And the Winner Is...

 Yosemite!

Part of the campground

   We decided we're going to spend a week in Yosemite next month for our summer vacation.  We made our reservations and are looking forward to it! I realized while making the reservation we had the choice to have our tent camping by a lake. There are 130 tent sites.

   One thing I forgot to mention about Thousand Trails is you can rent yurts (lake and hillside), cabins, bunkhouse cabins and trailers. We'll just stick to our tent, but if we decide to go to Yosemite or somewhere north during the winter where it snows, we'll consider renting a cabin or yurt so we don't freeze to death. I know there are sleeping bags made for it, but still.

   The Yosemite campground is 400 acres. You can swim (they have a "beach"), fish and pan for gold. It also has many fun and awesome activities. Of course, Yosemite is just beautiful and I'll be mostly going on nature hikes and enjoying the scenery. Hopefully by then I'll be able to use my camera. I ordered a new charger from Amazon and it came completely dead. So I contacted them and they'll be sending me a new one which I pray will work this time so I can finally use it!

Since I had the weekend off, Gary and I spent it camping at the Soledad Canyon campground. We had a lot of fun! We arrived Friday morning/afternoon, found a great location for our camp and spent a good deal of the day at the adult lodge. First, we started off by going to the ginormous swimming pool since it was hot. Gary always called it the ice pool as a kid, and he had good reason to! I thought I was stepping into the Pacific ocean. After a fun swim, we wimped out and went to the adult lodge where we swam in the outdoor heated pool. It's not jacuzzi hot, but just warmer water. We had fun playing swimming games and goofing off in the pool- people probably thought we were teenagers by the way we were "drowning" each other and splashing. Haha. We then headed inside the lodge and played some pool. I got my butt kicked by Gary since I've never been good at the game.

We spent Saturday playing mini-golf, more swimming, and even headed to Palmdale 10 miles away to check out their mall and get a few items needed. You see, I completely forgot to bring our quilt blanket so we FROZE the first night with just a sheet and blanket. I wasn't too proud of myself. But when we stopped in Palmdale we purchased an air mattress bedding set, which is super cute. It comes with a fitted sheet, comforter (which you can attach to the fitted sheet and zip up like a sleeping bag-awesome), and 2 blow-up pillows and pillowcases. It was a cute set and we were definitely warmer the 2nd night.

 We also saw housing in Acton and the super nice areas between Acton and Palmdale, and in Palmdale itself. Gary says we can totally do something like that. There were big, gated homes with lots of horse property. While we were in the mall, we came across a real estate listings store and checked it out. The homes are way affordable and when we told the guy we're from Valencia, he perked up, especially when we told him how much rent we're paying. He got our contact information and has been sending properties via e-mail. Gary started talking about getting a house when our lease is up. He's never actually done that before (normally he's a "we'll think about it" kinda guy), but this time, after actually seeing these giant homes with land, he's much more interested. The real estate agent said he'll send us properties that are of higher class and with land. I've never seen Gary so excited about buying a house before, so we might actually do it this time around. Exciting!

 Anyway, just thought I'd give an update. Time to wake my husband up from his nap and watch some Robin Hood (tv series). Later!