Show and Tell Friday!

Welcome to Show and Tell Friday! Today I'm sharing some Halloween things my dad has made for me!  Love this old crow with the cherry! Too cute!!!

...and my black cats! Thanks Dad!!!!

I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!!!

If you are joining in on Show and Tell Friday, please remember that your Show and Tell needs to be something from your home or garden.  If you would like to join in, please enter your name and leave your exact Show and Tell blog post link, not just your blog link and as a common courtesy link back to my blog.

Thanks to all of you that join in every week!

The Cemetery at Yosemite

 I know some people think cemeteries are creepy, scary places but I love strolling through the old ones! So much history!!!  I still remember when I was a little girl my mom telling me that she loved old cemeteries and I think that's probably why I like them now.

When my guy and I were at Yosemite a couple weeks ago, we were riding our bikes and came upon this cemetery! I've been to Yosemite a lot as a child and never saw this! I know my mom would have came here every year we visited if she knew it existed!  

I was really drawn to this bench...I took photos of it from every angle! I could just picture people coming here through the years and sitting. I'm not sure how long the bench has been here but the cemetery has been here since the 1800s!

My guy and I have been seeing each other for 6 months so we are still finding our new things about each other.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that he also likes to walk through old cemeteries!  I should have known this...he's a huge history buff and he stops at every historical landmark sign we come across! Sometimes this involves crazy, abrupt stops while driving down the road! At least now I know when he slams on the brakes and pulls over what's going on!

I love this one above!  It was carved wood and the letters were raised. Poor Effie Maud was just 14 years old.  It says "She faltered by the wayside and the angels took her home". Anyone know what "faltered by the wayside" means? Maybe it just means she passed away?

There were a lot of these wooden headstones with very little information.

Most of the headstones here where very modest, nothing huge or extravagant.

John Anderson's headstone says he was killed by a horse. He was 55 years old.

After I took these photos of the cemetery we continued on our bike ride through the park.  I came  upon this sign below in another part of the park and remembered that I had taken a photo of James Hutchings' 

headstone earlier.  He and his wife were inn keepers at Yosemite in the 1800s.

This must be his daughter that is buried next to him...

This one below was one of the largest in the cemetery. It was so beautiful with the tree changing colors...

This (below) is a close up but it's still hard to read. Many of these are so old and weathered that they are almost impossible to read any longer. So sad!

This wasn't a traditional cemetery with the headstones all lined up in a row, as you can see in the photo below, they are all spread out...

Sadie drowned in the rapids and her headstone was erected by her companions.

It really was a wonderful experience to visit the Yosemite cemetery.  You could just feel the history around you!

For more about my trip to Yosemite, click here: Yosemite 

Show and Tell Friday!

Welcome to Show and Tell Friday!  This week I'm sharing my roses from my garden! They are blooming like crazy right now! These are my "Nancy Reagan" roses and they are a beautiful salmon color. They are one of the healthiest roses I've grown!  The leaves are dark green and lush and it blooms profusely!

Please excuse the bad photo quality on this post. I was taking these photos with no natural light and they didn't turn out too well!

 

I'm also sharing this new Yankee Candle I bought (my favorite brand of candles). It's an order-eliminating candle and the scent is so clean! I love it! Lauren and I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond the other day and every time we go there, we head over to the Yankee Candles and smell them all!  I especially love the apple and cinnamon scents this time of year!  I think we probably spent 30 minutes smelling candles! So much fun! 

If you are joining in on Show and Tell Friday, please remember that your Show and Tell needs to be something from your home or garden.  If you would like to join in, please enter your name and leave your exact Show and Tell blog post link, not just your blog link and as a common courtesy link back to my blog. If your link has been removed, please re-read over the guidelines before re-posting, or e-mail me with any questions.

Thanks to all of you that join in every week!

My Weekend Getaway to Yosemite

Last weekend, my guy and I went to Yosemite! It was sort of a spur of the moment trip! We both took Friday off of work and headed up there! It's a little less than a 4 hour drive. 

I've spent a lot of time in Yosemite as a child. For many years my family would go up every Thanksgiving in our motorhome.  I remember that almost every year we would be there for the first snowfall! As a California girl it was really something special to wake up and see snow falling! 

As a child, I really didn't appreciate the beauty of it all! I just liked that I could ice skate at an outdoor ice skating rink. I took ice skating lessons as a child but around here there are only indoor ice skating rinks...for obvious reasons! It was really a special thing to ice skate outdoors, especially as the snow was falling! I have such fond memories of my time in Yosemite as a child...

which is why it was so wonderful to go back after all these years!  I think the last time I was there, I was twenty-something! 

Yosemite is so beautiful in the autumn!  The leaves were just starting to change color and the mornings were very crisp! The temps got down into the 30s at night but then up into the upper 70s in the afternoon.

This is the back of the Ahwahnee Hotel.  It's on my bucket list of things to experience in my lifetime. It's over $500 a night but I'm hopeful that someday I will stay there!  

This little path was in front of the hotel. I thought it was so beautiful with the canopy of trees over it...

We were riding our bikes around and came across this big rock in the ground. You can see the holes where the Indians used to grind things.  There is so much history here! 

In the photo above you can see Half Dome.  My bucket list also includes climbing this.  I've really gotten into hiking, I hike 10 miles every Saturday morning and this would be the ultimate challenge.  It's a really popular thing to do. You can see how crowded it gets (click here). I'm still not sure if I want to take the risk after hearing about recent hikers falling to their death.  

Update: You can watch a video on climbing Half Dome here.

When I was a kid I loved going into this Village Store! I couldn't wait to go back. It's funny to see something with "adult eyes" that you haven't seen since childhood.  It seemed so much smaller than I remembered it! haha!

Luckily the only bear we saw was this stuffed one in the Village Store!  They warn you so much there about bears!  You can't leave any food, water or toiletries in your car or tent! They have special bear lockers for all that stuff.  It's a little weird to be locking up all that stuff and yet there we were in a tent cabin with only canvas between us and the bears!

We took our bikes and rode all around the Yosemite valley. Here's my guy under a HUGE rock...

On the top of that huge rock was something very interesting...  a tree growing out of a small crack! Nature is so amazing! You can barely see it in the middle of the rock...

We did this trip on the spur of the moment and didn't have any lodging reservations.  We had planned to just find a hotel just outside of the park but I didn't want to leave so I called reservations as we were sitting outside the Village Store. The only thing available were these tent cabins in Curry Village.  My guy was not so into it when he heard there were no bathrooms or showers in them.  I really wanted to stay there so I talked him into it.  The bathrooms and showers were just a short walk down the trail so it wasn't so bad.   Luckily the tent cabin we got had heat because it got cold that night! Brrrr!!!

I had such a wonderful weekend there!  I can't wait to go back!

***************

I also took photos of a very old cemetery at Yosemite. I never knew that was there. I'll share those photos soon!