What We Did, Part 4

But all was not perfect on our trip.

As I mentioned in my first post back, we delayed the trip a day because of colds, and all of us except Doris were recovering from a cold the whole trip. For Lukas, recovering from a cold can mean asthma-like symptoms: an uncontrollable wheezing cough, especially at night. We brought a humidifier and nebulizer, which helped, and I thought I brought Lukas' oral asthma medication. But when I looked for the oral medication the first night, it wasn't in the bag. I couldn't believe I forgot it, and when we got home, it wasn't on the shelf where it should be...I still don't know where it is. Praise God, we were able to get the medication in the mountains, and it helped Lukas get his asthma under control. But not before several nights of severely interrupted sleep for Tom and me. One night, Lukas couldn't stop coughing and actually gagged himself...and then he couldn't stop gagging. Tom took him down the mountain to the ER (1.5 hours each way), where the ER doctor said we had done everything that could be done. Tom made it back to bed at 4 a.m. That was a hard day!

And then there was the near-death experience for Konrad and Tom. We had just arrived at the General Sherman tree when Tom heard a hissing sound, then SPLAT! two huge sugar pine pinecones fell just five feet in front of Tom (carrying Konrad on his back). They're posing with one of the offending pinecones. You can imagine that it wouldn't have been a pretty sight if one of those pinecones had hit Tom or Konrad after falling 150 feet. Praise God for His protection!

On another hike, Lukas had fun jumping on a rotted-out, fallen over log...only to find out that it was a wasp nest. He had at least two, if not three, wasps stinging his ankle at the same time. Poor guy! Thankfully he didn't have an allergic reaction, and didn't even remember to check his ankle by the time we got back to the car (although he did cry for five minutes or more).

But, hey, those are the things that make vacations interesting, right? And here are a few more fun pictures from our trip, including pictures of Konrad caught in his morning nap (thankfully, not clobbered by a pinecone!)

Tomorrow: water play!