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The big summer adventure began on June 3th with a long drive from Tucson to Sequoia National Park. We arrived in the park around dinner time and camped at Buckeye campground which is a relatively low elevation spot by the river. We took an evening walk along the river with some great canyon views. The ranger told us there had been a bear in the campground recently and we started what has become a regular routine of putting all our food into bear boxes every night.
June 4th began with a drive up the windy road in to the heart of the park. We hiked out onto Moro Rock which is a huge granite boulder much like half dome for some great views. We then parked at Crescent Meadows nearby and hiked through the groves of sequoias. We made a loop pas the General Sherman which is the world’s largest tree before making it back to the big trees grove and catching the shuttle back to the car. The trails were not crowded and were lush with vegetation and wild flowers. In the afternoon, we made our way to the other side of the park and found a camp spot at Grant Grove. We rode our bikes up to panorama point and took a side journey out to a fire lookout tower on a dirt road.
On June 5th we traveled to nearby King’s Canyon National Park where we dropped a lot of elevation and made it onto a road paralleling a roaring river. We did a 9 mile hike out to Mist Falls which was a very powerful falls that sprayed up a ton of water into the air. We saw two rattlesnakes on the hike and it was hot enough that we dunked our shirts in the water several times along the way. Next, we drove to Hume Lake and got a snack that we ate on the lakefront. We made it back to Grant Grove and took an evening walk around the grove to see some cool trees including the General Grant and the Fallen Monarch.
On June 6th, we packed up and headed to Yosemite National Park. We got to the park before noon but it was already busy. We got extremely lucky and got the last two spots in Camp 4 which is a walk-in campground with shared sites where all the young rock climbers stay. It was like a city of tents and it felt like a hostel. The weather was hot as we set up camp but cooled in the afternoon as we headed out on a bike ride around the valley. We took the paved paths and made it up to Mirror Lake where we got in the water to cool off. In the evening, we drove up to the Tunnel Overlook for the famous Yosemite Valley view. Yosemite has some of the most breathtaking combinations of waterfalls and granite cliffs in the world. It may be a busy place, but rightfully so.
We really got to appreciate the beauty of Yosemite on June 7th as we took a shuttle to the top of Glacier Point and hiked the panorama trail off the top and around the valley past Nevada and Vernal Falls. It was an incredible hike of sweeping views and incredible waterfalls. You can stand right next to where the waterfalls drop over the edge and really get a sense of how powerful they are.
On June 8th, we left Yosemite and drove north out of the park where we got some incredible views of the high country as we went over Tioga Pass. It was a Saturday and we could tell it was a busy weekend as we pulled into Lake Tahoe. However, our campsite on the west side of the lake at Sugar Pine Point State Park felt peaceful and quiet. We took a ride on the paved trails out to the lake and did some mountain biking on the General Creek Trail in the afternoon.
On June 9th, Alisha was ready to go mountain biking and had picked out one of Tahoe’s most famous trails for us to do. We took a shuttle to the Flume Trail where we rode a long four miles of uphill to the start. During this ride, the weather went from super hot to cloudy with a chance of rain and the temperature was great as we hit the famous Flume Trail. With a high lake level, we actually rode through two feet of water on the edge of the lake (another lake above Tahoe) right before the trail started. Flume parallels the lake but is an old pipeline trail build on the edge of the mountainside (much like Shoreline or Pipeline in SLC) with amazing views of the lake and good riding. We had so much fun that we took the Tahoe Rim trail up and over the top and did Flume again. On the way, I took us down a wrong turn and we had to climb up and out of a super steep descent to the lake that was a dead end. We made it back right as it seemed like the weather was turning worse and had some food at the Tunnel Creek Café. At the campground, I made a fire of wood that must have been green because it smoldered and smoked but never wanted to burn. We had mashed potatoes, green beans, and sourdough bread for dinner which was a nice change from cans of chunky soup and spaghetti which have been our other campsite meals.
On June 10th, we awoke to cooler temperatures and headed for a ride on the paved trail along the Truckee River on the northwest side of the lake. When the pavement ended, we climbed up the Western States Trail to Squaw Valley Ski Resort. We came back from that and did a bit more riding but we were starting to feel the effects of two big days of mountain biking and the pace slowed a bit as we rode out to Dollar Point. On the way back, the weather was getting worse and we sped back to the car right as rain drops were starting to fall. We spend our first night in a hotel so that we could do some laundry, check some emails, and recharge all our electronic stuff. For dinner, we took a break from campfire food and went out for Thai.
