Sequoia National Park - Trip Recap

I ran last night, and I didn't die. I sure didn't LOVE it, but I survived. It'll do....

The camping trip that wasn't.....

We originally intended to drive up Friday, stay overnight about an hour outside the park, while my friend Snork came up Friday and snagged a campsite, meeting her there Saturday. Some crazy cold weather forecast changed our plans a bit, the Snork's decided to pass on the trip, and we booked another hotel for Saturday night as well. Kind of a bummer, the girls (and me!) were looking forward to a fun weekend in the park with them, but what are you gonna do.

Lucky for us, it turned out to be super PERFECT weather - high's around mid-50's in the mountains, and not unreasonably cold in the mornings. Beautiful hiking weather.

#1 gets out of school pretty late - around 4 - which was the catalyst for our decision to stay outside the park the first night. We ended up leaving OC around 7, hoping that LA traffic died down a little bit. We made pretty good time, and made it to our hotel around 11:30 (and man, we were really glad we weren't driving another 2 hours up the mountain to set up a tent).

Hotel camping?

Saturday morning, we stopped at Target to pick up picnic supplies, then headed out to Sequoia!

The drive up? SUPER foggy. When we arrived, we asked a ranger at the Foothills Visitor Center for some good options for one day, with a 6 year old. She gave us a couple of excellent suggestions, and told us the forecast was clear and sunny. Really? Huh.

When giving a kid directions on photo ops... be specific. Like, Hey, take a picture of us WITH THE ROCK we climbed up...

Imagine the above picture, on this.

There's some construction on the 198 into the park, delaying traffic for about 20 minutes - the road becomes one lane, and they stop inbound traffic for 20 minutes to let outbound traffic run, then alternate. We happened to hit the light both directions RIGHT when it turned red, so we had heaps of time to enjoy the scenery...

FALL!! 

After driving up the 198 a bit, we were REALLY glad we didn't attempt it at night. It's not bad in the daylight, but I can't imagine having to drive it at night, after driving 5 hours to get there.

We hit the Giant Forest, and it was still super, SUPER foggy. It was so, so pretty - giant trees, everything green, like a fairy land. Kind of magic.

We broke through the clouds, and hit up the first area that the ranger suggested - Lodgepole campground, where we originally planned to camp.

After picnicking and storing our food in the bear lockers....

Really? Will you REALLY?

we headed down to the river to try some fishing.

It was not super successful, but it was super duper fun.

Gabby requested to caption this "Log Walking for a Child"

After Lodgepole, we drove back down to the Giant Forest to see the General Sherman tree, Crescent Meadow, and Tharp's Log.

No headless dancing?

General Sherman tree trail is only about half a mile long, but it's down hill to view the tree, then uphill on the way back.

Did you know it's hard to hike uphill at 7,000' altitude?

Crescent Meadow Loop (to Tharp's Log) was about a 2 mile loop, through forest and, duh, meadows.

Unclear what that rock did to earn The Look...

We didn't want to drive back down that road in the dark, so we headed out of the park, and got to our next hotel in about 30 minutes - not nearly as far a drive as I expected.

On the way out of the park, ALL of the cars on the road were stopped. People were just out of their cars, standing in the road taking pictures, of 5 bear cubs on a hillside next to the road - one in a tree, 4 roaming around just a few feet from the cars.

Now I want to have a pet bear, because they were the cutest EVER.

We ate delicious, delicious greasy pizza at Pizza Factory.

Sunday morning, we hiked out to the river behind the hotel (maybe 1/4 mile out back), and tried some more fishing (still no luck).

We hit We Three Bakery before heading out of Three Rivers.

We took some random back roads home, took hours and hours, found fresh produce stands selling the cheapest, most delicious fruits that we ate during the drive, and made it home in time for dinner.

Weekend, success.

We'll definitely be coming back - the park was a bit closer than Yosemite, making it way more manageable for a long weekend - if we could take off earlier on a Friday (obviously on a day #1 is not in school), it would be ideal. We barely scratched the surface of what the park had to offer - I was DYING to do Mineral King, and Kings Canyon, but it didn't make sense in the time we had - so we'll be planning another trip in the late spring.

I tried to convince The H briefly that we should make a trip up for this....

but so far no luck. 

My brain quits. PFTW

Last week:
Monday: 7 miles - 1 warm up, 5 tempo, 1 cool down.*
Wednesday: 16 miles. This sucked, hard. **

I know. I ran twice. I didn't cross train. I'm the worst at training.

I'm not sure what's wrong with my brain, but I was thinking pretty ugly things on our drive back from Sequioa's. Like... that maybe I don't even LIKE running. Maybe, I'll just STOP running. Maybe I'm just not made to be a runner.

