Later that month, July 2013, we took a vacation to Yosemite National Park. It was beautiful. I loved flying, and navigating the airports. I had bought a new camera to take great pictures just the week prior to leaving. My mood had gone up slightly, and I could allow myself to focus on the trip. Unwittingly, we booked a connection on two different airlines. This was just before American airlines and US airways officially merged. Our plane from Dallas to phoenix was about an hour late for takeoff. We landed in Phoenix where we were supposed to take a connection to Fresno, our final destination. But because we had two different airlines, we actually had to go outside the airport and take a bus to the other side, where we had to go back through security. We were running through the airport, to find out plane had just departed. We were stranded in the desert. The next flight to Fresno was booked, and the chances of four people getting on standby were slim. The only thing they could do was to reroute us to Bakersfield, about 3 hours south of Fresno. When we arrived, it was the tiniest airport I’d ever seen, think, one room with three gates. We managed to rent a car and started the drive in the dark through winding mountain roads to a cabin room we had rented in Mariposa. We were almost out of gas and thankfully found a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and my dad asked for directions. It was around midnight. We kept driving and finally got to the room. We all basically collapsed. It was around 2am. 4am where we had just come from at 6am. We then had to get up at 7 to make the drive to the park. Everything was so beautiful. We visited Yosemite Valley, and looked over the classic scene from Inspiration Point. We went to Mariposa Grove and hiked up a 2-mile trail. I almost couldn’t make it. Were we had come from everything was flat. Now I had to go straight up a mountain and then back down. The altitude was giving me a headache when combined with the effort of climbing. The next day I could barely walk. Every part of my legs and thighs hurt from the previous day. I did manage to take a trail ride on horseback though. But there was a bad accident with another rider happened as we were getting off. They didn’t get up and the ambulance came. The horse I was on reacted to the other two and spun around and took off a bit, but knowing how to ride I stopped him really quick and brought him right back to the group. I was ready because I knew he would probably react to the other horses that were scared. And he did. 

We took the winding road for miles up to Glacier Point. There was a cliff on one side with no guardrail and a wall of rocks on the other side. It was nothing but switchbacks as we slowly climbed the mountain. The top was over 7,000 ft in elevation. Finally, it was cooler. Yosemite Valley had a temperature of 104º F. The view was beautiful. You could literally see for miles. You could see three waterfalls, Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls, and Nevada Falls. There were also views of El Capitan and Half Dome. If you looked through the binoculars provided on the stone wall at the overlook, there was actually a row of a few people scaling the top curve of Half Dome.

On the other side of the stone wall with the metal rail, was about a 3,000 ft. drop. The cars looked like dots. There was a park ranger there at the peak. My sister wouldn’t go anywhere near the edge. I leaned all the way over the wall and took a picture looking straight down. I remember thinking, “If I was going to do it here, this would be the place. Maybe that’s why the ranger is up here.” But it did look like you would bump into things, like the cliff and rocks that jutted out, and land on trees first, just the perspective of being so high fooled my brain. The trees didn’t even register as being the mighty sequoias that we saw when we hiked in the forest. We didn’t stay long because my dad didn’t want to drive down the awful road in the dark. Can’t say I blamed him.

On the last day we visited Yosemite falls and did “rock climbing”. Climbing the huge boulders that had fallen over the years to get to the base of the fall, which was small due to the summer drought. Some of these were four feet high, and most had some water underneath. You really had to think about what you were doing and look for the best path to take, sometimes using your arms and legs together like a bridge to get across a part you couldn’t walk on.

We drove through Tuolumne Meadows. That was gorgeous too. There was no water, but the flat ground in stark contrast with the high mountain was awesome. There was a small little lake in one area, but I don’t recall the name of it. We spent three days in the park before taking a plane to San Diego to see my dad’s Brother. I’d never been there before, and I was excited.

We spent four days there. I was falling apart. The first day we went to the beach. I was so depressed I didn’t want to go anywhere, just stay at home. They wanted to go to the zoo that day. I didn’t want to. I went to the beach with them. We went to Coronado, and toured Hotel del Coronado. The beach was beautiful. I tool plenty pictures, played in the sand, and walked on the shoreline. Then we went to Old Town. I bought some souvenirs there. It was setup like a small down from the early 1900’s, or like what you see in the old westerns.

The next day was the zoo. Again, I just wanted to stay home. But I knew I had to come, and I did want to see it. I ended up taking over 200 pictures. SO many animals I hadn’t seen before, or even knew existed. We were literally at the zoo for 7 hours, from the aviaries to the elephants. We were all tired when we got back to the house.

The next day my sister got to go shopping with my aunt. I went around various places with my parents, including Balboa Park where we saw unusual plant life.

The next morning, we went to La Jolla Beach. The sky was overcast over the shore and it was chilly. The waves were big and were splashing up over the rocks and making waterfalls when they receded. Dozens of seals were laid out on the shore and on the rocks, and the air was filled with their cries while pelicans flew overhead. I was walking with my aunt. I remember asking her what San Francisco was like. She said it was like this in the mornings, but then the fog burns off and the sun comes out.

After we left, I got to go out with my aunt. We went to the mall, which was a really cool place. I ended up getting my hair done. I talked to my aunt a little about how I was feeling, glad to just be able to talk for a bit. Still cautious though, because I didn’t want her to tell my parents anything. I was so depressed. And we were leaving in the morning. I didn’t want to leave. I loved the city. The weather had been absolutely perfect.

I broke down crying that night, trying not to make a sound because I didn’t want anyone to know. I remember saying to myself “If you keep feeling like this, I’ll let you go. We’ll get you out of here, I promise, even if we have to get a one-way ticket to San Francisco.” I paused. “That’s totally impossible.”

“Wait, maybe not. I’m 18 now, maybe I could actually do this. I learned a lot about airports and airlines over the past week. Maybe I really can make this happen. I’m tired of failing.”

The wheels in my head were turning. On the flight back, I paid rapt attention to everything, especially how to navigate the airports. Maybe I really could pull this off. From that moment on, it was all I thought about. Examining every scenario I could think of, and every problem I could see being presented with each one.  I worked on solutions, and stories, and found cover-ups and loopholes. But one cannot plan for everything in the unknown. And there was no way I could prepare for what was to follow.