Monday/Tuesday, September 7 and 8: We dropped off the red Ford Focus we had been driving for almost a week at the Merced Airport on Monday morning. Then we stopped at a Best Buy near there to pick up a new portable hard drive to replace the older one we brought along since it was giving us problems and also found a new GoPro battery to replace the one that failed a couple of weeks ago. We drove to Visalia and pulled in to the Country Manor RV Park about noon. Since it was Labor Day, temps were already at 95 degrees and we didn’t have a car there wasn’t much to do but stay in the camper. I got some cleaning and reorganizing done on both the camper and the computer and we watched a movie after supper.

I had called Avis on Monday to see if we could get picked up to get the rental we had scheduled and the central office assured me that they did pick up within five miles - we were three miles away - and that they had entered my request. On Tuesday morning I started calling the local office as soon as they were open at 8:00 AM to confirm the pick up, however their phone was continually busy. The phone would automatically forward to the central office where they again assured me that the pick up request had been entered on my reservation. We were supposed to be picked up at 9:00 and when no one had arrived at 9:30 we decided that we would have to unhook the camper and drive there ourselves. Once we got there (a bit peeved as you might understand) the manager said, “They should not have told you that - we don’t do pickups.” He did give us the rental at half price for the inconvenience but we lost an hour of the time we wanted to be in the national park. Ahh, but often God turns a “bad” situation into a good one.

Just a short way into the park a lady motioned for us to look up into a tree along side the road. We pulled over and this time in plain view we could watch a bear feeding on the tree branches and had enough time to get the video camera rolling. Here is a very short clip of the footage ...

The drive into the park was beautiful with stark contrasts between lakes and lush green valleys set against brown barren hillsides.

The drive through the park consisted of almost constant hairpin curves as we climbed to 7,000 feet.

We stopped at one turnout to view the mountains surrounding us with a prominent rocky domed one standing out from the rest. The lady standing next to us explained that many climbers scale the face of the mountain with ropes but that there were also “stairs” up the side of the mountain. That didn't sound like something I would want to do!

At around 5,000 feet the terrain changed to thick forest and the giant sequoia trees began to appear. We stopped at the Giant Forest Museum and then took a side road that took us through a beautiful redwood grove and actually through a “tree tunnel.” There was a loop called “Moro Rock” at the end of this spur that took us to a trail head parking lot. The trail was only 1/4 mile long but climbed over 300’ via 350 steps. This was the stairs the lady below had been talking about and I still said “no way”! I thought we should at least get a few photos of the mountains part way up the steps so we started the climb. And then it was “let’s just see what is around the next corner” until we had climbed all the way to the top. Admittedly this is probably the only way I am every going to actually climb and mountain so it is a good thing we kept going and of course the view from the top made all of the effort worth it!

Our next stop was to the famous General Sherman tree … the largest tree (by volume) in the world. Viewing the tree required a half mile hike - all down hill to get to the tree but of course a steep climb to return to the parking lot. We ate our lunch at the base of this enormous tree. On the way back we took a photo of me standing inside the base of one of the trees to get the perspective of the size of these trees.

General Sherman Tree

We made a couple of more stops to the Lodgepole gift shop and Wuksacki Lodge. We contemplated having dinner there but decided against it so we started back down the mountain. At almost the same spot as the morning drive up we had to brake quickly for a bear crossing the road. This time we got just a quick photo as he disappeared over the hills on the other side.

Same lake on the way back