We had originally planned on staying local over the 4th of July, get caught up on life and prep for our dessert reception in California. That wasn't nearly adventurous enough and didn't take advantage of what was probably our only free three-day weekend all summer. So we decided at the last minute to knock one of the National Parks off our list (we have a goal of visiting ALL of them) and go backpacking in Sequoia National Park.

We had an early start on Thursday afternoon -- but it wasn't early enough to avoid the traffic on 152 East. We sat on 152 for over an hour before we decided to be resourceful, flip around and take a more scenic route south. (Little did we know we were just minutes away from getting through the traffic mess and the scenic route was NOT required). Can't say as we plan to go that way again -- but we saw countryside we never would have seen otherwise.....

Our plan was to camp near the Mineral King Ranger Station in the southern end of the park -- but rolling in at 10pm on a holiday weekend to first-come, first-serve campsites didn't prove very successful for us. We ended up renting one of the last three rooms (their Deluxe Suite even) at the Comfort Inn in Three Rivers. Made for a fairly cushy start to a weekend of backpacking.

We were up and going early in the morning to make sure we were one of the lucky ones to get a wilderness permit for the weekend. Everything was great - UNTIL we realized our spontaneous packing left a little to be desired....we had a water filter, but no batteries to operate it (we had to rely on old fasihoned water boiling) Bug spray, but no first-aid kit. TP but no shovel... Despite those somewhat crucial tools, we left the marmot populated parking lot and hit the trail. Hit the very steep and very hot trail. Our destination was Monarch Lakes -- two lakes at the base of Mineral Peak in the Southern Sierras. We scrambled up the essentially vertical terrain dividing the two lakes and camped at the upper, and larger Monarch Lake. The lake was beautiful. It was pretty exposed -- with very few trees. The lake was just slightly above freezing and at the base of a steep bowl that clearly had been carved by glaciers eons ago.

Our first 36 hours we were the only ones crazy enough to hike to the upper lake and we had it all to ourselves. We enjoyed the solitude and were pretty darn lazy. Didn't do much but climb to some higher ground to check out the views. (We used the smoke from the fires, slight altitude sickness on my part and the rationed water as reasons to stay close to camp...) Come Saturday evening we were joined by a couple other campers and a Park Ranger who made us move our tent... this time we dropped over the side just a bit and mixed up the view to see lower Monarch Lakes and face the fiery sunset.

Sunday was a very early morning -- we were up and back to the trail head by 10am. It was blistering hot -- so that was a very good thing. Then we opted to continue to explore and went home via the heart of Sequoia National Park and visited THE largest and the THIRD largest trees in the world (by volume that is). The General Sherman and General Grant trees. The sequoia groves were incredibly impressive. Even the ones that aren't the world's largest had branches the size of tree trunks. Some of them so wide that it would take 20 people holding hands to surround the base. It's pretty amazing that we live near such incredible places of natural beauty. We've got to take advantage of it more than we do... so we're already planning our next National Park visit. Kings Canyon or maybe the Redwoods? Anyone up for a road trip?