We took off on Friday after Jip completed his semi-annual physical readiness test on our great California road trip. The first challenge was getting through LA. Ugh. We finally made it to Visalia after being on the road for 8ish hours. We ate dinner and went for a swim. Then it was up and at 'em nice and early to head to Sequoia National Park. While on our way to one of the main attractions in Sequoia, we spotted a bear trying to break into a trashcan.
We stopped at a nice overlook about halfway to the top. RJ kept trying to make a picture like he was lifting the mountain in the background. I finally convinced him and Ryleigh to make it look like they were holding the mountain down.
It was just lovely up there.
Then it was up, up, up to the General Sherman Tree. The General Sherman Tree is the largest living tree in the world, by volume of wood. We took a few pics in front of the tree and a few more with the crazy big sequoias.
RJ took this one. Not bad.
On our way back down out of the park, we learned something important. RJ gets car sick. He threw up. Thankfully, it wasn't much and it was mostly caught by his car seat straps. We stopped, cleaned him up, and instructed him not to watch the iPad at all while on twisty-curvy roads. We then went down a little further, back to where the road used to go under a giant rock. RJ didn't want to get out, so Ryleigh was left to hold up the rock on her own.
After we got the kids the Sequoia stamp for their National Park Passport books, we had to retrace our steps a bit since there is no east-west road through Sequoia. We made it to Mammoth Lakes to pick up Jip's race packet with 90 minutes to spare.
On Sunday, Jip ran the Mammoth Half Marathon. It was hard. It was deceiving. The first half was downhill, from one of the lakes down into them town. Then, once into town, up, down, up, down, and up some more. Lots of up.
Jip was spent. But, what a good sport! We walked back to the hotel, he showered, and then we hit the pool.
After lunch, we drove up to the Mammoth ski area and took a gondola ride up to the very, very windy top.
After we went back down the mountain, we realized we still had time to take the shuttle to Devil's Postpile, considered by scientists to be one of the finest examples of columnar basalt. The columns are 60 feet high. Why is this interesting to our family? Well, it really isn't, but it was a pretty ride on the shuttle bus and the kids got to add another stamp to their National Parks Passports.
The kids were so tired that they passed out on the shuttle bus going back up the mountain. It was bumpy and twisty-curvy, but they slept all the way up. I'm sure Jip wishes he could have slept, too--the high-elevation run was definitely catching up with him at that point. Once we finally made it back to our car, we grabbed some dinner to eat in our hotel room, swam again, and slept hard.
The next morning, we left nice and early to get to the Yosemite Valley. But, our Yosemite trip will have to wait until Part 2 of our Road Trip.
Until next time, cheers!
