Lila Off Leash

Week two in southern California brought me to Joshua Tree. My sister-in-law had the idea to spend the night in Palm Springs and then explore Joshua Tree with her family girl-gang, aka her sister and cousin. Friday after work we packed up the car and began the drive to Palm Springs. We had a late dinner reservation at an Italian place downtown so we checked into the hotel, got ready with some vino, and got dolled up for our patio dinner. Dinner was amazing and we were all carb loaded for our big day. The next morning we headed to Joshua Tree which was only an hour away from Palm Springs. We stopped at the visitor center for souvenirs and made our way all the way down to the Mojave/California desert divide. Along the way we stopped at all the major sights. A couple of my favorites were the jumbo rocks where we had a picnic lunch and explored these massive boulders. They look really smooth and soft but are actually rough molten lava that used to be under the earth. Skull rock was super co...

After arriving in San Diego, four days later my brother and I decided to head north and explore Sequoia and Kings Canyon. We were doing some research and learned that the road into Kings Canyon closed for the season that weekend so it would be our last opportunity to go this year. We instantly said "well, we have to go now" and booked our stay at the Wuksachi Lodge an hour deep into Sequoia National Park.  I took off Friday so that we could have the full weekend to explore the park and after gathering our things in the morning we began the journey. It was scheduled to take us about 5.5 hours in total but we had to make a few stops along the way so it ended up taking us 10 with traffic. The forest just received snow that weekend so all vehicles entering in the gates were required to have tire chains on hand. We stopped at several Auto-Zones that didn't keep them in stock and ended up getting a set at Walmart. We weren't sure how to use them and luckily didn't end u...