My 26th Birthday weekend in San Jose/Sequoias!!!

For my 26th birthday, Ian surprised me with tickets to a Brian Regan show, a really funny comedian. However, the show was going to be in San Jose! So, I guess we are off for another romantic, adventurous weekend! Isn't Ian the greatest!?! When we got to our hotel in San Jose we looked at some pamphlets and tried to decide between spending a day in San Francisco touring around or going horse back riding or what... I saw this pamphlet that said, "Zip line through the redwoods" So, we looked into that. This was one of the smartest decisions we've ever made! It was an amazing, beautiful experience! We got to zip-line through various courses up to 440 feet I think the longest one was. It was super scary when we were on the first platform ready for take off, but then started to get the hang of it after the 1st try and of course after the little bunny course they put everyone through. It came pretty naturally after that and we started really having a blast! Then after a few zips, I finally got the courage to start looking down during my zipping instead of just looking towards the platform where I was going to be landing. It was so beautiful to see the trees and even a little creek under me as I would zoom overhead. It was such a beautiful experience. Something we may not get to experience more than once or a couple times in our lifetimes. (It's expensive and sort of hard to find an opportunity to do it). So after this awesome adventure, we headed out for some yummy mexican food. Ian was really good at planning ahead on where we would be eating while away for the weekend. He did searches on the internet to find the best mexican food in the areas he knew we'd be in, so we got to have 4-5 star mexican food the entire weekend! I could eat mexican food every day! I love it! So after a super yummy carne asada burrito, we headed off to the comedy show. Brian Regan is so hilarious. He is VERY animated in his joke telling. He gets really really physically involved in what he's saying with his body and his facial expressions so it makes his jokes twice as funny. We really enjoyed his show. He had us laughing REALLY hard at multiple points in the night. The theater was packed too. What's nice about him is that he is the cleanest comedian probably in existence. He didn't say any bad words and had no vulgar jokes at all. There were even children in the audience. It was very enjoyable. Then, we got out of the San Jose Performing Arts center only to find that we were completely turned around and did not know where we parked our car. There were parking structures EVERYWHERE and so we had no idea where we had actually parked... FINALLY, after about 30 minutes of walking up and down the streets looking for something familiar... I finally saw a street I thought might've been right. Except, the parking structure was closed for some reason... But I really thought this was the right one, so we headed down that street. Sure enough, we found our car but being that the parking structure was CLOSED... we had to run across another street to the Hilton hotel to call the security at the parking structure to ask them to open up the gate. It was about 10:30pm and the sign said the structure was open until MIDNIGHT... But for SOME reason the guy said they closed it at 10:00. DOESN'T make sense... O well. I told him he needed to print a new sign... idiot... anyway, so we were just so thankful by then to have 1. located our car and 2. to actually be sitting in it and able to drive it away. After such a great night, Sunday was a little more relaxing. We left San Jose and had a really great scenic drive towards Lindsay, California (closer to the Sequoias). We stopped off and bought some fresh strawberries from one of the many fruit farms along the highway and also some fresh corn for 8 for $1.00! Great price!!! And the food is so fresh and delicious! That was really cool. Then we went into a couple brand new homes that were for sale just to get a feel for the areas prices. WOW... That's a whole other story right there. BEAUTIFUL homes!!!!!!!!! I wish I could buy one so bad!!! By the time we got to our next hotel, there wasn't too much daylight left. So, we had dinner and went swimming and spent time in the jacuzzi. It was really nice having the pool and the jacuzzi to ourselves that evening. The next morning we got up early so we could head to the Sequoia National Park. We were excited to see the General Sherman Tree; The biggest tree in the world! It was absolutely amazing!!! We did a LOT of driving up the mountain... We thought we were there already but then we had to go ANOTHER 20 miles up the hill to see the giant tree. But when we got there, there were maps to the whole area so we picked a few of the spots we wanted to see so we could get back to the kids before too late that night. We hit some road construction up and down the mountain so that took up time, but we got to go spend a little time at Crescent meadow which was absolutely beautiful and very peaceful. It reminded me of twilight. hehe. Ian said he'd lay in the grass for me so I could see his skin sparkle. =) That made me happy. And before we went to the meadow, we went to tunnel log which was this huge tree fallen over that you can drive under. And on the side of the road, there was this tree also fallen over that had the roots sticking up probably 4 times as tall as Ian and me. It was amazing. On the way home, while waiting for some construction workers to let us down the road, we were killing a little bit of time... I heard some rustling in the trees about 30 feet above us. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we saw a bear! I don't think I have ever been this close to a bea before! It was really scary at first, but we started to get a little more comfortable with the situation when he was up there for a really long time and never did anything. He was just hanging out in the bushes probably looking for food or something. So, Ian was able to snap a bunch of pictures of him. (The last picture shows the bear) I really had no idea how close I have lived my whole life to so much natural beauty. I think the drive going up the mountain, passing by so many little rivers and babbling brooks was probably the most beautiful drive I've ever taken. Once we got about 14 miles up the hill, we started driving through the sequoia trees. They were MASSIVE and BEAUTIFUL. I can't believe how amazing these natural land formations are. Heavenly Father truly is an artist and has given us so many beautiful things to experience in our lives. I really hope we can go back there with our children some day when they are old enough to enjoy it and remember it. It is truly amazing to see. I wish we could've stayed a whole week there and camped and spent time looking at all the wonders the park had to offer. There was a cave I wanted to explore and a canyon I wanted to go see. Maybe someday soon we can go back. =)