Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Thursday June 12: We arrived at Sequoia National Park on the later side and quickly found a camp site at Potwisha and hunkered down for the night. This was our first night using a bear box, the large metal boxes at every camp site that all your food and scented items have to be stored in to keep the black gears away from camp.  We awoke and hit the road as early as we could to beat the crowds on Friday June 13th.  We wound our way up into the park and when we got into higher elevations started seeing the enormous Sequoia trees.  Our first stop was a short hike up Moro Rock.

Afterwards we drove through the tunnel tree 

And went hiking at Crescent Meadow. This turned out to be my favorite hike of our whole trip. 

We saw blankets of wild flowers, gorgeous high mountain meadows, enormous old sequoia trees, an old cabin made in a felled tree from the 1890's, a few mule deer.

After our hike I went for a run and James took the kids to see the General Sherman Tree which is the largest tree by volume in the world. We met up and went to find a camp site at the Lodgepole campground in the park.  We set up camp, got everything into the bear box and set out on a hike that went right from our campground. We hiked up along a river to a waterfall.  

Along the way we saw a mother bear and two cubs in the grass about 30 yards off the trail.  We we're excited that we got to have a bear sighting.  After our hike we made dinner and had a camp fire.

Saturday June 14: We awoke to a cold morning with our campground being at 7,000 feet elevation.  We got up and out again with the hope of beating the crowd.  We drove to the Big Baldy trail head and made oatmeal for breakfast and set out on our hike.  This was an out and back that was 4.5 miles total and ended at 9,200 feet elevation. The views were great at the top.  The kids have been such troopers and take great pride finishing hikes.  

We went to the visitors center so the kids could say their pledge and earn their junior park ranger badges. Then we did the hour drive out to the end of Kings Canyon National Park, which is adjacent to Sequoia. We got a camp site and then goofed off in a river in a beautiful setting. 

We checked out some more nearby waterfalls and headed back to camp for dinner and roasted marshmellows.

 

Sunday June 15: we did a short and beautiful hike at Gemwalt meadows. 

The only spoiler was that we were attacked by Mosquitos almost the entire hike. Then it was time to head out and up the road towards Yosemite.