Thursday, March 27, 2008
More National Parks
In our endeavor to visit as many Nationals as we can… we detoured on our way home to visit some famous California parks.
Sequoia Someone once told us that it doesn’t matter how beautiful a park might be—if the bathrooms aren’t clean,… Well, Sequoia has the dirtiest bathrooms of any National Park, etc. that we have visited. We stopped for a short hike in the foothills where wildflowers were blooming. But then the road goes up and up and up and any trails in the Sierras are still under snow. There are only a couple of places to stop and the parking at the famous General Sherman tree (biggest in the world) was so limited we were not able to stop. Luckily we kept on going and reached…
Kings Canyon
This little known gem was a breath of fresh air. There was a nice Visitor Center where we saw a video about the canyon (which was still closed for the winter.) Staff was friendly and the bathrooms were reasonably clean. There was plenty of parking (or rather fewer people) to see the General Grant tree and a nice walk through this grove of Giant Sequoias. We didn’t realize how different they are from redwoods. We could at least get a view of the canyon, and drove down to a lake where crowds were totally absent.
Leaving the park was even more of an adventure. We took a “short cut” back to Visalia where we were staying. Hwy 245 has got to be the “twistiest, turniest” road in CA. (even more so than the infamous #49). If we reached the great speed of 25 mph for a few minutes, I cheered. It was a long day.
Yosemite
Luckily we are staying at a KOA outside of the Park. There has been a major landslide and the highway is closed to trailers and vehicles over 28 feet—except the bus which we were able to catch here and ride into the Visitor Center. There is also a 30 minute wait at several construction sites. It was a beautiful fall day in Yosemite Valley, or so it seemed. The air was crisp and clear, and dry leaves covered the ground. We did our obligatory hike to Lower Yosemite Falls. Then we decided to do part of the Valley trail—an 8 plus mile hike which left us exhausted. Even though there was quite a crowd around the Village, we saw few people out on the trail.
We took the truck into the park on our second day to have a more flexible schedule. We did another 9 miles of hiking—around Mirror Lake and up to get a view (but no decent picture) of Vernal Falls. We were not impressed with the campgrounds in the Valley.
Sequoia Someone once told us that it doesn’t matter how beautiful a park might be—if the bathrooms aren’t clean,… Well, Sequoia has the dirtiest bathrooms of any National Park, etc. that we have visited. We stopped for a short hike in the foothills where wildflowers were blooming. But then the road goes up and up and up and any trails in the Sierras are still under snow. There are only a couple of places to stop and the parking at the famous General Sherman tree (biggest in the world) was so limited we were not able to stop. Luckily we kept on going and reached…
Kings Canyon
This little known gem was a breath of fresh air. There was a nice Visitor Center where we saw a video about the canyon (which was still closed for the winter.) Staff was friendly and the bathrooms were reasonably clean. There was plenty of parking (or rather fewer people) to see the General Grant tree and a nice walk through this grove of Giant Sequoias. We didn’t realize how different they are from redwoods. We could at least get a view of the canyon, and drove down to a lake where crowds were totally absent.
Leaving the park was even more of an adventure. We took a “short cut” back to Visalia where we were staying. Hwy 245 has got to be the “twistiest, turniest” road in CA. (even more so than the infamous #49). If we reached the great speed of 25 mph for a few minutes, I cheered. It was a long day.
Yosemite
Luckily we are staying at a KOA outside of the Park. There has been a major landslide and the highway is closed to trailers and vehicles over 28 feet—except the bus which we were able to catch here and ride into the Visitor Center. There is also a 30 minute wait at several construction sites. It was a beautiful fall day in Yosemite Valley, or so it seemed. The air was crisp and clear, and dry leaves covered the ground. We did our obligatory hike to Lower Yosemite Falls. Then we decided to do part of the Valley trail—an 8 plus mile hike which left us exhausted. Even though there was quite a crowd around the Village, we saw few people out on the trail.
We took the truck into the park on our second day to have a more flexible schedule. We did another 9 miles of hiking—around Mirror Lake and up to get a view (but no decent picture) of Vernal Falls. We were not impressed with the campgrounds in the Valley.
# posted by Carol Harma @ 8:06 PM 
