Yosemite National Park - A Test of Patience

Yosemite National Park sucks. Nah, I'm 100% joking. Yosemite was pretty amazing.

Our final National Park on our trip. Our final destination through the Sierras. Sierra Nevadas. Wait. Sierra. Sierra is actually plural. If you want to blend in to the California scene, don't out yourself as an outsider. You're not in the Sierras. You're not in the Sierra Nevadas, nor the high sierras. It's just Sierra. Or Sierra Nevada. Today I learned! 

See, California, I'm learning, and so should you. When in Seattle, it's I5. Not the I5. Not the 99. Not the 405. Just say the number. 

Either way, and all joking aside the Sierra were absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to return to explore more of the vast range. Lake Tahoe and Tahoe National Forest next? Yes, please!

Park sign!

 

However, this was by-far the most popular and most visited National Park that I've visited in my life so far and with that you have to bring a certain mental state and attitude with you. If it's summer...unless you're backpacking in the backcountry wilderness, there's going to be people. Especially if you're in the Yosemite Valley, where most visitors tend to congregate. And people are indeed everywhere. There's traffic. There's backups on trails. There's a higher concentration of disrespectful visitors not respecting the environment and not respecting the Leave No Trace ethos. The amount of people I saw trampling meadows, walking off trail, being disruptive, etc., was way too high. There are signs of human erosion everywhere as well. It's sad and unfortunate. Fortunately, Yosemite has implemented a reservation rule to allow only limited amounts of cars in the park during peak season. It's a good start, but definitely not enough. Yosemite was like the Disney World of National Parks. And that's not a good thing. 

Lower Chilnualna Falls -- Decided to take a quick stop while driving through Wawona. 

Speaking of Wawona, what a weird place, man. This was the first place we encountered on our entry to the park. As I understand now, Wawona as a town, or more specifically, census designated place, came before the park existed, essentially. However, Yosemite National Park now includes Wawona, so it's fascinating to see all of the living arrangements, housing, cottages, AirBNBs, etc within a national park. The Wawona Hotel was in full force, using a half dozen sprinklers to water their browning grass in the ever-so-dry Yosemite Valley. 

What's the point? Why waste the water? On top of that, we saw there was a golf course in Wawona as well. A golf course is just about the antithesis of a National Park. While I understand the Wawona golf course makes an effort to be more "sustainable", golf course's are bad for the environment, period. Sorry, golfers, but this made me quite upset seeing in a national park. National Parks are for preservation, not your perfect putting greens and golf cart joyrides. If you want to work on your swing, maybe try doing it somewhere that isn't supposed to be a haven for wildlife and natural beauty. end rant.

Wasting Water on burned grass at the Wawona Hotel in drought stricken California. Maybe don't worry about Monoculture grass and try preservation instead?

Also, Yes, you need a reservation to Yosemite in the busy months from Recreation.gov

Despite limited cars in to the park, parking was god awful. We spent way too long looking for parking near viewpoints and trailheads in the valley. There were several road closures as well that made it even more difficult to get where you need to go. The rangers suggested either taking the shuttle, or walking to the trailhead. I don't have a problem walking places, but when it adds 2 miles one way to your hike, it kind of sucks, especially when you didn't plan for that, and have limited time at the park.  The shuttle also takes forever. It takes nearly an hour and a half to make a trip around the valley. So you could easily spend an hour on the shuttle depending on your destination. The shuttle that serves the area we were looking to go, like Mist Trail and Mirror Lake wasn't running due to construction. I'm not complaining, I just wish I came into this all with a better understanding of expectations.

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Kings Canyon National Park - A Complete 180

Kings Canyon National Park was truly a park I knew nothing about. I knew it was lumped in with Sequoia National Park and basically connected. Administratively, they ARE connected as Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks or SEKI for shorthand. 

Route 180

We got extremely lucky for our visit as well. Route 180, the route that takes you as far into the park as you can go, was closed for quite some time, all of 2023 in fact. It was severely damaged during winter storms in the area. At the time of us booking the trip, there was no guidance as to when or even IF the road will open for the 2024 season. We figured we'd just wing it and find some cool hikes anyway if it didn't. AMAZINGLY, 180 opened from Hume Lake all the way to Roads End two days prior to us arriving to the park. In fact, I had to find this out via the National Park website, because even on the day we were there, google still listed the road as closed! Another example of why you should check the NPS website before visiting a park!

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Sequoia National Park -- A Cure For Heat Exhaustion

 The day before at Pinnacles National Park was far too hot and we were looking for an reprieve. We left our hotel in Coalinga, CA early morning and drove the two hours to Sequoia National Park in search of cooler weather. We couldn't get a very good picture of the Sequoia National Park sign in the foothills area because the pull off was being taken over by a large first responder / search and rescue set up. We weren't sure what was going on, but later found out that a teen was tragically swept away by the Kaweah River. The rivers in California are no joke in the spring with all of the snow-melt accelerating the water.  Almost every river we came across on our CA trip was positively raging.

