Kings Canyon National Park, Day 2!

We started our day at 9:00 in the morning for a 2 hour drive along a scenic byway with a few stops.  We didn't get back until 3:00 and it was a wonderful outing. Before we started on the byway, we drove up a narrow winding road to Panoramic Point.  Then a little hike to this area.  We felt lucky to see this much but it was still smokey and would have been much more spectacular. 

As we started along the byway the terrain started changing and we saw a lot of granite.

The Kings River cuts through this canyon.

We saw the river and waterfalls.

We did one short hike to see Roaring River Falls.

Another stop and hike was Zumwalt Meadow.   We walked across this suspension bridge.

It was a beautiful spot!

From here John Muir said Kings Canyon rivals Yosemite.

If you thought I was spelling the name wrong, here is the explanation:  Gabriel Moraga was searching for a mission site.  In 1806 he was the first European to enter the area and discovered a major river on January 6th, the day of Epiphany.  He named the river El Rio do los Santos Reyes (The River of the Holy Kings). It was later shortened to Kings River and that is why Kings River and Kings Canyon are never spelled with apostrophes!

It was made a National Park on March 4, 1940.

Kings Canyon National Park: Day 1!

We arrived at Kings Canyon National Park on Saturday afternoon.

(Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park are separate National parks but they share borders and are managed jointly.)

We stayed at Wuksachi Lodge in Sequoia National Park.

The path from the Lodge to the rooms.

Here is where we stayed:

 

First stop was to see the General Grant Tree.  First we walked through the General Grant Tree Trail.  There were so many Sequoia redwood trees everywhere.  Look at this group.  The people look so small and this only shows part of each tree, not even where the branches start.  Amazing!

I though this was intersting.  Not sure if you can read it.  Basically it says that this tree was cut in 1875 and a section was sent to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876.  Eastern people refused to accept the exhibit as part of a single tree and called it a "California Hoax."

We even saw a couple of little fawns.

Such a beautiful walk!

The General Grant Tree:

Statistics:

Height: 268 feet

Weight: 1,254 tons

Volume: 46,608 cubic feet which makes it the 3rd largest tree in the world by volume

Age: 1,700 years, fairly young

Circumference: 107 feet

Diameter: 40 feet

It was great to start off our trip by seeing this beautiful tree!

Kayaking With David!

 We were fortunate to have David here for a few hours on Wednesday!

He started off by working on our puzzle.  We never thought we would finish it before we left on our trip, but David is so good at it that he put in over 200 pieces and finished the puzzle!  Here he is getting close to finishing.  Then he played the piano for us and played a computer game.

Then it  was time to load up and take off for kayaking!

Looks so refreshing and fun on a hot day!

They made it to an island:

And did some swimming and floating:

Then back to the shore and home for some lunch and a special treat!

It was great having you here, David!!

Happy Anniversary To Us!

 What to do for your Anniversary when the weather is stifling hot and the place you wanted to go for a half day outing is closed on Mondays?

 We may be celebrating #48, but we can still change things up a bit!

We started off by having dinner for breakfast:

Dan always picks a really nice card to give to me and I've kept them all.  But this might be my favorite.  He made one this time because of the difficulty shopping.  Here's part of it:

I loved that he put this picture of us walking on a glacier.  Helped cool me off!

We usually do our Come Follow Me on Monday evening but today we did it in the morning!

We are watching Elder Uctdorf's talk about pride:

Then after a short break, we always watch Taylor and Tyler from Book of Mormon Central:

We usuallly make our own lunch so to mix it up

we got in the long drive through line at Chick Fil A and brought home some lunch.

Dan usually practices piano in the morning and I do some indexing, so we changed it up and did both of these in the afternoon!

Then we had some breakfast for dinner!

After dinner I told Dan we were going for a walk which I usually do really early in the morning.

He looked surprised because he knows I don't like being out in the heat.

But I assured him this was a walk down Memory Lane!

We read a letter from every year that we have been married that I have put in this book.

(And yes, it took us quite a long time but it was SO much fun!)

I've put a few examples at the end of this post.  It was fun going through all of the years!

And then instead of watching one of our favorite movies, we watched the 1954 version of it.

It was a very special day!

1973

1985

1986

1991