Thursday, July 2, 2015

Kern River Camping Trip - Part 2

Back for Part 2, I see :) Well, YAY! If you missed Part 1 of our Kern River exploration, make sure to check it out! I mean, there is a cute video of Walt the Wiener Dog swimming in the river! You should pop over just to check that out if nothing else!


Like I had mentioned in my post about "Being Okay With Rest/ Travel" before we left, Ryan and I had a couple hikes on the schedule for our camping adventure. We decided we would try and tackle two of them on Friday morning. We were hoping that some people were still at work, so the trails would be less busy.

But first, we had to get our EAT on, right?! I mean, we needed some nourishment if we were going to be hiking around in 100+ degree weather! Breakfast burritos were our meal of choice (complete with Morning Star soy sausages, red onions, egg, cheese and some Taco Bell sauce).

YUM!

The first hike we went to was the Trail Of A Hundred Giants. There were mixed reviews about the hike. Some people said it was awesome and you got to see lots of the big sequoias, while others thought it was lame because it was more of a paved walking path than an actual hike. We both thoroughly enjoyed it though, especially with a wiener dog in-tow. (A quick word of warning - it does cost $5 to park at this spot - but it goes towards keeping the area clean! We knew about the fee before we arrived though, so made sure to have cash on us.)

Some of the shots from our phones

You got a little brochure when you parked that had facts that correlated with numbers along the path. Some told you about trees growing together, trees that had fallen, root systems, and even one that had a portion of the tree fall off and impale the ground. The only bummer thing was it seemed like at the same time we arrived so did a big party (or maybe a school bus) so we were having to jump around a bit to get around them, but other than that it was a lovely 2+ mile walk.

Family shot!

I was in the crack of a tree!

Nature

Why won't Walt cooperate with our photos?!

He is an adventure doggy!

The roots of a sequoia go out, in a maze formation, not down into the earth

It was great to have some of the path shaded. Really cooled it down!

Ryan thought there might be a Squatch in those woods...

I told Ry we needed to get Walt a Wilderness Explorer badge ;)

Redwoods!

Thankfully there were many signs so we wouldn't get lost!

Just for a little comparison... This is the BASE of one of the trees that had fallen

GO OUTSIDE AND EXPLORE!

We are so silly!

Peace!

Obviously I had to sport my #WeRunSocial tank on the trip!

Again, the selfie stick came in handy to allow us to capture just a bit of these GIANTS!

About 10 miles further up the road was Dome Rock. Ryan had heard that it had some awesome views, so why not keep heading up the windy road?! There were definitely some great views, but not much of a hike. It was more of a climb up a rock - still cool nonetheless!

Tree lined streets are pretty magical!

The view from the top

I really have NO idea how people rock climb. It is SO scary to me!

These are "the needles" in the distance

I just noticed it, but doesn't it sort of look like the tree trunk of this picture
goes with the tree in the above picture? Okay, maybe not...

Even with the drought there is still some green

It was a bit windy near the edge...

The valley

Maybe I decided to take a quick break with Walty ;)

By this time we were pretty much famished (so much so that we forgot we had actually put all of our food in the truck to keep bears away from the campgrounds and didn't realize we could have eaten at any time), so we made our way back to camp.

Along the way we saw this fence with locks on it

If only we had a lock we would have left it!

It reminded me of the fence they just took down in Paris, so
I wanted to get a couple pictures of it. Definitely NOT as covered
as the one they just removed, but still cool!

We got back around 2pm and gobbled up some PB&J's before heading down to the river. Oh yeah, and not only were we hungry, but the pup was TIRED! While we were busy taking pictures on Dome Rock, he would find whatever shade he could and curl up for a 10 second nap.

Walt in "some shade" snoozing while we were grabbing a selfie 

He LOVED the shade of the pop-up we had at our campsite (thanks Reef!)

Let me tell you, the river felt DELIGHTFUL after the morning of hiking (I think in total we probably did 3-4 miles, which doesn't seem like much until you factor in the heat, sun, and having a hiking buddy that has 4 inch legs).

We had some nice neighbors who let us use their pop-up and raft when they
were away from their camp for the day. 

Ryan carried Walt over to a further rock. Walt kept looking at me like he
wanted me to somehow help him back to shore.

Another day, another attempt at having Walt swim the river:


This is the life, right?!

Ryan ended up getting a fishing license from the local
party liquor store (sorry, you non-Michiganders have different
terms for those places) so tried his luck with some river fishing.

We stayed in the water for the majority of the afternoon, that is, until we got hungry again and made our way back up to our fire pit. Next up on the menu? Pizza.

Ryan manning the fire

It didn't look too bad, but it didn't taste great...

A little shot of our site (I can't believe we didn't take any pictures of our "arrangements")

As soon as he hit the chair, he was OUT!

I would say this was our least successful meal of the trip. The dough didn't necessarily cook all the way through (thankfully we brought some pita bread as back-up crust "just in case"), but Ryan ate it. And what's the ONLY way to wrap up a campfire meal?! With a s'more of course! Ours were complete with square marshmallows (did you know these were a thing?!) and Reese's cups!

Oh heck-to-the-yes! My favorite part about camping ;)

FIAH-FIAH!

DELISH!

They were like cotton candy clouds!

The sun setting behind the hills across the river from us

When Ryan zoomed in on the camera you could even see craters!

And now Friday is in the books! Let's be honest, sleeping in the heat was NOT my jam, but you gotta do whatcha gotta do! At least we were safe from any rogue bears...

Okay, #RealTalk time, what are your thoughts on Selfie Sticks?

1 comment:

Scarabocchio Girl said...

I've never seen a sequoia in real..but if I plan a travel to California, surely I want to see the Sequoia National Park! Your camp is very nice, so settle up :) And Walt is a real adventure dog!