Spring Break: Roadtrip to Sequoia, Yosemite and San Francisco

Spring break was a fun and busy week for us. This year, we opted to do a road trip down to California and take the girls to see Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. We rented a car and drove down in order to make a few pit stops to see friends and ended it with a weekend stay with the Hanleys in SF before flying back home. It was a lot of driving but it was still really fun and of course, we saw so many beautiful sites.

We couldn't wait for vacay to start and set off for the first leg of our trip after work on Friday. We drove about 6 hours to Roseburg, a little town south of Eugene, before turning in to rest for the night. The next morning, we drove another 6 hours and made it to Sacramento by early afternoon. We whiled away an hour or so walking around the historic waterfront area before heading to the Ritter's house for an evening of fun with friends. We last visited with the Ritters years ago when we went to Sac for a wedding, so it was fun to see how much their kids have grown! For dinner that night, they also invited another one of Scott's college buddies, Andy, and his wife and daughter to join so it was a fun evening going down memory lane.

Sunday morning we headed out early in order to stop in Merced for brunch with another one of Scott's friends, Grant and his family. They have 4 adorable kids who were so friendly with the girls and because we lucked out with good weather, everyone romped around in their beautiful yard and we had lunch outside.

A rainbow! It was a sign the week was going to be great!

Mt Shasta on the way down

We spent a few hours at the old Sac waterfront

Sacramento

Scott and Grant

After lunch, we drove another 2-3 hours to get to Kings Canyon National Park. This stop was a last minute adjustment to our schedule so I was happy to snag a reservation at one of the lodgings within the park. Little did we realize though that it was probably not very busy because there was still tons of snow everywhere! Very few trails in the park were open but we made the best of it by trudging through the snow to see General Grant (the largest tree in the world when measured at it's base) and to Hume Lake for a picnic lunch and some fishing.

Jogging to stay cold. Look how much snow there is!

Huge icicle

You can walk into this tree! It doesn't look that big...

Until you see it in perspective. This tree is HUGE!

General Grant is also MASSIVE. Look at Scott there.

Evie and Scott next to General Grant.

The next morning, we hung out at Hume Lake.

And had a picnic lunch.

Next up: Sequoia National Park! Normally, the drive between Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park is only 45 minutes. But, due to the snow, the road was closed and we had to drive out of the park and back to the highway to get to the main entrance of Sequoia. It was a 3 hour detour!

Sequoia was also still filled with snow. It brought back fond memories of my 10th grade outdoor ed trip which was the first time I ever tried cross country skiing. This time, we didn't do any skiing but we did meet up with our friends, the Wongs, and together we all trekked to see General Sherman, the Auto Log, and climbed Moro Rock. Although it was snowy, the sun was out so it was a gorgeous day out and we got some wonderful views.

Auto Rock. Doesn't look too impressive here.

Evie is so strong!

But when you take a step back and see it in proportion to Scott, Evie and Nora at the top, you can see how big this rock is!

Really cool icicles on the pine needles

6 people hugging the tree and we're maybe only a 3rd of the way around the tree!

Auto Log. You used to be able to drive underneath. In fact, a truck got stuck trying to pass through and you can still see the scars on the underside of the log.

So much CA sunshine!

Trekking through the sequoias

Going up Moro Rock. There was several hundred steps, and some very sketchy, icy patches.

See Kathy at the top there?

Nora and I made to the top! Evie and Scott stayed behind.

Views views and more views.

After Sequoia, we headed over to Yosemite - the grand daddy of the CA national parks. I have so many great memories from visiting this park a few times when we lived in CA and was excited to go back and explore with the kids. The trek in started off very memorably because as we were driving to our hotel in the evening, a bear ran in front of our car! I had to break hard to not hit the bear. It was not too big (4 ft?) and a light tan color. We asked the ranger later about it and he told us all the bears in Yosemite, regardless of color, are black bears. Rarely, he said, would you ever see an actual black colored black bear.

