Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park
Ellen and I left Los Altos for Ohio on Saturday, April 4th. We were able to see Elise’s first T-Ball game of the season. What fun!! They play 3 innings with each player getting to bat during their half of the inning. There are no outs. The last batter is the “home run “hitter which means she/he can run all the bases instead of stopping at first. Elise and Ella (her teammate) made the play of the game. A groundball was hit to Elise who caught it and threw to Ella playing at first base. Ella caught the ball as well for the only true out of the entire game. We were all quite proud of Ellie’s hitting as well.
Saying our goodbyes was difficult for everyone. The kids did much better than me. I really do not like it when we must leave Jen, Dan, Elise, Thomas and Julia. We had a great trip. I could not have asked for a better way to start my retirement. We have built many memories. We are already looking forward to our June return trip to California.
We drove four hours to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The drive east of Fresno, CA was through an agricultural area with many fruit and nut farms. The road up and into the Sierra Nevada mountain range was beautiful. We have been on a number of windy roads with beautiful scenery on our trip. This was no exception. We checked into our room at the John Muir Lodge and enjoyed dinner. This morning we began our exploring of the area with a drive to Hume Lake. This manmade lake was built in the late 1800’s for the logging industry. There was a three mile trail around the lake which was very nice. We are able to use for the first time our walking sticks (thanks to our son-in-law Dan) which we really like. We left Hume Lake for General Grant Grove to view the General Grant Tree which is also known as “The Nation’s Christmas Tree.” This tree is the second largest tree in the world and is named after Ulysses S. Grant. We then drove a short distance into Sequoia National Park and stopped at an overlook of the Sierras. Later, we hiked most of the way to Panoramic Point. This was quite strenuous and uphill all the way. After that, we were done for the day.
Tomorrow we will drive 35 miles South into and through Sequoia National Park. We have plans to visit several recommended points of interest before moving on to our next destination.
I have posted pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/tschick62/SequoiaAndKingsCanyon?feat=directlink
More later . . .
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