Belated happy holidays!

We are back from a warm(-ish) trip to central California for the holidays where we met Dad and Barb in the Santa Cruz area, with a pit stop in Yosemite for Christmas day then Sequioa & Kings Canyon National Parks for New Years.

Scroll down to see the pictures from the start.

We timed our trip home just right - yesterday is was clear and sunny and perfect driving weather. Today much of the route is snow and rain!

XO

Sequoia and Kings Canyon NP

After several days on the coast, Dad and Barb headed home and we headed to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

We'd booked a cabin at a KOA in Visalia, CA, about an hour from Sequoia. This one had nice warm heated showers (in a heated room), but the campground was in an industrial area of town and smelled like cow poo and other mysterious, not so nice smells. It wasn't my favorite place.

Sequoia NP was ok. We didn't get there until about noon, most of the park drives are closed (snow) and we had to wait quite a while to chain up. It was New Year's Eve, and the park was busy enough that it was hard to find parking to see some of the sites. We didn't get out much (our choice). I was crabby.

Kings Canyon was similar, except we stayed to road areas where we didn't need to chain up because it was a pain in the rear. I was really frustrated by the visitors to these two parks - nobody seemed to pay attention to the signs telling people to stay behind fences and not trample the ground around the big trees. Someone left litter on our car while we were out walking, and there was a garbage can less than 20 feet away! It was just a frustrating couple of days. We'd like to go back sometime when we can hike more and get away from people and see more of the park.  We left thinking it was underwhelming and frustrating, and that made me sad.