Not many people realized Hetchy Hetchy is another option when visiting Yosemite National Park....

I came to this country as a 5-year-old little girl with just my small suitcase...

Along one of the turns, we saw a crashed van pulling a boat on the side of the road where yellow caution tape was up. We all had our theories about what possibly could have happened. Did the van get too close to the edge? Did foul play happen because it looked like gunshots in the windows? We’ll never know. We pulled over by the lake for a picnic lunch and enjoyed the serene views. When we got to the dam, we stopped and marveled at the history of all that this land holds and tried to imagine riding this trail via stagecoach. It was an adventure even by car.

"My life was being raised in a small town on a farm, and I...

Now that I've been here about 2 and a half years, you can take my lessons learned if you want to use the most of your time in Hollywood on where to go and where not to go.