King's Canyon (Part 2)

Woo hoo. Wifi strong enough to get ALL of these photos posted. :)

I think I mentioned that the drive was supposed to take an hour but that clearly didn't factor in pulling over at every opportunity. 

Who drives by this view and doesn't stop?

We had a perfect day- mostly clear skies and a hot sun!

Jackson always likes to stand really close to the edge and give me panic attacks.

I just loved every view.

We just kept driving through the park on its crazy winding roads when we came to a pull off for a waterfall. We missed the first entrance and inadvertently came in the exit. No big deal, right? WRONG. Suddenly I have a park ranger behind me with his lights on. Crap. I get out of the car and quickly get told to get back in. Whoops! He approaches and asks for my license which is in the trunk. He makes us wait forever and then gives me a warning to slow down so I don't hit a bear crossing the road. Really dude!?! He claims I was doing 52(!!!) in a 35. I BEG to differ. Whatever. All is well that ends well and no ticket was issued.

Once we hiked over to the waterfall we saw a few folks swimming and felt inspired. We went back to the car to change and then hiked back up for a swim. Note: Jackson was SHOCKED that I wanted to do this. What can I say? 30 year olds don't have fear. 

The falls.

Me jumping in!

Our friends on shore snapped this photo for us.

Again.

The water was so clear and SO COLD.

Jackson snapped a photo of me talking to our new friends- two Navy guys stationed near the park. I was a little nervous about drowning and told them that if they stayed around I would feel safer. They obliged and were super nice kids. (I'm always amazed at how young these soldiers are. Goodness. They couldn't have been 19!) I am happy to say that we (fine, I) didn't need rescuing. I swear that swim cooled me down for the rest of the day!

The river along the park's road was so gorgeous.

The water was just so, so clear. We were obsessed.

"Let's get in here, too!" -Jackson

"NO!!!!" -Jenna

Love.

A riverside selfie. :)

I was so taken by the views. 

This sign cracked us up. Ice cream ahead! Note: it was $4.50 for an ice cream bar. We didn't buy one.

Check out that handsome boy. 

This is my "I'm too close to the edge and feeling some fear" face that I occasionally give to Jackson.

Jackson read about a hike online that was only "one mile" and had great views. This is how he sells me on things. Please know that this was MUCH MORE THAN A MILE! It was also nearly entirely uphill. Sigh. One day I'll learn to stop believing him about a hike's distance and steepness. 

I had to pee when we got to the hike and there was no one around, but we also didn't have toilet paper. Ack! Ever the clear thinker, Jackson dug out an old sock for me and I went right there in the wilderness. Yep. Quite the outdoor girl these days. 

The man who made me pee outdoors and wipe with an old (clean) sock. Yep. I don't have words. 

The hike ended up being pretty awesome (while still being tough). 

The Internet was right: the views from the top were 360 and amazing. 

We kept climbing on rocks to get a better view. The issue was we had to get down, too, and we'd climbed around so much that we lost the trail. 

I had visions of getting stuck up there and eaten by bears. Alas, we didn't. After a few minutes of panic we found the trail again and snapped this photo on the way down. Amazing. 

No hike would be complete without my husband "meditating" on a rock. What a weirdo. 

We left the park after our hike and headed to Dinuba, CA for the night. This was just a fruit farm area with like no good options. We ended up at Pizza Hut. Yep! After a long day of hiking, swimming and driving those wild roads the pizza tasted pretty good. Sequoia is next!!

Kings Canyon (Part 1)

The drive to King's Canyon National Park (a lesser known sister to Sequoia known as a "warm up" for Yosemite) was supposed to take just under 4 hours. We stopped in a little town called Lodi for breakfast at a local diner. It was superb. We enjoyed the "hobo platter" (me) and the "hungry hobo platter" (Jackson). It was just eggs, potatoes, peppers, onions and cheese all scrambled together. Jackson's also had sausage in it. You know, for the hungry hobos. Anyway, we tried to eat a lot because we knew we wouldn't have a chance to eat again until much, much later. 

Once we were back on the road we powered right along. We passed a few fruit stands on the side of the road and I kept dropping hints to my driver that I'd like to stop. He kept driving. During this ordeal somehow the navigation assistant (me) neglected her duties and we missed a turn. We realized it once we ended up in a small town that was certainly not where we expected to be. Once the navigator checked her map she saw that they'd passed their turn by a mere eight miles. When she told the driver that she heard, "EIGHT MILES?!?! EIGHT MILES??!?!" She just laughed because what else could you do?

Do you want to hear the best part? If that driver had listened to his navigator's requests to stop at the fruit stand the turn would never have been missed as the fruit stand was the turn! In the end (as Jackson would testifies always happens) the navigator got her way and a stop was made at the fruit stand. 

