The Wade Family: Weekend Away-Clear Lake, CA

Ryan gets a few more Holidays off with his new company and we decided to take advantage of MLK day and have some good family time! It isn’t often that we get to stay in a hotel and we were all looking forward to it.
We started out early Sat. morning to get to the Petrified Forest by 11 for the walking tour. It was a bit close, but we made it and we are so very glad we had a guide to give us all kinds of information that we wouldn’t have otherwise known. At first glance, you would have thought the trees were regular trees, but upon closer inspection, they were rocks! She explained how it happened with the ash, water and perfect climate, but I still can’t quite comprehend how a tree can turn into rock, with such detail (you could see the bark and knots from where branches grew). These trees just happened to be 3.5 million years old. They were very cold and heavy and the kids were pretty amazed. We took a path up to the meadow where we saw an ash mound and the kids found ash rock and petrified wood. Of course Reggie wanted to keep it and is getting a bit more confident and went right to the guide to ask if he could keep it and reluctantly she agreed. Those are the kind of things that make Reggie REALLY happy.

From there we headed to California’s Old Faithful Geyser. None of us had ever seen a Geyser before and it was quite spectacular. Again, seems like the environment needs to be perfect for this type of natural phenomenon. It went off about every 15 minutes, so we got to see it a few times. They also had a little Bamboo trail and Reggie found a Bamboo lightsaber and couldn’t have been happier.
After that, it was time to go to the hotel. We punched in the address and followed the GPS instructions. Sometimes, I think it is a good idea to have an idea of where you are going or to have a back-up map. It told us to turn onto a very narrow, windy road, so narrow it wasn’t meant for 2 cars. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, but 4 super long miles later we saw the highway and I was so happy! When we pulled onto the highway, the GPS picture was just too funny not to take a picture. I have never seen a road look more windy and we were all cracking up (not to mention I high centered the car trying to get off that crazy road). Thankfully, we made it to the hotel without anyone getting sick.

We checked out the place and the kids wanted to go for a swim. Ryan went with them….I put my feet in the hot tub. The weather warmed up to about 65 during our adventures, but Clear Lake was not quite so warm (in the upper 40’s). The next morning we woke up and went for another swim. The water was actually very nice and we went back and forth from the pool to the hot tub. Ainsley took her training vest off and swam the width of the pool!!! She has to work on her stamina a bit, but it is nice to know that both the kids can swim. Once she has her mind set on something, she is quite determined to perfect it. They had a kiddie pool that was one foot deep that was a little warmer than the big pool and she would practice and practice swimming (the tops of her feet were red from smacking the bottom). The kids were a bit grumpy after our swim, Reggie hungry and Ainsley tired. She fell asleep on the way to our nature walk destination. It was cold, but nice to get out and see the lake and some nature. The next morning, we swam again and then made the 3 hour trek home. Ainsley slept at least 2 ½ hours!