California by Madison Kyle

When my family and I arrived in the San Diego airport, the first thing we did was rent a car pick up my aunt from the airport, then we went to the hotel we were staying at, we stayed there for two days. The third day we packed up our stuff and drove 2 hours to a campsite for my cousin Michaels wedding that was the next day. Since we ended up driving for a while I noticed it looked really hazy and kind of gross, then I realized it was smog, they had a lot of smog in California.  When we got there I saw everyone who was there busy at work setting up for the wedding, since the guests get cabins we put our stuff there and left it to go help.  After we helped we had to go to the wedding rehearsal. We weren’t part of the wedding party but since it was outside my sister and I ended up being assigned the job of holding her dress as she walked to the aisle.  The next day was the wedding we went down to the place where it was, and my cousin told me he forgot the songs so I had to run back up the 5-10 minute walk and be back within a two minutes, and since it was really high up on a mountain the air was already thin so running was almost impossible and I was in wedges so even worse.  I made it back with the music in time just as it was about to start, everything went well and it was a fun party.  The day after next we left for the sequoia national forest after I dropped a bunch of very unsubtle hints, and if you don’t know what a sequoia is then you’re missing out.  The sequoias are these really amazing trees that only grow in that one part of California, nowhere else.  They grow to be several hundred feet tall, and very wide.  They even have some trees made so you can drive through them.  When we got there we went on a trail through the forest, and we came across a couple from the Netherlands who were taking pictures of a rattle snake on a log, they also got pictures of a mountain lion or cougar, after we finished talking to them, we saw a pretty view and when we went to look, a couple told us that an even more amazing view was up on a mountain, since my mom is afraid of heights she didn’t go, but the rest of us did, and as the mountain is really high up, then I got to a flat rock with a wall sort of thing on it, I started to walk across and it was worse than being on gravel with no protection from falling, and so I ran across it, then I got up to the top and by that time we were about to take a picture and we had to stand near the edge of a complete drop-off.  And as soon as we took the picture I was running back down the mountain so I wouldn’t stop and not be able to get back down.  After that we finished the trail and drove down to San Francisco, and this was probably the most interesting part of the trip, and since the couple that got married were there we met up with them our second day after we visited china town and the other tourist places.  When we met up with them we went to a small restaurant, emphasis on small you were not allowed inside the restaurant unless you had a table and there were possibly ten tables in  the whole thing, so we stood outside and waited there for a good hour and a half, but while we waited outside, we were visited by some INTERESTING strangers, like a woman whom we had never met before who came up to us and started talking to us, at first it was a normal conversation then she got weird and started talking about some weird things and stood there with us for a while.  And then my cousin pointed out a guy who had been staring at me for a while, and I was sent to stand somewhere the guy couldn’t see me, so then after a while he went inside, he then reappeared on his balcony staring down at us again, and then someone got in a crash at the intersection across the street, that’s when someone told us we could stand inside the area beside the restaurant until we ate, so we did.  While we were waiting the police showed up after thirty minutes, that’s when we were taken to our table to eat.  About fifteen minutes in there was a really strong smell outside that’s was sweet and bitter and it smelled really strong, it wasn’t a good smell.  Then I looked outside because they keep the doors open to the outside, and I thought I saw the woman, but I wasn’t sure so I didn’t say anything, but then I looked away for second and the smell got stronger so I look back and she was right there, and she started talking about weird things again, and after a few minutes a waitress came up and asked her if she knew us and she said that she did, but the waitress knew she was lying, because the smell was a very obvious illegal thing.  So she was asked to leave and the waitress apologized and said they had never seen the woman before, and we just laughed it off, and my cousin told us that sort of thing is not too uncommon there.  So the next day we went to L.A. which wasn’t all it was made up to be, but it was still fun. Then we went to back to San Diego, and stayed there, and met up with my grandparents for dinner where they told us their crazy stories, one of which a boy had went to a pool and started smashing the chairs and tables, which scared all of the family’s away from the pool.  After dinner we went back to our hotel and went swimming, the next day we packed up our things and flew back to Virginia, it was sad to leave but I was home sick and glad to be back home.