Nothing like almost a year later to finish the blog posts from last summer’s trip! We got back last summer and immediately went into wedding mode with our bachelor/ette parties, the wedding, and then school starting! But I feel like I need to tie up last year’s posts before posting our current trip just so my OCD can calm down a little. Good thing I take good notes about our trip!

Today, we work up early at our campsite in Kings Canyon NP and planned on spending the day at Seqouia National Park. We stopped at Grizzly Falls on our way toward Sequoia. It was a VERY short walk to get to the falls (you could almost just sit in your car look at the falls if there weren’t trees in the way! We stopped here because the day before we had seen a lot of people stopped here. It was neat, but not a must-see.

We entered Sequoia National Park and immediately drove to Moro Rock. Scott had walked up to Moro Rock when he went out west with a friend, and he was nervous to do it again! It was a very cool experience because you climb this narrow rock staircase around and around until you get to the top! You could see everything which was pretty cool!

After Moro Rock, we parked the truck at the visitor center and got on a shuttle to take us out to General Sherman. General Sherman is a giant sequoia tree and by volume, is the largest known living tree on Earth.

Rather than take the shuttle back to the truck, we decided to do some hiking. We took the Congress Trail (full of massive Sequoias) to the Alta Trail which eventually led us back to our destination. In addition to seeing all of the sequoias, there was plenty of wildlife and nature to see. I particularly loved these pink flowers that covered the ground- they were so beautiful!

Along the trail, we happened upon a family that was a little lost. There weren’t a ton of signs along the trail, mostly because once you get on the Alta Trail there is only one direction to go unless you go off the trail. The family asked where we were heading, and asked if they could follow us (they said we looked like people who knew what we were doing! 🙂 ) They were a really nice family from the New England area who made this trip to celebrate their son’s recent high school graduation. We finally made it back to the visitor center area after a pretty short 4-5 mile hike. We headed back to our campground to eat dinner and enjoy our last evening in Kings Canyon. If I didn’t already say this, Kings Canyon is BEAUTIFUL and a place that we didn’t anticipate enjoying but now can’t wait to visit again! There is a hike that we didn’t do since we didn’t plan on spending much time here that we plan to do next time!

The next morning, we packed up and headed out toward the Grand Canyon. We wouldn’t make it all the way to Grand Canyon this day, but did do a lot of driving through the Mojave Desert. I know that a lot of our produce is grown in California and that they grow it in these massive groves in the desert, but until actually witnessing it, I had no clue what it would look like. It is a rather weird experience to see all these insanely green trees and groves and in the background all you can see is desert!

We continued along 99 to go around the mountains. We witnessed several brush fires along the road with fire fighters actively working to put them out. I imagine these were caused by cigarettes being carelessly thrown out the window 😦 We ended our drive on day 27 at a KOA in Saligman on Route 66. In classic traveling Trivisonno style, we pulled into the KOA after dark. Good thing KOAs are easy to get into and set up! Tomorrow is a big day as we plan on seeing the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, and Petrified Forest National Park!