2 Years Later (Starting in Summer of 2017)

2 Years Later

   This year we are revisiting the US. It has already been 2 years! Now I am going to get back to blogging. I am now in 5th grade. The new part of the blog starts this summer. I am going to explain my month in the US over the summer and the next chapters that follow. Lets start blogging!!!

Calaveras Big Trees State Park

Calaveras Big Trees State Park

Calaveras is about 3 hours drive from Berkeley.

It has ones of the biggest trees in the world!!
Those trees are called the Sequoia trees.
The Sequoia trees are the biggest and the Redwood trees are the tallest trees in the world!
Calaveras was discovered by a hunter named Augustus T. Dowd in 1852
 while he was hunting.

Source: http://www.gocalaveras.com/travel-info/

In this picture, I was standing on the stump. In 1853, five men spent 22 days to drill holes on the tree because they were trying to cut this tree. Later, they made this stump into a dance floor. And they used the fallen tree trunk for a two-lane bowling alley. 

This is a part of the fallen trunk.

Sina found a very big pine cone. It was tall like the redwood tree.

 These barks look different but they do the same job. 

 

There were some fallen trees nearby.

Look at our size and the Sequoia size!

This tree fell in 1965.It was so big that when it fell, people thought there was an earthquake. They believed that this tree weighed about 2,600 tons.

This is a female cone. Sometimes you can find seeds in them.
Some big trees have more then 40,000 cones at the same time. 

This tree bark is spiral. The spiral bark helps the tree to be flexible when there are strong winds.

Sina and I were entering the base of this tree. It used to be two trees actually.
But they connected and they are now called the Siamese Twins.

Can you see two trees?

I went into this log with Sina and Uncle Semih. While we were posing for this picture, I put my finger over a hole (see the next picture). I didn't know that inside the hole was a baby bird. The baby bird thought my finger was a worm and it pecked my finger 5 times!! 

The hole where the baby bird was hiding. 

My finger!!!!

These two trees are called Mother and Son. 

Look at the layers of the bark.

This is an old tree. It now has a tunnel inside. It is very long!!

Sina and I ran inside the tree tunnel.

They called this tree the Abraham Lincoln Tree
because they name big beautiful trees with important people's names. 

This is called the Pioneer Cabin Tree. A car can fit through it!! 

If you come to California, I recommend this place for you because it is a very fun place. You can also camp there. It is not very far and definitely not crowded.

:)      :)        :)

Information on this page comes from a Guide to the Calaveras North Grove Trail by Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Hiking.. from Lands End to Baker Beach

We live in Berkeley which is on the East side of the San Francisco Bay.
If we want to go to San Francisco, we have to cross the Bay Bridge.

This is the toll plaza. We have to pay to cross it. It costs $5 on the weekends and either $4 or $6 on weekdays.
If you cross during rush hours on the weekdays, it costs $6. 

This is the part when you get to see San Francisco from the Bay Bridge.

Nice mural from the freeway.

We started hiking from the visitor center close to Cliff House.

Then we saw a part of this ship that is now used as a monument.

This is the part of the ship. I think it got shot so it now has a few big holes in it.

We walked a bit more and we saw this view!

During the hike.

After walking for 1.5 hours, we arrived at Baker Beach.

Some people went into the ocean and got crabs.
But these two crabs were too little, so they threw them back into the ocean.

We walked around and found a picnic table to have our lunch.

We walked from the Cliff House and we walked back to the Cliff House.

More pictures from the trail.

Then we drove to the Golden Gate Bridge.

I felt so excited!! We were about to walk onto the Bridge!!

View of San Francisco from the Bridge.

I took a selfie with my mom. 

There was a little hole on the bridge. When we looked down, we could see the water!!
It was cool!

Some signs on the bridge. I learned that we shouldn't throw anything from the Bridge.  

On the way back to our car, we saw many writings on the steps.
They said 'Welcome' in different languages.

The Turkish and Thai 'welcome' were right next to each other!!

This shows inside of the cable used on the Bridge.
If you look carefully, you will see many tiny cables inside the big orange cable!

Tiny cables in the big cable.

It was so much fun hiking to the beach and walking on the Bridge.
If you come to San Francisco, you should definitely do it!
:)