its the simple things: Gustavo is always right.

Per usual I'm playing catch-up. But only because so many awesome things have happened in Nov-cember (that's the end of November and start of December, in case your deciphering skills are a bit lacking). Following a super fun Thanksgiving, Hannah, Gustavo, Luci, Landon and myself headed out into the wilderness to do some camping and hiking in Sequoia National Park. SNP is the bottom half of my top-ten list of National Parks in the US (side note: I rank everything. For those who are curios, the top 5 list: 1. Zion National Park, 2. Yosemite National Park, 3. Glacier National Park, 4. Joshua Tree National Park, 5. Shenandoah National Park. Moving forward....). It is a super cool piece of history in my book, and fall was the perfect time to visit it! Weather was absolutely gorgeous and we enjoyed two nights of camping in and two fun hikes while we were there.

For starters, since we left on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we simply packaged up all of our turkey day leftovers in aluminum foil and reheated them over the fire for dinner. We also ate left over turkey sammiches while on the trail and at a fabulous chicken, veggies, and soup dinner the second night. Everyone involved definitely agreed that it was the best Thanksgiving leftover idea EVER.

Oh yes, that's right! Stuffing, sweet potatoes, and turkey, campfire style!

I bet you are wondering about the title of this blog.... As we are driving up to SNP, we were playing the "super-hero" game (i.e. if you were a super hero in real life, what would your super power be based on your personality). I was promptly deemed Captain Sunshine, with the power of spreading enthusiasm to any possible venue. Gustavo decided that he can magically make things happen. His claim was that all he has to do is say that something is going to happen, and it will happen. He followed that statement by saying "For example, we are definitely going to see a bear on this trip." I promptly explained that this was highly unlikely, as we were staying in a very populated portion of the park and I was skeptical that we would see any wildlife except for birds and possible a squirrel. Gustavo repeated about six times that night (as we were locking our food in the bear locker) that we would definitely see a bear.

Sunrise.

No bear.

Breakfast. Delicious.

No bear.

Drive to trail head.

Bear.

And 3 massive bucks.

I kid you not. Didn't get a picture of the bear, but did get some of the bucks (they were pretty stellar)!

So I'm thinking it is a coincidence. Gustavo now says that we will see a baby sequoia tree. As a collective group, we are not sure if there is such a thing as a baby sequoia tree, since these things live for like 3,000 years. So during our hike alllllll day around these awesome giants Gustavo is pointing out "baby sequoia trees." I simply took a picture to compare to Google later, being the skeptic that I am.

Turns out, he's right! That is a baby sequoia tree! It will one day grow into this:

Bottom line, Gustavo is always right. The first day we meandered around the massive old trees and were absolutely amazed at their size and the history surrounding them.