Kings Canyon National Park

The day started early when the folks in the campsite next to me started their car at 2:30 am.   The car was sitting there running, they were at the campfire.  I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. I knew it was a mom and dad and 2 kids so it seemed very unlikely that they were up partying! I listened to the car idling, trying to go back to sleep for about 30 minutes before I decided that I needed to let them know that it was disturbing others (I’m the only one nearby in a “camper” everyone else is in tents and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was bothered by a running car at 2:30 am. Not only that but the cars headlights were on – no shining in a tent directly, but any light seems brighter when it’s pitch dark. 

I crawled out of bed and got my shoes then crawled back over my bed to put them on so I could go out the back door.  I put the right one on, one of my purple sandals, and picked up the other shoe that I’d gotten and discovered I’d picked up one sandal and one trail runner.  Oh well, a 3 am neighborly confrontation does not require matching shoes!  Only problem was that the trail runner was also a right shoe.  Back over the bed to get the other sandal, then back over the bed to the door.  I couldn’t get the door unlocked from the inside so I grabbed the keys and used the remote to unlock the whole van.  When I did that, the headlights came on!  crap! Luckily my van isn’t shining in someone’s tent! 

The family at the site wasn’t at the campfire so I headed to the tent when I saw them all walking from the bathroom.  I asked if that was their car that was running, and yes it was. I asked if they could please turn it off, being as it was 3am and all.  They explained that they were charging the battery on their light because they’d seen a bear! A few minutes later the car was off, but it took me forever to get back to sleep!

This morning we were driving out to King’s Canyon National Park, about 40 miles away.  Both Sequoia and King’s Canyon are right here together, but they are totally different!

The way to Kings Canyon is to go back the way we came in, which meant we’d be right by the entrance station.  On Monday when I came through I discovered I had good signal there on my phone thanks to a well timed text! So plan was to go there 1st and see if I could download the Kindle book I’d been reading so I could at least read it on my phone. No luck.  Mom had read the stuff that came with her Kindle and discovered a way to reset it, but that didn’t work either.  Something has happened with the “e-ink” and the top 3/4 of the screen is all blank with lines.  After the reset you can read the bottom 1/4, but what good does that do ya?  I’m still SOOOOOO freakin’ pissed about this.  I’d considered calling Amazon, but the entrance station wasn’t a good place to call and the signal was iffy at best (got a bunch of texts, and Words with Friends moves, but it couldn’t get my emails or my book), not only that but we’ve decided to go into Fresno tomorrow afternoon rather than waiting till Sat AM so I’ll have full phone/internet/wifi by dinnertime tomorrow, I’ll deal with it then. 

As we headed into the canyon the views became expansive! There were mountains everywhere and the terrain was different.  Sequoia is very “foresty” and these mountains seemed drier – more desert-like.  They were mostly rocks and small trees.  In the middle of the way down there were tons of yucca plants.  As we drove down we stopped at lots of overlooks and took pictures, not really sure of what we were seeing. 

Finally we reached the bottom and saw the river that carved the canyon! WOW! What an impressive river! It was so rough there’s no way you could even raft it!  We were down in the bottom – river on one side and steep, high mountains all around! 

We stopped for lunch at a picnic area with a HUGE waterfall – Grizzly Falls.  Then we moved on down the road, finally entering King’s Canyon National Park.  The park is bordered on all sides by National Forests and Wilderness areas.  The National Forest areas are a lot more rugged and wild, as evidenced by the pit toilets – the ones in the National Forest aren’t fit for man or beast (in the 2 that we visited both had #2 in places it should never be) and the National Park Service pit toilets are lemony fresh (I’m not even kidding!).   The National Forests definitely feel more “naturey” while these 2 National Parks feel more “Disney World”.  (more on this tomorrow!)

Once in the park proper we drove toward “Roads End”.  We were almost there when we saw a pull of for a paved walk to Roaring River Falls so we made our way out there to see a very impressive waterfall! Soon we were at “Roads End” where we hiked out to Muir Rock – it was a whopping 300 feet from the car! This was the place where John Muir addressed the Sierra Club about making King’s Canyon a park.  It was a cool rock in a great setting, however there were about 50 people there – sunbathing, sitting in chairs on the beach, and the kids were running wild playing “Harry Potter” and waving sticks at each other (admittedly I’m glad to see kids using their summer vacations for such fun pursuits – playing by themselves, running around etc…) and it took away from the ambiance of the rock.

After Muir’s Rock Dad and I hiked the 1.5 miles around Zumwalt Meadow!  That was a nice, quick, walk! We climbed over boulder fields where we got great views of the meadow from above and the granite rock faces that were soaring above it! 

Our last stop in the park was the Cedar Grove area where they have a little store and a motel and a few other services.  We all got an ice cream treat and then we were on our way back out of the canyon.

On the way back up we revisited many of the overlooks we’d stopped at on the way down – the views now made a lot more sense since we could place them geographically!

We took a bit of a different route back to camp – there’s a road the cuts off the corner by the entrance station and it’s mostly on US Forest Service land so it was a bit more rugged and windy and adventuresome!

Once back at Dorst Creek we got dinner and made our plans for tomorrow!  After dinner Mom and I did the dishes so Dad could play “find the elusive water leak”.  He was not successful so I have a feeling we’ll get to play again another night.

Tomorrow morning very early (he’s picking me up at 7:30!) Dad and I will hike out to Muir Grove from the campground, it’s only 4 miles so we should be back by noon.  Then I’ll take a shower (yay!), and hope I don’t totally fill my grey tank!  Then I can dump the grey tank before we head back to Fresno!

Kings Canyon NP