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Showing posts from June, 2025

Day 16 - Found some more trout! - Monday, June 30th 2025

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After all the travel this past weekend, we had a bit of a low-key day today, hanging out around the camper. I worked quite a bit and we tried as best we could to beat the heat. It’s not nearly as bad as the desert was, but 84 degrees in the sun still warmed up the RV pretty good.  Liz found a laundry mat that doubled as a dog wash, so she took our increasingly dusty Great Pyrenees dog Salem for a bath to reset his coat to white again. After dinner, we wanted to explore where the dirt road next to us went, so we piled in the van. We soon found a little park further up the canyon with a little trout pond that seemed to be very well stocked. That set off the kids to begging to go back and get the poles, but I wanted to find some worms first so we made a quick trip into Ketchum. The Big Wood River flows by the road there so we made a quick stop to check it out. Finding it too wide and fast for the kids to fish, we grabbed the worms and headed back to the pond. It was a bit like catchin...

Day 15 - Shoshone Falls - Sun, June 29, 2025

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 After leaving Sequoia around 1 pm yesterday, we stopped briefly in Fresno for groceries, then began the long haul toward Idaho. We called it a night when we got to the Donner Pass eastbound I-80 rest stop around 9:30 pm.  The actual Donner Pass site where the legendary expedition ended tragically is a few miles south of this, and while it would have been interesting to see the site in person, it will have to wait until next time. The rest stop is infamous in and of itself, as my Google sleuthing uncovered a creepy ghost story on Reddit about the restrooms there. Thankfully, we slept peacefully with no ghosts or creepy people disturbing us, and shortly after dawn, continued northeast on I-80.  Before we continue, I pulled this winter photo of the Donner rest stop from Google. This mountain range is no joke. Take a look at the height of that snow!  The interstate took us out of the mountains and into the desert yet again, as we passed Reno, Nevada. We soon passed Lov...

Day 14 - Gen. Sherman Tree - Sat, June 28, 2025

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 Still at our forest shangri-la in Sequoia National Forest, we spent this morning visiting a different visitor center in the area. (Between the two neighboring Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks there are five visitors centers. Between those and all the roads and trails, it would take a very long time to fully explore the area.)  This visitors center is located where the largest sequoias are standing. It was hard to believe that we still hadn’t seen the biggest trees in the park, aside from the Gen. Grant tree from yesterday. Another Civil War General got the naming honors for the tree we’d see today, General William T. Sherman.  The “Sherman Tree” while not the widest tree, is overall the largest tree on earth. A half mile trail with a 200 ft elevation change was pleasant on the way down, but not so great on the way back up. A series of switchbacks helped ease the pain and I’m proud to say that yours truly made it back to the parking lot, and overall, my back is gre...

Bonus video - Nap time on travel day

 

Day 13 - Kings Canyon National Park - Fri, June 27, 2025

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 It was a cold night at 7500 ft in the mountains of California, about 55 miles outside of Fresno. We couldn’t legally have a campfire if we were below 5,000 ft or above 9,000 ft so luckily, our dispersed (refresher: basically means off-grid, no services) campsite was right in the vertical sweet spot. As mentioned preciously, we had a nice little fire and roasted the trout on Thursday night. Friday morning, we visited the visitors center at Kings Canyon National Park, which is essentially right next to Sequoia Nat. Park. Kings Canyon has big pine timber and streams and also stark, rocky high alpine sections, depending on where you go. Next, we saw the Sequoia tree with the largest known trunk diameter, named after the esteeemed General Grant. Being up close to a tree of this size “makes you feel like an Ant” as Breana says. We learned that if you were to fill up the trunk with basketballs, you could fit 150.000 of them.  The interesting thing about nearly all of these big trees...