Sequoia-Kings National Park

We took our time getting there, but when we arrived, it was beautiful...some of the views were breathtaking and the Giant Sequoias were amazing. We ended up buying an annual pass to the national parks so now we will HAVE to go to Yosemite some time within the next 12 months!

On the way up, we stopped at this little cafe called the Cider Mill cafe, they have a cider mill, so I ordered apple cider with my sandwich and it was delicious. Nice little mom and pop type cafe on the way to the park. Here is a couple of pictures of our pit stop.



We drove to the General Sherman tree trail and brought out our double jogger, however there were several short flights of stairs on the trail on the way down, my hubby managed fine the way down, but ended up having to pick us up at the bottom (at the accessible parking lot). The General Sherman tree is the largest single trunked tree in the world, according to the Park Ranger that was there. It is unbelievable how huge these trees are. They are about 2000 years old. It was amazing to be in nature, it's easy to forget how beautiful nature is when you spend all your time in cities. I definitely have the 'bug' to go to Yosemite now.





After we spent time admiring the trees we decided to head to the Giant Forest museum. While we were waiting for my hubby to pick us up at the accessible parking, some people walked by us, shouting 'bears!', 'there's bears', and I looked down the road to see 2 black bears heading down the hill from the road about 200 feet from us. They were too fast for the girls to see. My hubby picked us up (he didn't believe me about the bears :) ) and we drove to the museum, it's a small museum, but had interesting information about restoration and preservation of the forest and the giant Sequoias.

We missed another encounter with bears, there, too. I passed by a woman that asked 'Did you see the bears? They were right on the trail!' By the way, in the parking lots, the Park has provided lockers for food from the cars, as bears have been known to break into cars. Hmmm, I had a banana and some snacks in my backpack, were these bears we kept missing hunting my banana down???


We headed back out of the Park about 4pm. Hopefully, next time we can go to Crystal cave, it was about a 45 minute drive from the main road inside the park. We had a great time, only thing is some of us get carsick while driving on winding roads. I felt carsick and Olivia threw up.

On the way back to Tulare for outlet shopping, we passed this lake called Kaweah lake, there was a dam there and it was interesting, here are a couple of pictures. You can see the lines where the water was and also how green it is in the valley with everything else around brown from lack of rain. We couldn't figure out if the water level rises during the year, but then what happens to the house boats and I could have sworn I saw a building or 2 down there.
Kaweah lake:



Dinner at Carl Jr's: