We left Friday morning to drive up to Seqouia National Park with a super packed car, friends, and all the gear. Our drive there was pretty good up until we hit a ton of traffic and realized that the was a huge fire and a section of the I-5 was closed because of it. We took a nice little detour to the west, through dirt roads and some ranch houses. At one point it looked like we were driving right into the fire... because the cloud was above our heads as well as in front. Then we were detoured once again to go up the mountain east of the 5, and from there we had an amazing view of the fire. I later found out that more than 650 acres burned! So that made our drive up pretty eventful and a lot longer than expected. We still were able to make it up to our camp before dark, to set up tent! It was way colder than we anticipated, so I layered like crazy, but was still cold. Half of our food froze because it was next to the dry ice, so our dinner was pretty quick and not the greatest, but it was camping to the expectations weren't too high. We even fit a little night hike in to go to the trail of 100 giants. It was pretty amazing to see such massive seqouia trees, not to mention to check out the one that fell just last winter. The size of the roots and the tree itself are indescribable. There were millions of stars up in the sky and we laid on the road and just stared up marveling in it for some time, looking for shooting stars.
The next day we embarked on a day hike. It was about 4 miles down, and then that same 4 miles back up. We crossed a creek multiple times, saw a few little water falls, but mainly just enjoyed the peaceful nature and being in the presence of something that is thousands of years old. We stopped for a lunch break and headed back up to our camp site. Beers, dinner, and smores and good company were enjoyed. Did I mention how cold it was!? When we woke up early the next morning to pack up and head to Kernville for a our rafting, the temperature read 37 degrees! Brrr...
We made it to Kernville on time, and spent our Sunday rafting before heading home. The rafting was a lot of fun. It was called the big 5 because on this particular part of the river you hit 5 big class 4 rapids. There was a scary class 5 rapid which we had to skip on by carrying our raft over it. We were bused over the site where the rafts as well as our guides were waiting for us. Once we went over all the rules and etc, we were on our way. We stopped for a lunch feast in the middle as well as a little cliff jumping. I really wasn't planning on doing that, but every person in my boat went off to jump so of course I couldn't stay behind. It was a 25 ft jump and the whole way up I questioned doing it. It was definitely an adrenaline rush. J did a front flip, while I ran and jumped feet first. We wrapped up the rafting, got bussed back to the shop and had a nice early dinner near by with our whole group. Great times! Now we are really looking forward to the back yard camp out coming up on June 23rd with the kids! We even bought a new 6 person tent to try out before we take it on an actual camping trip.
Our Day Hike - I don't think we've ever hiked with 17 people before
Bon Fire, Smores and friends
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