This past weekend I had the rare opportunity to head back North to the San Francisco Bay Area. Although I was going home from Wednesday night until Sunday, I only spent 12 hours actually at home the whole time. The occasion? Camping and hanging out with my immediate family and our ex-DCD friends, who I can safely say also count as family.

I arrived back in the bay Wednesday evening, braced for cold weather. Instead, I found that I was quite comfortable running around in a T-shirt–quite surprising considering the climate I have been growing accustomed to back in San Diego. Thursday morning my dad and I began packing for the trip, planning for a leave time of noon. Unfortunately, we were not going to make that deadline.

My family had rented a newer model Sienna and the plan was to take 2 vans up to the camp site. One would ferry passengers and the other, equipment. My mom was at work and would rendezvous with us at home around noon. As we were packing we got a call from my mom stating that she would be late. Noticing the speed which we were packing up, i knew we wouldn’t hit the 12pm deadline either. By the time we left it was already 3pm. 

The drive was long and painful. Hitting traffic at the Altimont pass, we sat for an hour or so at a slow crawl. By the time we reached the campsite, located near Yosemite, it was around 7pm. Although I was annoyed at being late, after finding out that the day was abnormally hot, I was secretly glad I didn’t have to suffer through it.

As the sun set, Wil and I began setting up our tent, finishing in around 10 minutes–not quite as fast as my pride had hoped for. Due to my Boy Scout training, and just camping experience in general, I can usually set a tent up in around 5 minutes. However I should point out that the majority of the time we went hiking or camping with the Boy Scouts it was without the extra comfort of a tent, meaning we slept under the stars. 

After finishing our tent, we began on the tent for my parents. By this point in time the sun had all but set, and our work was aided by the flashlight from Uncle Bobby. Having set up our tent we began to eat dinner and started to enjoy the company of our old friends.

Sometime early morning I heard a strange sound, a sort of pitter patter that I was not expecting. As I lay on my sleeping bag, half conscious, I soon came to the groggy realization that it was raining–and it sounded like it was raining hard with the drops slamming into the tent. At that point I thanked God that Wil and I had decided to put up the rain cover even though it was unbearably hot the previous night. When I finally worked up the courage to venture outwards, I found out that it wasn’t actually raining that hard, the tent plastics had deceived us quite thoroughly. People began to slowly wake up and we enjoyed a breakfast under a light rain.

Soon however, the clouds began to part, and the weather that the clouds had hidden from us began to reveal itself. Heat filled the air and we were soon feeling uncomfortable. It was time to hit the lake. 20 feet from the shore there was a diving platform floating. We decided to swim over and hang out for a while. Most of our time was spent floating on the platform, either rocking it side to side, or making it spin in circles.

Eventually we got the opportunity to ride in Uncle Vernon’s boat in order to go on some daredevil rides. A bunch of us boarded his vessel and we moved out to the middle of the lake, where one at a time we took turns riding an inner-tube at high velocities. Because I went with the older guys, Uncle Vernon had a larger challenge ahead of him. His goal was to get us knocked off the tube by many means necessary. That meant sharp turns, riding over wakes, and high speeds. My first turn at it I managed to stay on until he gave up, but the second time he did such a sharp hair-pin turn that the tube I was on was flying in the air sideways until I let go, flying off at 20mph and landing on my back. Because of the life vest I wore, I bounced and shot backwards for a while, skipping like a stone until my velocity dropped to zero and I hit the water fully. All in all a very exciting experience.

Enjoying good food, hanging out with old friends, and having loads of fun in the water, playing card games, taking photos: this was one very good vacation.

Most of these photos are by Nicole, my 2nd favorite photographer

As usual you can find most of the photographs on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjthandcd/sets/72157624381174300/

Once again that time of year rolls around and we are blessed to watch another class graduate from college. This year’s class holds special meaning to me and my fellow classmates. These are the freshmen who came along our sophomore year, with numbers we did not except. With almost 40 of these kids graduating, it was quite the sight to see. As usual the full album can be found at http://www.flickr.com/jjthandcd.