Sunday, June 9, 2013

Saturday 6/8- Sequoia National Park

Woohoo! Went to the gym early in the morning, ran a 625 mile, all time new record, i was super excited to start off the day that way. and oh yeah, they shut off the air conditioning here in the barracks, ugh. 11am comes around, and Anderson picks me up outside, and were on our way to the park! Stop at starbucks real quick to get a mocha ice coffee. The way to the park is just a straight line east of where we were, so it was very easy to get to. All the crop land slowely started to turn into trees and forests. And right before we hit the park, there was a huge lake surrounded by mountains, it was beautiful.

Once we went past the lake, we started on our curvy adventure of going through the national park. very nice people there, and the first thing we saw was a huge boulder!! lolz
After that we were driving along the mountain sides, through loops and U turns, and it was getting quite nauseating going up. We were at like 6000 feet going up these mountains. We drive for like 20 minutes or a half hour, and get to the entrance of the sequoia forest.
   
Just four huge trees marking the entrance to the forest, it was amazing. Even got to hug one of them. These pictures do not do it justice. So we keep driving along Oooing and Aaaing at the trees we pass by. Then we get to the General Sherman tree. The largest living tree in the world? didnt seem THAT big, but what they meant was the volume of the base had the most wood in it, than any other. nice.
   
This was also at 7000 feet. I thought it was a little hard to breathe, but there were a lot of people hanging out there too. From there we decided to drive further and check out the visitor center/ gift shop area. Bought a t shirt, and some trail mix lol. also saw a bear!!
Anderson really wanted to see some waterfalls, and on the map there was a river near us, so we asked the help desk where the waterfalls would be, they said it was a 1.7 mile hike out to the nearest ones. We were so down to do that. We strapped on our camelbacks, and headed into the woods. We talked to people on the way there that were coming back, and they said they saw bears, i didnt want to get my hopes up, but from then on out, i kept my eyes out..
We turned a corner and what did i see?!?!
A deer!! i know its hard to see in that pic, but we were really close, and its standing in front of the tree. It was pretty cool to be that close to a deer. So it got my hopes up that maybe we could see a bear. We walk another like 10 minutes, and turn the corner to a bear and 2 cubs!!!
We were very scared to get too close, cuz there were cubs around, but we did make a little noise and the cubs ran up a tree, pretty dang fast too. So we just scurried along. After we saw the bears, our trip was complete, for the wild life section. We were close to the falls, we could hear it.
There they were, beautiful!! But the cool thing was, that there was a swimming hole right below the falls, and i already saw a guy down there, and i wasnt going to pass this up. aint nothing like a nice cold fresh water swimming hole at the bottom of a waterfall. I climbed down carefully, and luckily i wear basketball shorts under my regular shorts lol, used those as my bathing suit!! And i jumped on in!!
   
That was probably the most refreshing thing in the world. It felt so good to be in there, and it was pretty deep too. It was so reviatalizing, felt like i could run a marathon after being in it. Made me extremely happy, and i had to convince Anderson to jump in as well. It was such a fun time.
After we got out, we hiked on back to the parking lot, and started our journey home. We had such a fun time in the outdoors, and saw a lot of cools things. It was the most fun ive had in lemoore since i got out here. Glad to know there is another person that enjoys the outdoors as much as i do. Anderson even snowboards! So we're already making trips to go skiing some weekends in the winter. Gotta remember to bring my skis down during my road trip!! Starting to enjoy myself here. And we have next friday off so, its gonna be a good week.







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