We arrived at the Foothills Visitor Center to grab our cancellation stamp and to see if there was any relevant information. Like most Visitor Centers they have a whiteboard with relevant weather information. Out of the corner of my eye I saw 95 degrees. NO! Not again! Not another scorching hot day! I can't! I'm still feeling weird after getting heat exhaustion at Pinnacles! However, the 95 degrees was only for the Foothills area of Sequoia National Park. As you continue along the park road you have fairly significant elevation change. By time we got to the Sherman Tree in the Giant Forest, the temperature was almost 20 degrees cooler! Low 70s sure felt great!

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Pinnacles National Park: A Heat Exhaustion How-to

Before the Park

On the third day of our California trip we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain in effort to continue our roller coaster fix. It was a hot day, but fun was had. It is in such a beautiful area too. The sights from the top of coasters is...magical I suppose you can say. Peaks and valleys and hills and mountains all over. 

After we left SFMM, we drove up to Wasco to lodge for the night. We pulled in around 9PM and got gas first. There were 4 cats at the gas station just chilling. One rummaging through a garbage can. I wonder if they were strays?? In the morning after Six Flags we hightailed it several more hours over to Pinnacles National Park the second National Park stop in our trip. 

The drive from Valencia was wild. There are so many hills and canyons to drive through, it was a beautiful beginning. Until we started driving through the Central Valley. Then it was just flat and hot for awhile until we neared Pinnacles. 

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Channel Islands National Park -- Santa Cruz Island

 California Trip

 In our effort to visit every US National Park (and hopefully then international as well) we booked ourselves a little National Park road trip type deal. Now that we live in Washington, the best of West is even closer than it was when we lived in Pennsylvania. 

The plan was to hit a few amusement parks on the way as well. In PA we were spoiled with having some world class rollercoaster parks relatively close, like Hersheypark, Knoebels, Cedar Point, etc. The one thing we miss the most about the east was roller coasters. There are no good roller coaster parks in the Pacific Northwest! Thus, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knotts Berry Farm in California were on our to do list. We tried to rule out some of the insanely hot desert National Parks, like Death Valley and Joshua Tree since we were traveling in June. So we settled on Channel Islands, Pinnacles, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite. 

We flew in to John Wayne Orange County, since it was closer to our first destination, Knotts Berry Farm, and cheaper to rent a car than LAX. Knotts is a small park, and of course like always, Xcelerator was down, so we didn't spend a lot of time there and went to Monkish Brewing on our way to the hotel for the night. I've been waiting and wanting to try these guys for ages. They did not disappoint. In the morning after Knotts and Monkish we headed over to Channel Islands National Park! Our first of many national parks on the trip. 

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Hiking Annette Lake Trail -- Snoqualmie Pass Region

Annette Lake was not a hike I had planned for in advance. In fact, I think we planned on potentially doing Wallace Falls, Twin Falls, or a completely different hike today. It IS Mother's Day however, so we weren't entirely sure how busy the trails would be. On one hand everyone could be at brunch having mimosas and celebrating with their mother, too busy to hike. On the other hand, this is the PNW so #1, of course mom is going to want to hike on HER day, it's in her blood. And #2, everyone around here is a transplant anyway so mom is probably 1000 miles away and you simply mailed her a Bath and Body Works gift card or something, right? I don't know. 

Since it's May, I knew we could start pushing east a bit more into the Cascades without fear of areas being closed due to snow, or trails being open but being too snow covered to hike without extra gear. So I scrolled over to the Snoqualmie Pass region on Alltrails and up popped Annette Lake. I have a rather sizeable saved list on AllTrails, and somehow this was not one of them. (Sidebar, AllTrails is great, but if you live in Washington, please support the Washington Trails Association, they do excellent work). 

After doing the extended Poo Poo Point trail hike the day before, I wasn't sure what kind of intensity I wanted in a hike. Mailbox Peak? Yeah no. But the pictures, and the stats just kind of hit right for me, so I showed my GF who agreed that it seemed fun and doable. And so we hopped in the car and drove East! And like countless amazing hikes in the region, it's right off of I-90. Like, almost right off of I-90. You get off on exit 47, onto National Forest Road 55, which merges into Asahel Curtis Road. This road takes you straight to the trailhead. 

Sign at trailhead. Looked a bit sparse. A bit scant. A bit shortwinded. Not sure what's up with this..but it wasn't a great first impression. Thankfully first impressions aren't everything. Because it was a GREAT hike.

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