I'm just not one of those people who OMGLOVE being sweaty. I do like that it keeps me from being a fat blobby mess. But if the option were there to sit on my ass, watch tv, eat whatever, AND not exercise, I'd be all over it. It's a necessary evil. Yeah, I like running, a lot of the time. I just... kind of don't feel like it. I don't know.

*Tempo run was fantastic {words I never, ever imagined saying}. Goal pace 9:45, I ended at 9:30, and feeling great. I don't know where those happy running legs were Saturday for that 5k, but they sure would have come in handy.

**The first 14 miles were fine. Nothing amazing, but easy enough. But those last two?? Awful. I walked, a LOT. I still ended up with a 10:49 overall pace, which is a little fast for me for a long run, so maybe that was the problem. I don't know. It's like my body has never, ever run distance before, eevry week, it melts down when I reach the distance I hit on the last long run.

So maybe it's in my brain.

Bah.

This week:
Monday: UGH Cross training UGH
Tuesday: 7 miles, 400's {I feel like I should be excited about this}
Wednesday: Dinner with friends = rest day!
Thursday: 7 miles easy, weights?
Friday: Yoga
Saturday: 5 miles easy, weights?
Sunday: 18 miles easy

Zoinks.
*******************************************************************************

In less sucky news, our weekend trip to the Sequoia's was fantastic. Our plans changed a little bit due to some sneaky cold weather, and we ended up at a tiny road-side motel on our own instead of camping with friends, but it was still great. There were bears. And foggy forests. And beautiful mountains. And giant, giant trees. Pictures to come.

If it ain't fixed, don't break it

1. Today is exactly 2 weeks since I ran last. I've been extra unpleasant, and generally cranky, but also realllllly grateful I didn't run through #heatpocalypse (it just took me three tries to figure out the correct spelling of grateful, wtf).

One might think I'd take this non-running opportunity to, you know, cross train. I've done some cycling (an hour's worth), and some ellipticalling (all of 10 minutes before I wanted to kick myself in the throat), and weights (one 30 minute arm/back/chest program).

That's 1 hour and 40 minutes in two weeks. LAME.

I had an MRI on Jerk Shin Tuesday evening, and I'm waiting for the results. I shouldn't complain, my company pays for my health care in full, nothing out of pocket, but holy bejesus slowest process ever.

Oh well.

2. Last weekend, it was a billion degrees. SoCal generally has pretty mild summers - we are hot for a few days, REALLY hot for a few days, but the rest of the summer is pretty glorious. Except this summer, where it's been ridiculous for a long, long time.

The H and #1 had plans to attend Comikazee in downtown LA (about 60 minutes NE of us, and HOTTER than OC). I was kind of a little concerned about this drive - neither of our cars have working AC, which isn't normally a huge deal, but that drive sure would suck for them.

BUT THEN! We found the OC Metrolink train - $10, all weekend, right into downtown (and Pasadena! And Hollywood!). There's a station a few miles from our house, and it's air conditioned. Awesome. So we dropped them off at the station, and I spent the rest of the day with the other kids avoiding #heatpocalypse.

FYI, you can spend up to at least 4 hours at Souplantation (or Sweet Tomatoes, for you non-west coasters) without getting any shady looks.

Gabby made friends.

Rose also attended Comikazee, and did the zombie obstacle course I was really bummed to miss.

The H brought me a present, though, so I guess we're good.

You can pick up your own copy of "That's Not Your Mommy Anymore: a zombie tale" on Amazon (not an affiliate link, I'm not that fancy). Totally worth it. Gabby and I read it, and i was pleased to hear that I must not be a zombie, since I'm not green.

Yeah, we added that shit to her kindergarten reading log. That might be awkward at parent teacher conferences.

3. Kind of zombie related.... The H and I are going out for actual, real life grown up fun Saturday night, for the launch of Knott's Scary Farm!

This year is Scary Farm's 40th anniversary, and it sounds... well, terrifying. I haven't been to anything like this since Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando BEFORE I HAD CHILDREN. That was in the last century, I'm not even joking.

Halloween Haunt runs weekend nights from 9/21-10/31. And looks extra, extra scary.

4. My job is driving me batty. I'm kind of for real sort of looking, but mostly just for specific organizations and companies that I really want to work for. The thing is, I have it pretty cushy at this company, so I think until something I really, really want to go for pops up, I'm just going to tough it out. There just aren't a ton of great jobs out there that interest me, and I'm not desperate, just bored.

But if anyone knows of something that lets me wear compression and running clothes, and does good, like curing cancer, and is in SoCal (that's important), I'm game.

5. I don't really love getting up at 6am, but I do love getting out of work by 4pm. And these fall sunrises sure don't hurt.

6. We're planning a camping trip to Sequoia National Park in a few weeks. Anyone been there? I hear it's beautiful, but everything I read says there are bears everywhere.

 

Am I going to be eaten by bears?