Sequoia National Park

Claire writing again!
Our original plan was to go just North of LA too swim in the ocean. We nixed that in favor of Sequoia. Excellent choice. Lots of wildlife, enormous trees, breath taking scenery, and blessed quiet. Wonderful place.
The drive up the mountain was beautiful but long, we didn't make it to the ranger station for our permits and bear boxes until late in the afternoon, and because my henna has all the smelly oils in the mix it made our car smell sweetly delicious for bears. It took us forever to get all the smelly stuff outta the car and into the bear locker. And even longer to pack ourselves. We only camped like 3/4ths of a mile up the trail, but it was a quiet night as the road to get to the Redwood Loop trail head is down a steep low maintenance dirt road.
The next day remained cool, and a thick eerie mist clung to the woods. At any minute we expected some sort of magical creature to step out from behind the behemoth trees. Lots of deer approached us, they are quite fond of humans, the ultimate walking grocery stores.
Every so often, we'd stop and scramble over the enormous trees. That night we slept near "Fallen Goliath." We had a giant live Sequoia next to us, we hung out in it's cavern. Very cool.
The next day we hiked. Very pretty again, a little sunnier, not much. The rangers said that they'd had snow a few days before!
After we got back to the car we drove down to Cedar, which is one of the biggest canyons in the world. Did another hike, hung by the river.
On the way back up we watched the sunset on a ridge. There were a few other people their, and at least 3 languages were being spoken. It was unbelievably beautiful, once again.
After that, we headed out of the park, (we had to stop on the long drive up from Cedar to get gas at a very expensive but interesting place that had old fashioned pumps.) It was 9pm when we really got on the road, we stopped into a cool mountain restaurant. It was closing but the owner was super nice and fried us up some fish and chips in a pan. After all the backpacking and ramen noodles it was excellent and decadent.
We made it all the way to Yosemite that night, pulling in at about 3am. Tiring!