Author Archives: Artemis A.

California National Parks Ranking

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So I tend to travel a lot, and some of my favorite adventures have been to our Californian national parks! I’ve been to all 10 of them except for Channel Islands National Park, so I’m going to rank the other 9! It will be in order from worst to best, although none of them are bad.

8. Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park isn’t a particularly interesting national park. It’s very small and far from here, but it’s still nice. It has some good hikes, but the competition is so steep that it just gets pushed down to the bottom of this list. If you’re in the area, I’d recommend checking it out, but it’s hard to justify driving all the way up there just for Pinnacles.

7. Joshua Tree National Park

I love Joshua Tree and it’s a huge jump up from Pinnacles, but it’s just the least amazing out of the parks. It’s a lot closer, only being about 2.5 hours away, and is a lot bigger. Joshua Tree also has some very diverse and interesting hikes. There’s a lot of shorter trails and there’s almost no, if any, hikes longer than 2 hours.

6. Sequoia National Park

Sequoia National Park is a great national park with good hikes, but the scenery is, in my opinion, nicer than Joshua Tree’s. It is a lot farther, but it’s very nice.

5. Kings Canyon National Park

Kings Canyon is essentially the same as Sequoia but it has Hume Lake. Hume Lake is just a really nice place with nice walking trails around it and a lot of ducks. Otherwise, it’s the same thing pretty much, and they’re right next to each other.

4. Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park is maybe the most unique of the Californian national parks. There’s a lot of geothermal activity in this park, like mud pools and geysers. It also has some nice forest hikes. The only reason this isn’t higher is because it’s hard to get to. The closest real hotel is in Redding, which is an hour away and can get extremely hot in the summer.

3. Death Valley National Park

Death Valley is a beautiful national park. It has some of if not the best hiking trails out of any of the parks. There’s a lot of trails with climbing too if you enjoy that. This park is also huge, almost the size of Puerto Rico, so I can really only talk about what’s around The Oasis resort properties. Speaking of which, they’re pretty nice and close to a lot of the more popular areas, including Badwater Basin and Artists Pallet

2. Redwood National Park

Redwood National Park is essentially a better Sequoia National Park. It’s much more coastal and has some of the best biking areas I’ve ever experienced. It also has some amazing scenery and some pretty great hiking trails. Redwood isn’t even that isolated compared to the other parks, and is a great stop if you’re doing an RV trip up the west coast.

1. Yosemite National Park

This shouldn’t be surprising if you’ve ever been to Yosemite, there’s a good reason it’s ranked as the best national park on many online rankings. It has by far the best scenery of any of the national parks and also some of the most enjoyable trails. Yosemite is also huge and has much more to offer outside of the main Yosemite Valley, which gives you so many things to do on its own. The campgrounds are also excellent, with a good hotel if that’s not your thing. Overall, it’s definitely worth the visit.

So there you have it, a ranking of (almost) every Californian national park. Have you been to any of these parks? Would you agree? What would you change?

Books about California’s National parks are available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library.

Band Review: Coldplay

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I have another artist I would like to share with everyone, except this time you’ve probably heard of them! This band is Coldplay!

Coldplay is a British alt rock/pop rock band formed in 1997. They released their first album, Parachutes, in 2000. Parachutes, in my opinion, is their best album to date. It has one of their more well-known songs, Yellow, but also what I consider to be their best songs, like Shiver, Spies, High Speed, and Don’t Panic. I feel like it’s their most unique album and they sort of fell into more poppy music down the line. I really like the feel of the album all the way through, it’s a very chill album and it makes you feel like you’re just aimlessly drifting.

Their second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head,  was released two years later and is my second favorite album by them. This album also has two pretty popular songs by them, Clocks and The Scientist. I like A Rush of Blood to the Head because of its unique instrumentals. This album is noticeably less calm and a little sadder, or at least melancholic, shown with songs like Politik, The Scientist, and Warning Sign.

I’d like to skip forward to their 6th album, A Head Full of Dreams, released in 2015. A Head Full of Dreams is much more of a pop rock album than an alt rock album. This one has a few popular songs like Hymn for the Weekend and Adventure of a Lifetime, which I would actually agree are the best songs on this album. A lot of the other songs are pretty forgettable, but I don’t hate them. The two songs make me feel like I’m flying through some sort of city or some big spectacular scene, and I think it’s really neat how they were able to write music like that that.

