yet another camping trip, part 3

Our last day in Sequoia & King's Canyon

We decided to get up early, skip cooking breakfast and try to go see some wildlife. We hadn't seen any bears and kind of wanted to. They get up early, nap in the middle of the day and then get up again in the afternoon. Yeah, we managed to. We watched this guy for about 15 minutes. The pictures are a bit blurry because I was on super-duper zoom. We weren't all that close and that was just fine by me. At one point he noticed us, got scared & went up in a tree. Then I guess he decided we weren't going to do anything so he came back down and started foraging again.



We saw another bear from further away, but he was on the move and we didn't get to see him for long. That one had an ear tag, which means they've already caught him. They don't try to catch bears unless they've been getting aggressive, so were were perfectly happy to not see much of that one. It's a shame. When people are careless with their food, then the bears realize that it's much easier to get food that way than to forage. Then they get aggressive and sometimes end up getting killed.

petrographs at Hospital Rock

sliding on Hospital Rock

We drove out to the Mineral King section of the park. More remote, less visited. We didn't see many people at all. We pulled into a campground that was closed for the season thinking we might picnic there. Then we saw this guy and changed our plans.

After Mineral King, we stopped in town to get gas & ice and use the library and the phone. We didn't have much cell signal in the park. Mike used the internet to find a mechanic and a hotel in Fresno so we could get the air conditioning on the Escape fixed. What's a Gilbert family vacation without a little car work? Mike used the internet, Thomas skimmed through several non-fiction titles. I flipped through magazines. When we left, the librarian let Thomas pick a book out of their give-away box. Very kind of her since he had already finished the books we packed with us.

goofing around at Tunnel Rock

atop Tunnel Rock

We went back into the park for one last hike before we headed to Fresno for a hotel and car repairs. We chose Crescent Meadow.

This was officially off the trail, but it was really hard to resist walking on the log that went across the entire meadow.

chimney tree

This reminded me of a scene in that movie First Knight with Richard Gere and Julia Ormond, where they hide under the ferns in the forest.

We headed to Fresno with no a/c, checked into our hotel, cleaned up & cooled off. Then we went to dinner and to Target. Mike got a car charger for his cell phone, Thomas got a new book, having finished the one the librarian gave him that day. Me? I got a razor so I could shave without having to unload the entire car to find the one I had packed.