This post will cover part 2 of Dillon’s and my road trip to California, right after we left Las Vegas. There will be way more to our Cali trip so this is just the beginning. But after leaving Las Vegas, we headed to California to visit some of the national parks. To keep this post organized, I’ll cover the three national parks we visited back to back. We arrived in Cali on Thursday, June 30th. We ate dinner and spent the night at Visalia. The following day we made our way to the first national park…
Sequoia National Park
The first national park we went to was Sequoia. If you’re not familiar with this park, basically it has ginormous trees called sequoias. My mom always joked that our Christmas tree is like a sequoia because it’s so big. Anyway, so we arrived at the park and planned to do the Congress Trail. Before that though, we stopped by to see the largest tree in the world. The largest tree is called General Sherman and the hike to it is about half a mile. There is a parking lot right by the General Sherman hike trailhead.
During the time we were there, some trails were closed due to previous wildfire activity. Part of the Congress Trail had some areas closed off. It’s always a good idea to check the national park’s website to see alerts. For the Congress Trail, we found the trailhead in the General Sherman trail. The Congress trail is about 2.7 mile round-trip. This is a popular hike but it wasn’t overly crowded when we were there. You’ll see huge trees along the way and some of them have their own names. I love the shade the trees gave. It was so cool seeing so many giant trees all around!
I would have loved to visit the Tunnel Log in this trip but we didn’t get to do it this time around. Basically, it’s a giant tree that fell years ago and they carved a tunnel through it. Cars can actually drive through it. There’s also many other day hikes you can do in this national park, but the ones listed on this post are what Dillon and I did. Check out my reel on IG from our day at the national parks 🙂
King’s Canyon National Park
On the same day we visited Sequoia National Park, we also visited King’s Canyon National Park. It turns out that you can drive from one park to another along Generals Highway. However, keep in mind what season you go because some roads may close in winter. While Sequoia has more of the giant trees, King’s Canyon has more peaks, waterfalls, canyons, and valleys. Dillon and I really didn’t hike anything in King’s Canyon except a short walk to a waterfall. We drove by and stopped at some overlook spots to see the mountains and river. The drive through Kings Canyon Scenic Byway was especially nice with the river on one side. Other than that, our trip there was fairly simple yet sweet. It was beautiful to take in all that nature. The fresh air. The birds chirping. The sound of the river rushing by. It was really refreshing. After a full day of spending time in nature, we booked a room at Hotel Picadilly in Fresno for the night which was on the way to Yosemite National Park.
Yosemite National Park
On Saturday morning, we woke up and checked out of our hotel. We had a delicious breakfast at The Fresno Breakfast House. I always get the eggs Benedict. It’s become my go-to breakfast lately. Then we made our way to Yosemite National Park.
In terms of national parks, Yosemite National Park is the creme de la creme. We actually happened to be there on 4th of July Weekend. So that means it was especially busy. Generally as a rule of thumb, expect it to be busy during summer and holidays. So one thing to point out, you actually need reservations to go to Yosemite since it’s a popular national park. You can find out more about making reservations at Yosemite on their website. BUT, the reservations only apply between 6am and 4pm. Since Dillon and I have been road-tripping and have been really flexible with where we stay, we didn’t have our Yosemite trip planned weeks in advance. We planned it more like the week of LOL. Well we knew we wanted to go there, we just didn’t have a date set. As a result, we didn’t have a reservation. So what we did is we showed up after 4pm on Saturday, July 2nd, and we were able to just explore for some hours that evening.
We had previously bought a tent for camping so we planned to camp right outside the park since the campgrounds inside Yosemite were booked up. If you do some research, you’ll see there are plenty of campgrounds located right outside the park entrances. Some require a fee so it’s something to keep in mind. We found a placed called Berkeley Tuolumne Family Camp on our GPS and it was the place we decided to pitch tent. Well, we actually posted up right before the entrance. There were a few people camping right before the entrance as well. But it wasn’t crowded at all, it was actually pretty secluded. The stars that night were incredible!
The following day we woke up early with the intention of showing up to Yosemite before 6am. Since camping isn’t the most comfortable way of sleeping, it wasn’t that hard to get up and go. Plus, the entrance to Yosemite was like 10-15 mins away. So we got there way before the rangers. There were many other people who were able to enter the park the same way. Either they are early birds getting ready for their sunrise hike, or just like us, they didn’t have reservations.
Hiking at Yosemite
We parked close to the Mist Trail trailhead and took a power nap before our hike. That was the one hike we’ve really been wanting to do. Maybe Dillon would have done the Half Dome hike had he acquired a permit, but that one is not my cup of tea. That one is way too intense for me and I like to appreciate Half Dome from the other angles that don’t require me hiking it.
After our power nap in the car, we walked to the trailhead. The Mist Trail consists of hiking to two waterfalls. The first one is Vernal Falls and it’s 2.4 miles round trip. The second one is Nevada Falls and that one is 5.4 miles round trip. You are already at a high elevation at the trailhead. But the hike itself gains 1,000 ft to top of Vernal Falls and 2,000 to the top of Nevada Falls. The hike is considered moderate to strenuous level. You are hiking at an incline for most of the time. Dillon and I only hiked to Vernal Falls, then we made our way back down. More so because we didn’t want to spend all day hiking when we still had some driving to do to get to our hotel that night. The hike was tough but it was so worth it. The falls and the way the light hit it created a beautiful rainbow. This hike is definitely a must!
After hiking, we left the park and booked a hotel room at Carson Valley Inn Casino which was near Lake Tahoe. This is where our road trip leads us next…
Xo, Jessica
