On Wednesday we left the Owens River Valley to loop around the southern Sierras and started to drive up the western side. We started out looking for some hot springs along the Kern River. We found the hot springs, but it appears that the spring snow melt has washed away the soaking pools. All we found were some extremely hot water seeping out of the ground and the remnants of some concrete pools that no longer hold any water. The Kern River was incredibly beautiful and it was so nice to see green grass and lush flowers for the first time in weeks.
We followed the Kern River to the end of the Kern River Valley, which opened up into Bakersfield (a town seemingly owned by K. Hovnanian, a housing developer). As soon as we left the federally protected lands, we ran into housing development after housing development. All the remaining farmland had large for sale signs on it, most likely destined for more cookie cutter housing. We both said at the same point "looks just like Jersey." We did some required shopping (remember we are shopping our way across the country) and beat it out of there as soon as possible.
We headed north with Sequoia National Park as our destination. We were fighting the setting sun to find a place to sleep for the night but were on the losing end of the battle. We stopped for dinner alongside a citrus farm.
After this we continued toward the park. Since the park doesn't technically allow dogs we couldn't stay in the park with Tucker. We did a few laps around the town of Three Rivers looking for a place to stay. Usually we try to find a camping spot before it gets dark because it is much easier to see our options in the daylight. But this night, tired and fed up with not finding anything in the dark, we eventually asked the Comfort Inn if we could park in their lot for the night. This wouldn't normally be our first choice but we were willing to take what we could get.
In the morning we met up with our friend Christa, who is a California native, a fellow Northwestern alumna, a fellow Princetonian, and a recently relocated Californian, and her friend Wendy for a morning hike. They also brought along Christa's new dog, Tuffy. Since dogs aren't allowed on any trails in the park we had to stick to auto roads. Luckily since it is so early in the tourist season we were able to have a great walk on a closed dirt road. We walked all morning and headed back to a picnic area for lunch.
After lunch we headed higher up in the park to check out some of the parks namesakes, the Sequoias. The pictures don't do these trees justice. It is hard to comprehend just how massive they are. We were happy to find copious amounts of snow so that we could explore the forest with our cross-country skis. Taking advantage of another closed road, we set off in about 6 feet of snow on our skis with Tucker. Unfortunately they don't make skis for dogs and Tucker was having a tough time keeping up with us because he could not stay on top of the snow. It was an incredible workout for him, especially at 12 years old. So after 45 minutes we turned around and let Tucker sleep off his workout in the car. We went back out on our skis for another few hours until almost dark. What a nice treat to be able to be on the snow in our shirt-sleeves!
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| Skiing in a tank top! |
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| The snow was even deeper further into the park. |
Sequoia was the prettiest place we have been so far, full of greenery, waterfalls, steep mountains, large trees, wild flowers, and snow.
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