Pre Trip

July 31, 2012: After months and months of preparations, it was time to leave for Yosemite. My wife (Judy) and I drove our vehicles to Yosemite National Park. We dropped off my truck in Curry Village, then proceeded to set up camp at Upper Pines for the night. We managed to get a nice little hike up to Vernal Falls and get some nice waterfall/rainbow photos. We got back to our camp at 8:00 pm and headed back to Curry Village for a pepperoni and mushroom pizza, it was so good :). The park employees were doing their annual Halloween dress up, we were thoroughly entertained. We finished the day off with The Lion King and fell asleep.

Heading To Vernal Falls

 

 

 

August 1, 2012: Woke up after a decent night of rest and had some cold pizza for breakfast. We packed up camp and headed over to Housekeeping for a shower. We departed Yosemite and headed south for Sequoia National Park. While driving in Fresno I took great notice of the large billowing thunderstorms building over the Sierra Nevada to our east, I hoped they would dissipate before my departure. We made a couple of stops in Fresno for supplies, frozen yogurt, caramel apple, steaks, wine and sodas. We were now prepared for the drive up to Kings Canyon National Park's Big Stump entrance. We made another stop at the Grant Grove Village Center. We watched a great video about the park, got some fresh fruit from the market and headed south on the Generals Highway. It was a very enjoyable drive to Lodgepole where we would camp the next two nights.  We made camp, got the campfire going and barbequed steaks and corn for dinner with pop chips and avocado as an appetizer, very tasty. We finished watching the Lion King and dozed off, today was a good day.

Mt. Goddard From The Generals Highway

 

 

August 2, 2012: After another good nights rest we headed over to the market/grill for a pancake, bacon and eggs breakfast that hit the spot. The plan today was actually no plan, we made it up as we went along. We started off hiking from the upper General Sherman Tree parking lot down the Congress Trail admiring the Giant Sequoia's. We just kept making decisions at each trail junction and before long we were at the Giant Forest museum. Our lack of planning equaled not enough food, actually no food so we were really looking forward to any kind of junk food at the museum, well, they don't sell anything edible so logically we decided to hike to Moro Rock and take shuttles back to our car :). The hike out to Moro Rock was great, the staircase up to the top provided a good workout and we were rewarded with fantastic views of the Great Western Divide, I was also faced with the reality of what would be my reality the next few weeks, thunderstorms. Off to the east they were building, oh boy, oh boy. After a few photographs we headed back down to the shuttle area and hopped on the first available ride back to the museum. It was entertaining listening to the driver point out Mt. Whitney to the unassuming tourists who wouldn't know Whitney from the Matterhorn at Disneyland. After a couple of shuttle rides we were back to our car and shortly back to camp. We were very hungry and filled up on turkey/avocado sandwiches. After lunch I packed up my bag for tomorrow's departure. I was able to get the pack down to 35 pounds for the next six days. We headed over to the store for some Its It ice cream sandwiches followed by a shower. We finished up the day with another steak and corn barbeque and an hour of the Little Mermaid (we are such Disney freaks :).