Chris and Beth's Epic Road Trip Blog

Greetings again vicarious travelers!
The good news is we found the memory card reader, so pictures will be included. Here is one from the top of Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park, with the sierra nevada mountains in the background.

After spending two nights at the desert view campground in Grand Canyon National Park, we headed for the pacific, and went ocean kayaking at Huntington Beach California, thus making our cross country trip complete! We paddled among enormous yachts with macho names like “aggressor”, and little pleasure boats with clever names like “Current Occupant”

From there we headed north, to Sequoia national forest (not to be confused with Sequoia National Park). The map showed a short drive, but no indication of the 5000 foot elevation gain, with towering cliffs on one side and a sheer drop into whitewater rapids on the other side. A sign mentioned that 167 people had died on this road since 1970, but apparently that was not enough motivation for the park service to install a guard-rail. But we made it alive and stayed in a spectacular little campground called “sandy flats” a boulder strewn canyon bottom shaded with trees, the tent sites perched on terraces carved into the rock slopes.

From there we headed to the actual Sequoia National Park, where once again, we got campsites in the park, against all odds. We stayed at the lodgepole campground for two nights, only feet from a raging white water river, which we were warned repeatedly not to swim in. The rivers in this area are swollen from record snowfall this past winter, and while we were in Sequoia, three people were swept over the edge of Vernal Falls in Yosemite

The following is a list of wildlife we saw during our stay in Sequoia: 1 lynx, 7 mule deer, 5 black bears, and a very obese ground squirrel who the man in the next campsite kept feeding.

Yesterday we visited Yosemite, but for the first time on our trip had to stay outside the park. But we are only a short drive away, so we were able to spend the day sightseeing. We would have liked to spend more time there, but time is running short, and we have many other places to go, and less time than we thought to visit them. I don’t want to jump the gun, but it seems I have a very strong job lead in Ohio, which would start the Aug 15th. So we have only about two weeks left on our trip, so we’d rather spend it somewhere less crowded than Yosemite, which is more like a nature theme park than a wilderness area (unless you have the time to spend a day hiking, which we don’t).

Next? On to San Francisco, the redwoods, and northern California, before heading east to the Dakotas, Yellowstone, and home.



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