!

A view of Bear Lake from the Bear Lake Visitors Center.

The living room from the cabin we rented in Jackson, WY.

One of the two master bedrooms.

Great views greeted us along the walk around Jenny Lake. The weather was also great as well.

Brian and I waiting for the rest of our group to catch up.

The bridge which crossed the river and into the west boat dock.

Despite the name, Hidden Falls was extremely populated by tourists.

Brian being silly after he noticed that I was taking a picture of him.
This was the start of the trail leading to Inspiration Point.

Finally, at the very tippy top of Inspiration Point. What a magnificent view of Jenny Lake. It's a shame there was not something like this on the other side so that we could get a view of the lake as well as the Tetons.

Another view from the top.

The hike back down was so much nicer on our tired bodies.

Very picturesque creek along the way back down.

After we left Grand Teton NP at approximately 4:30pm, My cousin and I thought it would be funny to take the van (with all our passengers) up another 2hrs to Yellowstone NP. Needless to say the drive was well worth it. We paid $25 to get into Grand Teton and our pass was good for Yellowstone as well. So I figured, why the heck not?! What's another 2hrs on the road??

So Wyoming was Monday through Wednesday. On Friday night, Brian, our distant cousin Tai, my brother Bradley, and I took Brian's car out to Strawberry reservoir out in the middle of nowhere to go crawfish-ing. We left home around 10pm and drove for about 2hrs into the mountains east of Utah to get to this place. The view at night as both eerie and calming, and not to mention the moon was ginormous that night too!

The previous night, Brian and I had been working on his car from 9pm until 7am that morning. So needless to say, we were tired. Crawfish-ing at 12am the next day did not seem like the best idea, but screw it, we did it anyways. We ended up fishing from 12am until 5am. There was another 2hr drive back, so we did not make it back home until 7am the next morning. We were all extremely tired now, but we caught a lot of crawfish!

This is only 1/3rd of what we caught...

Even Tango was tired.. He stayed up till 7am with us while we were working on cars the night before. Poor guy.

That pretty much concludes the photo stream from my Utah/Wyoming trip. I wish I had taken more pictures while I was in Utah, but it is what it is. I had an amazing time there with my family and I absolutely cannot wait to go back again next month!

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