Yosemite was just as majestic as I remember it being - the huge Rock walls on both side of the valley are so impressive! The trees were pretty scraggly though because the spring greenery hadn't yet set in but it still pretty breathtaking anyway. And, unlike Sequoia and Kings, it wasn't snowy in the Yosemite Valley which made exploring much more palatable for the kids.

A lot of folks had recommended we hike the Mist Trail so that was the main hike we opted to do on the one full day we had in the park. Unfortunately, it turned out that the main "fun" part of the trail was still closed for the season. No worries, we took the longer John Muir route and quite enjoyed ourselves. We stopped at Clark Point to enjoy the views and eat lunch and then proceeded down to the top of Vernal Falls. Altogether, it was about 7.5 miles and quite steep but the views were pretty darn spectacular. The kids weren't super excited about the hike but they did think that the views of the waterfall were epic.

The next day we sadly had to check out of the hotel. While the dads got everything ready, the moms did an early morning hike on the Yosemite Falls trail. This one was started with a lot of switchbacks and no views, and was just as steep as John Muir. About a mile up, you get to Columbia Rock and the views open up. From then on, the trail hugged the side of the mountain on one side and was completely exposed on the other. Talk about scary! We weren't able to do the full hike but did still gets some spectacular pictures before turning back around. The funny thing about this hike was that everyone was so friendly! We made lots of friends with our other fellow hikers.

We sadly left Yosemite and made our way to the Bay Area where we met up with Meher, one of Evie's old schoolmates who moved down to CA a few years ago. It was so great catching up with her family - they introduced us to a wonderful Burmese restaurant in Pleasanton, and then we all headed over to get soft serve at Meadlowlark Dairy.

The best part of hotels is the free breakfast! Nora wanted me to take a photo of her sorting lucky charms.

On the way in to Yosemite, we stopped in Wawona and hiked to the swinging bridge.

And did a glamour photo shoot...

... while Scott fished some more.

Requisite stop at Tunnel View!

Another picnic lunch

And more down time playing by the river

Picnic lunch at Clark's Point, a nice stop along the John Muir trail. The waterfall back there is Nevada Falls.

Our view of the top of Vernal Falls

The falls were really flowing!

The next morning, Kathy and I hiked the Yosemite Falls trail. This is the view at Columbia Point.

The trail started off with a lot of switchbacks in the forest, and then opened up to beautiful valley views.

But it was a little harrowing how it was a sheer cliff on one side, and streams to cross.

There's Yosemite Falls! Funny how far it looks in the pic, but it seemed close!

This is the bottom of lower Yosemite Falls, which is an easy walk from the hotel.

And this is a far away view of the Falls in the evening.

Evening stroll

Fiery sunset clouds behind Half Dome

Meeting up with Meher for dinner

The crew at dinner

The last leg of our trip was a quick visit to see the Hanley's! Our stop was way too short but was packed with lots of fun for both the kiddos and adults. On Saturday, we spent the day exploring Berkeley because the weather was too windy and wet for us to go with our original plan of visiting Alcatraz. The walk around Berkeley was really fun though, especially because it was Cal Day - which is when all the newly admitted students can visit campus and explore clubs and buildings. It made for a very fun and lively atmosphere, which hopefully inspires the girls to start thinking about their future! We stopped into the science museum on campus, where I learned through one of the interactive exhibits that their trained AI model thinks that my resting face is very angry. Hahaha - I have RBF!

While most of the week we had mediocre lodge or camp food, we more than made up for it with some yummy meals in SF! In Berkeley, we did a combo lunch of hot dogs from Top Dog and delicious fresh rice noodles from Yin Ji Cheng Fun. For dinner, Way and Kevin took us to a french restaurant in Mill Valley called Le Marais, where we had lots of wine and I got schooled on how to eat bouillabaisse the correct way. And then on Sunday, we stopped to get dim sum at our old standby, Hong Kong East Ocean in Emeryville.

All in all, it was such a packed but fun week. The girls did great on the long drives because we had some good audio books (highly recommend Chomp, by Carl Hiassen and read by James van der Beek) and lots of Taylor Swift songs to sing to. They'll complain that they did so much hiking but none of them were any harder than what they've done in the past. From my part at least, I got the itch now to check out more national parks!