A new adventure

Dropped down from Kings Canyon to see the big trees.  Quite a twisty turny road!  Glad I got my brakes fixed in Clovis. Went to the main big tree areas, hiked around for several miles, then went to the museum.  Overall a nice relaxing day in the trees.  They are so massive, how do you even start to give a scale? Got lucky with a campsite not too far from the main trees.  Was going to have a fire,  but they wanted $12 for a box of wood, and $9 for kindling.  I opted for the $4 worth of foot warmers and called it an early night and cuddled into my sleeping bag.  Up early to enjoy more of the park.  Summitted Moro for some great views, then headed to Thorpe Log (log converted to a cabin).  Nice relaxing day again. Chilly up there, never even got into the 50's.  Time to head out to the desert and gets some warmer nights!

Headed to the north end of the park to do a big hike.  About ten miles round trip to see Mist Falls.   Nice hike without too much elevation. Cold night of camping.  Do I sound like a broken record?  Really going thru my hand and foot warmers this week, will need to buy more. I thought the national forest area was actually a lot prettier than the national park portion.   But, maybe it got better is you went farther into the back county.  Saw a few of the big trees, but saved most for the next day.

After another chilly night, I packed up my gear and got ready to head to Glacier Point.  Was feeling sleepy and a little grumpy, so decided to treat myself to a hot breakfast.  Headed over to Half Dome Village and enjoyed some biscuits and gravy.   Nom, nom.  Every morning in the valley has been hazy due to the Empire fire near by.  But, things always cleared off and left things beautiful for the afternoon.  I headed up to Glacier Point to see how thing were.  The road had been closed for a while but had re-opened a few days ago.  Things should be fine, right?  I got about half way up, and traffic was stopped.  There were only three cars in front of me, so I could hear the ranger pretty clearly.  They were escorting groups of cars thru the fire zone since the smoke was heavy....  and once we got moving, there was fire right beside the road! ACK!  Of course, me being the tourist I am, I went thru the fire area with m...

Headed down to the valley early (after saying goodbye the the nurses) to see if I could get into my camping spot before my tour.  Was hoping to set my tent up to let it dry.  That's right! Another frosty morning.  No such luck for the campsite, the people hadn't even started thinking about packing things up when I drove past at 10 am.  So, found some nearby parking and took the shuttle over to meet up for my tour. The tour was great!  Had a really funny tour guide that cracked jokes and gave a lot of history about the park.  Got lots of compliments on the pictures I was takeing of other people for them.  Realized that word was getting around, and people were actually standing in line waiting for me to take their pics! Too funny!  Glad I could make so many people happy. After the tour I went back and set up my campsite.  Ugh. I hate wet gear!  Another beautiful day in the mountains, so things were dried out by the time I got back from m...

Got up early, packed up my frost covered tent, and headed down the road to the next campsite.  I wanted to make sure I had somewhere to sleep that night, since the park really seemed busy and there were limited choices for places to stay.  Set up my cold, wet tent so it could dry during the day, and set off for the Valley.  WOW! What an amazing place!  Once I got my bearings, and got a good place to park, I realized that the Valley is the place to be.  Figured out the shuttle system pretty quickly and was off to my first hike: Vernal Falls.  Very pretty, but my body was doing lots of complaining, so instead of trying to cram in another hike, I opted to tour around the Valley and hit the visitor center.  Lots of information and some good museums there too. I swung by the campground reservation building just to see if I would get lucky for the next night.  The workers took pity on me and released a camp site and gave it to me.  Whoop! That s...