Playtime!: Sequoia: Scenic Driving

I got an early start today, waking up with the sun around 6 am. I got more sleep in my little RV than I’d gotten in the hotel so that was good! My day started with getting organized and unpacked, then I got ready for the day and finally enjoyed coffee and breakfast and my kindle at the picnic table, where it was so chilly I needed my fleece jacket! :-)

Around 9 I walked over to meet Mom and Dad and we headed out to explore the park. Our primary destinations today were most of the “must see tourist spots”.

We started at the Lodgepole visitor center where we got our passports stamped! Then we moved on to the General Sherman tree – the biggest living thing on earth – by volume or weight or something, they clearly made that statistics work for them. It was a nice paved walk down to the tree – lots of people! It was a pretty good climb though, but very “touristy”.

After the tree we had lunch at a nearly deserted picnic area – I was amazed that it wasn’t overrun with people!

Next up was Moro Rock – another popular tourist stop. It’s a 1/4 mile hike up 500 rock steps to the top of a granite rock where you can get a 360 degree view of the mountains, the valley, and the Great Western Divide. It was a great view and a neat rock, even if it felt like something out of Disney World rather than a natural phenomenon!

The final thing on the agenda was to walk around Crescent and Log Meadows. Supposedly Crescent Meadow was John Muir’s favorite, which I thought was odd because there are granite steps at Mt. Rainier engraved with a quote from John Muir that would lead you to believe that the Paradise Meadows were his favorite! Not sure what’s going on with that but here are my speculations:

A) John Muir hadn’t seen Mt. Rainier yet when he said Crescent was the best.

B) Whatever meadow he was standing in at the time was his favorite.

C) Someone is twisting John Muir’s words to mean what they want it to!

The meadow was very nice, however at first sighting I wasn’t too impressed, mostly because I was standing on a paved trail. The meadow had lost some of it’s wonder in the process of making it accessible to all. The meadows were surrounded by giant sequoia forests and it was very nice, except for the pesky pavement and touristy feel to it.

About 1/2 way into the walk we came to a “log cabin” – a cabin made by the guy who discovered the park and it was a hollowed out downed Sequoia tree! It was pretty cool. After the cabin the trail became dirt and had more of a “wild” feel to it! We walked through the giant sequoias and you could get some space between yourself and the other people, and there were fewer other people!

When I was almost back to the parking lot I spotted some cool tiger lilies in the meadow and I wanted to take a picture. You can just trample into the meadow, you’ll kill the flowers that have a very short growing season to begin with, I quickly saw the solution to my problem – there was a dead tree that was close to the trail and went out into the meadow, so I climbed up and headed out. Once I got out on the log I saw hundreds of flowers, many different types, that I hadn’t noticed before! I took a bunch of pictures! By now it was late afternoon and the sun was starting to sink – the colors in the meadow changed several times over the 10 or so minutes I was on the log and I’m pretty sure *this* was the meadow that John Muir saw and fell in love with! I wonder what he’d think if he knew that we’d paved a path around his favorite place so that every could visit? Would he be happy? Or would he be mad that we spoiled it?

After the walk we headed back to the campground for dinner, and charging my RV!

Time for our “RVing Lesson of the Day”":

RV’s can plug into power if you are at a campground that has hook ups or operate on batteries if you are “dry camping”. We are currently dry camping – no hook ups. This means the battery is VERY important. The battery runs things such as lights, the water pump, and the ignition for your propane stuff like the fridge or the hot water heater. In most cases an RV fridge runs on both propane and electricity and it will switch itself back and forth depending on what’s available. In my case however, the fridge runs on electricity only - which means it’s powered by the battery when there’s no hookup.

This morning I checked the battery and it was almost dead! I couldn’t believe this because I’d driven ALL day yesterday and driving charges the battery, so it should have been good and full and should have been able to last me almost the whole time we were here.

I do have a generator in my RV so it’s easy to just run the generator and charge the battery. In theory. My campsite is in the “no generators” loop of the campground, meaning it’s never OK for me to run it. My parents are in the generator loop so we decided that I’d drive my RV over and find an empty campsite and squat for an hour or so while I ran my generator. This was a better plan than me going for a drive b/c it wouldn’t use up as much gas (there is gas in the park, but it’s ridiculously expensive $4+/gallon).

The site next to my parents was empty so we ran back and got my RV, but by the time I got it over there the owners of the site had moved in! There was another empty site right across from them so I backed in there and got the generator going. Almost as soon as I did the owners of that site showed up! They told me I could stay, so I stuck around about 30 minutes, hoping that would be good enough. These people didn’t need to listen to my generator (sounds like a lawn mover) or breathe the exhaust! Just in that short amount of time the battery was back up to 2/3 full so it should be good for the night.

I don’t have much in the fridge that needs to be super cold so I turned it way down – it was set at it’s highest setting (no wonder the battery died!) and my carrots were frozen this morning! No need for that! One thing I’ve learned is that if I ever own an RV, it will have a fridge that runs on propane!

It’s starting to get really chilly in here! We saw a weather report (that had been printed out on Sun so it was old) that said it was going down to 38* tonight! Brrrrrr! Glad I have my 0* backpacking sleeping bag, I’ll be toasty warm!

Tomorrow Dad and I are going to hike to Little Baldy which is very close to the campground, I’m pretty sure it will be a lot like Moro Rock minus the hordes of tourists!