We loaded up the car and headed to Chicago to fly from Midway to San Jose, CA. We have settled into a pretty good 'flying out of Chicago' routine. 'Catching Fire' was our audio book for this trip followed by 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.' The girls and I have read all the Hunger Games books, but these are new for Briggs. We skipped 'Mockingjay' since none of us really liked that one.
Even though we had a morning flight instead of an afternoon one, we still got sandwiches from the grilled cheese place at the airport. Instead of our typical grilled cheese or ham and cheese sandwiches, we got breakfast sandwiches. They were yummy!
We flew direct to San Jose, passing our time on the plane with movies, snacks, and sleeping. Once in San Jose, we grabbed our rental car (after Staley sniffed all of them to determine the least 'new car' smelly of them all), got some In-N-Out burgers for the road, and headed for our first destination of the trip...
Pinnacles National Park!!
We had time for one hike in Pinnacles, so we opted for the Condor Gulch Trail to High Peaks loop. It was about 5.5 miles and hit most of the highlights in the park. The Bear Gulch cave was closed while we were there due to the bats' pupping season.
It was a good hike with lots of scenic views along the way. The climbing up the rocks and steep sections were Briggs' favorite.
It was a beautiful day...warm, but not too hot. And the clear skies meant we had views for miles.
The hike we did was the quintessential hike in the park. The closed caves are another of the park's highlights. And the final thing Pinnacles is known for are the endangered California condors. Although it took a little while for us to figure out what we were looking for, we ended up seeing a bunch of the condors...including this tree full of them!
We enjoyed a good hike in some beautiful weather while marking another National Park off our list. Success!!
Although it had already been a big day of driving, we hopped in the car for a few more hours of drive time on our way towards Yosemite National Park. We stopped in Merced, CA for the night. After a good rest and a free hotel breakfast, we loaded back up to head towards our next park of the trip.
I was so excited to take my kids to see Yosemite, but since they had just discontinued their reservation system, I had read horror stories about the traffic, parking nightmares, long wait lines to enter the park,... I was very worried as we were visiting on Memorial Day, but we had absolutely no line to enter the Oak Flat Entrance around lunch time.
Because of my crowd concerns for Memorial Day (and because Tioga Road had just opened for the season), we decided to forego trying to head to the Valley and instead drove up Tioga Road to do a hike in the high country.
We had decided on a short, easy 2.5 mile hike to May Lake. And although it turned into more like a 7 mile hike with a closed road/parking lot and some miscommunication from a trailhead sign (wouldn't you think 2.7 miles means to May Lake and not the May Lake trailhead??), it was easy and lovely as we hiked through alpine forests to a mountain lake.
It was fairly warm and sunny...a perfect day for hiking...but we still encountered some snow along the trail.
We definitely managed to avoid the crowds as we only saw about 2 or 3 other people throughout our entire hike. May Lake was beautiful and a great place to have our mid-hike snacks.
We definitely enjoy our destination hikes. Waterfalls, lakes, scenic overlooks. It is always nice to have a spot to just sit and soak in the views.
By the time we finished our hike, it was getting to be later afternoon. We decided to head into Yosemite Valley to grab some groceries before checking into our condo. We again missed the crowds and got to show the kids some of the grandeur of Yosemite Valley.
We grabbed some groceries, made a quick stop to see Bridalveil Falls, and then checked into our condo in Yosemite West for the next few nights. We made a quick dinner of chicken sandwiches and got settled in.
Our condo for our two nights in Yosemite was very convenient. Within the park boundaries, we were just a quick 15-20 minute drive from the valley. It was small (and a bit stuffy without any air conditioning), but it worked fine for our 2 nights there.
After 2 really nice hiking days, things took a bit of a turn. Our plan had been to take on an epic 13 mile day hike up Mist Trail to Panorama Trail to Glacier Point and then hiking back along the Four Mile Trail. Unfortunately, an overcast day with rain forecasted made us rethink this plan as we feared that we'd hike all the way to Glacier Point and have no view and then get caught in a rainstorm on the way down. So we instead decided to hike the 7 mile roundtrip hike to Upper Yosemite Falls.
The hike up to Upper Yosemite Falls was strenuous, but beautiful. We stopped at Columbia Rock to check out the Valley views. The clouds were so low in the sky that they obscured the tops of the most of the granite cliffs...again making me glad that we hadn't tried to go all the way up to Glacier Point.
