Leaving Sequoia and Kings Canyon

Leaving the great trees~

June 23rd

For those of you that are thinking you are all caught up with my journal entries, you’re not! I am posting three new ones at the same time. I’m a bit behind because I haven’t had internet availability for a few days. No cell phone either. I’m feeling a bit cut off from civilization.

I woke up at 7:00 this morning. It is Sunday, a good day for sleeping in! After a breakfast of oatmeal (I am so sick of oatmeal!) and coffee I packed up my tent and headed off to hike. I hiked Redwood Canyon Trail in the national forest. Great hike~ six and a half miles. It felt good to be out in the woods. My knee is hurting, but not when I hike. It hurts after I’ve been driving and I first get out of the car. Aging sucks!! I shouldn’t have slept in either because I found out later that someone saw a bear with two cubs on the trail I hiked. I didn’t get started until almost 9:00 so they were long gone!

After my hike I did a lot of driving~ all the way through the national forest, up a side road to Lake Hume, then all the way to the end of the road through Kings Canyon. It was about 35 miles one way. Then I turned around and came back. I went down a dirt side road looking for a place to camp and found another hike to do. It was only two and a half miles and I needed to get out and walk around. This hike was to Boole Tree, the largest (by volume) in the forest. And it was awesome! The hike was absolutely beautiful; I’m so glad I stumbled on to it. I saw some cows on the trail and got a picture of a calf. Not exactly what you expect to see when hiking in the mountains! It was also on the dirt road I drove in on where I saw Stump Meadow. Stumps left over from when logging was done in the area. I never did find a place to camp down that road, but it sure was a fun adventure. I ended up leaving the forest and the park thinking that there was a picnic area on the outskirts where I could at least cook my dinner. It was closed for some reason, but there was a young ranger there who told me where I could camp just a couple miles down the road. She said that she and her husband come down here to get firewood. It’s a nice spot, not far off the road. I’ll be on my way to Fresno early in the morning. I’ll wait till I get there to have breakfast at a Panera Bread where I can update all this stuff and eat something besides oatmeal!