Day 13

A day in Sequoia

I am sitting here warming up by the fire that David worked so hard to build, after trying a fire started, poking it, fanning it with extreme force, rubbing alcohol and breaking the ax we brought trying to cut some logs, we finally have a nice warm fire to take the chill out of the air. Lets just say my dinner came with a show tonight, David and his fire dance.  We had a great day in Sequoia national park, the national forest and Kings Canyon National Park, which are all three basically the same area. First I have to say that the day started out really nice because we were able to sleep in until 8 and we didn’t have to take the tent down.  We had breakfast and then headed out to explore. We were going to start with the giant forest near our camp but since the shuttle system does not start until tomorrow we decided to go ahead and do the longer drive out the Kings Canyon. It was a beautiful drive and we mapped out which scenic views and trails we wanted to go to. We followed our path down the curvy roads. These roads probably have to be the curviest roads I have been on, I don’t get carsick and these roads were making me a little a sick. David of course was having a great time driving on them. With as windy as these roads were we next expected to be flagged down by a guy telling us that we can’t through because a wide-load tractor-trailer was stuck around a corner. As we were watching them back the truck up back and forth just enough to let the cars pass I am thinking  “ Why on earth would anyone think they could get this truck up this road?”. We were finally able to pass and we continued on our way. We stopped to look at two waterfalls, the third biggest tree General Grant and we took a hike through a beautiful meadow. David was so excited to play on all the rocks he called it his “playground”, he would jump from rock to rock and even tried to scale a few which did not work out so well. It was a really nice hike with amazing surroundings. I really wish everyone could see some of the amazing sights that we have seen, I have taken a ton of pictures but it can never really capture the feeling you get of looking up to something as tall as an almost 300 foot tree. Some of our highlights for the day was getting to walk through a fallen tree, meeting our neighbors who was a really nice older couple, the waterfalls, singing in the car as we drove, and just spending some really beautiful days together. Our best highlight of the day was that we saw a bear! This was really exciting but also made me afraid that all these bear precautions, like the bear bin we have to store our food in is necessary. We have had no cell phone reception up here so we have not been able to talk to our family’s, but we wish Daniel, David’s brother, a happy 16^th birthday, we wish could be there to celebrate with him!  Now we are just sitting here by our fire thankful the rain cloud we away, and looking foreword to our time in the Giant Forest tomorro