Painting the Fence

Today, we finished a service project from way back last year (yeah, it sounds pathetic)! You see, we painted a section Sister Holland (a senior citizen in our ward)'s fence in her backyard. Now we came back to paint the rest of the fence.

Brother Spencer, Rick, Kyle Worley, Ryan, Dewlin, Brandon, Dallin, Jeremy, Jaren, Tay, and I met at her house with tarps, brushes, paint scrapers, and stuff.

Right behind the backyard was a big meadow on a hill.

The only problem was, we couldn't find the paint! Jaren and I searched the garage for the paint can (it was pretty much an I Spy book on steroids)!

Jaren eventually found the can tucked away in some shelf. Then, at last, we started painting. But it started getting dark, so that was kind of tricky. And Brother Spencer had made some lemonade, but it got kind of chilly for that!

And a turkey flew into a tree and kept gobbling at us!

We also had to get the "behind the bushes" area.

After painting the whole fence and near the gate, we all cleaned up and went home. Fun, huh?

Back to Pinnacles

Well, we got back today from one of the coolest places we've been: Pinnacles! And we had a lot more scouts come this time, unlike last time.

Anyway, Alec, Jaren, Jeremy, Tay, Rick, Ryan, Jeff, Teddy, Brother Reed, my dad, and I met at the church yesterday (March 19th) at about 5:30. The 1st Ward scouts were also going on a camp out, but to Mission Peak (near Fremont).

We waited for Brother Spencer, and when he finally came, we hauled our bags into Brother Reed's car and Brother Spencer's car, and we drove off.

We stopped over in San Ramon to eat dinner at Subway.

We had these really huge Cheetos Puff things. So big, they could barely fit through your mouth!

We also went into Petco really quick to see the chinchillas.

We then hopped back into the car and we were back on the road again!

We drove southward through San Jose, Gilroy, and Hollister. We even saw where we got "saved" by Linda!

Anyway, we got to Pinnacles around 9:30. We found our campsite and set up the tents and tarps. After getting that stuff done, we drove a little ways to the Bear Gulch Trailhead and started a night hike.

We found the small caves by the trail from last time!

Most of us explored the caves.

And we climbed on top of the rocks above the caves too. Above the caves, there was a giant boulder wedged in between the two main boulders. Jaren leaped onto the wedged boulder. It was awesome!

We continued up the trail to Bear Gulch Caves. If you've read about our last camp out here, you would know why Bear Gulch Caves is really cool!

Even the sign made us excited!

At long last, we went inside.

We stopped halfway, and then turned and went back the way we came (we wanted to save the rest for tomorrow). We hiked out of the caves and back to the cars.

We drove back to the campsite and went to sleep. Rick, Jeremy, Alec, Jaren, and I slept on the tarp. Jeff, Teddy, Tay, and Ryan slept in a tent. We made a tent for Dallin and his friend, Daniel, since they were coming later on.

It turns out, Dallin, Daniel, and Brother Earl got there around midnight, and it got cold in the night!

It's funny, because March 20th is the first day of Spring this year, but when we woke up, we found frost on our sleeping bags!

When everyone got up (or fought each other to get up), the breakfast crew started making breakfast, while the rest of us started making a fire. And Dallin and Daniel told about what happened on their way down there (about "Jaren's trike" and a "Machete Man"). Anyway, we had a good fire going!

We had our favorite for breakfast: Sunrise Stew!

After breakfast, we got cleaned up and packed everything up to go on our hike.

We drove back to the trailhead from last night, and started hiking up the same trail.

Turns out, we got to go through the caves again!

We got through the tricky part, but it was a lot easier than last time, since we had only day packs on!

After hiking through the caves, we finally got to sunlight! And the long, narrow staircase...

...that ran alongside some little waterfalls...

...and that led up to the reservoir!

A ranger took some pictures of all of us.

We took a rest stop here, and then continued on to the harder part of the hike. This is where we could really get some great views!

And the higher we hiked, the more rock formations we saw!

One looked like a dog face:

Another one looked kind of like a castle:

And one up on a hill that looked like a baseball glove:

My dad kept quizzing Ryan about the name of the manzanita tree whenever we found one.

After several long moments, we all got to the top!

We ate crackers, salami, and Easy Cheese up on the face of a big rock.

After loading ourselves with fake cheese, we headed back down a different trail.

This trail had several staircases and things (some of them weren't even staircases at all. They were just holes dug into the rock).

We came to a fork and the road, and Brother Spencer, Alec, Jaren, Teddy, Dallin, Daniel, Jeremy, and Jeff took the wrong turn. Brother Reed had to go and get them, while Rick, Ryan, Brother Earl, Tay, my dad, and I continued on the right trail.

It wasn't until we got to Condor Gulch Overlook, when Dallin, Alec, Jeremy, and Jaren caught up with us. We kept on hiking down the trail until Teddy, Daniel, Jeff, and Brother Reed caught up with all of us.

Once we were back together again, we all hiked back down to the parking lot, sweaty and tired.

We then hauled our packs into the cars, and we drove all the way back home.