Pinecrest, Calaveras County

Whoa! What a weekend. First of all thanks to our buddy Jer! Without his help this trip wouldn't have been possible. (I have to warn you guys. This writing is going have a lot of misspells because it's my first one in english :D. I've changed my writing language in english due to popular request.)

If you want to find the right mood while reading this, you should listen Kid Rock's All Summer Long.

So where should I start... Our purpose was to explore the nature of California. First we were thinking of visiting the National Park of Yosemite. When we took a closer look, we found out that it is under reconstruction at the moment. One of our friends here suggested that we could go to Pinecrest, which is located approximately 160 miles from Hayward to east.

Our team concisted of eight finns, one aussie and one american and the trip started Saturday morning at 7:00 hours. Before we arrived to our destination, we stopped at Nation's Giant to have some breakfast. And it was good. Fried eggs, bacon, french toast and hashbrowns (perunasuikaleita). After three hours we finally arrived at our motel - Gold's Inn Angels Camp. Typical American motel, similar to the motels you can easily recognize from the movies. Price for one night was something USD 25 for each.

After this we started our journey to Pinecrest. We were supposed to hike approximately 12 miles. And the views - they were something you cannot definitely see back home. Waterfalls, mountains, rapids, almost everything you could possibly imagine.

After the hike we continued our trip to Sonora, where we were supposed to see a movie. We chose to see the movie called Moneyball, including Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. The movie was based on true story of a Baseball team Oakland Athletic's General Manager (Pitt) who starts to assemble and coach his team with mathematical models with help of his new assistant (Hill). The movie was great and I think we all can recommend it to others, though I'm not sure if it's in theaters back in Finland. Later we got some chicken wings in Applebee's. 24 chicken wings with Classic Buffalo sauce and two glasses of Budweiser - total USD 16,00. And boy it was delicious.

We were all pretty tired so we decided to go straight back to our motel. The greatest thing in the motel so far was that there were blankets. We've used duvet covers so far and to be honest, the nights have been freezing. (Now I have tho thank Vinnie and his aunt. Because of them, the Finns now have blankets and we don't have to suffer from the cold nights of California anymore :D).

On Sunday we headed to Calaveras - home of the Giant Sequoias. The thing is, you cannot even imagine the size of those trees before you see them with your own eyes. Just see for yourself!

 (Because we're in the homeland of the NRA(!), we had to took the picture above :D)

To sum up: the trip was great. On monday October 17th we're going to the Shark Tank in San Jose to see the derby Sharks versus Ducks. And in the near future we're looking forward to see also Santa Cruz and Carmel. And for sure... do some studying as well ;)