Don Pedro Reservoir-- Smith Family Vacation

I think if I called this a much needed vacation, there might be a little bit of eye rolling. I sat down the other day and thought about all Cole and I have done this year and these are the trips I found:

• Return from Tennessee
• Hawaii
• California
• Moab
• Pizmo
• Park City Cabin
• Seattle
• California
• Vegas
• Cancun
• Vegas again
• Bear Lake
• Don Pedro Reservoir

I feel pretty good about our adventures this year :) However, I still say Don Pedro was a much needed vacation! It came just at the right time at the end of the month, right after I hit my sales quota at work. So perfect!

Don Pedro Reservoir is past the Yosemite National Park in California. While deciding how we were going to get there, I became our navigator. I decided that going through Reno was the long way, and that instead we should go south across the 6 and through Yosemite. The trip started off great. It took several hours to get to the 6, but once we got there I started looking everywhere for UFO landing spots or tourists traps (in case you don't know already, HWY 6 is known for its UFO activity) BUT I never found anything so that part of the trip didn't get anymore exciting. Around 8 or 9 we arrived at Yosemite. It was beautiful!!! We were only about 120 miles from Don Pedro and hoping to get there by 10 or 11. The last thing we saw before the sun set was this beautiful basin lake sitting underneath gorgeous mountains that were black because of the setting sun and purple and pink skies above them. Then the windy roads kicked in. It took us 3 and half hours to get to Don Pedro-- or something close to that. I was so glad we weren't hauling our jet ski trailer behind us. THAT would have been awful.

But we arrived safe and sound.

We stayed on Tyler's, our brother in law, parent's house boat. Thank you Pittson's! The boat was perfectly named, The Pitt Stop :)

Here's Cole and me, happy to be anywhere but work, and lucky enough that it was on this houseboat in Don Pedro!

I was trying so hard to learn how to jump the wake!! I never made it fully across, but I had one close one... followed by a pretty gnarly crash that I'm pretty sure caused the wakeboard to hit me in the back of the head. A vein in my foot actually popped because the board was ripped off my feet, and my entire big toe was completely purple with blood. I thought I was going to have a massive bruise there, but after about 10 minutes all of the blood had gone somewhere else, and my foot was back to normal. Weird.

Here's Cole catching some major air! He came SO close to landing a flip this trip! He pretty much landed a few of them but then fell. He'll get it. It was so much fun watching Cole and Tyler. Tyler is legit-- his wake boarding abilities are definitely refined.

Barbara and I on our last ride in the boat! This lady is amazing

Logan and Tyler. The best drivers on the trip :) Tyler was a stud and drove every single time the boat went out. 

Sun bathing beauties: Seirra, Brookie, and Hayley

Truman did not miss a single boat trip!! 3 years old (we actually celebrated his 3rd birthday while we were in Don Pedro)  and loves the boat! Every time we left, there was Truman. It was adorable. 

It may just look like Cole is doing a backwards dive into the pool, but he's doing a back flip :) I just couldn't get it on video because the camera had no more space left.

On the way back from Don Pedro, we drove through Yosemite again. We were originally going to try going back out through Sacramento, but this ended up being better and faster. The windy part was easier this time because it was in the day light and the first part of the drive instead of the last.

Aww so cute! 5 days no showers.... lol. Unless you count the 3 we took in the lake every day! That hat didn't leave my head unless I was sleeping, or wake boarding.

Well after this picture, there was a lot more driving, and then we were home. The next day, we were back at work. On to the next month! Thanks Smith family for an awesome vacation!