The driver, annoyed, picking out peaches

One happy navigator eating a peach

The peaches we purchased were phenomenal! That was the last stop before we got to King's Canyon. The drive to which was mildly terrifying. We wound up the side of a mountain and only saw like two spots with guardrails. WHAT DO PEOPLE HAVE AGAINST GUARDRAILS?!?!?!?! I tried to busy myself with navigation efforts, but the cell reception was weak up there and even that outlet failed me. I was stuck watching us climb ever higher up this mountain. In the end we made it. Whew. 

A friendly park ranger gave us directions on how to see the entire park in one day. We got on our way and stopped at the General Grant tree which is between the 2nd and 3rd largest tree by volume in the world depending on which source you select for your information. 

The burn hole

The trees around it are so large that the perspective is hard to manage.
It is HUGE, though.

This is as close as you can get to the tree. 

The tree is roughly 1,650 years old and they don't want us walking on its roots. My thought is that if it lasted this long...(just saying).

Jackson approached a less famous tree to show its hugeness

There was a downed tree near the Grant Tree that was hollowed out in the middle and made for a great Petefish playgound.

Again with how huge the trees were- Jackson looks miniature!

Climbing inside what felt like a cave but was really just this tree

Jackson's climb from bottom to top (it was slopped)

Jackson at the bottom, me at the top shooting down

Nope, I'm not in a cave...I AM IN A TREE!!!! (a dusty one)

We had quite the time climbing in and around the downed tree (which was allowed, I might add) until Jackson found a large rock to climb. 

"Check me out!!!!"

I'm always amazed at his lack of fear of breaking a leg or ankle or something. Anyway, he made it and once we'd finished playing we headed back to the car for more exploring. The road through the park is about 37 miles and the speed limit is 35 mph (more on that later) so it is supposed to take just over an hour to see the whole thing. They clearly didn't factor in pulling over every few minutes to snap photos of the glorious vistas all around you. I drove this part as it was super curvy and I feel better when I am in control. Thankfully there was not much traffic at all and with all of the stopping to snap photos I never felt all that nervous on these mountain roads.

Part 2 will be coming whenever a hotel's wifi allows me to post the 40 or so photos I snapped yesterday. Stay tuned for that. We're off to Sequoia today to see some even larger trees. It is supposed to be 108 degrees today so here is hoping that we don't melt! :)

Lake Tahoe

Yay! We made it. Whenever we have so many moving parts to a trip (four total flights from two different initial locations) I always worry that one of us will get stranded somewhere. Not this time. Hooray! Jackson picked me up at the airport and whisked me to our hotel for the evening. It was a super nice place just outside of Reno. We slept like babies since it was so late our time. When we woke up we were surprised to see our view of the mountains. (Landing at night you have no idea what things will look like in the morning!) It was beautiful! 

The surprise view

We forced ourselves out of bed and started our day by heading down to Lake Tahoe. We were amazed at how beautiful the drive was from Reno to Tahoe. We had to make a quick stop on the Nevada side of the lake to get my Mom a Hard Rock Cafe pin. You know, the essential of each trip whose destination has a cafe!

4th of July pin since that's where we'll be watching the fireworks this year

We left the Nevada side and found the California side of Tahoe to be much nicer. Something about all of the casinos on the Vegas side just made it very smokey a little more rundown feeling. Crossing over to California was a breath of fresh air, literally.

My handsome lunch date

We found a little Mexican place to have lunch and enjoyed dining on their patio. The weather is certainly warm here but without the humidity it just feels really good. We left lunch and explored the area a little more before setting out to go stand up paddleboarding. I was all excited about having our GoPro for this adventure when Jackson reminded me that if I dropped the camera it wouldn't float. Whoops. That made me come up with this plan...

I tied a shoestring to my life jacket and hooked it to the camera's waterproof case

Genius if you ask me. Jackson was less impressed when he had to untie all of my knots at the end due to my lack of fingernails. Whoops.

The view from my board

Anyway, the place we chose ended up being really shallow so when we fell off we could generally just stand right back up. I didn't really need my brilliant invention after all. Oh well. The shallow water made staying up on the board more difficult and I actually fell off once. I was so sad. Jackson fell off more than he stayed on. My only complaint about the area was that people on the boardwalk heckled the paddleboarders if they fell down. It is really easy to be over there, jerks. You try it in this choppy, shallow water. End of rant.

Jackson's adventures in fall-down paddleboarding

We had the board for 1.5 hours so I took a break for a bit and just soaked in the sights and sounds. Then Jackson joined me for a bit.

Resting on the job

This took skill ;)

After we'd had enough of the paddleboarding we got back in the car to head to our next stop: Rancho Cordova, CA. It was just a good stopping point between Tahoe and King's Canyon National Park for us. We had dinner at In-n-Out which is like a must when you're in the Cali/Nevada area (I actually hate the place and had forgotten, but Jackson enjoyed his so that's good!). Being the old folks that we now both are, we went to bed pretty early California time so that we could head out for the National Park the next morning bright and early.