Skipping forward again to their 8th and most recent album released in 2021, Music Of The Spheres. Each song from this album is meant to represent a song from each planet in this theoretical solar system, but all of them are pretty poppy. A good portion of them are collaborations with other artists, such as Selena Gomez (in Let Somebody Go) and BTS (in My Universe). I like the idea behind this album, but I feel like it was executed poorly and I don’t really like any of the songs. However, there is one song on this album that breaks that rule: Coloratura. Coloratura is a 10 minute masterpiece that I feel perfectly ends the story they were trying to tell. I would highly recommend skipping the album and just listening to that song.

In conclusion, Coldplay is a talented band that sort of fell off, but their older songs are still very good and worth a listen. That’s not to say all of their newer songs are bad, as there’s still some pretty great ones.

Hades Video Game Review

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Video games have been an admittedly large part of my life, and so has Greek mythology (I mean, my name is literally Artemis), so a game that combines both is bound to be one that I like. Hades is probably my favorite single-player game, and I want to share it with y’all!

Hades is an isometric hack n’ slash rogue-lite game available on macOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5, Windows, and Netflix Games. The goal is to make it out of the Greek Underworld by getting through different rooms and defeating enemies. The game has no checkpoints and you lose almost all of your resources and progress if you die, but it’s a lot less frustrating than you might expect. That’s because there’s a lot of permanent upgrades that can make the game easier over time!

There are four types of currency: Charon’s Obol, Darkness, Gemstones, and Nectar. They’re all used for different types of items, but Charon’s Obols can be used for upgrades within your run, while the other three are used outside of your run to give you permanent character upgrades, or for trades between the currencies or for other artifacts.

The gameplay is very fun and interactive. You can use one of six different weapons with four versions of each. This along with the different boons from each god can really switch up how you play in each run. I usually just use the Varatha and get a ton of boons from Zeus and Ares, and Athena’s Dash boon if possible and mash buttons, but you can play in a ton of more engaging ways. It can be very difficult at first, but it gets exponentially easier as you unlock more permanent upgrades.

So if you like action-filled single player video games, I would highly recommend Hades. It’s a great roguelike with good theming and very fun gameplay.

Hades is available to check out from the Mission Viejo Library.

Band Review: Mad Caddies

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I like a lot of bands, most of which are relatively unknown. I’d like to introduce you to one of them, Mad Caddies.

Mad Caddies is a ska band from around Solvang and Santa Barbara here in California. They’ve been around since 1997 with their debut album Quality Soft Core. I first learned about them from, of all places, the radio of our Uber driver’s car in Portugal over summer break in 2022, and I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since.

I would like to highlight a few albums by them, starting with Rock the Plank. Rock the Plank is sort of pirate themed, but also has some other themes, like a bar fight themed song. My favorite Mad Caddies album is Keep It Going, which has a great opener and closer in “The Dirge” and “End Dirge” respectively. The album also has some great songs like “Lay Your Head Down,” “Coyote,” and “Tired Bones,” but especially “Backyard” and “State of Mind.” “Backyard” has some of the best lyrics/advice of any song I’ve heard, and also leads into “State of Mind,” which I think has some of the best instrumentals out of any of their songs.

I also went to a mini-festival that had Mad Caddies as the closing band. It was at the Garden Amphitheatre in Garden Grove, California, and they played a ton of great songs. It was only around 300 people, but they put on a great show and it had good energy.

So, have you ever heard of Mad Caddies? Do they sound interesting to you? Why don’t you give them a listen and tell me what you think in the comments!

Listen to the Mad Caddies on Freegal, free with your Mission Viejo Library card!

Dune 2 Movie Review

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Hey y’all! So Dune Part 2 was in theaters, and it’s pretty amazing. 

Dune Part 2 (2024) is, of course, a sequel to Dune (2021). Both Dune movies are adaptations of the first book in the Dune series by Frank Herbert, which is a sci-fi series following the remaining members of the Atreides family. Dune inspired other works of science fiction, such as Star Wars.

The second movie continues the story of Dune, following Paul Atreides. It tries to stay as faithful to the original book by as possible. As someone who has read most of the first book, I can confirm that it’s very accurate to the original novel. The movie only changes a few things and cuts out some more minor, dialogue-heavy scenes. Dune Part 2 also provides an amazing sense of scale, which is something that I feel the book sort of struggles with, and I think that makes the movie a great companion to the book.

Overall, I’d say it’s a great adaptation, especially considering the first book is about 900 pages. I would recommend finishing the book first, but I didn’t do that for either movie and there’s still a ton of bonus information you get in the book. And if you’re like me and you stop reading the book for a year or two, the movie is a great refresher if you’re more than halfway through.