Day 13 - Waterfalls, Big Trees, and GRILLED BURGERS!!

Day 13
Clovis - King's Canyon - Sequoia - Walnut
Miles Driven - A few hundred
Time in Transit - 10 hours
View From Hotel - NOT A HOTEL. AGAIN!! Woo HOO!

Today started off with me matching the gray and blue of the hotel and ended with me bobbing around in a pool with a bunch of friends, so, all in all, it was a great day.

Admit it. You are jealous of my fashion sense.

We stayed at a Holiday Inn, which was nice. The hotel was under construction, so the breakfast room was relocated to a small conference room. It was slightly tight quarters, so I was up close and personal with a young lady as I filled my mug with coffee.

I'm not a high maintenance guy, but I am a homebody. I like my small routines and when I travel, I always bring a handmade coffee mug that my best friend, Ben made. I actually have several Ben mugs so I have a variety to choose from. They're a small slice of home that I enjoy having with me.

I was filling this mug when the lady next to me looked at it in horror. "You're really going to drink THAT MUCH COFFEE?!?" she gasped in heavily accented English.

The much, I feel compelled to explain here,  is not some comical Big Gulp-esque 72 ounce 'Muricah Mug™.  It's a pretty standard coffee mug. It might hold 12 ounces if I filled it to the brim.

"Heck, yeah!" I laughed. "I'm just getting started."

In truth, I love a cup of coffee in the morning, but I usually just have one cup and that's it for the day. She reacted as if I had just punched her favorite puppy in the face.

She laughed and explained that in Amsterdam, where she was from, people drank much smaller cups of coffee.

"But you also have hashish bars," I reminded her, "So maybe coffee lags begins in popularity."

We both laughed and wound up having a great conversation for a few minutes. She and her travel companions had flown in from Amsterdam to attend the Burning Man Festival.

I wished her the best and set off to become my own personal burning man in the scorching heat that was still blanketing California like a... well, like a blanket. A really, really hot one.

Today's journey was to take us through King's Canyon & Sequoia National Parks, then down south to spend a night or two with out great friends, Heather and John.

Our view from the hotel this morning.

As we were pacing up to head out, a text arrived from Alex. Suspecting some great Colton-related news, we scrambled to open it.

It was, in fact, a photo that Alex had taken of himself on the first day of classes.

Awwwwwwwww.

Kerri may have been a bit teary as we drove off into the heat to look at more big trees.

We passed a few small highways that had been closed because of wildfires in the area, but eventually made it to King's Canyon National Park, home of the most terrifying drive in the world.

Some of the brave fire fighters taking a brief break from work.

I"m glad that Kerri took some of these pictures, because I was too terrified to look around while I was driving.

The scenery was quite scenic.

And the hills were quite majestic.

Kerri, being the smart, sensible one, had brought along a National Park book that described all the amazing things to see in all of the National Parks. It included Grizzly Falls in King's Canyon National Park. The photo showed a spectacular, raging waterfall cascading down an impossibly high cliff.

Best of all, it was near the end of a dead-end highway so the chances of me driving right past it were substantially reduced.

After an hour or so of white-knuckled driving along craggy cliffs, we arrived at the falls.

They were not quite as spectacular as advertised.

Grizzly Falls Selfie!

Tori, being a model.

Tori, attempting to nap on a rock.

Our guess is that the falls are a bit more spectacular in the spring, when snow is melting and the rivers are high.

The signage was fun, though.

I feel so badly for the female in this picture. Probably because she saw the condition of the bathroom behind the door. 

Fortunately for us, we had pizza for lunch and we WERE able to clean it in the lake or stream.

After the falls, we turned around and did the same terrifying drive in reverse. well, not actually in revers, that would be ridiculous. You know what I mean. Don't be a smarty-pants.

Yet another picture that I have no idea why I took. Yucca Point Trail Head. I  probably had heat stroke or something. 

The final, scrawled words of a pioneer, dragging his parched body across the barren wasteland.

King's Canyon Lodge, deep in the heart of the canyon, was, unfortunately closed. A few cocktails before getting back on the winding, dangerous road seemed like just the thing.

They parked this truck across the driveway to make sure that I couldn't sneak in and look for cocktails. Or ice cream.
Curses. Foiled again!

Worst place for a breakdown. Ever.
I do admire the solution to the broken axel, though. I can just imagine the driver as if her were me.
"It's broken. It's 112 degrees in the middle of a god-forsaken canyon. WE'LL BUY A NEW CAMPER. JUST LEAVE IT!"

No. I wasn't exaggerating.

It really was amazingly gorgeous, though.

And SUCH A long way down.

That tiny ribbon of tan is the road, winding away into the distance.
If you follow it, there is a free pop-up camper waiting for you!

We really need to up our selfie game. I'm going to try to get some tips from some Japanese tourists.

King's Canyon and Sequoia are two separate parks, but they essentially overlap each other. So, after the mountains, come the trees.

Quick science lesson: The difference between redwoods and sequoias is negligible.

Uless you are a redwood or a sequoia, I suppose.

A photo to set the scene for you and give you a sense of place.

We drove slowly through Sequoia National Park. It was, in theory, the only way to drive. The road, as with so many of the roads we had traveled lately, was tortuous and difficult to drive. That didn't stop every driver in the world from roaring up behind us and revving impatiently until I pulled over to let them rocket past us so they could enjoy the scenery at a much higher rate of speed than I cared to do.

"Get out of the way!" I imagined them yelling "I have to hurry up and enjoy this natural beauty!"

I will admit to having a small sense of that myself as we wound our way along the road through the park. We still had a long way to go to get to Heather and John's house and Heather had intimated that there would be grilled burgers upon our arrival.

I really wanted to enjoy the tranquil majesty of the ancient sequoias, but GRILLED BURGERS!!

Yup. Them are some biiiig trees.

They go up...

And up...

And up...

Okay. Can we be done now? GRILLED BURGERS!

I tried to take a picture of the road through the park, as shown on the GPS. It basically became a tangled mess, clumped up at the bottom of the screen. The robotic voice became more and more flustered giving directions. "Turn left! Turn right! Turn right again! And again! Turn harder! AHHHH TURN LEFT LEFT LEFT!!! Oh, forget it. Just watch the road."

Only 30 more miles of this!

We survived the drive and made our way south toward Heather & John's and, did I mention, grilled burgers?

The drive through the park segued from a particular kind of horror to another one as we made our way through 7 lanes of rush hour traffic around Los Angeles, a shy, reclusive little hamlet tucked away in a scenic valley filled with fog and cars.

The less said about that, the better.

We pulled up at Heather and John's place at about 8:00 and, believe it or not, we had grilled burgers!

Heather and John are, without question, some of the warmest, most generous people we know. The house was alive with delicious smells and conversation between friends. Heather's younger brother, Gavin, as well as our friends, Amie and Jennifer were there.

We ate, drank, and made merry in the pool (more on this amazing pool tomorrow!) until nearly 3:00 am, when, reluctantly, we dragged our exhausted selves away from the festivities and crashed in a comfortable bed and had the best night's sleep we've had in a long, long time.