Just as we were getting our first views of the falls, the clouds lifted a bit and we even got some glimpses of blue sky. The views of the falls were breathtaking...and looking at the top made us realize just how much farther (and harder) we were going to have to hike to make it to the top.
It was a strenuous climb. My favorite part was walking along the trail near the falls and hearing the roar.
Reaching the top of the falls was a great challenge, but the end result was a little disappointing. Once at the top, there was very little view of the actual falls. It was a little anticlimatic. It was also windy and very cold once we reached the top. We sheltered behind some rocks, ate our picnic lunch, and then started our descent.
Throughout this trip, Adelie and Zach lagged behind a bit (or sometimes a lot). Staley and Briggs started making a habit of pretending to sleep while waiting for them to catch up.
Of course, then when Briggs would lag behind, Adelie would get in on the fun.
After our hike to Upper Yosemite Falls, we trekked over to see Lower Yosemite Falls before heading back to our condo. I wish I had tracked our cumulative steps goal for the day as we had plenty of extra steps before and after our hikes walking to and from our parking spot, going the wrong way for quite awhile because of my poor sense of direction, and getting a little lost trying to find our trailhead. Regardless of totals, we all walked A LOT this day...even if we didn't get to do our big planned hike.
We had hoped to drive up to Glacier Point after our hike since the rain had held off, but the low clouds and obscured views on the way back up towards our condo made us decide that an extra 1.5 hours of driving to get to a spot with no views would be a big bummer. Instead we made a taco dinner, showered up, and then Adelie and I drove back down into the valley to try to watch the sunset at Tunnel View.
Although there was no sunset to see, the view with the clouds was still a beautiful example of God's amazing creation.
The weather really threw a wrench into the rest of our park plans. I had hoped that we could go into the Valley the next morning and hike the Mist Trail before making our way to our final 2 parks of the trip. However, a cold front came in, it started to snow, and the forecast for the morning in the valley was in the 40's and rain. My family was all opposed to the idea of doing a hike that would make them very WET in the cold and rain, so we instead just packed up and hit the road towards Kings Canyon National Park.
The park sign for Kings Canyon National Park was not at the main entrance, so sadly I have no picture of the park sign. The cold and rain kept us to short, easy hikes. We stopped to do the 1/2 mile paved loop trail to General Grant's grove to see "The Nation's Christmas Tree." General Grant is the second largest tree by volume in the world.
We had planned to stop at a few scenic overlooks in Kings Canyon on our way to Sequoia National Park. However, as the cold and rain continued, a thick fog also rolled in. There were no views to be seen and, by the time we entered Sequoia National park, we could barely even see the road.
We had a few things planned in Sequoia including Lost Grove, General Sherman's, Big Trees Trail, and Tunnel Log. Because of the dense fog, the cold, the rain, and the stress of driving through a National Park when you can barely see the road, we ended up just doing the short, paved trail to General Sherman's.
The big trees were very cool, even in the fog, and getting to stand in front of the world's largest tree was an experience. However, I couldn't help but feel disappointed in the way our day had turned out. I am a maximizer...I want to see and do as much as possible on our trips. Not getting to do even the few things we had planned was a big bummer. I didn't feel like we got to truly experience either of the parks we visited this day.
After stopping at General Sherman, we drove out of the park, leaving behind the fog...and the cold...and the rain. By the time we had driven to McFarland (just a few hours down the road), the weather was sunny and warm.
As fans of the based-on-a-true-story cross country movie, "McFarland, USA", we definitely needed to stop in McFarland and visit the high school where it all happened.
We couldn't go into the high school or even the courtyard as they were having high school graduation at the time, but we walked around the school and the neighborhood. It was a fun pit stop on our trip.
Our visit to some of central California's National Parks had some high points and some lows. We marked off 4 more parks, did some great hikes, enjoyed some beautiful views, and challenged ourselves. However, we also experienced changes to plans, missed out on things we wanted to do, and experienced every weather from warm and sunny, foggy and rainy, and cold and snowy in the span of just a few days. It wasn't exactly how we had planned it, but sometimes it's good to have the reminder that, as much as I'd like to think so, I'm not the one in charge. Thankfully, our trip did not end on a low note as we looked forward to what the other half of our trip had in store.
